Strangewood (32 page)

The Queen was not listening.

But someone was.

From the tree high above came the sound, incongruous amidst
the horror, of harp chord and wind chime, of violin and piano key, and the
General turned over and stared above him as Fiddlestick the dragon swooped down
low over the clearing. His orange belly glowed purple-red in the blue firelight
and his green skin looked black. But the General would not mistake him for any
other.

The dragon flew at the Queen of the Wood. Her thorny pricker
hair swept up behind her and reached out for his flapping wings. Fiddlestick
opened his mouth, and fire jetted from his gullet in a blaze of crackling red. It
burnt her hair to cinders before it reached her tattered face. Then, as
Fiddlestick flew on, past the Queen, she burst into flame completely, the fire
crawling swiftly over her body.

The Queen of the Wood shrieked in sorrow and surrender.

And she burned.

Moments later, as Fiddlestick settled once more on the
Peanut Butter General's shoulder, all they could see of her was the fresh,
moist, blackening green of the unruined half of her face. It was too green, too
young to burn so quickly. But in the end, she would be gone entirely.

Fiddlestick wept little tears of fire.

The General walked from the clearing, straight and true on a
makeshift path for the Up-River and the fortress beyond. The dragon snorted
sadly.

"You did what you had to do to save the wood," the
General said, unused to offering such comforts. It had been hard enough with
Nathan, and now the dragon . . . the General had never been a very
compassionate man. Even when his own children had been small, he had rarely kissed
their wounds or soothed their sorrows.

"I slayed the Heart of the Wood," Fiddlestick
replied.

"The wood could not live without its heart," the
General reassured him. "Perhaps that is what all of this is about. I've
thought Our Boy was the Heart of the Wood, in his way. But now, I wonder, if
all of this has put that on Nathan."

They walked through the trees for some time before the
dragon spoke again. At length, Fiddlestick said, "Will we die, do you
think? In this battle, I mean? The Jackal Lantern is fierce, you know."

"We may," the General replied. "That is the
nature of war. Are you afraid?"

The dragon seemed almost to laugh, and spread his wings a
bit. The music no longer sounded as sweet, but instead made a mournful dirge.

"I was afraid of pain, before, but not afraid to
die," Fiddlestick said reasonably. "I thought I would be with my
parents then. Now the pain holds no fear for me. I am numb. But of death . . .
I am terrified. I don't know what lies beyond the wood for one who is damned. Do
you?"

It was the General's turn for silence now. He walked on
several yards, the dragon on his shoulder, and then he stopped a moment. He
turned so that, craning his neck, he was eye to eye with the dragon.

"We'll find out together, my friend," said the
Peanut Butter General.

Together, they walked on.

* * * * *

It was half past eight in the morning when Walt Sarbacker
arrived at Emily Randall's home in Tarrytown. He hadn't even gone into the
office yet. He'd received a call from the lieutenant just after seven with the
full story on the break-in at the Randall house earlier that morning. The
lieutenant didn't see any connection, but the Randall woman had asked for Walt.

Before he went up to the front door, he walked around the
side of the house to look at the shattered second story window. The rain of
previous days had passed and the sun shone brightly that morning, a clear blue
sky above and a nice breeze to go with it. Walt thought for a moment about the
beach and how nice it would have been to be with Jenny and their boy, Alex,
right then. He'd bought a new kite for Alex in the springtime, one with
dinosaurs on it, and they flew it every chance they got.

Then he thought again of Emily Randall's son in that
hospital bed, and his heart broke a little bit. On the job, his heart broke a
little bit nearly every damned day.

With a disgruntled sigh, Walt ran a hand through his
salt-and-pepper hair and turned back toward the front of the house. He was
surprised the carpenters hadn't shown up to board the window yet, and he made a
mental note to track the guys down for Mrs. Randall if she needed the help.

He went up the front steps and rang the bell, then stood and
waited patiently with the Dunkin' Donuts bag in his left hand. Two cups of
coffee, black. If she wanted cream and sugar, she could add it on her own.

But when the door opened and Walt saw the look on the poor,
stricken woman's face, he forgot all about the coffee. He searched for a word
in his own mind, some way to describe the pale face and hollow eyes, the lost and
searching gaze. And then he found it. Emily Randall looked haunted. As if all
the ghosts of her life had visited her in the night, and now she could barely
face the day without expecting a new specter to arise.

"Mrs. Randall, do you remember me?" Walt asked
her. "Detective Sarbacker?"

Her eyes cleared a moment, and she opened the door further. "Yes,
Detective. Thanks for coming so early. I . . . I need to speak with you."

She glanced momentarily down at the Dunkin' Donuts bag, and
Walt felt suddenly very self-conscious, almost stupid, for having it in his
hand. He held it up, almost as an offering.

"I brought us coffee," he said lamely. "After
the shock you had last night, I thought you might need a cup."

Mrs. Randall gamely attempted a smile then and failed
miserably. "I think I'm long past coffee, Detective. But thanks for the
thought."

Then she turned and walked into her home, her vulnerable and
violated home, and left Walt to shut the door behind them and follow her in. In
the living room, she sat on a sofa and gestured for him to take a chair
opposite her.

"I think my ex-husband was right," she said,
without preamble. "I think there is a stalker, someone obsessed somehow
with Strangewood, and I think he's the one responsible for what's been done to
Nathan and to Thomas."

Walt felt a sadness overtake him, and he struggled not to
let it show.

"Before we get into that, Mrs. Randall . . "

"Call me Emily."

"Emily. Before we get to that, I know you've already
given a statement about last night, but I'd like to hear it directly from you,
if you don't mind. Everything you can think of."

She blinked, paused, and then told him, beginning to end,
her version of the events of the early hours of that morning. The part Walt
hadn't heard already was the episode of the previous morning, at the apartment
of the man she was seeing. Her tone of voice indicated she expected him to be
judgmental about that relationship, but Walt kept silent. Then there was her
certainty that someone had been following her.

"I sound paranoid, I know," she said. "And
maybe I am. Maybe I should go see someone. But it's all too coincidental."

Walt agreed. But he had to wonder if some of the
coincidences might not be imaginary. He didn't voice this possibility, though. No
need to agitate the woman.

"Well?" she demanded. "What do you
think?"

After a long sip of his coffee, Walt sat forward and forced
the woman to meet his eyes.

"I'm going to be frank with you, Emily," he told
her. But he was lying. He was only going to be as frank as he thought she could
handle.

"Please do," she replied, somewhat defensively.

"Our investigative team that was here this morning
picked up hair and blood samples, and some fingerprints as well. If this guy
has ever been picked up for anything, anywhere in the free world, we should be
able to identify him. If he hasn't, we don't stand a chance in hell if he just
goes away."

Emily chuckled darkly. "He isn't going away,
Detective."

"Call me Walt," Sarbacker offered. "All we
can do, at this point, is have a prowl car make regular passes by your house
and notify hospital security that you might be in danger so that when you're
there, we have extra eyes looking after you."

The misery in Emily's face was obvious. Walt felt it echoed
somewhat in himself. After what this poor woman had been through recently, he
began to feel very profoundly that he needed to do something to keep her from
suffering any further.

Walt Sarbacker was not a man who got personal with his
cases. In fact, until now, it wasn't really much of a case. But he was a human
being, and this woman had already lost so much.

"As to your theory," he told her, "I've
talked to the doctors about your ex and your son. Neither of their medical
conditions indicates foul play of any kind. More than likely, this was all just
a simple burglary, and the guy won't be back. But if there is some kind of
stalker out there with a thing for your ex-husband's work, it doesn't have
anything to do with what's happened to Mr. Randall, or to Nathan.

"If that makes all of this more difficult for you, I'm
sorry. But there's just no connection. On the other hand . . ." Walt
paused, realized he was straying, and shook his head.

"What?" Emily asked.

"Nothing. No relation to the case."

"What?" she repeated, this time as a demand.

Walt shrugged. "Well, according to Dr. Gershmann, there
has apparently been some kind of connection between Thomas and Nathan's
conditions. Something to do with brainwaves."

The woman's eyes went wide. "But . . . they told me
there was no similarity. They . . ." she stared at Walt. "Look,
Detective, the doctors obviously don't know their asses from their elbows. Something's
going on here. They don't know why Nathan hasn't woken up. Now there's some
kind of relationship to what's happened to Thomas . . ."

"Your ex-husband tried to kill himself, Emily,"
Walt said bluntly.

When the woman winced, he felt nauseous.

"I'm sorry," he said. "But it's true."

"Maybe," she said. "But in his whole life,
Thomas Randall never did anything halfway. I can't imagine he'd fuck up
something as simple as suicide."

"The medical oddities you'll have to take up with Dr.
Cardiff or Dr. Gershmann," Walt said, trying to rein the conversation in. "I'm
here to tell you that, whatever they are, they have no correlation to what
happened here this morning."

Emily stared at him a long moment before dropping her head
and sighing. "I know you're probably right. No. I know you are right. But
it's just . . . all the logic in the world can't take away how weird this all
is. I feel like, even with all the terrible things that have happened, it's all
just a part of something else. Like something really horrible is going to
happen, and there isn't anything I can do about it."

Walt opened his mouth, then closed it again. He didn't have
a response for that.

* * * * *

In the cold, drafty stone of the fortress of the Jackal
Lantern, Grumbler stood in the corridor outside Nathan's cell. Even from out
here, he could hear the boy's soft snoring. As gently as he was able, he
unbarred the door and opened it. The dwarf in the pinstriped suit noted an odd
new weight to the guns he wore under his arms as he stepped into Nathan's room.
Instruments of death, they were. Always had been. But now, for some reason,
they felt foreign to him.

Atop the filthy blanket, shivering in the deep chill of the
seeping stone, Nathan lay sleeping. His naked body was covered with deep, angry
purple and black bruises. Blood was caked beneath his nose and there was a
recent splash of red on the blanket beneath him that Grumbler could not see the
source of. The boy began to hack and cough in his sleep, and a bit of blood
dribbled out of his mouth and down across his cheek.

His gut and his heart as cold as the fortress tone, Grumbler
stepped back into the hall and retrieved a heavy fur blanket he had carried
from his own chambers. With a quick glance about him to be certain he was not
watched, he re-entered the boy's cell and draped the fur over him.

Grumbler's stomach churned as he noted the stench coming off
the boy. Blood and filth and illness — all were part of that odor. But
there was something else there. Something darker. Something coming very soon,
coming to take the boy away from here, to save him in a way that Grumbler
himself could not.

The dwarf looked at him, at the sweet, jaundiced, pained
face of a boy not yet six years old. He was just a boy.

"I'm sorry, Nathan," he whispered. "It wasn't
supposed to be like this."

In his sleep, Nathan's entire body spasmed once, and a
ripple of awareness passed over his features.

"Daddy," the boy whimpered. Then his face went
slack once more and sleep claimed him again.

Grumbler watched him another moment, unable to speak another
word. After a time, he left Nathan to his illness, and his cell.

But, he thought, at least the boy wasn't cold anymore.

The forest thinned out as Thomas and his traveling
companions approached the Up-River. Here, in the northeast region of
Strangewood, the river was bordered with a wide expanse of glittering sandy
shore, and the water moved more leisurely than in other areas in its meandering
circle around the wood.

Tinklebum didn't like the sand. He complained vociferously
about the manner in which it slid from beneath his feet and pushed between his
toes. Brownie was unhappy about it as well. The shifting sand was a poor surface
should he be inspired to dance. Thomas ignored their complaints. The
bell-bottom wasn't quite sane, and the bear hadn't been in much of a dancing
mood, at least since Thomas had arrived in Strangewood.

They had other problems to deal with. Saying as much, Thomas
had set off up the shoreline toward the Bald Mountains in the distance, and the
others had followed, in spite of the shifting sands. Far off to the south, the
sky above the wood began to lighten. It would be dawn soon. Thomas would be
glad for the sunshine.