The Ancient One (9 page)

She screamed again, shaking her hand wildly. Aunt Melanie grabbed Kate’s wrist, thrust her hand into a rivulet of water flowing into the pool, and started scrubbing intensely. Kate squealed in pain and tried to pull away.

“I know it hurts,” said Aunt Melanie with a scowl, “but it’s necessary. Hold steady.” She continued the scouring despite Kate’s squirms and cries of anguish.

At last, she relented, releasing her grip. Kate looked at the back of her hand to see red and blistered skin below her knuckles. It was bleeding, and ached as if it had been scalded, but the writhing worms were gone.

Aunt Melanie pulled a faded purple kerchief from her pocket. She wrapped it carefully around Kate’s hand, securing it with a knot. Holding Kate firmly by the shoulders, she scrutinized her. “Are you feeling all right now?”

“I guess so,” muttered Kate, sheepishly avoiding her gaze. “My hand hurts like crazy.”

“It will for a while, I’m afraid. It’s going to sting for a couple of days, and then you’ll probably have a scar.”

“What—what happened to me?” Kate stammered. “All I wanted was to get closer to—”

“The green pool,” completed her great-aunt grimly. “You were caught in its spell.”

“Spell?” repeated Kate, incredulous. She looked over at the pool, frothing energetically. The fragrant perfume had vanished, and so had her desire to touch it. “But how could it? Spells aren’t real.”

“This one is.”

Kate pursed her lips. “And that bird . . . the red one that flew into me. Was it part of the spell too?”

Aunt Melanie stroked her chin. “No, I don’t think so.” She paused, thinking. “It looked like an owl. Maybe a flammulated owl. It’s a rusty color—and small, about the right size. They can be downright feisty. But I’ve never heard of one flying right into somebody like that. And in broad daylight, too, when it should be sleeping.”

“I still can’t believe there’s some kind of spell.”

Shaking her head, Aunt Melanie declared, “Then watch this.”

She thrust the end of her walking stick into the pool. Suddenly, it ceased bubbling. The green liquid seemed to evaporate, and in its place Kate saw thousands upon thousands of the same venomous worms that had been on her hand, writhing over and under each other in one massive heap. They filled the depression that had once been the pool, slithering across rocks that had once been its sides. Then, to her shock, she saw several knobs of white mixed in with the gray rocks, and she recognized them at once.

“Bones,” she said in horror, drawing her left hand close to her chest. “There are bones in there.”

Aunt Melanie pulled out the walking stick, and immediately the bubbling pool returned. The green worms, if still there, disappeared in the froth.

“How does it do that? The stick, I mean.”

“This stick is, well—unusual,” answered Aunt Melanie, cocking her head to one side. “I’ve only begun to discover what it can do. It’s full of puzzles, like why this owl’s face on the handle looks almost human. I found it on my first trip through the tunnel behind the falls. It was just lying there, as if it were waiting for me. Somehow, it has the power to show what the pool really looks like. Don’t ask me how.”

She hefted the stick in her hand. “It’s the only thing that saved me when the spell first drew me up here. I forgot all about the Halami chant about
deadly green water
, though it was one of the first I ever heard:

Beware of the deadly green water
That swallows whatever it sees
You shall not escape from the Stones
You shall not encounter the Trees.

I was about to fall in just like you, when the end of the stick happened to slip into the pool. Suddenly, the spell was broken, and I saw everything. Even that wonderful aroma of juniper berries and peppermint—my favorite smells—vanished instantly. Did I ever feel stupid.”

“You and me both,” said Kate, regaining her feet.

Aunt Melanie faced the green pool. “Apparently, once the spell’s been broken, it doesn’t affect you again. That’s why it isn’t pulling on us now.”

Cautiously, Kate stepped nearer to the edge of the boiling liquid. She could not help but wonder how many creatures had been drawn to their death there. “I wonder how it got here,” she said, holding her left hand protectively. “It isn’t natural. No way. And the stream there, where you washed those—those
things
off my hand, it’s clear as anything. But, look, when the water gets to the pool it turns that horrible green color.”

Her gaze moved to the assembled boulders. She counted them: There were seven, all deeply cracked. Behind them, a colonnade of eroded lava columns lined the cliff wall, resembling the ribs of a decomposing skeleton. “Something’s weird about these boulders too. They feel—I don’t know, strange.”

“They should,” replied Aunt Melanie, as she started down the slope toward the lake. “They are the Circle of Stones.”

“The ones in the legend,” recalled Kate, hustling to catch up to her. “What else do you know about them?”

“Later,” came the response. “Right now we have to get into the Hidden Forest. Before anyone else does.”

Kate glanced over her shoulder at the great boulders. “All I know is they make me nervous.”

“That,” answered Aunt Melanie with a mysterious gleam in her eye, “is because they’re watching you.”

VIII:
T
HE
H
IDDEN
F
OREST

Aunt Melanie’s pace quickened as they rounded the last inlet on the lake before the deep woods. Whether she was worried that they would arrive after the loggers, or simply excited to be nearing the Hidden Forest, Kate could not tell. Probably some of both. They stepped rapidly over the buff-colored rocks lining the shore of the steaming lake.

At last, they approached the deep woods. The jumble of rocks underfoot turned to sand, then soil, then a curvaceous carpet of grass. Several streams of bright water flowed from the forest across the grass to empty into the lake. Mosses, vibrant green, clung to the broken branches that lay on the ground, while small birds chirped in the branches overhead.

Kate had never seen a meadow so verdant. Her left hand continued to ache, but she gradually grew less aware of it. Flowers—white, yellow, violet—draped the sides of the rivulets. Looking at them instead of where she was going, she thrust her foot into a deep well of mud. She had to lift it out carefully, toes high, to avoid losing her sneaker.

At the border between the meadow and the forest, she looked back once more at the blue, blue lake. The fog was swiftly returning, making the island seem to glide ghostlike over its surface. How deep this lake must be, she could not even guess. She wondered what strange beings might live within its waters.

In a few seconds, fog had completely obscured the island, as well as the Circle of Stones some distance above the shore. Billowing clouds now blocked the sun. It would not be long before the day’s first rain would fall, filling the lake and fueling Kahona Falls.

Stepping across a moss-covered log, she entered the Hidden Forest. At once, she was greeted by the familiar fragrance of resins, needles, berries, cones, leaves, bark, and soil, mixing together in a powerful perfume. Yet this time something was different. These woods smelled older, deeper, and something more, something she could not quite identify. She saw Aunt Melanie, looking smaller than usual against the backdrop of tall trees, disappear behind a double-trunked cedar.

A thrill ran through Kate. She and Aunt Melanie were the only human beings ever to walk in these woods since the time of the Halamis. As she strode quickly to catch up, her feet practically sprang across the forest floor. She understood that this buoyancy came from the thousands of years of living and dying that had occurred beneath her feet. A delicate ring of pink sorrel caught her attention, and next to it she saw an enormous snail slithering across a toppled fir. A cluster of sword ferns shone in the dim light ahead; the fronds, three or four feet long, glowed with a soft radiance.

Aunt Melanie, while working her way through the trees, pointed out some of the herbs and flowers springing up from the soil, from between roots, or sometimes straight from the ragged bark of the trees. Eschewing their tongue-twisting Latin names as “more for show than anything else,” she used only the more expressive common names. Kate liked especially the ones called bleeding heart, sugar scoop, fairy lantern, scarlet paintbrush, and glade anemone.

Like the crater filling with fog, Kate’s heart began to fill with a sense of unaccustomed peace. Everything here seemed to fit somehow, to belong just where it was. She turned slowly around, discovering new seedlings sprouting from almost every surface. Sinuous vines of purple and brown wound around trunks, making little rope ladders for small animals to climb. One tree, long dead, was covered completely with a leotard of light green lichen. Across fallen logs marched dozens of colorful mushrooms, some no bigger than ants, some shaped like luscious red lips, some round and wrinkled like exposed brains. From virtually every cavity in the trees something surprising appeared. Ferns and fungi, conifers and broadleafs, each one unique in dress and design, each one part of the common community. Life of all kinds was here wholly at home.

Despite the accumulating clouds above, sometimes a stray shaft of light would penetrate the intricate mesh of branches to reach the forest floor far below. One of these, stretching like a fiery filament, fell upon a moss-covered rock by Kate’s feet. She leaned closer to study it.

To her amazement, the rock had some lines deeply etched on its surface. Many of the lines had been filled with moss, and she had to trace their pattern with her finger to feel where they ran. When she found one line encircling the others, she realized they were too deep and regular to be accidental. There could be no doubt. They had been carved.

She stepped back a pace to get a better perspective. Then she saw the unmistakable design of the lines. It was a face. A human face. With wide, deep-set eyes, the face glared at her, across time beyond memory. Its open mouth seemed to be shouting something, a warning perhaps, in a tongue Kate could not comprehend.

“Hey, look at this,” she said, pointing.

No answer. She whipped around to see where Aunt Melanie had gone. But she was nowhere to be found. Kate ran a few steps ahead, suddenly finding herself at the edge of a clearing. Not again, she thought. Where could she have gone this time? A pang of fear shot through her, and she noticed her aching hand. For the first time, the forest began to feel somehow perilous.

“Aunt Melanie!” she called.

No sound but the swishing of branches.

Kate ran deeper into the forest. Again she shouted.

No answer.

Then she saw them. Arrayed before her were the most awesome trees she had ever seen. As solemn as a group of pilgrims gathered to pray, they stood together in silence. Drawing in a deep breath, Kate gazed at the uplifted boughs arching three hundred feet above her head, their lacy branches permeated with light. At the base of the trees, heavy burls hung like jowls, bordered by fibrous bark as delicate as strands of hair. Powerful roots clenched the soil firmly, as they had for centuries upon centuries.

Redwoods.

Then, in the center of the grove, she saw the most majestic tree of all. It stood taller and broader than the rest, older than anything else in the forest. It rose straight out of the earth with all the strength and grace of a monarch.

Kate moved closer, laying her hand respectfully on the tree’s gnarled trunk. So thick was its base that she guessed it would take five or six grown men holding hands to encircle it but once. She craned her neck backward, following the narrowing girth higher and higher, through successive canopies of mossy boughs.

Lowering her eyes, she discovered a hollow cavern within the folds of the massive trunk. Although it was only as high as her waist, it seemed to be quite deep. Something about its dark interior frightened her, yet tugged at her as well, so she approached it cautiously. Stooping to peer inside, she suddenly froze. Staring at her from the blackness of the cavern were two gleaming eyes.

The eyes regarded her intently. Then, in a flash, she recognized them.

“It’s you,” sighed Kate. “I called and called and when you didn’t answer I got scared.”

“No need to be scared, dear.” A hand reached out from the cavern and, taking Kate’s arm, drew her inside. “I didn’t hear you calling. As it happens, I was listening to something else.”

“Aunt Melanie, you’re impossible.”

Her heart still beating with excitement, Kate slipped the day pack off her shoulders and sat beside her great-aunt within the hollow of the tree. Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the dark, and she perceived the subtle gradations of colors around them. Rising from the earthen floor, the ribbed wooden walls of the inner trunk were streaked with black, charred by some forest fire perhaps a thousand years before. She looked at the wood bordering the cavern’s entrance and saw that it was only four or five inches thick, yet she knew it must be supporting considerable weight.

As she leaned back against the wood, her body relaxed. She felt safe. As if this tree would hold her, protect her against anything that could possibly happen. She looked through the entrance to the grove outside. The scattered shafts of light and wispy streaks of mist made the scene look more like an impressionist painting than a real stand of redwoods. It was cooler here amidst the trees than it had been near the lake, and she folded her arms against her chest to stay warm.

“We beat the loggers here,” said Aunt Melanie, “Let’s be glad of that. I wanted you to feel the power of this place, when everything’s quiet, at least for a minute or two. Before we head up to where their road comes into the crater, how about a quick taste of hot chocolate?”

Kate nodded at the suggestion. Swiftly, she unzipped the pack and poured out two cups of the steaming liquid. The smell was as delicious as the taste, and she held the cup close to her nose. Stretching out her legs, she realized that she had not sat down since emerging from the Jeep before dawn.