The Bone Flute (15 page)

“Me neither.” Mark closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead.

“You okay?”

“I don't feel right. Kind of groggy.”

“Breakfast, that's what we need. Let's get out of here!”

They climbed back to the ridge at the edge of the hollow. But nothing had changed. Woods still rippled to the far horizon.

“I guess they want me to use my gift.” Camrose set her hands on her hips. “Hidden paths, right? Where should I start look–ing?”

Mark said nothing. When she looked over her shoulder he wasn't there.

“Mark? Mark! Where'd you go?”

She ran back down the path to the clearing. “Mark!”

He was all the way across the hollow, and he wasn't alone. A tall figure walked beside him, its arm wrapped in a friendly way around his shoulders. They walked into the woods together.

When Camrose reached the spot, breathless, half a minute later, there was no sign of them.

22
The river of time

The path through the woods came out into a meadow of chicory and thistles. Alongside that ran a muddy track beaten into the grass, with more meadow and trees on the other side. “Just like Lynx Landing,” Camrose said aloud, not liking the silence of the place. “Only, nothing like it at all.”

Eastward—or in the direction that would be east if this were Lynx Landing—two figures passed over the crest of the road. Camrose started running. When she reached the crest, the road on the other side lay empty.

This was the way they'd gone, so this was the way she'd have to go too. If only she didn't have such a feeling of being pulled along on a string.

She walked on. Th e muddy track turned to gravel, then asphalt. Buildings appeared, but with never a speck of light at the windows, never a human face. Th e air was cool and wet.

And now the light was draining from the sky. Ten steps more and night fell. Th ere were no stars. Streetlights wore giant halos of mist. Th e streets glistened black.

Camrose walked into Market Square. The worst of it was, it was almost the same as home. The same stores, the same racks and bins out in front, the same fancy brickwork under the eaves.

But it was all different. The words on the signs were worn away, the awnings were torn, the windows broken.

As she passed the war memorial in the center of the square, movement caught her eye. She whipped around. A scrap of white flicked out of sight around the other side of the granite plinth.

White? Mark had on a white T-shirt. Her heart hammering, she ran around to the other side. Nothing there.

“Eyes playing tricks,” she muttered.

She turned around and her heart flipped. There he was, round–ing the corner onto Mill Road, on the river side of the square.

“Mark!”

She raced across the square, burst into a short street with inky water gurgling past the end of it and skidded to a halt on the slick pavement. No Mark.

The river wasn't right, either. It was supposed to be fifty feet down at the bottom of the cliff, not up here by the street.

She walked back into the square. “None of this is real. Somebody's jerking me around!”

“Camrose!”

It was the first voice she'd heard in that place besides her own. Mark's voice.

“Cam, help!”

It was coming from the far side of the square, from Mill Street. It sounded scared. Mark never sounded scared! Must be a trick, like the others.

“Cam! Please!”

But suppose it wasn't a trick, this time? Suppose it was really Mark?

Camrose burst into the short street beyond the square. The midnight river gleamed a few strides away. This time a boat rode the water beside a stone curb.

Mark huddled in the bow. Terence sat on the middle thwart with both oars poised above the water. No, not Terence: Gwyn, with his Otherworld face and his darkly glittering clothes.

“You should have come sooner, Keeper. You should have come the first time he called. It's too late now.”

The oars dipped. “No! Stop!” Camrose leaped for the boat. The moment her feet hit the boards, the oars bit into the water. The boat shot forward.

When she looked back, the shore was a gray line fading into the night. Ahead and all around lay the river of time.

At first all she could do was hold on to the side. With no land in sight, and nothing but blackness and moving gleams of light all around, the boat seemed to float in a midnight sky. If she fell out she would fall forever.

She closed her eyes. Hearing Gwyn's laughter, she opened them again.

“What are you doing with us?”

“You'll come to no harm, never fear. Not once we're home.”

“You mean you're taking us home? Really?”

“Really and truly,” he purred.

Mark lifted his head. “Whose home?”

He only smiled.

“Look, I know you want revenge, payment, something!”

Camrose said. “What will you take to get us back?”

“You stole my Rhianna. What do you have that could repay me for that?”

“But we didn't
steal
her! And we don't have anything you want.”

“Then it will just have to be your own sweet selves, won't it?”

“What for?” Mark demanded. “Camrose was just doing what she was supposed to do.”

“That's true enough.” He stood up and smiled at them. “But it won't save you.” He swept an arm into the darkness, cried, “Look!” and on the word he was gone.

Camrose looked. Where he'd swept his arm the darkness was gone. An oar length away lay a shore of ivory sand, and beyond the shore, soft green meadows rolled back to velvet woods and far blue mountains touched with gold.

The river was clear and gold-shot here. A few feet below their keel lay the sandy bottom, spangled with quivering light from the surface. An eddy carried the boat curving in to shore. The keel grated and stuck.

Mark looked like he'd been bashed on the head and hadn't had time to fall over.

Camrose felt something pulling at her, and realized it was music. She could never have described it, except to say that it made her forget everything else.

Mark was the first to move. He stood up and started to climb over the gunwale. Camrose lurched forward and grabbed him. “No! Don't do that!”

“But … the music! I need to—”

“Don't listen to it!”

“Didn't you hear him? It's too late. We'll never get home.”

“Since when do we trust anything he says?”

“It's what the story said:
No mortal flesh may cross that river
twice and live.
”

“But so long as we haven't stepped on shore, we haven't crossed—not yet!”

“It hurts me not to go.” He set his hands on the gunwale and swung a leg over. Camrose grabbed his shoulders and pulled hard. He sprawled in the bottom of the boat, looking bewil–dered, then struggled up again.

She wasn't strong enough to hold him. If only she could convince him, make him
see
.

What had the Wyrde said?
You will see truths and find paths
hidden to others.
Her gift. Well, this was the time to use it.

“Mark, you always say seeing is believing, right?”

“Right.” He gazed at the shore. “Like now.”

“Here, hold my hand. I'll take you there. I'll show you.”

Her gaze traveled up the ivory shore. Leaving two bodies crouched in the boat, she and Mark skimmed like ghosts across the meadow, hand in hand. They floated inches above the bent tips of the grasses, above fields of sky-blue flowers that turned on threadlike stalks to watch them go by.

They passed through the dark pillars of the woods and on up the mountainside. A gate swung open, and they floated into a wide hall with no roof but the sky.

This was where the music came from. They hovered at the edge of a blur of dancers. The lamps of dawn and moonlight picked out a silken elbow here, a laughing mouth there and over there a crown of living flowers.

Would it be so bad never to go home again? Camrose wondered. Was there anything at home as good as this?

She sank toward the floor, and Mark sank with her.

But in that moment another sound flickered through the music. It slipped past so quickly her ear almost missed it. A cold sound, a whisper like wind in a stony place.

Use your eyes, said a nagging voice in the back of her mind.

She looked again. Darkness veiled the back of the hall. She looked harder, and there stood two rows of seven guards with golden helmets in the shapes of hawks and lions, and all their swords drawn. And beyond them stood the door that had so terrified Miranda.

But now the guards were not standing in front of the door, barring the way. They were lined up on either side, making a pathway like a guard of honor.

And the door stood open. Past the threshold and filling the doorway was nothing. Nothing at all.

The dancers froze. The music fell silent. Heads turned, eyes glittered at Camrose. She looked around and saw Terence standing two paces away, smiling at her. The emptiness in the doorway grew thicker, blacker, began to reach …

“No.” The word echoed. A shiver ran through the crowd. She said it again, louder: “No! I see it, and you can't make us.”

At that, they were back in the boat. Mark was still blank-faced, still gazing toward the blue and gold mountains.

Camrose pulled one of the oars free of its pins, stuck the paddle end in the sand and pushed. The boat came loose with a jerk that nearly toppled her out of it.

She sat down quickly and pushed with the oar until the boat was floating in deep water. Then she crammed it back in the oarlock, heaved at it to bring the boat around with its bow pointing away from the land and set to work with both oars.

For a few minutes they seemed to make no headway. No matter how hard she rowed, the current pushed the boat back toward shore. When Mark crawled forward and tried to take the oar from her left hand, she held on tight.

“Mark, I'm sorry. But I guess you didn't see what I saw.”

“I saw.”

She looked at him. The stunned look was gone.

“Let me help.”

She shifted along the thwart to give him room.

With the two of them rowing, the ivory shore drew farther away. The green-blue land melted into a glowing mist, then dwindled to a bright line on the water that winked out, and at last they were rowing in the dark.

Reach and pull, reach and pull. The oarlocks creaked and the water slapped the side of the boat, and there were no other sounds except their breathing. Camrose never knew how long they rowed. She began to think this would be Gwyn's real revenge, to keep them laboring in the dark forever, their only light a memory of the Otherworld.

Then Mark stopped rowing. “Smell that?” he said.

She felt it first: a cold wind on her back. It smelled of the spongy wood that collects on the beach after storms, of lime–stone and beached fish and pine trees.

Mark reached with his oar again, and Camrose reached, and they pulled together. The darkness turned gray, then silver and warmed to the glassy pale gold of early morning. Across the river eastward, the hills of Quebec stood black against the morning sky.

Their keel grated on pebbles. Camrose jumped out with a splash and Mark followed her. Towing the boat behind them, they set foot once more upon the shores of home.