A Grave Tree (28 page)

He opened his mouth. “Here!” he called, but it came out as an empty croak that nobody would hear above the sound of the river. “Here!” he managed to yell, louder this time.

Three of the men turned to look at him, and he waved wildly. He had no real plan other than trying to attract their attention so they wouldn’t find Caleb. What he was going to do with their attention, he had no idea.

The men who had seen him set up a cry and pointed. They regrouped for a second, and then three of them began to plunge across the river in his direction, while the other three continued their search for Caleb. Mark panicked and tried to clamber backward up the steep bank, his lack of planning with regard to his hoped-for outcome now starkly apparent.

When the men were in the middle of the river, an alarm started to ring at the top of the dam; a few seconds later, a torrent of water flooded down the two lower spillways. Mark turned and scrambled up the silty embankment, grasping clump after clump of the sharp grass, heedless of the ribbons of cuts on his hands.

The water hit the riverbed in a surge, and he looked back just in time to see the three men swept away downstream, their arms clutching wildly at the air and their fur caps floating on the white foaming water behind them.

Mark went up a few more feet just to be safe, his hands slippery with blood, then he tried to brace himself on the bank, panting with the exertion and the terror of it all. The other three men had been above the high water mark, but they’d paused in their hunt for Caleb to stare at the frothing water. Caleb, meanwhile, must have used the opportunity to reposition himself—he was now hunkered down in some bushes behind a mound of dirt, watching Mark.

The men resumed their search, and Mark was sure they would be on Caleb in a few minutes. Mark dug his heels into the bank and tried to figure out some way to help Caleb. There was no way he could get across the river now. Water thundered from the spillways, filling the air with a fine mist.

Think, think, think.
Mark’s mind jittered with useless possibilities. He could go back up along the dam, but that would take too long. He could try to swim across, but he’d failed his special swim classes at the Coventry Recreation Complex every year until the instructors had finally told his mother that some people just weren’t suited for water. If Caleb swam to him (because Caleb was far more physically astute) they’d be on an exposed bank, and who knew, maybe the men could swim just as well as Caleb. Perhaps Mark could do nothing, and Caleb was better off trying to steal off into the forest and lose the men there.

Mark inched his way down as close to the surging water as he dared. It had not reached the high water mark, and the edge of the bank was lined with rocks. Mark selected one and tried to heave it across the river. It went halfway before plunking uselessly into the water.

Maybe he could push the stone with his mind, the way he’d pushed Abbey along, the way his sister had created the surge of energy that threw the men against the wall. He picked up another stone and threw it, this time focusing on trying to push the air behind it with his mind. The stone dropped into the water in the same place as before.

He looked across the river—the men were getting closer to Caleb’s spot.

Mark tried with a third stone, pushing with more force; a vein throbbed in his neck and temple with the effort, and Mark hoped he didn’t cause himself to stroke out. The stone landed even closer to Mark than the previous two had. But the trees on the other side of the river seemed to bend slightly in response, and two of the men glanced over at him. He tried again, this time without the rock, pushing even harder. All three men stumbled and turned their attention to Mark. Could he push the air just like Sandy?

Another alarm sounded on the dam, and just as abruptly as they had opened, the spillways started to close, the water flowing from them tapering. Mark could just make out a figure in the window of the control room, watching them.

Sandy.

She disappeared from the window. Was she coming their way, still determined to get into that room? Mark hurriedly dug through his pack, removed his key from his satchel, and shoved it in his pocket.

Then he tried to focus his mind again.

*****

The camp appeared to be abandoned by the time Abbey and Sylvain reached it, the tepee poles standing like skeletal pyramids. The central watch fire still smoldered, but Caleb’s people were gone, probably already at the meeting place a few miles up from the diversion. Abbey scoured the camp for Russell, but saw no sign of him.

“Would he have wandered off into the forest looking for us?” she whispered.

Sylvain bit his lip and inched a little closer into the camp, looking left and right and turning in a full circle to examine the trees. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “It’s possible they took him. It’s also possible… well, let’s just say that Russell’s family has a particular ability that can sometimes manifest when stressed. I would have thought him too young, but spending time in the future has aging effects, which is why we’re supposed to limit it.”

Sylvain’s words made something tickle at the back of Abbey’s neck. She turned her gaze to examine the trees all around them, but they remained as silent as always. Surprisingly silent, Abbey decided. Although this future did seem inhabited by a few birds and beavers, she’d seen few other animals. Which was strange—of all the futures, this would seem to be the one in which animals would be most likely to survive. And all of Caleb’s people wore the fur of animals. Abbey ran an inventory of the types of skins she had seen. Raccoons and beavers topped the list, but there had been no larger animals. No large predators.

“What other ability, Sylvain?” Her voice was a little thin.

Sylvain’s beak-like nose cast a long shadow on the ground in the midday sun. “All our abilities link back to a stronger connection with, and ability to manipulate, energy. Some studies have shown that genes and DNA can be energetically manipulated to cause species shift,” he said slowly.

“You’re not saying…” Abbey started, and then stopped. It was too impossible, although technically she knew it was not impossible. She’d read about the experiments, which were not totally accepted in the scientific community, but they involved trees and plants, not humans.

“It’s part of what has made the Andrews bloodline weak,” Sylvain said. “Large predators in human places tend to get shot, or tranquilized, and transported to zoos or the wilderness.”

“What can Russell shift into?”

“Not sure,” Sylvain said, beginning to stride away from the camp. “But as I understand it, the transformation is almost complete. They maintain little semblance of their human brain. Sometimes they don’t remember to shift back… ever. We’d best watch our backs.”

Abbey launched out of the clearing behind Sylvain, her chin nearly hitting one of his shoulder blades in her desire to stay as close to him as possible. She drew back with a jerk. Two days ago her head had barely reached the top of his shoulder. She shifted her eyes to sweep the length of her body. Her breasts were larger, and she detected a faint widening of her hips. She was aging. At this rate, she’d be in her forties in no time.

“Why aren’t the stones working?” she said to Sylvain.

“It’s not the stones that aren’t working,” Sylvain replied. “It’s the point of power that the stones used to occupy that’s no longer working. I hope,” he added.

They walked for a few more minutes, Abbey’s ears alert to the snap of every twig and the twitter of every bird.

“If the points of power for the stones and docks aren’t working, maybe the points for second derivative travel aren’t working either,” she said. “Maybe my parents are trapped.”

Sylvain’s voice drifted back to her. “That, unfortunately, is a distinct possibility.”

Abbey absorbed his words. “But why? Why is this happening? Has it happened before?”

“Not to my knowledge. But there have been so many shifts and changes in the last few weeks that it feels like the entire universe is spinning out of control. Somebody has changed something, or several people have changed several things.”

“You hesitated before when you said there was a second Alty. That nobody knew who it was. You have a suspicion, don’t you?” Her voice had become a bit strident perhaps, but she didn’t care.

“You ask a lot of pointed questions, Ms. Sinclair. It will make you a very good scientist some day. I hope it will, at least. I don’t know who the other Alty is, but there have been rumors that it runs in the Forrester family line.”

She ran through the possibilities. “Sandy?” she said.

“It would fit with her disappearing around the same time as your mother,” Sylvain answered.

Sandy had clearly made it home, or she couldn’t be running for mayor of Coventry in Simon’s future. Sandy could be a good person, albeit clearly an ambitious one. Abbey wished she had looked her parents up while she was in the library. But older Caleb had been insistent that the future she was seeing was just a possibility. So even if her parents had been present in that future, it might not mean anything.

Still, it would have made her feel a little better.

*****

Mark closed his eyes, ignoring the painful vein that was likely to lead to his stroke. The men were almost on top of Caleb. He needed to gather as much energy as possible. He imagined it coming together above him, coalescing, and then flying across the river. When he felt like he held a substantial mass of something (perhaps nothing) in the air, he released it, trying to direct it only at the men, the way he’d seen Sandy do. His blast sent two of the men flying backward through the air, and knocked the third to the ground.

“Run!” he yelled to Caleb as he started to plow through the water toward the dam. “Here!” he clarified, in case Caleb didn’t get it.

The third man managed to rise to his feet, but Caleb dropped him with some fancy jujitsu moves and started running up the riverbank toward the dam.

The faint current and icy water caught Mark off guard, and he was almost swept downstream, but he steadied himself and waded through the waist-deep water, heading for the wall of the dam.

Caleb yelled, “What are you doing? If the spillways open, you’re dead.”

The men had righted themselves and were closing in on Caleb.

“Please come here. Please,” Mark responded. Caleb gave him a squinty-eyed look but leapt into the water and broke into a front crawl, carving through the river faster than Mark could have imagined, as the men struggled through the water behind him. Mark thrust his key in the lock on the dam wall.

He felt a now-familiar ripple in the air, and he whirled his head up to look at Sandy. She stood stock-still on the stairs leading down to the riverbank, staring at him. He flung open the door and leapt inside, pulling Caleb with him. Together they pushed the door closed against the inrushing water, and then spun the wheel to close it the remainder of the way. Then Mark pulled a flashlight from his pack and lunged across the room to pull the lever to empty the water.

“What is this place?” said Caleb.

Mark shook his head, intent on the code for the door. They had to get into the inner chamber before Sandy got to them. He closed his eyes again and visualized the patterns on the sign. Then he moved the wheel back and forth on the door, dialing in the combination. Caleb peered inside when the door swung open, but Mark pushed past him.

“We have to close the door,” he announced (apparently this was not obvious to Caleb).

Caleb obediently stepped into the circular room, and Mark slammed the door. Then, gulping a few breaths, not out of relief (because he was far from relief), but for life sustenance (because he was pretty sure he hadn’t breathed in the last three minutes), he withdrew a second flashlight and handed it to Caleb. He looked hopefully at Caleb’s back (Caleb had been carrying the sandwiches), but remembered that Caleb’s pack had been lost on the cliff above the Moon River the previous day.

Being Warrior Mark would certainly be easier with food.

Caleb shone his light on the pentagram with the inlaid wood and the strange characters. He cocked his head. “What have you found here, Mark?”

Mark shook his head. He didn’t know. He had no idea. He knew he should talk, and explain to Caleb how he’d found the room, and that he’d seen Ms. Beckham and Mr. Sinclair, and that they had given him a message, but after all the stress of the last several hours and trying to be Warrior Mark, he couldn’t bring any words to his mouth.

Instead he opened his pack and withdrew Ms. Beckham’s flowered handbag. He pointed at the floor. “I found this. Here.”

Caleb took the handbag with his eyebrows elevated. Then he slowly walked around the pentagram looking at the floor, the handbag held close to his chest. “Sandy said we needed to get to the wormhole, but I don’t feel any energy,” he said. “Do you?”

Mark shook his head. He opened his mouth to tell Caleb that he’d seen Caleb’s parents, when there was a pounding on the door to the room.

“Are you guys in there?” Sandy yelled, her voice muffled but still alarmingly distinct. “It’s Sandy. The men are gone. Let me in.” The banging came again, hollow and echoing, and Mark imagined she had a battering ram and an army out there.

He flung himself in front of the door to block it and shook his head violently at Caleb.

Caleb scrutinized him. “Did she really hit you?” he said in a low voice.

Mark nodded and put his hand to his head. He’d almost forgotten about that. Maybe that was why the vein in his temple was throbbing. Maybe he wasn’t stroking out after all.

“She has turbines up in the diversion building that are making the water disappear. Jake is being held prisoner there. She’s using him to make the water disappear. She made two men fall off the diversion and tried to make me fall too. She had the men shoot at me. She can…” Mark stuttered around the right words. “She can… throw energy.” Now that he was saying it all, it seemed more real, as if he just now realized that it had actually been him experiencing these things. A wave of being overwhelmed swept over him, and he sank down onto his haunches.