A Grave Tree (8 page)

Or until it’s dashed to pieces on some rocks a couple hundred meters downstream
, Abbey thought grimly. She looked back up at Mark. “Are you going to just stay there and wait for us? We might be a while.”

Mark gave a violent nod, and after hesitating for a second, Abbey continued her descent, her mind in turmoil. Mark was an adult. Even though he had some challenges, he was an adult and could make his own decisions. It was okay to leave him on the cliff. She repeated this over and over in her mind.

The going was easier in the mouth, as there were more hand and footholds among the teeth, and soon Abbey dropped to the ledge next to Ian and grabbed hold of the boat that was now a third of the way out of the mouth.

“How are we going to get the boat in the water?” she said. The ledge on which they stood featured a sheer three-meter drop into foaming water on all the sides that she could see.

Ian pressed his lips together and directed his gaze over to the edge closest to the river, the only edge she had not yet inspected. “You’re not going to like it,” he said.

Abbey took a couple of steps in that direction and saw why. The water had scoured away a section of rock, forming a steep but smooth slide that continually refilled with surging water from the river below. The slide would direct them into the narrowest part of the canyon, where the water bucked and frothed, throwing vast amounts of spray into the air. In other words, they were going to have to ride a rowboat down a natural waterslide into a treacherous rapid.

Maybe Mark had made the right choice after all. He looked like a nesting vulture up there on the cliff on his haunches.

Abbey considered her options. They could walk down the canyon edge, searching for Caleb; they could run back to the cabin and call 9-1-1. But that would all take too long. They had to get to Caleb now.

“Wait. Do you have a phone?” she said to Ian. “Could you call for help?”

Ian shook his head. “No service up here.”

Of course there isn’t
, Abbey muttered as she helped Ian haul the heavy boat the rest of the way out of the mouth.

The planked boat looked like it had seen better days. The wood seemed soft in places and the whole boat had the general sense of rot. Two oars lay in the bottom, their wood aged and splitting.

Abbey closed her eyes. “Mark!” she yelled. “Go back to the cabin and get Sylvain and Russell. Tell them what’s happened.”

Mark didn’t move. Perhaps he hadn’t heard her. She tried once again, with no effect, then ground her teeth together and went back to the boat. She couldn’t waste any more time.

Together she and Ian dragged the boat over to the slide, Abbey questioning her and Ian’s sanity the whole way. The roar of the water had risen in volume, and Abbey’s hair and jacket were soaked from the spray.

“I’ll go in front if you want,” Ian said. “But that means you’re going to have to push off and hop in.”

Abbey nodded mutely. What if she missed and ended up sliding down the chute behind the boat? She would be dashed to death immediately on the rocks, pulled under the current, her bloated body thrust again to the surface downstream.

Of course, that was likely to happen in the boat too, so what difference did it make?

They positioned the boat at the top of the slide, and Ian clambered in, keeping his weight in the middle. “As soon as you give it a push and get in, I’ll move to the front. That should be enough to carry the boat down the slide. I know this goes without saying, but I would strongly suggest keeping low and hanging on tightly for the first bit.”

Abbey moved to the back of the boat, her arms extended to give it the final push. The word “Believe” was written in calligraphic letters on the stern. Not surprising. You’d have to have a whole lot of belief—not to mention stupidity and desperation—to get in this scow. But apparently she had all three. She gave the boat a final hard shove, then leapt over the edge of the stern and into the bottom of the rickety wooden craft. Ian lunged into the front, and the boat picked up speed, careening down the chute at an alarming pace.

The bow of the boat was thrown into the air when they hit the water, and Abbey was thrown backward, her spine hitting the seat hard, her fingers burning from gripping the gunwales. It seemed as though they might capsize, but then the bow dropped back into the water, and they were off down the wild foaming river like a shot, catapulting from side to side and up and down in the current.

The last thing Abbey saw as she glanced back up at the cliff was Sylvain and Russell standing on either side of Mark, with Jake behind them. Sylvain had his hands in the air and appeared to be yelling something. But it was too late.

*****

Sometimes seeing the bad man was not a bad thing, Mark decided. And sometimes seeing the beret man seemed to bring a lot of difficulty and discomfort. He watched Abbey and Ian sail off down the river in the bucking and writhing rowboat, while the bad man yelled, “Stop!” and “Stop immediately!” (both of which were rather pointless commands as far as Mark was concerned).

Hands were placed under his elbows and he was yanked to his feet—not roughly, but not gently either. The bad man’s craggy face and silver hair appeared directly in Mark’s line of vision (a little too close, in Mark’s opinion) and the gold tooth in his mouth flashed wildly. “Where’s Caleb? What happened to your head?”

“Caleb fell in the river with one of the bad dogs. Selena hit me in the head with a rock. They were by the tree. But we closed our eyes and they went away.”

“What?” the bad man sputtered. “What are you talking about? How is that possible?”

Mark shook his head. He considered mentioning the teleporting that the beret man had talked about, but decided not to. It might unhinge the bad man even more, and right now, Mark just wanted to get back to the cabin, and Ocean, although he did feel a bit worried about Abbey and Caleb.

The bad man had sprung away from him anyway and now stood at the very edge of the cliff, craning his neck in the direction that Abbey and the beret man had gone. He lifted his hands to his head and clutched it on either side (much like Mark himself did when he was upset). “They’re going to be killed. They’re going to be smashed to bits. This is terrible.”

The bad man darted a squinty-eyed look over his shoulder at Russell, then started running along the edge of the cliff, staring over the edge as if intent on pursuing the rowboat to its certain destruction, his twiggy legs and dark trench coat flying. Mark wondered if he might not leap off the sheer wall and take flight like an elongated bat. Russell followed the bad man at a rapid clip.

Jake, dressed in his normal red and black Coventry Cats warm-up suit, raised an eyebrow at Mark. “We’d better go with them. I hope Ian has some witchcraft up his sleeve to keep that boat safe.” Then he turned and also started running along the top of the canyon.

Mark followed, his own legs rubbery. He was not getting left behind, and he smarted from the hint of accusation in Jake’s voice that Abbey’s departure in the boat was somehow his fault, as if he had been the adult present, as if he could have done anything to stop her, as if he controlled, or even influenced, these people.

Despite his expectation of being quickly and easily outrun, he found that with some exertion (which made his chest feel a bit tight), he could keep up with the other runners. The rain had stopped, and although a mist remained in the sky, he could feel the warmth of the sun burning through the cloud cover.

They ran for twelve minutes (according to Mark’s Garmin Forerunner) before Sylvain came to an abrupt stop. (Mark was going to try to use proper names for people, at least for Sylvain, who had just rescued Mark and now seemed so determined to rescue Abbey that the “bad man” title did not seem to fit as well as it had before, although for a rescuer, Sylvain did not seem overly concerned about Mark’s well-being, or the fact that he was bleeding.)

“It’s no use,” Sylvain said. “They’re moving way too fast. We’re going to have to try something else.” He held a curled finger to his lips and lowered his gaze to the ground. Then he raised his eyes to Mark, his angular face hard and sharp. “We’re going to have to use projection. We need to go back to the Madrona.”

Mark froze. He had appraised the Madrona out of the corner of his eye when they passed it a few minutes ago (checking to make sure the dogs were not lingering at its base waiting to leap out at them). It had seemed deserted, but there was something in the way Sylvain was looking at him now that he did not like.

Sylvain cut inland in the direction of the Madrona, and the procession followed. Mark tried to reassure himself as he ran. Sylvain would not want him to do anything, even though technically he was the second-oldest person present and the only adult other than Sylvain. But nobody regarded him as an adult, and nobody depended on him to do anything.

At the foot of the blessedly bereft-of-dogs Madrona, Sylvain turned to them. “Okay, here’s the deal. Mark is going to follow the path of the river with his mind. He can go faster that way. In order to project that far, he’s going to need our help. We’re going to have to stay here at the Madrona and concentrate on sending him energy.”

“What?” Mark managed to eject from his mouth in a rather clipped yelp. “Why me?”

“Because you’re the only one of us, as far as I know, who has the ability to do it. Projecting requires a keen sense of geography and a certain kind of mind that notes the details of place. I’m pretty sure you’ve studied and know the path of this river. I’m pretty sure Jake and Russell haven’t. Besides, you’ve already demonstrated that you’re capable of projecting based on the fact that your head was flying around my office last night. If we send you energy, we can help you go farther distances in a more sustained way. You might even be able to partially teleport, which would mean you could help them.”

Mark opened his mouth to deny this, to deny something, anything, to make it so that he was not responsible for doing something, for doing this. But his brain came up blank, and he ended up standing there with his lips open wide and unspeaking.

“We don’t have much time,” Sylvain continued when Mark said nothing. “I don’t know how to project myself, but I understand you need to allow yourself to go into a bit of a trance. Being close to the Madrona helps, as they serve as conduits for our connection to the world and the energy that allows us to perform witchcraft. The rest of us will gather by the tree and focus on helping you. You need to follow the course of the river as quickly as you can, checking both sides all the way down. If you find them, see if you can steer the boat or help in any way. If not, come back, and we’ll go to them.”

Sylvain motioned Russell and Jake to the tree. Russell moved immediately and obediently. Jake hung back a little, but after shooting Mark a raised-eyebrow look as if to express his deep misgivings about trusting Mark with any task, he, too, went and stood by Sylvain.

Mark stood dumbly, gawping at the tree and the three men who stood beside it. He didn’t know how to project. He had only done it last night by complete accident, although he supposed he had in fact done it again just an hour ago, when he found himself in his own room looking at the map of Coventry and Granton. But that had again been by complete accident. He couldn’t do this. He imagined Abbey and Caleb being carried farther and farther down the river, their bodies bruised and broken by rocks. He clenched his fists.

Russell and Jake, at Sylvain’s direction, already had their heads bent and eyes closed. Mark closed his own eyes and tried to focus on moving his head down the river, on scouring both sides of the riverbanks for people, for debris, the water surging beneath him. He mentally traced the sinewy line of the Moon River, a line he had studied so many times on a map, but his mind remained stubbornly entrenched on the cliff, the low breathing of the others and the twittering of nearby birds jarring his concentration.

How had he felt when he had flown before? He had been sleepy, almost inattentive. He had not been intending to go anywhere. He just had. He pictured Abbey with her face tight and her eyes wide, calling to him as she climbed down the skull face. She had been worried about Caleb. He knew this. He could read it in the set of her features, even though reading people was not his strong suit. He could read Abbey. Her emotions rippled off her like a spinning tornado, capturing him and pulling him along.

The ground seemed to buck and drop from beneath him, and he nearly fell to his knees. He threw out his arms and clung automatically to the nearest solid object, the smooth, peeling trunk of the Madrona. Then the ground fell away again and he was tossed to the side. The riverbanks flew past at an alarming pace, the air heavy with the spray of the water, the triangular bow of—a boat?—leaping and twisting in the current in front of him.

He wasn’t following the path of the river from above, as he had expected. He was in the boat.

He whirled his head back, and sure enough, there were Ian and Abbey, clutching the sides of the roiling rowboat, their knuckles white, their pale faces scrunched in identical grimaces of terror. They were both soaked to the skin, and Ian had lost his beret.

The boat shot into the air bow-first, and Mark felt his stomach leap and then plummet. (Had his stomach accompanied him on this flight? He didn’t think it would have.) The front of the boat landed hard, and the stern jerked up, threatening to catapult over the bow. Both Abbey and Ian were flung forward, nearly hitting their heads on the seats in front of them. Mark flew forward too, but his movements were somehow muted. He was moving with the boat, feeling the twists and turns, but he wasn’t experiencing them in the full body way that Abbey and Ian were. He was not really there. He hoped.

Abbey was scanning both sides of the river as best she could. Mark turned his attention back to the front. Maybe he could figure out where they were and go back and tell Sylvain. Maybe he could find Caleb. He focused on the steep sides of the canyon. The craggy dark grey rock was cut with horizontal and vertical fissures. Small trees and plants clung to the canyon walls near the top. A white line showing the historical high water mark ran along the walls a few feet above where the water now surged. The line caught Mark’s eye, and he wanted to focus on it and consider what it meant for the flood data he had been examining, but he had to concentrate on determining where they were.