Campbell Wood (16 page)

The bookcase across the room moved again, and Kaymie knew by the look on
Taemon
Gaye's face that she had not moved it.

"Quickly!"
Taemon
Gaye said. "I've been found."

Responding to the urgency in
Taemon
Gaye's voice, Kaymie stepped forward. "Kneel, child," the old woman panted, and as Kaymie did so
Taemon
Gaye placed the crown gently on her head.

"It is done," she said.

A shock went through Kaymie, and the window in her mind flew open. It was as if a light had gone on inside her, blinding her momentarily. She knew her power now. She could see each piece of wood in all of Campbell Wood in her mind's eye, could visualize each one and knew that she could control it. A tiny, warm core at the center of her began to glow. A feeling formed there, a kind of shaping limb, and Kaymie saw what she had to do for the people of Campbell Wood. She knew what they wanted of her.

Kaymie came back to herself.
Taemon
Gaye was gasping, breathing shallowly, leaning back against the wall. The bookcase was pinned against her chest. The other objects in the hut—the table, the chair, the wooden bed in the far room—were flying about in the air, crashing one against the other and breaking apart.

"Go, child . . ."
Taemon
Gaye gasped, pointing to the door. "You . . . cannot save me . . ."

With a movement of her mind, Kaymie instantly stilled the objects in the dwelling. As she did so, feeling a momentary pang of triumph in her power, there was a shriek from
Taemon
Gaye that turned
Kaymie's
bones to ice. She looked to see the old woman being pulled, bone by crushed bone, into the side of the bookcase. Only her face and one arm were visible now as she slowly melted into the wood. She let out an unearthly cry.

Kaymie turned all of her attention on saving the old woman. But
Taemon
Gaye, with her last agonized scream, cried, "No!" and pointed to the doorway
as
her last finger disappeared into the bookcase.

The furniture in the room began to fly about again.
A
cry of fear and frustration escaped
Kaymie's
throat as she discovered that she was unable to help the old woman.
Taemon
Gaye vanished, leaving only the vaguest outline of her being in the grain of the wood.

Kaymie let out another cry, and then turned her attention back to the furniture in the hovel, and to the whacking branches that were now flying in from outside. She was able to still them, but as she stole a look out into the forest, she saw an almost solid wall of wood advancing on her, a tidal wave of sticks and twigs that picked up every tree, leaf, and bush in its path and added it all to its fury. The wood in
Taemon
Gaye's hut was exploding. Kaymie silenced the madness around her, turning to the blockade outside. With an effort, she formed a tunnel through the wooden mass, forcing it foot by foot back into the forest and keeping it there. She climbed out of the hovel and into the tunnel.

There, at the other end, its head covered by a cowl and the wild wind of the savage forest streaming about it, waited the hooded figure of her nightmares.

A
hundred yards into the woods, Mark had to abandon the car. The road was there one moment, and then the next moment it vanished in a tangle of weeds, twisting branches, and chunks of wood. The car wheels caught; spun loose, then caught again, and as they spun loose one more time something caught at the car from behind and jerked it to a halt. It felt
as
if a tow rope had been attached, and Mark looked back to
see
that a huge vine had indeed attached itself, octopus-like, to the rear of the car. There was a sickening snap as the rear axle broke in two.

A hockey stick of Seth's in the back seat abruptly split into shards and flew at Mark's head. The glove compartment burst open, letting a pencil fly out at him like a bullet; the radio buttons were inset with slabs of wood that popped off, flying at him.

His face and hands bloodied, Mark threw open the door, pushing aside some grasping branches as he did so, and leaped back. He watched in horror as the car seemed to be eaten alive, pulled whole into the wall of the woods.

Looking behind him, Mark sought to make his way out the way he had come in. But he saw now that this was impossible. Behind him, the forest had closed, like the jaws of a lion. A barrier of sinuously twisting vines and dead leaves was barely twenty yards back, pushing at him with uncanny speed. He looked to either side and, spying a pathway that seemed less dangerous than the others, he ran into it.

There were eerie noises in the woods all around him—cracking and crashing, and the sound of wood knocking loudly against wood. It was horribly loud, like a million raucous, excited animals concentrated into too small an area.

There was a curving length of branch a few feet from him. Suddenly it lashed out like a whip, coiling viciously around Mark's waist and squeezing him like a python. He gave a startled cry, and reached out both hands to the spot where it was attached to a wildly bending tree. With all of his might he snapped it off. It went dead for a moment, long enough for him to pull it from his body, but as he ran on he saw that it quickly burst into life again, following him like a real snake for a few yards before darting off up into the trees to batter against the trunk.

As in a fever dream, the path before Mark was appearing and then disappearing. First it was there, with all of the insanity going on to either side of it; then the forest closed down around it, throwing its green and brown arms out to tangle
and batter him, to creep and crawl and then pull back again. Mark tried to time these pulses but soon discovered that there was no rhythm to them. He had to stumble through, constantly throwing off whipping leaves and grasping tree limbs.

The wild sounds of wood against wood became louder behind him, rising to an ear-shattering level. It sounded as if the forest was tearing itself to pieces, battering itself into the ground.

Mark found himself in a high clearing. With a gasp of relief, he thought for a moment that he was safe; but then he saw that the woods were slowly closing in on all sides and that this was an isolated, but doomed, area.

The clearing did, though, afford him a momentary glimpse of the town of Campbell Wood in the near distance. What Mark saw frightened him even more than what was around him. The town looked as though it was in the middle of an earthquake, even though the earth was as steady as rock beneath it. Wooden houses were exploding, their shingles and everything else within shattering and flying into the air. A cloud of sawdust was forming over the town,
an
eerie pollution-like fog. From this distance it looked as though the trees themselves, come alive, were battering the town to dust. Mark thought he saw a few figures running, which made him only more resolute to get to Ellen and Seth. And to Kaymie. He saw her school, only a half mile to his left. As the forest crept toward him, he plunged into it, keeping to a vague path toward the school.

He went on for some time. The earth now was trembling beneath his feet, and he thought that maybe an earthquake was responsible for all this after all. But he quickly dismissed the thought. This was no earthquake, but rather the sound of massive trees being pulled up and thrown to the ground all around him. The pathway closed, opened, closed, and as it opened again Mark dove through the hole, falling to the ground.

He pushed himself to his feet. He was, he saw, in a tunnel whose walls were built of tree boughs and leaves. He turned and saw Kaymie, dressed in a strange white robe with a gold crown on her head. The crown seemed almost to glow with golden light, and its tiny diamonds were like fireflies around her head.

Kaymie was staring beyond him, as though she was in a trance. Mark turned to see another figure, in a cowl, standing not ten feet from him.

"My God," he said.

The eyes were cold and hard and stared right through him. Those eyes wanted him dead. The figure was small, but the power it commanded nearly drove him to his knees. He knew that all around him, every bit of wood and branch and tree was, at this moment, in command of this figure. The very earth moved and heaved with the power of the roots thrusting beneath it.

"Fay," he said.

All resemblance to the warm, alluring person he had known was blotted out. This Fay had snake's venom running through her. She was a statue devoid of feeling, a block of ice.

She laughed. The laugh was a chilling, evil sound, a sound as old as death itself.

"You don't believe it?" she said to Mark. She gave him a frigid smile. "You fool."

Mark turned to Kaymie, who was staring at the figure before her. Mark could almost feel the electricity between them, could see Kaymie gauging the strength that lay before her.

He turned back to Fay.

"Why?" he said helplessly.

"You tiny, stupid man," Fay spat. She had grown from the girl he had first seen in the library to a monster. He couldn't believe this was the same woman.

"You don't know who I am?" she asked him contemptuously. She laughed again. "You would never have guessed. In fifty years you wouldn't have guessed. You're as stupid as your father was." She looked past him at Kaymie, and her eyes burned with a red, hellish fire.

"I'm going to tell you a story about a Queen," she continued, in a voice dripping with venom. "A Queen who betrayed her people. Many years ago a young idiot named
Taemon
Gaye brought to this new town her sacred charge, the Queen of all the Faerie. In the new language, the Queen was called
Una
Duncan. When she grew old enough to assume power, she seemed infected by this new land where her people lived, and liberalized the way of the Faerie. Some were alarmed by this.
Taemon
Gaye tried to dissuade the Queen, but after awhile she gave in and assented to the changes. At the appropriate time the Queen took a husband, Robert Campbell, and she took his name. There began the real problems. For a Queen to take the name of a man was blasphemous in itself, but it led to other things. By charter the name of Duncan Wood was changed to Campbell Wood. The people, by and large, did not seem to mind this blasphemy. The old ways were passing, and, finally, what centuries of invaders and alien hordes could not do in the Old World, one generation in the new one was accomplishing. The Faerie ways were being mixed with the filth of modern life.

"
Una
Campbell prospered, and her husband prospered. She had a son, and she named him Mark. There was no great rejoicing at this, since a daughter was needed, but the people once again were content with their Queen's happiness. And she seemed unnaturally happy with her son.

"And then something happened that made, finally, some of the older people begin to mutter. It was said that Robert Campbell had decided that his wife was to have no more children. He was happy with the way things were."

She paused, and her voice grew shriller. "
Una
Campbell agreed with him; she stood by her husband's petty wants and it seemed that there the matter would end. This woman, this Queen, would place the entire surviving line of Faerie in jeopardy for a man's wishes.

"But this time something was done. The power of a Queen is great, but on the night of the April full moon each year her powers fail her. On one such April moon night, with the help of other strong, true members of the clan, a man named Ian
MacGregor
took the Queen for his own and planted his seed in her.

"And the seed grew.

"
Una
Campbell, Queen of all Faerie, was a fool in the end. She sought to hide this supposed shame from her weak husband. When she could hide the swelling of her belly no longer, he denounced her and fled, taking his young son with him. Such a fool was this Queen that she did not command him to stay.

"The child, a girl, was born."

"Oh sweet Jesus," Mark said.

"And what did
Una
Campbell, this great Queen, do?" Fay shouted. "She spurned the girl, abandoning her to the woods and commanding that no one help her. Ian
MacGregor
she murdered in those same woods, squeezing his poor body into a tree until he burst from within.

"But the child thrived. There were others, those
who had supported Ian
MacGregor
, who cared for the baby in the woods. She grew strong, while
Una
Campbell became a dried-up old woman, living the rest of her life mourning the foolish life she had lost and rejecting the one chance she had of restoring the Faerie to greatness. As
Una
Campbell shriveled, the young girl bloomed, learning the ways of the Faerie and preparing well for the day that would come when the real Queen would take her people back to what they had once been.