Dreamwood (17 page)

They'd survived.

But instead of exhilaration at being alive, Lucy felt empty and hollow.

“Lucy,” Pete said. In his voice she could hear that he wanted to apologize. But she didn't feel like listening.

She didn't answer. Instead, she turned away and walked to the edge. She stared into the churning flood below, its destructive murk mirroring her thoughts.

There wasn't anything wrong with knowing things, she told herself. If she didn't know a lot, they'd be dead right now. But then she thought back guiltily to the many times she'd called Pete superstitious in her thoughts, and the gleeful way she'd corrected him when he was wrong. She
did
love knowing the answers; until now she'd never thought about how that made other people feel.

She glanced back at Pete, who was standing with his arms folded around himself as if he were cold. He looked miserable.

“Lucy,” he said again, more pleadingly this time. She turned her back on him, not yet ready to talk.

She walked by herself along the edge of the bluff until she found a spot where she could sit and watch the water go by. The water was as brown as earth and full of things it had ripped apart on its way through the river channel: branches, small trees . . .

And then . . . an arm raised up suddenly from the muddy froth. It looked for a moment as if it were trying to grab hold of something. She jumped to her feet, watched its efforts with horror . . . There was a log right by it. Surely the person would feel the log and grab on?

She waited for the person to save himself. And then she realized it was only the water making the arm move.

She must have cried out loud.

“What is it?” Pete rushed to her side. “Are you hurt?”

At that moment she clearly saw a leg. All the clothing had been torn from it by the force of the flood.

Lucy felt she would be sick. She clapped her hands to her mouth. “Those are people down there.” The broken, lifeless limbs had belonged to living bodies.

Those were people.

Could one of them be her father?

Her stomach folded into knots, Lucy barely breathed. She stared fixedly at the boiling brown water until the bodies were swept out of sight.

“Oh, those poor, poor people.” She turned to Pete; the misery and shock were physical things inside her, and if she didn't get them out . . .

She reached for his hand—she wanted to clutch something—then remembered how he felt about her . . . how spoiled things were between them. Her hands dropped to her sides and she clenched her fists instead, digging her fingernails deep enough to hurt, all the while thinking,
those people are dead.

Pete's brows drew together, darkening his face.

“You know what this means,” he said, leaning over the edge of the bluff.

She thought of the many close calls they'd had since landing on the Thumb: the wolves, the nightmares, and now the flash flood. The dreamwood spirit caused them all.

“Maybe Governor Arekwoy was right.” Lucy pulled on the fringe of her Lupine tunic. “Maybe His-sey-ak
is
evil.”

“No,” Pete said grimly. “It means we're not the only ones here.”

W
ho were the bodies in the river? The question tortured Lucy through the rest of the afternoon. When she wasn't thinking about the bodies, she heard Pete's voice:
You're always right.

But how shallow she was to keep thinking of herself when two people had just died.

And on her thoughts went, running and fluttering like silly chickens. She was so miserable that she didn't bother checking the vitometer, resulting in them wandering aimlessly over the course of several hours.

A sudden, violent conviction caused her to stop. “It couldn't have been my father,” she said to Pete. “We saw two bodies.”

Pete was walking like a person whose thoughts were elsewhere, stumbling over things, not caring where his feet went.

“So it wasn't your father.” He sounded as if he were just agreeing with her out of habit.

This would not do. She needed Pete to put up more of a fight so she could argue with him. If they argued, she would win, and that would make her feel better. Frustrated, she carried on the best she could.

“He
was
traveling alone,” she said, taking a big step to avoid a muddy patch of ground.

“All right,” Pete said, walking right through the mud.

What had her father written?
Even if I survive his challenges.
A horrible sense expanded in her that they were up against something much bigger, more dangerous than she'd realized. The forest was full of booby traps and tests, and that diary entry had been written weeks ago. How could anyone survive weeks here?

“The gold was a trap,” she said, working it out in her head. “Able Dodd told me something just before we left:
Take nothing that is not given.
But my father already knew His-sey-ak set challenges in the forest, so he wouldn't have been fooled by any gold.”

“No, of course your father would have been too smart to fall for that.” Pete's voice had an edge. He stopped walking, a bullish expression on his face.

But who else would be here? Lucy circled around him, unable to stay still.

“What if it was Niwa?” she said. “What if Niwa made it here after all and she found my father and now they're both dead?!”

“Don't be silly,” Pete said. His reply was like a shove.

But Lucy's thoughts ran on in panic. For a moment she truly believed the bodies were those of Niwa and her father. This was more than reasonable, it was inevitable. “They're dead because of me.” She turned to Pete, feeling her eyes brim with tears.

“They wouldn't be dead because of
you,
” he shot back. There were hollows under Pete's cheeks she hadn't noticed before, and he stood with his chest collapsed, like someone who'd lost hope. “It was
my
fault the river flooded. Because I was greedy. Is that what you want to tell me? Do you want to make me feel even worse?”

“No.” She shrank back, surprised and a little afraid. She didn't think of it like that at all. She watched him walking ahead: stoop-shouldered with guilt. With a sudden ache she thought of what he must be feeling.

She ran after him. “Let's stop,” she said. “It's been an awful day. We should eat something and rest.”

Pete didn't answer. He slid down the trunk of a tree and sat with his head thrown back.

“The river took my pack,” he said hopelessly.

It took a moment until she understood; when she did it was like a punch in the gut. Pete had been carrying their food.

“We're surrounded by game. I could catch something easy.” He spread out his hands. “But . . . I don't think it would be safe.”

“So, there's an easy solution,” Lucy said, determined to find a way out of their predicament. What they had was a set of conditions and constraints—a puzzle. All she had to do was figure out the answer. “We don't eat anything we didn't bring. What do we have left?”

Pete held out a frayed piece of dried meat, sandy with pocket lint. “This.”

One piece of jerky.

An irritating voice in her head was saying they had failed and should go home now. They were doomed.

We are not doomed,
Lucy told the voice sternly.

She took a deep breath. “Okay. I'll see what I have in my pack.” She slung it to the ground and bent to look inside.

She already knew she had very little. But she felt like crying when all she discovered was one hard little biscuit.

Tightness gripped her chest. She looked up and saw two fat squirrels scamper up and down a kodok tree. They flicked their tails in her direction and one even threw a nut to the ground in front of her. She and Pete were going to starve in the middle of plenty.

She plunged her hand into her pack again, rooting past Obwe's flare and her ghost sweeper. And then her fingers closed over something rough and bristly.

The thunderbird feather.

Feeling drained out of her as if she'd sprung a leak. Turning her back so Pete couldn't see, she took the feather out, running her fingers over the stubby quill.

When she'd picked it up the only thing she'd thought about was how amazing it would be to bring back proof of what she'd seen. She'd thought of the interviews she might give and imagined meeting famous researchers: how grateful they'd be to her for this gift to science. All she'd wanted was a little attention.

And all Pete had wanted was gold to save his family.

She threw the hateful thing away from her, then covered her face.

“What's the matter?” Pete asked. He'd heard her gasp.

Lucy turned around and sat down beside him. A tiny part of her had been proud she hadn't succumbed to gold lust at the river. But she hadn't passed the test after all.

And now she had to admit it to Pete. “I picked up a thunderbird feather and put it in my pack to take back with me.” She couldn't meet his eyes. “I made that river flood just as much as you.”

Pete's face softened and he let out his breath.

His eyes lost their haunted look, and he gave her a soft, slow punch to the shoulder, something almost like a hug.

“Aw, you're just a little bit guilty,” he said. “You really think a ratty old feather—even if it is from an extinct bird—counts as much as a pack of gold?”

“I don't know.” It was funny, she'd never realized that it could feel good sometimes not to know the answer.

“That's right, you don't know.” He grinned as if this were the best possible outcome. “So don't go blaming yourself.”

She nodded gratefully. For some reason, she felt tears pricking in the corners of her eyes.

“We'll be all right,” he said softly. Pete's long legs were stretched out beside her shorter ones. The sun-warmed bark of the tree at their backs felt reassuring.

Somehow, the feather made things right between them.

“Thanks.” She sniffled just a bit and then recovered herself. “A person can go a long time without food,” she told him. “I read it in a book somewhere.”

Pete had found new energy. He no longer slumped like he'd been beaten. “Weeks, I think. That's what Pancake Walapush told me anyway. His granddad was some kind of medicine man who used to fast for a week and no harm done.”

She looked at the biscuit she'd found. “Then this has got to last a while.”

• • •

They ate the biscuit. At first Lucy intended to eat just a few crumbs and save the rest of her half. But one tiny morsel was torture. Two weren't much better. And soon she'd wolfed down the entire thing.

Pete had done the same with his.

So now they were down to one piece of jerky. Lucy wondered if stories she'd heard about pioneers eating their shoes were true. If so her moccasins would probably be a good deal tastier (and easier to chew) than Pete's boots.

Pete stood up and began to gather kodok needles together to make himself a bed; his bedroll had been swept away, too.

They took their anti-dreaming drops as soon as the sky darkened. Pete lay down on the ground and heaped needles over himself. He looked like he was disappearing into the forest floor. As the moon rose, Lucy fought a nagging fear she'd wake up in the morning to find he'd been swallowed up whole. She kept looking at him, checking to make sure his head was still uncovered.

Soon Pete's breathing was deep and regular. He was asleep.

But the moon kept Lucy awake. Something about its fat, self-satisfied face was infuriating. Why did it have to look so smug, just when things were going so wrong?

She sat up in her bedroll and shivered against the cool night air. As she stared out at the inky forest, a light flickered in the distance. She held her breath and stared. It was the orange light—the same one they'd seen their first night after leaving Pentland.

Her neck tingled.
What was it doing here?

Someone was following them. For a moment she had a wild hope it was her father. But that didn't make sense—how could he be
behind
them?

Whoever it was, they'd passed through the forest's traps thus far. That meant they'd brought food. Lucy's stomach gurgled, reminding her of their most pressing problem.

Pete slept peacefully. In the moonlight his face was relaxed and innocent.

“Pete,” she whispered.

He didn't wake up, though the nighttime stillness made her feel like she'd shouted.

“Pete. Wake up!”

His breath came in contented rumbles. Lucy crawled over and pushed his shoulder. It was like trying to push a log. She shoved; he heaved and flopped, then snuggled farther down into his bed of kodok needles.

This was getting annoying. She found Pete's ear, hidden beneath a sheaf of hair. For a moment she felt strange touching him, but the feeling quickly passed and turned to satisfaction as she grabbed hold of his ear and twisted . . . hard.

“Ow!”

He sat up, rubbing the side of his head and looking hurt. “What'd you do that for?”

Lucy's knees were damp from kneeling on the forest floor. She stood up, brushing kodok needles from her legs. A few ragged patches of mist hung low to the ground like a trail of floating islands making a path between her and the mysterious orange glow.

“The orange light is here.”

“What?” Pete said groggily. He lumbered to his feet in a way that suggested a sleepwalking bear.

Lucy took a few steps, stopping under a towering kodok. “The light we saw before. It's
here.
”

He stood beside her, smelling of mulch. “Jiminy,” he whispered.

“We've got to find out who it is.”

“Oh no we don't.”

“They could have food.”

“Or they could take ours.”

“Our one piece of jerky,” she scoffed.

“That one piece is what's going to keep us alive.” Pete was fully awake now; the sleepiness on his face had been replaced by suspicion.

“Well, I'm going.” She knew Pete was probably right; they should be more cautious. But she was tired of questioning herself, of being uncertain. She wanted to go back to being the old Lucy, before the Thumb. That girl simply did things, without worrying about the consequences.

“
Lucy
 . . . ” Pete pleaded.

She put on her moccasins, then started off into the woods in the direction of the twinkling orange light. The moon lit her way well enough, and she was careful to walk silently. Niwa would have been proud of her.

Behind her she heard a dramatic sigh and then Pete's footsteps, following her.

• • •

The orange light came from a phos globe. Lucy could see the glass orb—it was about the size of a grapefruit—as a man held it on his palm. Flames danced inside it.

Once in her life she'd seen such a thing, in the grand mansion of a St. Louis steel magnate. A maid had slapped her hand when she'd tried to touch it. Only a few hundred existed, and the inventor who created them died without passing on his secrets. The flame in a phos globe never went out, nor did it transmit heat. You could carry one in your pocket and never worry about it burning you. Or you could toss it in the air—as the man was doing now, as if this very rare and expensive thing were nothing more than a toy.

Pete crouched beside her, tense and wary. They had crept to the edge of a campsite. On the ground, sitting next to their bedrolls, were three more men.

They were settlers, burly men with short hair and beards and flannel shirts rolled up over meaty arms. Why would they be following her and Pete?

“It was the devil rigged that river to flood,” one of them said suddenly, as if reviving an argument from before. He was boulder-size with a blocky head and seemingly no neck. “It was the devil what killed them.”

“Anyone you ask says this forest is cursed, yessir.” This man was anxious. In the faint light provided by the phos globe she could see someone small and wiry with a coxcomb of hair springing up from his scalp.

“
Bull pucky,
” said a cantankerous country voice, punctuated by the wet sound of spitting. “It was their own fault. If Rambles and Charley had left the gold alone and run they'd be alive right now.”