The Fatal Tree (11 page)

“Well, I guess I’ve come to break you out.”

She produced the key and put it in the lock. The words came to her without thinking – as if she were rehearsing lines from a play, as if she were going through motions preordained.

“Mina! Mina, listen – I’ve been trying to find you. I never abandoned you – you’ve got to believe me. I didn’t know where you were, or how to reach you. Cosimo went back for you, but you weren’t there, so we asked Sir Henry to help. That’s what all this is about – trying to find you.”

“And here I am, finding you,” she said. Kit’s words had the echo of a lost conversation; she knew what he was going to say and what her reply should be. “We’d better hurry. We don’t have much time.”

“But how – ?”

Giles put his head around the corner. “Sir?”

“Oh, Giles, step up here. This is my dear friend, Wilhelmina Klug,” he said. “Mina, Giles Standfast.”

“Glad to meet you, Giles,” said Wilhelmina, uncertain whether she and the sturdy, solemn-faced young man had met before.

“An unexpected pleasure, my lady,” replied Giles.

Wilhelmina jostled the key in the lock again, gave it a strong twist, and managed to produce a loud click. She pulled and the heavy iron grate swung open, releasing the two captives. Kit stepped into the vestibule and took Wilhelmina into his arms briefly, then stepped back as if slapped, suddenly awkward. Something had passed between them – she felt it too, but could not tell what it was.

“Thank you, Mina,” he said and reached for her hand, gripping it tightly.

“Entirely my pleasure,” she said, still trying to fathom what had happened just then. She stepped away. “Well, I think we’d best be on our way.”

“I’m sorry,” Kit said. “About losing you, getting everyone mixed up in this… I’m sorry about everything.”

Kit –
this
Kit – seemed to have no idea what they had been through together. “Don’t be sorry for a minute,” she told him. “Honestly, it was the best thing that ever happened to me.” Had she said that before? She started for the stone staircase. Kit hesitated. She turned back. “Anything wrong?”

“Yes. It’s Cosimo and Sir Henry – they’re dead,” Kit replied; he half turned to the room behind him. “We can’t just abandon them – walk away as if nothing happened.”

“Oh.” Mina stood in the dim light of the chamber for a moment, gazing through the open grate and into the darkened tomb beyond. “I know.” She moved back, took his hand, and squeezed it. “I’m sorry, Kit – I truly am. But I’m afraid that if we don’t leave now we may very well end up joining them.” She nodded toward the black void beyond the grate. “I don’t see there’s anything we can do for them now. We have to go.”

Kit regarded her, but still hesitated.

“Look at it this way,” she continued. “What better resting place than a royal tomb?”

Giles stepped up next to Kit and put his hand on his shoulder. “Your friend is right, sir. The gentlemen are beyond our help, and it avails us nothing to remain here. ‘Let the dead bury the dead’ – so it is written, is it not?”

“I suppose,” allowed Kit. “But it just doesn’t seem right.”

“No,” Mina replied with some vehemence, “it is
not
right. There is a lot about this we will probably never understand – I know I never will. But if we go now, there may be a chance we can come back and make it right.” She paused. Where did that notion come from? Was it even true?

In any case, Kit seemed to accept her reasoning. “Okay, Mina,” he conceded. “You lead the way.”

I’m doing the best I can
, Wilhelmina thought to herself and led them from the tomb. By the time she had climbed the stairs and stepped into the heat and light of the wadi, she knew what she had to do. There was no way she would allow herself to become caught up in the progression of events for whatever alternate time or dimension Kit and Giles inhabited. Who knew where that would lead? She would see them on their way and then, as she seemed destined to ping-pong through Egyptian history, she would continue her self-imposed mission to find Thomas Young.

T
hey snaked through the brambles along the riverside to the trailhead and started up the path to the Big Valley Ley, Kit leading the way with Cass at his heels.They had spent a rough night in the rock shelter above the river, had risen early, and were heading back to the ley line to – they hoped – meet up with Wilhelmina. Morning mist clung to the steep cliff face and flowed across portions of the path itself; water dripped from the rock ledges above, splattering on the gravel and oozing into the thick-grown moss.The sky grew lighter as they went, and the air warmer as the sun gained strength and altitude. Upon reaching the neat pile of rocks that marked the spot where the ley terminated, Kit stretched out his hand.

Cass regarded the narrow track with lips pursed in a dubious expression. “Feel anything?”

Kit shook his head. “Not yet. We’re on time.”

Cass had gathered blackberries from bramble thickets along the river; she carried them in a water lily leaf. She sat down, opened the leaf, and started to eat. “What do we do if Mina doesn’t show up?”

Kit sat down beside her and helped himself to a handful of berries. “I’ve been thinking about that,” he said, popping a few of the ripe purple fruit into his mouth. “We could head back to Prague and wait for her there – and we should if she doesn’t turn up soon – but I’d rather give it another day at least.”

“And if she doesn’t turn up this morning?”

Kit rubbed his stubbly jaw. “We’ll go on up to the yew tree and see what we can see. To be honest, I think we’ve got as much as we’re going to get out of that tree. I mean, it’s beginning to feel like a fool’s errand.”

They ate from their packs and talked, and the sun rose above the canyon rim. From time to time, Kit checked to see if the ley line was active, and at one point reported that he did feel the tickle of static on his skin. They waited, but Mina did not appear; and when at last the ley activity began to dwindle and eventually cease, Kit climbed to his feet and said, “Well, we did our part. We can try again this evening. Let’s head up to the tree.”

“I’ve got a better idea. Take me to that cave.”

“That cave?”

“The one with the paintings you told me about. I’d love to see it.”

“Okay, sure, why not?” Kit agreed after a moment’s thought. “The tree isn’t going anywhere. We can check it out later.” He started back down the trail. “Have you still got that handkerchief?”

“The one with the smudge? Yeah, I’ve still got it. Why?”

“You’ll find out.”

They descended the trail in silence. The sounds of the forest grew loud around them, punctuated by the soft crunch of their feet on the loose gravel of the path. Upon reaching the floor of the gorge, Kit led them downriver, walking easily along the rocklined bank. Cass picked berries on the way, and Kit forged the trail, keeping a wary watch for jackals, wolves, or bears. His survival skills revived with every step. It was, he decided, like riding the proverbial bike: once learned, never forgotten. All he needed was a little practice and he was back in form.

“Keep your eyes peeled for clamshells along the bank here,” he told Cass at one point. “Bears and other beasts eat clams and leave the empties. We’ll need a couple of good-sized shells.”

“Dare I ask what for?”

“Torches,” replied Kit. “The Hall of Extinct Beasts is a fair distance into the cave. We’ll need some light to get there.”

“And the clamshells will help us how?”

“Tools for gathering pitch.”

“Pitch – from pine trees? That should be fairly easy to get – this place is lousy with pine trees.”

They continued along the riverbank, pausing now and then to retrieve a clamshell or two from the water’s edge; at one place they found a cache of a dozen or more discarded shells. “Otters,” said Kit, surveying the detritus. Many of the shells were broken, but some were whole and suitable for the purpose. They rinsed off the sand and mud from the shells and moved on, following the river as it wound around the foot of a towering limestone bluff. Turning the corner, they came upon a small herd of buffalo – seven adults and five young ones – drinking in the shallows formed by the suddenly widening stream.

“
Bison bonasus giganticus!
” Cass exclaimed. “Amazing.”

“Well spotted.”

“I’ve seen them before – as bones. They’re related to the modern European bison.” She fell into step behind Kit as he started working his way around the herd; the bison had now seen them and were watching the humans warily. “I think they’re more aggressive too.”

“Just don’t get between a mother and her calf. That’s a lesson I learned the hard way.” Giving the creatures a wide berth, they continued slowly around the river bend. “Up there.” Kit pointed to a stand of tall pine trees a few hundred yards ahead. “That looks a likely place.”

Upon reaching the pine grove, they made a quick search among the trees. Kit scanned the slender trunks from the ground to the upper branches for places where the bark had been damaged – maybe by an animal or a branch breaking off – some injury to the outer trunk that caused the sap to leak out. The first few trees were young and unblemished, but several were older, larger, battlescarred veterans with broken branches and damaged limbs; one tree had a big gash where some animal – an elk, most likely – had used it for a scratching post – and the raw wound was oozing sap; some had coagulated into trails of pale yellow resin that collected like wax dripping from a candle.

“Just what we’re looking for,” Kit told her. “We do it like this.” Taking a clamshell, he began using the sharp edge to scoop the sap off the tree, breaking off the hardened chunks and scraping the rest into an unbroken half shell.

Meanwhile, Cass busied herself searching among the other trees in the stand and soon called out, “Hey! I think I found the mother lode.” She pointed up toward the upper boughs. “Up there – a big glob ripe for the taking.”

About two meters up the trunk a large limb had been torn off, and the raw stump had been bleeding pinesap ever since. The stuff had formed a sticky lump the size of a large grapefruit. “Good work,” Kit told her. “Now to get it down.” He gauged the girth of the tree and the height of the lowest branch. “I’m not going to be able to reach that,” he said, “and the trunk is too big to get my arms around.”

“Give me a boost,” suggested Cass. She took a clamshell, and Kit cupped his hands, took her foot, and lifted her up the side of the tree. “Perfect,” she called down, placing her other foot on his shoulder for balance. “Now just hold steady.” She hacked at the agglomeration of dried resin, breaking off chunks into one shell after another, handing them down as she filled them. “You okay down there?” she asked, scraping away at the goopy mass.

“Take your time,” said Kit, leaning into the strain. “I could do this all day.”

“How very chivalrous.”

“That’s my middle name.”

She laughed and, for the moment, felt the tension of the last days dissipate a little. After a few more passes with the scraper, she announced, “There! Finished.”

With Cass back on the ground, Kit lined up the filled shells at the base of the tree and gathered a pile of dry twigs and sticks and larger chunks of pine bark. He then constructed a little platform made of sticks and small stones that he had arranged in a horseshoe shape, and proceeded to kindle a fire using the flint and steel from his pack. He fed pine needles into the mix and coaxed the tiny flame to take hold. Using embers from the fire, he melted lumps of pitch in the clamshells and coated reeds gathered from the riverside to make the torches. Cass took one sniff of the acrid fumes and said, “My, there’s a fragrance you don’t smell very often.”

By the time the pitch had given out, Kit had three rushes with blobs of black sticky gunk on the end. “Well, that’s that,” he said. “Let’s go caving.”

He led the way farther downriver until they came in sight of a rock wall rising from the valley floor. “There it is,” he said, pointing to an oval-shaped hole a few metres up from the base of the stone curtain. “That’s the cave entrance. You go up first. I’ll light a torch and hand it up to you.”

As with the tree, Kit hefted Cass up the steep side of the cliff wall; she secured a handhold and Kit lifted her higher up the rock face until she could pull herself into the mouth of the cave. He handed two unlit reeds to her, then busied himself for a few minutes kindling the remaining torch from the embers he had brought with them. Once the pitch took flame, he carefully passed the lighted reed to her and, with a last glance at the sun, which had just passed midday, scrambled up into the cave himself. “Okay, no time to dally. We’ll have to zip along.”

Torch held high, he led them deeper into the cave and into hollows and chambers large and small connected to one another by narrow passages – some so tight they could but scrape along sideways, and others wide enough to have accommodated a double-decker bus. Kit, mindful of the time limit imposed by the torch in his hand, chivvied Cass along at a pace little short of reckless. When they reached a long, roughly rectangular room, he pulled up abruptly and announced, “Behold! I give you the Hall of Extinct Beasts.”

Stepping close to the near wall, Kit lifted his torch to reveal a primitive but delightfully evocative rendering of a rhinoceros in red and brown ochre. Beside it a black hump-backed bison protected its mewling calf while, on the wall opposite, two tawny, spindle-legged antelope cavorted before a bear standing at bay, its great arms spread and killing claws extended. The walls on both sides of the passage were filled with animals: fat little horses with spiky manes, a long-horned aurochs being chased by wolves, an imposing elk with a magnificent crown of antlers, more horses, a shaggy red mammoth with a looming head and long, questing trunk, oxen, and even a herd of curly-horned sheep.

“
Un
-believable!” breathed Cass in a reverent whisper.

“Watch this,” Kit told her, and holding the torch close, he moved the flickering light slowly along the smooth surface of the cavern wall. The painted creatures appeared to move; the quivering light lent life to the long-frozen animals and they lived again.

“I wonder who did this,” she said. “Who painted them?”

“I know exactly who painted them – some of them, at least.” Kit pointed to a picture of a bear. “I was here when this one was begun and…” His voice faltered at the memory. That was the last time he ever saw his friends.

Cass put her face close to the surface of the painting. “You actually saw them paint this?”

“Most of them were already here,” he explained. “The hunters came to paint more animals, I think – or maybe to finish some they had started earlier. But I saw them mixing their paint and making their brushes. I saw them set to work.”

“Unbelievable,” Cass said again.

“That’s not all,” said Kit. “This way – just along here… somewhere.” He moved farther down the gallery and came to a section containing a display not of animals, but of abstract symbols. And there, down low on the adjacent wall, a collection of smaller cyphers – more complex and more precisely drawn, and very, very familiar. “Ever seen these before?”

Cass caught a glimpse in the flickering light and her mouth dropped open. “Incredible.” She pressed nearer and crouched down to look at the enigmatic spirals and whorls with their transecting lines and dots. “They’re the ones in Gianni’s photos.”

“The very ones,” confirmed Kit. He held the torch a little nearer and looked more closely himself. “Only…”

“Only what?”

“I don’t remember seeing that many.” He passed the burning reed along the wall. “There seem to be more of them now.”

“Meaning what?” asked Cass. “Someone has been adding to them since you were here?”

“Maybe.” Before Kit could say more, the burning reed started to hiss and sputter. “Quick! Give me another torch.” Taking the proffered reed, he held the pitch-covered tip to the dying flame. “Come on… come on… ,” he coaxed. Just as the last flicker died, the new torch sputtered to life.

“That was close,” said Cass.

“Too right.” He held out his hand. “Let’s have that handkerchief.”

Cass fished the square of cloth from her pocket and carefully unfolded it before passing it to Kit. He held the cloth against the wall and began moving down the little row of painted symbols until he came to one he recognised. “This is it,” he said, handing the torch to Cass. Spreading the cloth, he held it flat to the wall beside the symbol.

“It’s a perfect match,” said Cass, moving the torch closer.

“Identical twins,” remarked Kit.

“Did you know this one was here?”

“Just a hunch. These same symbols are on the Skin Map, and everywhere else.” He indicated the small dotted spiral on the wall. “This one probably is too.”

“But how did it get here?”

“More to the point,” said Kit, “how did that same symbol get on the handkerchief?”

Cass bent her head close to the wall and studied the painted symbol and the faint, dusty image on the square of cloth. Kit watched; he could almost see the gears spinning in her head. Eyes glinting in the firelight, she turned her face to him and asked, “Know anything about quantum entanglement?”

“Let’s pretend I don’t.”

“Well, briefly, any atomic particle that has ever interacted with another atomic particle becomes forever entangled – or connected. Scientists have known about this for years. They’ve documented it on the quantum level and now they’re even able to trace entanglement in larger objects, not just particles and atoms.”

“You say the darndest things, Cass.”

“Yeah, well, this is Dad’s specialty, not mine. But I grew up with this stuff. Anyway, the point is anything that has ever been in contact is connected,” Cass continued. “Which, when you think about it, is pretty much everything that has ever existed. If you care to trace it back far enough, back to the Big Bang and everything that followed, all matter in the universe is entangled – connected in some way.”

With these words, Kit again sensed the flash of revelation he had been granted in the vision of the smashing teapot. “Everything is connected,” he murmured. “Right – so… what’s that mean, exactly?”