The Fatal Tree (25 page)

“You know this place?” said Mina. “It’s the Bone House, right?”

She had to repeat the question before Kit answered, “That’s right – and it’s just as I remember it.”

“Incredible… ,” murmured Gianni, peering sideways through his ruined glasses. “Never have I seen anything like it.”

Lost in thought, Kit gazed at the Bone House as the memory of what had taken place there replayed in his mind.

“We’re going to freeze to death out here,” Cass said. She pointed at the igloo-shaped hut. “Can we go inside?”

Kit turned his attention to the snow-covered clearing and scanned it quickly. “Where’s Burleigh?”

“He was standing right there before the blast,” said Wilhelmina. A swift search of the perimeter and surrounding wood, calling his name and shouting to rouse him, failed to turn up any trace.

“He must have ended up somewhere else,” Cass concluded.

“Suits me,” said Kit. “We can’t waste time looking for him now.”

“We’re freezing out here,” Cass said again. “We’ve got to do something.”

Kit glanced around the clearing one last time, then picked up the intact Shadow Lamp and started around the side of the Bone House. “I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Follow me.”

G
etting everyone into the Bone House was a tight squeeze; the structure was never meant to hold so many. Washed-out sunlight filtered down through the chinks and cracks in the bony roof, casting the interior in a dim half-light that was neither day nor night. The floor of the hut was packed snow spread with pine branches and the skins of deer and buffalo. Immediately upon entering, Wilhelmina and Cass pulled up one of the pelts and draped it over themselves; Gianni did the same. Once everyone was settled, Kit said, “I don’t know how much any of you know about this place, but this is where I sat with En-Ul while he was – ” He hesitated, trying to decide how to describe what it was the old clan chief was doing. “Well, I know it as Dreaming Time…”

“You have mentioned this before,” said Gianni. “Can you tell us more about it?”

“I can try,” said Kit. “But the thing is – River City Clan had fairly primitive language skills. They communicated mainly through what I thought of as a kind of mental radio – once you were able to tune in, they spoke to you through mental images of whatever it was they were trying to tell you.”

“I remember you saying” – Mina pulled the cork from her laudanum bottle, took a sip, and swallowed hard – “images, impressions – that sort of thing, right?”

“What do you think he meant by
dreaming time
?” asked Gianni.

“Well, he didn’t use exactly those words,” Kit explained. “The clansmen didn’t have many words, remember. But that is the sense I made of what he was trying to tell me. I guess I supplied the words. Oh,” added Kit, recalling the urgency and gravity of what had been communicated to him. “And also that what he was doing was incredibly important – life-and-death important, as if survival of the clan depended on it.”

“In what way?” asked Cass.

“I honestly do not know. The precise meaning was fairly vague, but that was the sense I got of what he was telling me. Anyway, the impression I got from En-Ul was that here, in the Bone House, he was able to interact with time.”

“Creating time? Changing it?” asked Gianni.

“More like he was seeing what time would bring and somehow interacting with what he saw.” Kit shook his head. “I can’t say.”

Cass, who had been studying the interior of the Bone House with professional interest, exclaimed, “I get it now!” All eyes turned to where she sat huddled under the heavy pelt. “It’s symbolic – don’t you see?”

“What’s symbolic?” asked Mina, sitting next to her.

“This place – the Bone House – it’s a symbol. Get it?” When the others continued to stare, she hurried to explain. “Stay with me here, okay? My mother was an anthropologist, and she told me once that old Scandinavian poets used a device called a
kenning
. It was a way of expressing a thing obliquely by referencing something else – like saying ‘battle sweat’ to mean
blood
or saying ‘swan road’ to mean
sea
– a metaphorical way of speaking, and heavily symbolic. So, using that model, Bone House would be…” She paused to consider.

“Maybe it’s your body,” said Mina. “The place where your spirit lives?”

“Could be,” Cass allowed, her brows lowered in thought.

“Your skull,” declared Gianni suddenly. He appeared as surprised as anyone else by his utterance. “It is obvious. The skull is the dome of bone that houses your mind. Your consciousness
lives
, so to speak, inside your skull – ”

“Inside a house of bone,” added Kit, finishing the thought.

“That fits,” said Cass. “Kit, I think your friend En-Ul was telling you more than you know! All this is symbolic – only instead of trying to explain it to you, he acted it out. He was
showing
you how things worked. Don’t you see?” Cass rocked back and forth in her excitement. “By sleeping in the Bone House, he was demonstrating his fundamental understanding of the world and his place in it.”

“Do you think he was visiting the Spirit Well to do whatever he was doing?” asked Mina.

“Possibly,” granted Kit. “It is surely no coincidence that the Bone House sits on the portal that connects directly with the Spirit Well.”

Gianni cleared his throat. “Before we were so thoroughly diverted,” he said, “you said you had an idea.”

“We’re directly on top of the portal,” Kit replied. “We can use it to get to the Spirit Well, and I think I know how to turn it on.” Kit went on to explain how he had spent hours watching over En-Ul while the Old One slept, and how, after three years of inactivity, his Shadow Lamp had inexplicably sparked to life. “In my excitement, I stood up and fell through the floor – ”

“Like at Black Mixen Tump,” suggested Wilhelmina.

“Just like Black Mixen Tump,” replied Kit. “Only instead of connecting to Egypt, this leap took me to the Spirit Well. I think that whatever En-Ul was doing opened the portal and allowed me to go through.”

Gianni, nodding thoughtfully, said, “You seem to be suggesting that the conscious mental activity of the Bone House occupant initiated the portal.” He peered around at the group through the shattered lens of his glasses and concluded, “That would support Cass’ hypothesis – and it would be easy enough to test.”

“By doing what En-Ul did,” said Cass. “Is that what you mean?”

“Right,” said Kit. “Whatever En-Ul did, he did it while asleep – or at least very relaxed. Eyes closed, meditating. That sort of thing.”

“Then let us try that,” said Gianni. To Mina he said, “Your Shadow Lamp will show us if we succeed in activating the portal.”

“What shall we meditate about?” asked Mina.

“Think about the future,” offered Gianni.

“Like En-Ul,” said Kit. “Imagine yourself in the future and what you want to have happen there.”

After a little more discussion, the travellers settled back to contemplate various possibilities of life for themselves in time to come. They closed their eyes and turned their sight inward. After the fraught events of the last few hours, they slowly succumbed to the calm and quiet of the place, and one by one drifted off.

The first thing that came into Wilhelmina’s mind was the kaffeehaus. She saw herself in the kitchen of the Grand Imperial working with Engelbert, happy, prospering; she saw the two of them together and realised just how much they complemented one another – Etzel with his quiet strength and peerless character, and herself with her creativity and business savvy. The image changed abruptly then, and she saw a white stucco house with a red tile roof in a pleasant corner of Old Prague with a tiny orchard garden filled with flowers and vegetables. Two little towheaded girls fluttered around like butterflies while Etzel picked apples and she, with a ledger in her lap, did the weekly accounting. Thinking of herself and Etzel together seemed right and good, and filled her with a warm glow of pleasure.

Perhaps it was the setting – the Neolithic structure of the Bone House guiding the direction of her thoughts – but Cass saw the nearby gorge and river where she and Kit had spent those days while waiting for Wilhelmina to join them. Only this time, she saw it without the overlay of anxiety and fear. Instead, she saw the placid river reflecting the white cliffs all around; she heard the lazy hum of insects and the pure-throated calls of the blackbirds in the rushes along the bank. She saw herself writing and making sketches in a notebook for research, observing long-extinct animals in their natural habitats, exploring the caves with members of River City Clan as guides. She saw herself and Kit together and imagined they were building a house – an old-fashioned dwelling of wattle and daub. Kit was up a makeshift ladder, thatching the roof with reeds gathered from the riverside; she was there, holding up a bundle for him to use… She imagined them in their cosy dwelling together, and he was holding a skewer threaded with sliced onions and cubes of meat over the fire on their round stone hearth… She saw them swimming in the river by the light of a rising moon… She saw them holding hands and sharing a kiss as they sat on a stone ledge and watched the stars come out… She imagined this and felt how fine it would be if they could enjoy a life together – a life of adventure and discovery, every day new.

Upon closing his eyes, Gianni’s first thought was of the JVLA and the marvellous work they were doing there. He saw the man who had, in a very short time, become a dear friend; he saw Tony Clarke working with the other scientists there, working to understand the coming cataclysm… And then he saw himself and Tony in his old observatory at Montserrat and they were very excited about something they had seen – followed by a picture of himself and Tony on a stage in a great hall with lights all around, and they were sharing a prize for one of their breakthrough discoveries; they were dressed in black tie and tails, standing at a podium in a gleaming golden hall, beaming as they received the applause of an august audience for their singular achievement. Was it the Nobel Prize? The feeling of accomplishment suffused him with pride, which both surprised and embarrassed him.

For Kit, the exercise took a little time to bear fruit, but when it did, it came in abundance. His mind filled with the faces of people he had met, and some he had lost, along the way. He did not try to impose an order on them, but simply allowed the images to come as they would. He saw Brandon and Mrs. Peelstick and the rest of the Zetetics – happily continuing their work, maintaining the genizah, reaching out to travellers, expanding their knowledge of the ways of God in creation. He saw Tess and pictured the whitehaired octogenarian laying a wreath on a newly erected memorial. The writing on the simple slab of granite said:

No dates were given,but that did not matter.Cosimo was remembered, his passing marked and respected, and that seemed to be enough. Next to that grave was a second inscribed in similar fashion for Sir Henry Fayth. That the two friends should rest together in this way seemed right and proper to Kit.
Bless you,Tess
, he thought, and then reminded himself that he had only imagined it.Yet somehow that did not make what he saw seem any less real.

Other faces came before him: Haven and Giles… what had happened to them? He imagined them together – in a great city, perhaps, where Haven’s beauty and spirit would shine, for she would need refinement and sophistication to be truly happy. As for loyal, stouthearted Giles, Kit imagined him thriving and attaining a rank he deserved – as a respected retainer in a noble household, perhaps, in a position where his devotion and trustworthiness could be both appreciated and rewarded. This seemed right to Kit: Haven finding a measure of contentment with a man like Giles whose steady hand could temper her mercurial nature. He imagined that would be a good thing.

He saw a campfire, the lambent glow flickering on the stone walls of River City Clan’s rock shelter… En-Ul was there, and Dardok, and the rest of the clan. He imagined them in their summer dwellings at River City, protected by high rock walls near the river’s slow-flowing water; he saw young ones dabbling in a brook, their mothers nearby, keeping watch while picking blackberries. He saw En-Ul sitting under a tree, thinking deep thoughts, guiding his people with wisdom and care… and Dardok with an infant son. Kit saw the clan surviving – more, he saw them safe and flourishing, carving a niche for themselves in an often harsh and unforgiving age and going from strength to strength. He saw himself introducing the clan to Cass, and them accepting her as they had accepted him.

And then, just as he glimpsed himself and Cass sitting on a rock by the river, watching the moon rise, the image blanked out – not into darkness, but into a bright and all-pervading light. Kit had a sensation of movement.

In that instant the four separate minds with their individual thoughts and images fused into a single combined consciousness; they were one and they were falling, plunging blind into a blazing, colourless void
.

Their downward plummet accelerated, turning gradually into flight; they felt the unnerving, giddy sensation of flying, of travelling at immense, mind-bending speed over distances beyond reckoning at a velocity that exceeded the speed of light; it seemed to them that they were covering impossible distances with the swift felicity of thought itself. Encased in an incandescent shell, they detected no possibility of the journey ever coming to an end. An age passed between one breath and another, an eternity in the blink of an eye, and still they sped on.

When it began to seem as if they would remain forever frozen in flight – a mere speck of dust in a cosmic glacier of time – they saw a faint shape emerge in the distance. At first little more than a shadow, it slowly took on form and substance; patterns of light and dark solidified and spread across the light horizon, growing steadily, filling the void with the distant hope of a destination.

But the light gradually faded, evaporating into the darkness of deep space spangled with a spray of starlight and the perfect blue orb of a world far away. The planet rushed toward them at such speed that they had no time to brace themselves: they were dropping through the cloudless heavens, and the collective consciousness separated into its constituent parts once more.

One moment Kit was free-falling through the atmosphere, and the next he was lying facedown on a beach of flawless white sand, his clothes soaking wet as if he had just been for a swim. He did not remember plunging into the water, but he was wet and the sea waves soughed gently behind him. He raised his head and took in his surroundings, inhaling the sweet air and savouring the warmth of the sun as the recollection of his first visit came rushing back in a surge of vivid memory. Behind him, the sparkling turquoise sea spread to the far horizon. Before him rose a verdant wall of green, almost radiant vegetation, exactly as he remembered it. Beyond that lush green wall, in a secluded jungle glade, lay the Spirit Well.