The Fatal Tree (26 page)

I
s everything in this world more alive?
Kit wondered. Perhaps the gravity of this planet was subtly different and that made things seem more vibrant; from the jewel-like colours to the impossibly blue sky and flawless white clouds – everything seemed fresher, newer, more intensely present. The assault on the senses was powerful. Within seconds of stepping from the warm sea wash, the sheer beauty of the place overwhelmed him anew. Nothing in his memory matched the brilliance, the splendour, the unutterable magnificence of the reality before him.

He moved up the beach toward the jungle, and his feet had just touched the grassy verge when he heard a splash behind him. Glancing back, he saw Cass standing knee-deep in the surf. He called out to her and waved as he turned and started back to meet her; he was halfway to the water’s edge when Wilhelmina materialised. Like a ghost taking on flesh, she just simply appeared – kneeling, up to her hips in the waves. Seconds later, Gianni arrived. Like Mina, he appeared first as a vague and hazy outline that rapidly filled in, becoming flesh before his eyes.

Kit hurried to greet the dazed, disoriented newcomers. “You made it!” he called. “I was beginning to think I was the only one to make the leap.” He ran to help Mina up out of the water. “You okay?” She gave him a groggy nod as he took her good arm and raised her to her feet. “Here, let’s get you onto dry land.”

“Where are we?” asked Cass, wading over to help. “Is this the Spirit Well?”

“No,” Kit replied. “I don’t know what this place is called, but the Spirit Well is through that bit of jungle over there. It’s just a short walk from here.” He turned to where Gianni stood gazing around with an odd expression on his face. “You okay over there, Gianni?”

The priest gave a start and came to himself. “
È così bella
,” he sighed. “So very beautiful.”

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” Kit told him. “I’ll show you.” They crossed the beach and were soon on the path leading into the jungle paradise. All around them grew strange, exotic shrubs and trees: plants with foliage that resembled lacework fans or billowy clouds of tiny green stars or long, tapering feathers of spun gold. Flowers and fruit grew in profligate abundance – in bunches and clusters, clutches and clumps, in banks and drifts like clouds: flamingo pink, violet, saffron, ultramarine, citrine, and others that no earthly tongue had ever named. Everywhere they looked, some new and arresting form met the eye – in shapes that beggared description, and all of it fresh and unspoiled as if rejoicing in its first hour of existence. From the graceful elegance of the trees and shrubs to the contours and patterns of their leaves and the pristine elegance of the flowers – it was all so arresting the travellers found it difficult to avoid continual distraction.

As they moved through the wildly exuberant foliage, they sensed the strange resonance of a sound just beyond hearing; it permeated the atmosphere with the reverberation of a symphony when the final triumphant chord has faded, yet still lingers in the air. “Listen,” whispered Gianni, pausing in midstep. “It is the music of perfection – the sound of creation in harmony.”

Farther into the jungle, they struck a wide grassy path. “We’re close now,” Kit told them, and a few paces later the travellers emerged from the sun-dappled path into a wide, shallow, bowlshaped clearing. In the centre of the clearing lay a crystalline lake of translucent, shimmering liquid. The calm, mirror-like surface reflected the sky and overarching branches of the surrounding trees and hinted at unfathomable depths below.

Gianni crept to the edge and knelt down to examine the pool more closely.

“Is this it?” wondered Wilhelmina, frowning slightly. “Is this the Spirit Well?”

“This is it,” replied Kit, noting her expression. “Disappointed?” Mina held her head to one side. “I thought it would be different.

This looks like a pond in a park. Nice but, you know…”

“Nice?” Kit shook his head. “Anyway, it’s not so much what it looks like, it’s what it does.”

“Now that we’re here, what are
we
going to do?” she asked. “I was hoping – ” began Kit, and was interrupted by a nudge to the ribs.

“We’ve got company,” said Cass, indicating the opposite bank where a man had just emerged from the surrounding foliage. “Bloody hell!” growled Kit. “Burleigh, you rat!” he shouted.

“How did you get here?”

“Good to see you too,” Burleigh replied. He waved the Shadow Lamp in his hand. “Superior tools, dear fellow. Even so, I doubt I could have found my way here without you. Well done.” He stuffed the ley lamp into his coat pocket and turned his attention to the pool. “Now, if you will excuse me. I believe I have a rendezvous with destiny.”

“He’s going into the water,” said Mina.

“We can’t let him do that,” Kit told her. “We’ve got to stop him. Come on!” He dashed off around the perimeter of the pool. Burleigh, poised on the edge of the pool, raised a hand in warning as Kit scrambled nearer. “Stay back!” he snarled. “Do not come any closer.”

“Listen to me,” Kit pleaded. “You don’t know what you’re doing!”

“I know exactly where I am and what I’m doing,” countered Burleigh. He turned his eyes back to the Spirit Well. “This has been my life’s sole ambition. It is what I have lived for. This is Arthur’s treasure, his legacy. I am about to undo all the wrongs I’ve ever done and all that have been done to me. From the moment I first learned about it, this is all I ever wanted – the chance to make it right.” His voice softened. “The chance to make everything right.”

“No!” cried Kit, horrified. “You don’t understand! Arthur was wrong. You can’t undo what has been done. You can’t re-create the past.”

“Oh, but you can. You said so yourself. Arthur did it, and so can I.”

“Kit is telling you the truth,” said Cass, joining Kit where he stood on the bank a few paces from Burleigh. “Arthur made a serious mistake bringing Xian-Li back to life. What you’re about to do will only make things worse.”

Burleigh was shaking his head. “You’re wrong. I can make things better. Don’t you see? In one single act of will, I can change it all – make things the way they were supposed to be. I do not have to be the bastard son of a mother who died in gin-soaked poverty and…”

His voice caught in his throat, and it was a moment before he was able to speak again. When he continued, his tone had softened further. “I do not have to be the street ruffian who grew up ragged and hungry, without schooling, without friends, without dignity, or even the grudging compassion of my fellow men. Do you know what it is like to grow up that way? Do you know what that does to a young heart?

“But here” – he waved a hand at the pool – “here is where all that can change. I do not have to be the unloved son, I do not have to be the man who spurned the love of a good woman.” He closed his eyes and drew a shaky breath, then said, “I can be the man my Philippa loved and would have gladly married.”

Burleigh paused and swallowed. There were tears in his eyes as he stood at the edge of the pool. “In the waters of this well, I can be made new. Don’t you see? I can be a better man.”

Gianni joined Kit and Cass on the bank. “My son, I understand why you feel the way you do,” he said, adopting a priestly tone.

“What happened to you should not have happened to anyone. But it did happen. Sadly, it did happen.

“We all have regrets and sorrows in life,
mio amico
. We all have our trials, and these must be borne with courage and fortitude. It is for us to shoulder our burdens and go forward in hope and trust into the future God has ordained.” He put out a hand toward the pool at Burleigh’s feet. “But this place, this Well of Souls – it is not about remaking the past. It is about the future. Whatever you take from the pool, you steal from the future. This is a theft that creation cannot endure.”

“The apocalypse we talked about,” said Wilhelmina, stepping forward, “is the death of all creation. It began a long time ago, and was caused by Arthur stealing from the future to remake the past for his own purposes. He was wrong to do that, and what he did poisoned the well.”

“You cannot know that,” Burleigh said, his voice slurred. He turned his attention back to the pool and took a slow, deliberate step into the liquid.

“No!” shouted Kit, dashing to the place on the bank where Burleigh entered the pool. “Stop!”

“There is no going back now,” Burleigh told him. “I will do what I have come to do.”

“For the love of God, Burleigh,” shouted Wilhelmina. “Please stop!”

Burleigh took another step, deeper into the pool. Wind gusted through the treetops round about; it swirled around the pool, shaking the branches with sudden violence. Leaves began falling from the trees, and the forest fruit shrivelled on the stem, dropping to the ground. The grass lining the banks of the well began to wither and die; before their very eyes it dried and blew away. “We’ve got to get him out of there,” said Mina. “Kit, we’ve got to do something.”

“Burleigh!” Kit called. “Look around. See what’s happening!

Listen to me, you’ve got to come out of there. You’re making things unstable.”

Burleigh took another step; slow ripples of light scattered across the pool. He was now up to his knees in the Spirit Well. Leaves and petals spun to earth, falling like snow, some of them striking the pool, sending tiny pulses of light racing across the surface wherever they touched. The wind, which had been gusting fitfully, dropped away to nothing, and an eerie silence settled over the glade. Cass, standing close to Kit, let out a cry halfway between a gasp and a stifled scream. “I do not believe it,” she said, her voice quivering. “Kit, look.” She pointed to the forest behind them.

“What’s happening?”

Kit looked where she was pointing and saw a second Cass step out of the jungle. Wearing the outfit she had been wearing when Kit first met her – the odd combination of long peasant skirt, billowy blouse, blue-checked shawl, and high-topped shoes – she looked around with an expression of puzzled apprehension, saw the others, but made no move to join them.

“That’s me,” Cass said. “That’s what I was wearing when I first met Haven and Giles.”

“Stay calm,” Mina told her, shuddering at the memory of meeting her own twin in Prague. “She is probably more freaked out by this than you are. Just turn around and don’t look at her.” Kit turned to Burleigh, who was wading deeper into the pool.

“Do you see that?” he shouted. “You caused that! You’ve got to come out of there.”

Burleigh regarded the duplicate Cassandra, who was just then joined at the Spirit Well by another doppelgänger. “Oh no,” gasped Wilhelmina as a second Gianni appeared. This one was dressed in the robes of a priest. “It’s Brother Lazarus.”

Gianni regarded his twin: long black cassock, short tonsure, and the owlish round-rimmed glasses – it was himself as he had been when in residence at the Montserrat observatory. Like the others, this newcomer appeared disoriented and confused, but then he saw Gianni and instantly recognised him. After a moment’s hesitation, he lifted a hand in a tentative wave. Gianni waved back and called a warning for the doubles not to come any closer. To Kit he said, “We
must
get Burleigh out of the pool – now! Before something else happens.”

“I’m going to have to go in and pull him out.”

“That’s not safe,” Mina said. “It could make things worse.”

“I don’t see we have any choice.”

Kit stepped to the edge of the pool, but before he could enter, Cass cried, “Kit, wait!” She stabbed a finger at the screen of foliage behind him.

Kit spun around as another man stumbled from the jungle bearing his dead wife in his arms: Arthur Flinders-Petrie as Kit had seen him on that first, fateful visit to the Spirit Well. Haggard, careworn, and desperately tired, Arthur gaped in startled amazement at the strangers on the opposite bank. It was a moment before he found his voice, and when he did, all that came out was a hoarse croak. “Who are you?”

“Stay where you are!” Kit, standing between Burleigh in the pool and Arthur out of it, raised both hands to prevent Arthur coming any closer. “I’m warning you. Stay back!”

Arthur looked beyond Kit and saw Burleigh in the pool. “You!”

he snarled and staggered back a step. Looking around furiously, he said, “All you people – what are you doing here? What is going on?”

Burleigh seemed not to hear; he had turned his attention to the pocket where the lights of the Shadow Lamp were glowing through the fabric of his coat. He pulled it out to reveal an instrument glowing with a bright, pulsating, greenish light. Sparks leaked from the little holes around the outer rim, and the device gave off a distinct, waspish hum. Burleigh stared at the Shadow Lamp, seemingly transfixed by what he saw.

“This is getting way too weird,” Mina said.

“It just got weirder,” Cass told her, unable to suppress a shiver as another Wilhelmina joined the doppelgängers at the pool’s edge.

This Wilhelmina had a wan, dull appearance; her hair hung in limp ropes and there were dark circles under her eyes. She was dressed in skinny black slacks and a black turtleneck, and had a much abused hand-knitted purple scarf around her neck and sheepskin boots on her feet. Behind her came yet another Wilhelmina – this one dressed in her desert assault gear with the blue pashmina. Cass leaned close to Mina. “Is that really you?”

Mina shook her head in disbelief. “It used to be,” she admitted.

To Kit she said, “Kit, it’s getting bad. We’ve got – ”

Whatever she was about to say would remain forever unsaid.

For at that moment, yet another figure appeared out of the foliage.

This man was old. The few strands of hair on his bare head were as wispy as spider silk, and his wrinkled skin was blasted brown by the sun and wind. He looked leathery and tough and as withered as a mummy, but the eyes, sunk deep in his skull, glinted hard and bright with quick, dark intelligence. He was dressed simply in loose-fitting trousers and what had once been a white shirt. The trousers were ragged and travel-stained; the shirt hung off him in tattered scraps, allowing those on the bank to see clearly and distinctly that the skin of his chest was decorated with dozens of curious glyphs: lines, half circles, dots, spirals, triangles, and odd half-geometrical, half-organic pictograms.