The Tree of Story (40 page)

Will wiped at his eyes. He sat up and blinked. The dust around him was falling now, thinning out.

“Rowen, where are you?” he said softly, not daring to speak any louder. His words seemed to vanish as soon as he spoke them.

“I’m here, Will.”

As the dust settled, he saw her, picking herself up, a few feet from him. He hurried over to her and helped her to her feet.

“I think the wind is gone,” he said.

“It can’t come in here,” she said, and then her eyes widened. “Will, your cloak.”

He tugged the end of his travelling cloak around to see what she was looking at. One side of it was shredded to ribbons, as if by a beast’s claws.

He let the cloak drop and looked up.

The dust had settled enough now that they could see they’d fallen into a large circular hollow, almost as deep as the cliff at the edge of the Silence had been high, but with more gently sloping sides. Like a crater on the moon, Will thought. Thick drifts of dust had settled at the bottom of the rim, where they stood now, but farther out the earth was as hard and bare and lifeless as it had been in on the plain. The pillar they were inside rose like a towering grey wall around them, closed over with a hanging cloud of dust at some height they could not guess. There were no fetches to be seen anywhere.

At the centre of the hollow stood a tree.

It was immense, leafless and looked long dead. The trunk and the many twisted, skeletal branches appeared to be made of the same dust that filled the hollow.

“What is this place?” Will asked.

“I don’t know,” Rowen said. “I can’t see the threads anymore. Not Shade’s. Not anyone’s.”

“What happened to the fetches?”

“I think they were drawn up into the pillar. Maybe it’s from here that they get sent to do the Night King’s bidding.”

“At least we’re safe from the wind now.”

“Where’s Grandfather’s staff?” Rowen cried. She glanced around wildly and then saw it, half buried in the dust near the place they had fallen. She hurried to it and lifted it. The waylight was still attached, but its door hung crookedly and the glass in its panes was broken. Rowen peered into the lantern’s interior.

“Sputter’s not here,” she said. “What happened to him?”

“There he is,” Will shouted, pointing. The wisp was coming toward them, skimming low over the floor of the hollow. When it reached Rowen it flew up into her open palms, trembling and bobbing, its light pulsing brighter than they had seen it in a long time.

“He’s excited about something,” Rowen said.

The wisp leaped up from Rowen’s hands and sped off again the way it had come. It didn’t go far, though, before it halted in midair and waited for them to catch up.

“He’s taking us to the tree,” Will said.

They set out across the floor of the hollow, the dust sifting down from their hair and clothing as they hurried along. The closer Will got to the tree, the sharper and more defined it seemed to grow, as if it was becoming more real only because of their presence.

At last they reached the tree and drew to a halt beneath it. In size and height it was even more enormous than Will had first thought, its trunk squat but thick and broad, larger around the bole than any tree he had ever seen back home. It rose straight out of the dust without any roots visible, its barren branches towering into the ashen sky. Will thought of a dead spider lying on its back with its legs in the air. It was a sight of such utter hopelessness that he felt all his own hopes had finally ended here.

Only Sputter didn’t seem to think so. The wisp danced around them frantically, then shot up to the tree’s heights and back down again to settle on Rowen’s outstretched hand.

“What have you found, Sputter?” Rowen asked, and then she looked up with her eyes wide and said, “Oh.”

“What is it?” Will asked.

Rowen didn’t answer. Slowly she reached up and touched the rough, knotted bark.

“It’s
their
tree,” she whispered. “Or it
was
. This was it, Will. The tree of the Stewards. The one that stood on the green hill where they met at midsummer with the Fair Folk and the Speaking Creatures.”

“But it was destroyed a long time ago. Wasn’t it? That’s what Shade told us.”

“This is how Malabron destroys,” Rowen said. “Like everything we’ve seen here, it all becomes more of the shadow. The same thing happened to the tree. But this is it. Sputter knows. He recognizes it. This is the Tree of Story.”

The wisp sprang from Rowen’s palm and whirled into the air, dancing and crackling and buzzing like a firecracker that has spun out of control. Then, before they could do more than stare in surprise, the wisp shot toward the base of the tree and vanished into a furrow in the bark.

“Sputter!” Rowen cried. She pressed her hands to the
place the tiny creature’s light had vanished. There was no sign or sound of the wisp.

Rowen stepped away from the tree.

“He’s gone back to where he came from,” she said sadly. “At least he’ll be safe here for now.”

“But we have to keep going,” Will said. “Master Pendrake isn’t here. This isn’t where he was taken.”

Rowen lowered her head and stared at the ground as if she was deep in thought. Then she looked up and gazed around the hollow with a startled expression, as if she was seeing it for the first time. She reached out a hand and touched the tree again at the place where the wisp had disappeared.

“No, Will,” she said. “We don’t go anywhere from here. I didn’t understand before. Or I didn’t want to. But Sputter showed me.
This
is the place all the threads lead. It all began here, at the tree, just like Sputter did. Everything that the Stewards wove and cared for began here.”

“But there’s nothing here.”

“That’s just it. Nothing. All the stories lead here, to the tree, and then they just … end.” Her voice had gone faint and hollow. “It’s just like Grandmother told me.
Nothing
is what will happen, forever, once
he
wins. Everything will end, in the same place it began.”

The cold despair in her eyes terrified Will. The words of Dirge’s song came to him again:
Tale is done, and all is one
.

“Then where is Master Pendrake?” he said desperately. “You said he’d be where all the threads ended up.”

She didn’t answer but stared past him, at the tree. Her eyes seemed to burn in the gloom.

Will turned to where she was gazing. In the furrow where Sputter had vanished, a slender, pale green shoot had grown out of the bark. Rowen crouched before it. She raised her hand but didn’t touch the thin, fragile tendril, as if she wasn’t
sure it was really there. In the grey emptiness of the hollow this one tiny thread of life and colour held him spellbound, too, as if he had never seen such a thing before.

“It’s
him
,” she murmured. “Sputter did this.”

She set her hand on the bark beside the shoot, then pressed her ear to the tree, like someone listening for a heartbeat. After a long silence she gave a cry and looked up at Will with a gleam of hope in her eyes, the first he’d seen in a long time.

“The tree isn’t dead, Will,” she said. “Not yet. Sputter knew. That’s what he’s trying to show us. That the fathomless fire is here. It’s so faint. It’s barely here at all. But Sputter felt it. The tree is still alive, Will.”

“Can Sputter heal it?”

“I don’t think he’s strong enough, not by himself. Not in this place. Malabron’s story is too powerful.” She took a deep breath and brushed her hair out of her eyes. “Sputter’s returned to where he came from. This is his home, but he’s still weak. He needs my help. Maybe together we can make the tree grow again. If that happens …”

“Will it stop Malabron?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t know, but I have to try.”

She fell silent, closed her eyes and crouched, pressing herself up against the tree once more.

Will watched and waited, not daring to speak and disturb her. He glanced up often at the rim of the hollow, dreading to see figures there: Dama and whatever creatures she had gathered to hunt them. But the hollow remained silent and Rowen did not stir.

Then Will heard the faintest of sounds from the tree. He looked up in surprise to see another slender, pale green tendril rising from one of the crevices in the bark. It was so quick and fine that at first he thought it must be a tongue of
werefire. Then he looked closer and realized the tendril was real and solid. It was another shoot, like the first, and it was uncurling as it came, growing longer and thicker. Tiny buds like green droplets of water appeared along its length.

Then he looked higher up the massive body of the tree and saw that other shoots were appearing there, as well, some growing out from the trunk and others from the branches. The sound he had heard was the buds on all of these new shoots opening to the air, the leaves inside them stickily unfolding. Not all of the tree was growing, though, he noticed. Most of the branches remained lifeless and bare. And yet it seemed to him that the grey dimness of the hollow had lightened just a little.

Rowen was still pressed to the tree, her eyes closed, her brow furrowed in concentration. She hadn’t given any sign that she knew what was happening. Will was about to let her know what he was seeing, but he held back, not wanting to disturb her. He caught the warm, sweet scent of sap and green life and breathed it in deeply. It seemed to him a lifetime since he had smelled anything but dust and decay.

Then he glanced down at his feet.

Green shoots were slipping from the cracks in the earth, too. These were stalks of grass, he realized. They were growing all around the tree, more and more of them appearing each moment. Each slender stem seemed lit with its own inner fire, as if the light of a sun that Will could not see was shining on them.

He heard Rowen take a sharp breath and turned to her. Her eyes were open and she was marvelling, as he was, at the change that had come over the hollow. They shared a look of wonder but didn’t speak. Rowen climbed to her feet.

The grass was growing with impossible speed. Instead of scattered blades poking up here and there through the
barren earth, a deep, living carpet of green was spreading out on all sides, climbing the slopes to the rim and rising there, growing taller, the stalks tangling and intertwining to form a living wall. A moist, earthy smell filled the air. Will even thought he heard the sound of water trickling somewhere not far away.
Water
. It was something else he had wondered if he would ever see again.

“You’ve done it,” Will said excitedly. “You and Sputter.”

Rowen faced him. Beads of sweat glittered on her brow and she was shivering as she had been when they were hiding in the bus.

“Now they know where we are,” she said. “We can’t hide anymore.”

As she turned away from the tree, she staggered. Will caught her just as she was falling into the grass. He lowered her down and crouched beside her.

“So tired,” she murmured, closing her eyes. Her breathing was deep and laboured.

He waited for a while, not daring to disturb her. His own body so craved rest that he was tempted to sink down beside her and close his eyes, too. But her own last words kept returning to him, prodding him to stay awake.

At last he could wait no longer. He touched her shoulder.

“Rowen?”

She opened her eyes but didn’t look at him.

“They haven’t found us yet,” he said. “We should keep going. We don’t want to stay here and wait to be caught.”

She didn’t seem to hear him. Will gripped her by the shoulders.

“Rowen, listen to me. You have to get up. It isn’t over yet. If we find Morrigan we can—”

“They’re bringing him,” Rowen said.

“What?” Will said. “Bringing who?”

Rowen sat up suddenly. Her fingers clutched the grass.

“They’re bringing Grandfather here,” she breathed. “They’re bringing him to me.”

Will followed her eager gaze to the hollow’s rim. Beyond the newly green slope there was nothing to be seen but the same slowly churning wall of dust.

“We have to get out of here
now
,” Will said. “We can find Morrigan and—”

“There’s nowhere else to go, Will,” Rowen said. “And I’m not leaving. Grandfather is here.”

“Where?” he said. “I don’t see anything.”

Rowen herself appeared uncertain. She turned in a slow circle, her brows knitted, then knelt and put a hand to the earth. She stayed like that, with her head bowed in concentration, as if listening for a heartbeat. Then suddenly she stood.

“They couldn’t get through. I had to make a path.”

Again Will looked where she was gazing, and this time he saw that the woven wall of green had collapsed in one narrow place, as if it had been mown or trodden down.

Dama stood there. Others were with her—Dirge and Gibbet, and creatures Will had never seen before. Among their hideous shapes stood a familiar figure in grey.

“Grandfather,” Rowen whispered. The Loremaster did not raise his head.

Dama’s wings spread. She rose into the air and then came gliding down into the hollow, leaving Pendrake and the others behind on the rim.

Will drew his sword and stepped in front of Rowen.

“No, Will,” she said, clutching his arm. “That won’t do any good. Let her approach.”

Swiftly Dama crossed the space between them, but as she came Will saw doubt and even fear in her eyes. Not fear
of them, he realized, but of this place. She had never set foot here before. She had no more idea of what she would find here than they’d had.

Dama descended to within a few paces of Will and Rowen, but her feet did not touch the grass. When her gaze fell on the tree a tremor crossed her face. A look, Will thought, of both fear and desire. At last she turned her eyes to Will and Rowen.

“The armies of the One are before the walls of your city,” she said. “Soon all who dwell there will join you here. They will feed us. You have failed.”

“What have you done to my grandfather?” Rowen asked.

“He is unharmed,” Dama said.

“Let him go. It’s me you wanted, and now I’m here.”

“Whether he remains with us or goes free is of no consequence. But very well, we will bargain. If you want the old man set free, you must call off the wolf.”