The White Oak (6 page)

Sybil fills a massive cast-iron teapot with water and drops in a handful of leaves and bark. She hangs the pot on a hook over the flames. I stare at the last scrap of my book. Only one letter of my name remains legible, an
o.
The cover is blackened, but the gold leaf is still shining.

“Give it to me,” Sybil says, holding out her hand. I close my fist around it and shake my head. My heart is fluttering and I am shivering slightly. The loss of my book feels more suffocating than my fall through the earth. I push my feet into the floor and try to breathe deeply. If it wasn’t for the life force flowing into my injured feet from the tree itself, I think I would be dead.

“Am I going to be okay?” I ask again, hating how meek I sound.

“We will manage this,” Sybil replies, smiling reassuringly, still holding out her hand. I give her the last of my book and she slips it into her pocket. “Are you hungry?” she asks.

She doesn’t wait for my answer, and I don’t offer one. I stare into the fire, feeling empty and overwhelmed. Sybil opens her pantry and takes out a loaf of bread with crust the texture of tree bark. She tears off a few pieces. Inside, the bread is snow white and soft as cake. She cuts a red apple in half, revealing its black seeds, and slices cheese from a huge yellow wheel. She arranges everything on a plate made of wood and places it on the table between us. She sets two cups next to the plate and fills them with steaming tea. Next to my feet, she places a shallow pan and fills it with the remainder of the tea from that enormous pot.

“When it cools, you will use it to wash your feet,” she says.

My entire body heaves a comfortable sigh at the thought of clean feet. I test the water with my toe, but it’s still burning hot.

“Have something to eat first,” Sybil says. “You look hungry.” Then she walks over to her desk, takes the golden twig from behind her ear, and touches the end of it with the tip of her tongue. A pen nib emerges, and Sybil holds the pen vertically, touches the nib to the paper, and lets go. The pen stands upright and begins to write on its own.

I watch the magical pen as I bite into the bread. It’s the most delicious bread I’ve ever had—soft, yeasty, and slightly sweet. I take a sip of the tea and feel instantly calm. It tastes like soil and bark. As I drink it, a sensation of well-being seeps into me, and the anxiety over the destruction of my book melts away.

“When you finish eating, you will feel different,” Sybil says.

“I already do,” I reply, and even my voice sounds different, clearer and steadier. When I take a bite of the apple and look up at the shelves, the threads connecting each book suddenly have meaning. They are attached to the golden pen, which has divided itself into a dozen identical pens. They dance like knitting needles as they work on the different books.

“I am writing them,” Sybil explains, tapping her forehead to indicate that the ideas are somehow coming from her mind. “They transcribe my thoughts as I work through the stories in my head.”

It’s a weird feeling, watching other people’s lives being written. Something about it bothers me. “Don’t we decide for ourselves what happens in our lives?” I ask.

“Yes,” Sybil says, “but every time you make a decision, you set a series of consequences in motion, and those things have to be accounted for. The story has to be revised—the larger story, I mean.”

Suddenly, one of the pens stops writing and flies up to the shelves, burrowing into a finished book to edit a passage.

“I thought the finished books belonged to dead souls?” I say. Sybil nods. “But the pens are revising them,” I say. “How can they do that? Once life is over, you can’t go back and change it.”

“That’s true,” Sybil replies, “but it’s only half true. The dead can’t decide to change, but the living can. Transform yourself, and the lives connected to yours will shift in ways you cannot predict.”

I take a bite of apple and consider this. It makes sense. I can see how a life in progress can be changed by someone else’s actions. If my father had learned to control his temper, if my mother had stood up for my brother and me, my life would be different.
I
would be different. The seeds of resentment that were planted every time Redd hurt me, or Mom turned her back, would be unearthed. But Sybil is suggesting that if
I
change, then my
dead father
will change. “How can a
finished
life be changed?” I ask skeptically.

“A life is never really finished,” Sybil answers. “Nothing is ever finished. That’s the great misunderstanding—that’s where everyone gets it wrong. There are no beginnings or endings, only cycles.” She sits down next to me and picks a black seed out of an apple wedge. “We think of the seed as the beginning,” she says, holding it up for me to consider, “but it’s just a thread that connects one iteration of a tree to the next. The seed is not young; it’s ancient. It is the last chapter in the life of an apple tree. The seed is buried, and if the tree is fortunate, it will grow, rising from its grave, to produce flower, fruit, and seed—another cycle. You could just as easily call the fruit the beginning, or the sapling, or the fully grown tree. Or you could call those same things the end. Beginnings and endings are illusions, but we cling to the illusions.”

I think about the seeds in my dress, and about plants, and life. I realize that I know this already—that I’ve always known it, but I’ve never heard anyone tell this truth so plainly. It’s exhilarating.

“So why do we prefer the illusions?” I ask, taking another bite of apple. It tastes sweeter than candy.

“For the same reason you like stories,” Sybil answers, waving her arm like a conductor. When she does, the pens all pause and wait for her next movement. She points to one group and waves her hand at another. The pens respond to the gestures, some quickening their pace, others slowing down. “Stories are structured as we wish our lives were, with a beginning, a middle, and an end; with meaning and purpose; with a transformation from darkness to understanding. When we read a book, we look forward to the end—we race toward it. We want to know what happens, and we want all the loose threads tied up so that we can feel reassured that there is a grand design, because our real lives often feel random and meaningless.”

We are both silent for a while, watching the threads of light move and change, extending to other books, to the pens, to Sybil, and to me. Some disappear suddenly; others spontaneously emerge from the books on Sybil’s desk. The shimmering web is constantly breaking, changing, weaving itself anew.

“Are you saying that real life
has
no design or meaning?”

“No,” Sybil corrects, taking the silver flask from around her neck, unscrewing its tiny cap, and pouring a single drop of silver liquid into the pan of tea water by my feet. It has cooled enough for bathing. “I’m saying that the design is too complicated to know except in bursts of insight, and as for meaning . . . well, meaning is all we really have.” She lifts my feet and places them in the warm water. As the black dust of Asphodel and the sticky tar from the riverbank loosen and dissolve, warmth and tranquility seep into my feet, travel up my legs and torso, and blossom in my heart and lungs.

“Look into the web and you will see it,” Sybil says.

With my feet soaking in the tea water and the taste of apple on my tongue, I look up into the endless stacks connected by the web, whose pattern can be seen against the darkness. For a split second I catch a glimpse of it—the meaning of being human—shimmering there in the interwoven stories. It all adds up, and the meaning flickers in my peripheral vision like a fragile ray of light, then it’s gone. Sybil smiles at me, knowing what I’ve seen. Then she goes to fetch a towel. When her back is turned, I pick up the apple seed lying on the plate and wedge it into the hem of my dress for safekeeping.

Sybil dries my feet with the towel and takes away the dirty water. I notice that the cuts and bruises have healed and all the pain is gone. It must be strong medicine she carries in that flask of hers.

I stare at the charred remains of my book, now just a pile of ash on the hearth. “Why did Minotaur try to steal it?” I ask.

Sybil smiles gently. “That is a mystery you have to unravel on your own. But I can offer these words of advice—keep them in mind during your journey with Minotaur: Never trust a machine. It is an agent of somebody else’s dream.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask, feeling a twinge of annoyance at Sybil’s mysterious, preachy tone. “What dream?” Sybil extends her hand and helps me out of the chair. I stand up reluctantly.

“Minotaur was built to carry out his master’s plan. That’s really all I can tell you,” she says. Although Sybil glows like a good witch, I hate her riddles.

“Why can’t you just tell me what’s going on and what it has to do with me?”

“Cora,” Sybil says, smiling, “it is
all
to do with you. You are the only the second living person ever to enter the land of the dead. You are the only one who can help Minotaur and his creator.”

“Help
him
?” I echo, now completely annoyed. Sybil’s cheerful but indecipherable advice is frustrating, and things seem to be getting more complicated by the minute.

“I don’t have time to explain,” Sybil continues. “They will be coming for us soon. You must return to the river and follow Minotaur. You can’t trust him, but he’s the only one who can help you get through the City.”

“
Who
is coming for us?” I ask. But Sybil ignores the question. She is at her desk, collecting all the pens. She holds them like a bouquet of golden branches and squeezes with both hands until they merge into a single pen again, which she hands me.

I hesitate, then take it. “What am I supposed to do with it?” I say.

“Try it,” she says.

I remember seeing Sybil moisten the tip in her mouth to make the nib emerge, so I try that. As soon as I put the twig between my lips, it shrinks and slips inside my mouth, wrapping itself around one of my teeth like a gold cap. I try to pull it off, but it won’t budge.

“Good thinking,” Sybil says, laughing. “Minotaur will never look there.”

I’m not sure whether she’s talking to the pen or me. “Why do I have to hide it?” I ask.

“Minotaur will kill you for it,” she answers matter-of-factly.

“Oh. Thanks for giving me something that could get me
killed
,” I say, sarcastically. What I don’t tell Sybil is that I’ve fallen instantly in love with this weird pen. I can feel it vibrating in my mouth, and when I look up, I understand the threads of light even better. They move toward me, like tentacles seeking me out; they surround my head and try to enter my mouth to connect to the pen.

“What’s happening?” I say, marveling at the light that surrounds me.

“I don’t mean to be mysterious, but I can’t tell you very much about this,” Sybil answers. “You are at the center of a very long story, my dear. I have been writing it, but now that your book is destroyed, that task has become yours.”

“What do you mean?” I say, trying to control a wave of panic. “I’m not a writer. I can’t do any of this”—I gesture toward the stacks and to the manuscripts spread out on Sybil’s desk. I reach into my mouth and try to pull the golden pen out, my terror of writing overwhelming my love for it. Unfortunately, no amount of prying can detach it from the molar it wrapped itself around.

“Don’t worry,” Sybil reassures me. “You will write your story by living it. The pen will help you. It’s important that you do this well because all of these stories depend on yours.”

“Right—no pressure,” I say, running my tongue over the bump on my tooth and trying to understand Sybil’s meaning. “How is a pen going to help me live my life?”

“The pen—” Sybil begins; she hesitates, looking at me for a minute as if deciding whether to divulge her secret. “It has powers,” she finally says.

“What kind of powers?” I say slowly, hoping to sound trustworthy. I know she won’t tell me what’s going on unless I seem very calm and mature. I stand up straight and put on a serious, contemplative expression.

“What you write with it”—Sybil hesitates again, giving me a wary look—”comes into being.” She watches me carefully as I take it in. I think she knows what I’m going to do next.

“Where is Lucas’s book?” I ask, rushing over to Sybil’s desk to examine the works in progress. She looks at me disapprovingly, but I ignore her. If there is a chance to get my brother back, I don’t care what it costs. She watches me in silence as I rummage through the work on her desk, messing up her piles and throwing all the manuscripts not about Lucas onto the floor. It doesn’t matter if they’re ruined; there is no one to finish writing them anyway.
I’m
certainly not going to.

Sybil steps up behind me and puts a hand gently on my shoulder. “His book has been shelved,” she says.

I freeze, gripping the table for support. “He’s dead,” I whisper.

Sybil squeezes my shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she says.

I feel all the air go out of my body, and everything grows dark inside me, as though a door has slammed shut in my soul. Lucas was my best friend—my only real ally. He can’t be gone.

“Your brother is dead, but that means that he is here in the underworld—looking for you,” Sybil says. “You must find him. He won’t be able to get to his final resting place without your help.”

The thought of Lucas stranded in this terrible underworld for eternity breaks my heart. I turn to look at Sybil. “Tell me how to find him,” I demand.