Waking in Dreamland (12 page)

Chapter 9

Everyone braked to a halt, and stood looking up at the twisted, claw-like branches colored the dead gray of ash against the night-dark sky. The trunks were threatening shadows. Among them, the gleam of hundreds of pairs of eyes reflecting the group’s lanterns appeared and disappeared before anyone could guess what they belonged to.

“I’m sure they went in there,” Felan insisted, putting his foot onto his pedal.

“Oh, no,” Roan said, balking. The Nightmare Forest!

“Yes!” Felan said, pointing at the ground. “Look, man.”

“If that’s the way the trail goes, we have to follow,” Bergold said, uneasily.

“Go in there in the dark?” Private Alette asked, her voice rising to a strangled squeak. “We can’t . . . I’ve heard if you . . . go in there after dark . . . you never come out.”

“You
can
get out,” Roan said, steeling his voice so it wouldn’t quiver. All his childhood fears were hammering inside his chest trying to escape. “I did it. It was hard, though.”

“Then, let’s go,” Spar said. But no one moved.

“We must go on,” Leonora said, her voice trembling. “If we stay together, we should be all right.”

Roan later considered his next act to be the bravest thing he had ever done. Very deliberately, he dismounted his bike, and walked it forward under the looming overhang of the twisted branches. He glanced back over his shoulder at the others.

“Come on, then,” he said.

“I’m right behind you,” Leonora said, hastily, falling in behind him with Golden Schwinn. Roan could hear the uneasy rattle of spokes as the royal steed twitched with fear. Leonora hushed it and talked to it in a soothing undertone. The sound of her voice calmed him, too. This moment was like many in their childhood, when they had dared the shadows together, although those terrors had been bogeys in one of the castle’s many closets and cellars, well-domesticated over the centuries. This was untamed and frightening. He kept her behind him so any peril that threatened her would have to go through him first.

Behind the leaders, the others followed in a cluster, staying as close as possible without running up their heels. Only Spar seemed unmoved by the looming menace.

“It’s just trees,” he growled scornfully, as the others looked around them white-eyed. “Firewood on the hoof. House parts. Unpulped paper.”

The confusing influences Roan and Felan had found leading up to the forest became lost once they were in it. Broken twigs and telltale heavy footprints from the litter bearers were clear evidence something large had passed through. Maybe several large things, in fact, to judge by the condition of the ground. Piles of leaves were kicked up, and the undergrowth was torn. The track ended abruptly in a narrow, impenetrable thicket, at the foot of a huge and menacing tree.

“Where did they go?” Leonora asked, peering ahead over his shoulder. “How did they get out of here?”

“I don’t know,” Roan asked. He left Cruiser with Golden Schwinn, and leaned around both sides of the great tree with his lamp to see where the trail went. The huge tree shifted slightly against his weight, and Roan jumped back. Another three inches of torn ground appeared under its roots.

“It moved!” Leonora exclaimed.

Uneasily, Roan looked up at the tree. “I think we’ve been following the prints from this big fellow.”

“Don’t get it angry,” Bergold cautioned him, with an alarmed look on his face. “That’s a mad oak. They’re slow to react, but they’re the strongest things in the world next to an avalanche.”

“I won’t,” Roan said, in a very calm voice, keeping his eyes on the thick branches over his head. He took his hand off the bark, and eased away from it slowly. “Everyone move steadily and slowly until we’re off its dripline. Don’t disturb any roots.”

But it was difficult for a large group of people and bicycles to reverse course in the dark in a strange place without a single accident. Roan steered Cruiser, squeaking with protest, a step at a time. Then, the stinging began. Buzzing no-see-ums alit on his exposed hands and face. Where they touched, painful, itchy welts arose before he could brush the bugs off.

“Ow!” Leonora cried, slapping at her arms. “Something’s biting me!”

“Ward yourself, madam,” the nurse said, firmly, immediately behind Roan and the princess. “We should have put repellent on before coming outside, shouldn’t we?”

Such prosaic advice momentarily calmed the group. Roan drew a veil of influence over himself like a coverall. The no-see-ums withdrew, humming furiously at being thwarted. Roan mentally thumbed his nose at the Forest.

“Keep going,” Bergold said, his normally cheerful voice cautious. “We’re bound to get out of this in a moment.”

“Watch where you’re going!” a voice shouted behind him, and Roan heard a loud crash. He looked back over his shoulder. Felan’s steed and that of one of the guards had locked handlebars. Both bikes bucked and jumped to free themselves, with their owners trying vainly to pull them apart.

“Here, you!” Spar shouted at his guard. “Private Alette! Put your beast under control!”

“I’m trying, sir!” the husky young woman said, yanking at the frame of her fighting steed. She glanced up at her captain, and her eyes widened into saucers at something beyond him.

Roan looked up. Two enormous, twisted branches were reaching down towards the battling bicycles. Leonora shrieked a warning. Felan let go of his steed, and pointed at the tree, aiming all the influence at his command, but the Nightmare Forest was stronger than any single being. The branches brushed him and Alette aside, snatched up the two bicycles, and flung them far off into the darkness.

Squeaking with fear, the other steeds jerked loose from their riders’ grasps and retreated along the narrow path, rolling right over their owners’ feet in their panic. Roan grabbed for Cruiser and missed. The silver bike crashed into the undergrowth, with Golden Schwinn right behind, creaking for help. In a moment, they were all gone.

“Stop them!” Leonora cried.

“Stay here with Spar!” Roan shouted to her.

He plunged into the forest after the frightened bicycles. Their high-pitched squealing receded in several directions. Roan cast about, then followed the loudest sound.

Within a few paces, he realized he had made a mistake. What lamps the party was carrying were attached to the bicycles or in the packs. None of them were in his possession. He was alone in the dark in the middle of the Nightmare Forest. He turned to go back, and realized he didn’t know which way he had come from.

A deep rumble stirred the ground under his feet, and sinister whispers began in the treetops above him. In a heartbeat, Roan was back in time twenty years, and the shouts he heard were the voices of his two small friends. They had dared each other to go into the haunted woods. He was a fool for letting himself be convinced to come. The trees all seemed so much bigger in the dark, and he could no longer see the sky. Roan hoped he wasn’t making any of this happen to him. He wrapped his arms around himself and concentrated, trying to contain his own influence. He was an adult, surrounded only by shadows and trees. The noise came from the wind in the boughs. There was nothing to fear.

The laughter got louder and more raucous. No, the Forest had all the power it needed from the fears of millions of dreaming minds, and it made light work of any barriers he put up.

“All right,” he shouted, wildly. “I’m still a scared little boy. But I’m leaving!”

He felt blindly around him for the way back to the others. They would have to wait until daybreak for the bicycles to come back. Another delay; he hoped Brom couldn’t be too far ahead.

His questing hands brushed against one tree bole after another, but failed to find a gap between them. The trunks stood in a solid ring around him. How had he made his way into this glade if there was no space between the trees large enough for his body to fit? But, no, he had forgotten they could move.

His eyes were becoming accustomed to the dark, which only made things worse. He could half-see the pointed branches waving around him. One clawlike cluster reached for his eyes, and he dashed it away. Shadowy axes waved over his head; arms brandished swords; clubs whisked dangerously close; evil, glowing, green goo dripped from them all off, but there were always more threats beyond them.

Then, something dropped on his hand, and Roan jumped. With myriad crawly legs, the something ran off before he could brush at it. Another fell on top of his head. He looked up, and two more fell on his face, and scurried off. More and more dropped from the trees. There were thousands of them, pouring down the tree boles, filling the space around his feet. In moments, he’d be drowning in vermin.

“Help!” he shouted. “Can anyone hear me?”

Low, creaking laughter rose around him in the blackness, and Roan went on guard. He reached for his pocket knife, remembering that there was an emergency lamp attachment in it. He fumbled with the blade, and had one fleeting glimpse of red, malevolent eyes, before another branch knocked the knife from his hands. He dropped to his knees to search for it, but a knobby root slipped over it. Roan scrabbled at the rough bark, and the laughter mocked him.

“Are you there, sir?” asked a man’s voice.

Roan stood up. “Yes! Come help me!”

“Roan?” cried Leonora’s voice. “Where are you?”

“Here!” he called into the blackness, pounding on the nearest tree. “I’m trapped! I can’t get out! Bring an ax!”

A thin beam of light pierced the dark, shining between two trunks. Roan thrust an arm out and waved to show the searchers where he was.

“Here!”

“Right you are, sir!” Captain Spar’s voice said, and the reassuring silhouette rushed up to him, with the slender shadow of the princess behind. “Never fear, we’ll scare these wooden boys off. I’ve got a big, sharp ax just waiting for one of them.” He shone his lamp through the gap past Roan.

In the spillover from the light, Roan saw his eyebrows go up.

“Sir,” he said, in an entirely different voice. “Why didn’t you just go out that way?” His other hand came through and pointed. Roan turned his head to look.

The way was open. There were no large trees behind him. A few shaggy saplings clung together in the light looking like terrified deer.

“They had me surrounded,” Roan protested. “They were huge. They knocked my knife out of my hand and stood on it with a root. I was trapped. Really!”

Spar’s head tilted. “Things go funny in the dark,” he said, and his voice suggested it was more than moving trees. “Come on, then, Master Roan. Isn’t that your knife down there?” The beam angled downward and picked up a finger of red and silver. Roan bent to pick it up and brushed at its case. It was covered with a thick coat of moss, a parting jeer from the trees. He turned to show it to Spar, but the captain was already leading the way back to the narrow clearing. Feeling sheepish, Roan ducked around the few trees that remained of the ring, and fell in behind.

“Are you all right?” Leonora whispered, dropping back to slip her arm through Roan’s.

“Apart from a wounded dignity, I’m fine,” Roan assured her. “Did the bicycles come back?”

“No,” she said. “Isn’t that funny? It’s the second time today they’ve been scared off. At least those trees didn’t throw a pair of people.”

For a gently reared noble lady for whom the greatest terror was having to dance with visiting dignitaries and taking final exams from private tutors, she was coping remarkably well.

“We’ll have to walk out of here,” Spar said. “The steeds will come out in the daylight, if they can. Otherwise, we’ll double up until we can get replacements. Form up!”

“Sir!” Lum said, appearing beside him and throwing a crisp salute. “We found ’em!”

“The bicycles?” Roan asked.

“No, sir, the scientists,” Lum said, highly excited. Alette and Hutchings were behind him, nodding agreement. They had altered to be slightly taller and more fit, and their uniforms were tailored, deep olive camouflage shirts and trousers, with round steel helmets encased in netting. “I heard their voices, off to the west, sir. We all heard them. Voices, and machine sounds. It had to be them, sir.”

“Good,” Leonora said. “I’ll have something to say to Master Brom about making us bungle around in the woods after him. I have
never
liked it here.”

Spar frowned while his uniform changed to match those of his troops. “Can you find it again, Corporal? The path keeps moving.”

“Sure of it, sir,” Lum said. “We followed my compass back here. That’s stayed true, at least.”

The captain rubbed his hands together and flexed his knuckles. “That’d make this worthwhile, then. What do you say, Master Roan?”

“We’ll do it,” Roan said. “Lead the way, Corporal.”

“Yessir!” Lum said. He pointed his lantern off to the right toward where the trees were more widely spaced. “This way to start.”

One pace behind, Roan found it easier to maneuver in the dark. Leonora fell in beside him, and put her arm through his. In the light of the lantern they had borrowed from one of the guards, he could see her eyes, huge and wary.

The trees cast fearsome shadows on their path, but Roan kept turning the lantern toward them and reducing them to twigs and leaves. A sharp hooting from a night-bird made them both jump, and then laugh nervously. Leonora maintained a tight clutch on his arm.

“How far is it, Corporal?” Roan asked, after a while.

“Not much farther,” Lum said. “If you’re quiet you can sort of hear their voices now.”

“Can’t hear much of anything with all the threshing we’re doing,” Spar grumbled from his position at the rear.

“Shh!” Leonora hissed impatiently. “Listen.”

Roan strained to understand the low susurrus coming from ahead of them. Gradually, words surfaced. “Turn back. It’s a trap. Lost. You’ll die here. Die.” Was it a warning, or just the natural malice of the forest?

“Did you hear that?” Roan asked.

“Hear what?” Spar asked. “Just the wind in the branches. Sir.”

“I hear it,” Hutchings said. “Sounds like threats. The Forest doesn’t want us here. It’ll kill us.”

The female guard was sobbing quietly to herself. “I was lost here once when I was a child. The voices almost drove me mad. The words!”