Into the Stone Land (6 page)

The ball of the sun disappeared behind the wall, allowing shadows to envelop the land. Tall was paralyzed with fear. He stretched out his arms to the smoot as his head started to slip into the other place. “I—I don't know what to do.”

“The yearning!” The smoot bellowed. “Reach out to them with it! Find the missing and weak linkages… Make them whole!”

Tall thought he might faint. His chest burned with fire even though the air in the lost place was chilly.

“Breathe!” Tall hadn't realized he'd been holding his breath until he suddenly exhaled. He breathed in, looked inward. “You've the yearning in you—in your heart! Find it!”

Tall tried to find the yearning. He was in bad shape. But he took a breath, then another and another. With each exhale, he felt the pressure release a little and when he looked down, he saw his chest—though everything below that was still somewhere else.

“That's it,” the smoot coached. “You must learn to see the yearning as any other sees with his eyes. Can you see the connecting lines—the white fire stretching from you to them?”

Tall felt faint again, but he did see something that shouldn't be there. Many somethings. Glowing lines. Tethers really. And all of them reaching back to him.

A sudden urge to touch the tethers overtook Tall. When he reached out, the lines disappeared, and he instead saw his legs, felt the toes in his right boot as he wiggled them. His left leg from the knee down was elsewhere, however, lost in the chilly other place. “Smoot?” Tall said. By then he knew he was in for something, and there was clear panic in his voice. He started thrashing, pulling his missing leg and moaning.

There was still some evening left, but the light was fading. The smoot reached out, gripped Tall's shoulders with both hands. “Your movement will attract the othersiders. We don't want that… Calm yourself.”

Tall's eyes widened. “Othersiders?”

The smoot held Tall firmly. Air that had been unusually cool turned icy. “Not a word or movement now,” The smoot whispered. “He's near, mustn't let him use this doorway.”

An overcast sky hid the moon and stars. When it got so dark Tall couldn't see, he reached out to the Smoot.

“Foolish, boy!” The smoot screamed, as he crushed and fed Tall five seeds from a scatter bush pod.

The foul taste of the seeds filled Tall's mouth. All he could think was that he surely was going to die and that the smoot only wanted to speed up the process.

In a matter of a breath, Tall's heart was beating so fast he thought it would explode. His throat and nose burned. He started coughing and his lungs ached. But somehow he felt certain this discomfort wasn't entirely from the seeds.

His body was being pulled into the lost place by unseen hands. A shimmering specter clad in a tattered, but-once-fine robe waited there for him. Tall felt drawn to the glowing eyes and the weathered face with its hollow, sunken cheeks. The head was adorned with an ancient crown fashioned not of gold and jewels but of carved bones and wood.

The burning. The pain. The cold of that other place. Watching as the specter reached and pulled. It was a lot to handle. He didn't want to think about the specter. Its disfigured body. Its desiccated fingers gripping his legs.

His legs! Somewhere in his befuddled mind one thought connected to another and he started kicking, fighting back. The crown. The bones. He must get them. He saw now in both worlds, so perhaps the smoot was telling him to do this.

He reached for the crown, just as the specter realized what he was doing. The specter vanished. A man, so striking in his golden robes, appeared. Then his features withered, his limbs reduced to half their normal girth, and he became once more unrecognizable as a man. Tall's legs began to ache because the specter had them. He pulled as hard as he could to free himself. His knees exploded, spewing bright red blood around him. He had to grope for what used to be his calves and feet, but the flesh disintegrated in his hands.

Was this real? Or had he started hallucinating? He squeezed his eyes tight and tried to breathe thought his mouth, telling himself not to become sick. Ringing in his ears blocked everything and his world fell to silence. He lurched back, tried to free what was left of himself.

“In the time between time I wait,” the specter said. His words, spoken rapidly, were almost incoherent. Tall felt compelled to listen and was almost disappointed when the smoot pulled him back from the other side. All he could think about was whether he was whole.

Panic. He reached down, tried to force his hands to move past his thighs.

“Do this!” He commanded himself. Clenching his jaw, he dug his fingers into his flesh and inched downward. He got a hold on what must be his knee, and forced himself to continue. He couldn't help it, he could scarcely breath now, the whole thing was like a nightmare and he seemed to have lost his grasp on what was real. His fingers found his calves, his feet, his toes. He realized he was back, whole.

Now the smoot and Tall were only outlines in the dark land. Close by, Tall sensed Old Bull and the hatchlings. A little further off, he felt the yearling and the mare. But something else was out there in the night. Tall sensed that too. He edged toward the smoot. The smoot's body was warm; his, cold. Half an hour passed. Then the smoot spoke, “So much you don't know. So much you must learn.”

“Then teach me,” Tall heard himself say.

“Not tonight,” the smoot said in a small voice. “Tonight I must tell you something of even more import and you must listen.”

Tall wiggled the toes on his left foot. The numbing cold was leaving. He felt warmth returning.

Later, much later, when Tall had almost given up on the smoot saying anything more, the smoot said, “Ray and the high wizard will meet. When they do, the fate of our lands and people will be decided. That path I see very clearly, as I saw that your path and Ray's might intersect if a fate dealt to you could be averted…”

“This is about Keene and Ray, isn't it?” Tall barely saw the smoot's hand come up to rest on top of Old Bull's head. He had not heard Old Bull approach, but he had felt it. Just as he had seen the momentary fire created when the two connected.

The smoot said, a hint of a smile in his voice, “I felt you. You saw the yearning as Old Bull and I connected. Careful now… Others should not know that you can see in that way.”

Tall couldn't breathe for listening. All around him the world was aglow with fiery connections. The strongest and most brilliant was the connection between Old Bull and the smoot. It was true that other weaker connections linked himself and the hatchlings, himself and the horses. But that was just the beginning of it.

It was as if he was seeing for the first time. The world was alive with white fire. Connections were everywhere. In the air. In the loch. In the very earth at his feet. There were connections between the arbors and the loch. Connections between nesting creatures and their broods. Connections between a queen and her mated bull. And on and on and on.

A hand closed over Tall's. “Careful. You'll burn yourself out. Second sight is not a trifle. Never reach so fully… or so…” With a gesture, the smoot sent Old Bull to prowl. Tall heard a little scampering, sawing sound as the bull made his way through the weed-grass. From the scatter bush the yearling and his mother made some tiny, terrified sound.

Tall stood, strapped on his backpack. Then he picked up his container and staff.

The smoot looked away, then turned back to Tall. “Not to worry. Old Bull will take care of it. They'll be safe.”

Tall heard a scuffle in the grass, gripped his staff more firmly. He wanted to race the wind through the grass to the scatter bush. Seconds passed. Then once more the smoot spoke. “What I must say affects you as much as it does the other 12-winter boys. Didn't you think it strange that suddenly none of your friends were around?”

Tall turned back to the smoot. Even before he realized what he'd just heard, his eyes showed his uncertainty.

“Isaac's father busied him with winning a bride. Ephramme's, with the speaker's trade. Keene and his father would have nothing of it, however. As a man, his voice counted as much as his father's. It's the real reason he was exiled.” The smooth leaned forward, flicked Tall's forehead hard enough to make a hollow thump. “Think! Banished for stepping on nestlings and lying. Bah!”

“Smoot, what are you saying?”

“I'm saying that I saw and knew your fate before you left the village. Ordinarily, I wouldn't have shared this. Ordinarily, I wouldn't have made so many mistakes. But this time—this time is different. Your path converges with Ray's and when it does, there is hope against all possible odds. It's why I had to tell the others…”

The smoot paused, and though Tall couldn't see the other's face clearly, he knew the smoot's face was wet with tears. “…I shouldn't have; I know this now. His death should have been yours and all this would be settled. Hope would be lost, but the one who was meant to live would.”

It was Tall's turn to grip the smoot's shoulders. “What are you telling me?”

The smoot turned away, breathing heavy. “The boy meant to live is not you. It is Keene… I'm telling you that you were meant to die out here in the deep. But I was selfish… I told the elders what a smoot never should. I told them of the convergence because I feared for the future of our people. Only Ray can bring back hope, but without you, Ray would never return.”

Tall's mouth opened in a silent scream. He started running as fast as he ever had before to get away from the smoot and the madness. When the clouds parted and the light of the moon shone down, he got his first real look at the smoot that night, and what he saw would haunt his dreams for the rest of his days. It was the smoot and the specter. They were one somehow.

The smoot called out after Tall. “When you lose your way—and you will—remember this…. Wav'erh'n cluster is close. Outtrader villages. There's one who will help you in the third village. Ray's in the stone land. Without you, he's lost…”

Tall said nothing. He kept running. In a low voice, the smoot added, “…as are we all.”

Chapter 6: Beyond the Loch

Tall was thinking he couldn't possibly lose his way when he realized he had done just that. He was lost, completely and utterly, and no amount of trying to find his way back to the smoot helped. Weary from the long day, he paused, telling himself it was only for a moment. That moment turned into many hours.

The sun was midway in the sky before Tall stirred. He stared and blinked up at the sky for the longest time before he stood. A foul, rotten taste pervaded his mouth. A thick, chalky film covered his lips and tongue. A heavy dried drool stuck to the side of his face. Sometimes when the adults celebrated too much with fermented nectar his father would complain of headaches and throbbing and dizziness. That was how he felt. His head ached and throbbed. The world spun and made him so dizzy he had to sit.

Sitting, he crushed something wet and slimy that popped under his weight. That was when he noticed the thick carpet of dead suckers and buzzers all around him. Their bodies were bloated, heavy with blood—his blood.

Vaguely, he recalled the smoot feeding him crushed scatter bush seeds. The seeds were poison, he knew that well enough. The poison in his blood must have killed the suckers and buzzers. But he suspected the seeds had some other property he didn't understand.

He groped for his pack. In one of the pockets he found what he was looking for and pulled out a handful of the long, green-blue pods. The seeds inside the pod were plentiful and small, about half as big as the nail on his little finger. He crushed one between his fingers and put it to his nose. The scent was overpowering, beyond horrid.

As an experiment, he touched his tongue to the crushed seed. Almost immediately the spinning world slowed and the throbbing in his head eased. Taking this as a good sign, he ate the crushed seed. He had scarcely exhaled when the spinning stopped completely and all pain eased. He saw them then—the lines of white fire that shouldn't exist connecting everything and all. The tethers told him where the hatchlings were, where the yearling and mare were, and more, so much more. The biggest surprise was a thick line leading away from the loch, for it seemingly pointed the way to where he must go next.

Tugging his pack into place, Tall followed the ribbon of white fire. The hatchlings, the yearling, and the mare followed. He felt and saw them, but with his mind and not with his eyes. It was as if a door opened and he now walked through it into a new, interconnected world.

And this world that existed behind his eyes spun with thoughts and images. There was one image he couldn't shake as he made his way from house to house. It was the image of a girl with long, brown hair and a golden flower tucked behind her ear. With smiles in her eyes and lips that were thick and pouty, she was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen. She did not know he existed, but he knew her. Her name came to his lips. “Ellie,” he whispered.