Shadow Tree (29 page)

Chapter 51: In the Branches

When Alfonso landed on the Shadow Tree, the tree itself shivered violently; and then, as if in response, a groundswell of angry cries resonated from the Dragoonya soldiers encircling the tree below. They all lunged for the tree at once and began climbing it, pushing and shoving each other to get ahead. It was as if every single person who had taken the ash was now heeding the tree's call in a great rush to save it. Those already in the tree – the leaf cutters – immediately stopped their work and began heading towards Alfonso. From every direction they converged on the spot where Alfonso was currently standing.

Alfonso climbed quickly, stopping on a few occasions to hide from the leaf cutters, and within a few minutes he had arrived at his final destination – the spot on the tree where there was a large, gaping gash on the trunk. He held his stick, whose end was affixed with the Pen, almost like a bayonet. All he needed to do was plunge the weapon into the tree and the tree would die. If it was this simple, why did it have to be him? Alfonso had no idea.

“I'll never understand why people don't just act.” This conversational voice came from just behind Alfonso. He whirled around and stared uncomprehendingly at a sixteen-year-old of small stature with a cruel face. The teenage boy was standing on the same branch as Alfonso only feet away.

“Did you think I was gone for good?” he asked, with a half smile. “Oh goodness, that would have been convenient I suppose. How precious. Such wishful thinking will always get you in trouble, Alfonso, don't you know that?”

“Nartam,” replied Alfonso.

“Good to see you my dear, dear boy,” said Nartam. “Now please step aside before I slice open your guts and let you bleed to death.”

Alfonso felt the weight of the stick in his hands. He slouched his shoulders in apparent defeat and let the stick dangle loosely in his hands.

“How did you get here?” Alfonso asked.

“Well, at first I fell,” said Nartam. “It was rather dreadful falling all that way and breaking my neck and my spine as well. But I am not so easily killed. The ash really is marvelous in that way. It makes me nearly immortal. So then I got on my feet and climbed. Care to hear more details?”

Alfonso could hear a great commotion both above him and below him. There were people in the tree – scores of them – and they were converging on him.

“Details?” asked Alfonso as calmly as he could.

“Ah, yes,” said Nartam, “The details are always...”

At that moment, Alfonso concentrated to make his move – a twirling jump towards the gash, weapon extended. But before he even moved a foot, Nartam had tackled and pummeled him onto the branch with such ferocity that Alfonso's very breath choked within his throat.

“No, no, no my lovely child,” said Nartam in the same conversational tone. “You'll have to do much, much better than that.”

Nartam picked up the stick and held it up to take advantage of the first rays of morning light. At that moment, a sharp rock whistled towards his head and struck his left eye. Nartam howled, dropped the stick and put his hand to his eye. It came away bloody. Alfonso took advantage of the situation to escape from being underneath Nartam's foot. He stood up, picked up the stick and with all the force he could muster, thrust it – with the pointy tip of the Pen acting like a spearhead – deep into Nartam's belly. It lodged there like an oversized arrow. The Dragoonya leader grunted in pain and fell to his knees.

Who had thrown the rock?

Alfonso looked up.

Resuza.

“Hurry!” she yelled.

Alfonso had never been so happy to see anyone in his entire life.

Resuza jumped down next to Alfonso and the two of them faced Nartam. The Dragoonya leader was looking down at the stick protruding from his belly. It looked like a fatal wound although oddly, he was smiling.

“Do not fret,” he grunted. “All is well.” Nartam grabbed the stick and held it tightly. He closed his eyes, focused, and the stick blew apart. Shards flew everywhere and the Pen, which had formed the tip of the stick, fell down through the branches and vanished below. Nartam's left eye and his gruesome stomach wound rapidly healed.

“No!” yelled Alfonso and flung himself at Nartam. Instead of avoiding Alfonso, Nartam gladly welcomed the blow. It seemed to have no effect. Nartam quickly counter-punched and Alfonso flew backwards, slamming into Resuza, and together they toppled off the branch and into the air below.

The wind pounded their faces as they plummeted downward. Alfonso clung to Resuza tight and tried to force himself into hypnogogia one last time. He focused of the pulsing sound of the wind in his ears. He relaxed his mind
and, felt hypnogogia within his grasp, like a brightly-lit doorway at the end of a dark hallway. But he couldn't do it. He tried again, and again, and again. Time slowed down. He lost sense of where he was. The presence of Resuza was the only reason Alfonso kept struggling. He had not saved the world, but at least he could save her. He managed to enter hypnogogia only once – for a second. As they neared the ground, Alfonso succumbed to his wounds and fell into unconsciousness. He and Resuza crashed into a powdery snow drift.

Resuza was the first to open her eyes. She discovered that she was lying on her side next to an old man with paper thin skin stretched tightly across his face and long strands of white hair that dotted his cheeks and chin. For that moment, everything seemed quiet. Resuza felt as if she was alone in the world, even though she heard soldiers approaching.

“Alfonso?” she whispered.

The old man cringed at the sound of Resuza's voice.

“I tried,” he whispered. “I tried.”

Chapter 52: The Watch Repairman

Hill wondered why no one had noticed him. Then he realized that for once, being overlooked was an advantage. Apparently, neither Nartam, nor the Shadow Tree, nor anyone else could possibly imagine that an untalented, untrained Dormian could pose a threat. And yet, Hill had always been good in a pinch. His sleeping self was primitive but effective. If he could repair an incredibly complicated watch, how difficult could it be to repair a stick? And perhaps most importantly, he understood the prophecy properly; and it seemed he was the only one who did.

Hill climbed the tree slowly, taking his time. He had witnessed the fight between Alfonso and Nartam – it had occurred within earshot, in the branches overhead. He knew what had happened and he knew what he had to do. He was looking for one item in particular. It had fallen away during the fight, and Hill was reasonably sure it was lying somewhere nearby, caught by the thick web of gnarled branches. He looked methodically, and took advantage of a cloud-free sunrise. He climbed deliberately, stopping every few seconds to look in each and every crevice. He took his time and kept his calm.

And there it was.

The Foreseeing Pen was lying just where Hill had suspected it might be, in the branch just below where Alfonso and Nartam had been fighting. Hill walked carefully out along the branch until he picked up the Pen. After all these months of worrying to keep it safe, it was back again in his possession, and it would remain that way until the end. He carefully placed the Pen back in his pocket and continued to search.

Within a few minutes, he had gathered all the main pieces of Alfonso's weapon – the Foreseeing Pen and broken shards from the wooden stick. He sat down cross-legged on the branch where the fight had occurred, and laid all the pieces out in front of him. This time, it was easy to fall asleep. Hill felt strangely calm, and the warmth from the branch helped as well. Within a minute, Hill's eyes had closed and his hands immediately reached towards the items in front of him. And then the old watch repairer set to work.

Alfonso lay on his back, staring up at the tree. He and Resuza had landed a good distance from the actual base of the tree, but he could still see the higher branches. There were shouts coming from nearby. Feet were pounding the snowy ground. There wasn't much time left. Alfonso summoned all of his strength and sat up. Resuza, who was by his side, helped him.

“Uncle Hill,” he gasped.

“Where?” asked Resuza.

“Look.”

Together they looked and saw, halfway up the tree, the unmistakable figure of Hill with a long stick in his hand. “No,” whispered Alfonso. “It won't work. It has to be...” Again he considered the words of the prophecy:
A Perplexon will succeed, but he will also die.

A Perplexon. Meaning, Alfonso Perplexon.

A sudden realization came to him. The “A” wasn't an initial that stood for Alfonso. It was a figure of speech, as in a member of the Perplexon family – any Perplexon – even Hill.

Nartam stood on the ground, at the base of the tree, looking up its trunk. Something was wrong. He could feel it. His heart was pounding, his breathing was shallow, and despite the cold he was sweating. Moments later he felt his muscles go into spasms. It took all of his concentration to quell the spastic convulsions in his body. Then, once again, the tree began to shiver. It made no sense.
What had he missed?
Nartam looked up and, to his utter amazement, he saw someone on the branch he had just left. He stared closer.

“No!” Nartam roared.

Seconds later, the Dragoonya leader was racing back up the Shadow Tree at an astounding speed.

Chapter 53: Reunited

Leif stood next to Marta and waited anxiously. His feet were in chains, but his hands were free, and presently he was using them to hold a pair of binoculars up to his face. Marta stood next to him, unshackled; apparently, the Dragoonya did not see her as
a threat, probably because she was now in the form of a girl. Leif was presently using the binoculars, searching the tree, frantically looking for his son, but what he saw instead was haggard middle-aged man that looked vaguely like himself. Was that Alfonso? After all, he was an ageling, perhaps he had morphed again. Somehow, however, Leif knew this wasn't his son. It was just instinct, but he would know his own son – at any age. Then slowly a thought formed in his head. At first it seemed impossible, but then he felt increasingly certain. He was staring at his older brother.

“Hill,” whispered Leif. “My brother – he's alive!” Leif could see the Foreseeing Pen glint in the morning sun. Leif shook his head. “What is he doing?”

As if in response, Hill smiled. He seemed to be looking directly at Leif from across the distance. Leif knew that his brother couldn't actually see him, but for a moment it was as
if he and Hill locked eyes – two brothers who hadn't seen each other in decades, and had each feared that the other was dead.
Was it possible that Hill saw him?
Leif screamed his brother's name. But it was too far away for Hill to hear Leif shouting and, even if he had, it would have had no effect. Hill was focused on one thing only. Hill was now holding a stick high over his head. Something shiny, which was attached to the end of the stick, gleamed in the morning light. It was the Pen. It had to be the Pen.

As he continued to watch the scene unfold through his binoculars, Leif noticed something moving up the tree – a teenage boy moving quickly, bearing down on Hill. Leif recalled hearing the Dragoonya soldiers talk about their king, a man named Nartam, who lived in the form of a boy. This had to be him. Nartam was almost upon him, when Hill took the stick and thrust it powerfully into the knothole on the side of the Shadow Tree.

Zig zagging lines – like cracks in a sheet of glass – formed across the surface of the knothole. The bark of the tree began to shatter into shards and the shards exploded outward like millions of pieces of shrapnel. Streaks of light seemed to surge up through the core of trunk; steam hissed through the bark; and those climbing the tree began to shriek horribly. The effect was terrible. Even the battle-hardened Forlorn Hope dropped to their knees. The ground shook so powerfully that those standing were thrown off their feet. Leif embraced Marta and together they dropped to the ground.

High up above in what remained of the tree, Nartam inhaled sharply – it was the last breath of a life that had spanned many centuries. And then the explosion came. The Shadow Tree and all those who ingested its ash – those who were clinging to its branches like babies cling to their mother – everyone disappeared in a blinding flash of white light. The sheer power of the Shadow Tree's explosion sent a shock wave through the land. The pillars holding up the Dragoonya ships swayed and then toppled. The giant sailing vessels slammed into the frozen ground and shattered into splinters. The Shadow Tree consumed itself in a plume of wind, light and heat. The hoards of Dragoonya soldiers who had become addicted to the ash charged into the inferno like moths drawn to a flame. An invisible wave of explosive power rippled through the landscape, tore off the roof of the slave quarters and toppled many of the stone trees in the Petrified Forest. For hundreds and thousands of miles, the ground shook and everything alive was thrown roughly to the ground.

“Look!” shouted Marta. She was back on her feet. Leif struggled to stand up and, almost immediately, he saw what Marta was pointing at. Seconds later, Marta was running and screaming a name.
Alfonso! Alfonso! Alfonso!
Marta churned through the snow, her lungs bursting from the effort. She ran toward two figures lying in the snow. One was Alfonso and the other was Resuza. All around them snow had begun to fall, thicker and whiter than anyone could imagine. It was as if the earth itself wanted to scrub away any last trace of the Shadow Tree.

Alfonso lay flat on the ground in the form of a very old man. Marta and Resuza were both crouching over him. Marta put her head to his chest. His breathing was slow and ragged; and for several seconds, it stopped altogether. Marta heard footsteps behind her. She glanced backward briefly and saw a small gathering of people. Kiril, Konrad, Leif, Bilblox, and Naomi stood and watched silently. And there were soldiers too – the members of the Forlorn Hope – all of whom stood at the ready. Marta ignored them all and, instead, leaned down close to Alfonso's ear. She grabbed his hands. “Breathe,” she whispered. “Like I taught you. Breathe in and out – focus on every second and then move on to the next one.”

Alfonso did not move.

“Remember the armory in Jasber,” said Marta. “Feel the heat, smell the smoke, put yourself back there.” Tears streamed down her face. He still wasn't breathing and his lips started to turn blue. “You're fifteen years old,” she whispered. “Fifteen years old.” Slowly, his chest began to rise and fall again.