The Real Boy (18 page)

Dandelion, vetiver, goldenseal.

A tea, to work from the inside out, and a salve, to work from the outside in. Sometimes in remedies it was better for the herbs to be infused; sometimes it was better for them to be absorbed. But this wasn’t a remedy, really, and the children’s bodies were illusions covering a churning tangle of spells. The herbs needed to work their way to each spell, weave themselves so gently into it that nothing else frayed in the process, then join all the bits together so the tangle could become a working whole. A tea and a salve, to meet in the middle, double in power, and find their way to every little spell.

Making a tea is easy—you just combine the herbs, watching the mixture carefully to see the moment when they become more a whole rather than parts. But a salve is a system built on these moments. First you boil the herbs long enough to coax out their gifts—you will feel it when this happens. Then you strain out the water, pour oil into the herbs, and keep simmering until the oil now has these gifts. You will be able to tell. Then, beeswax, just enough to give the mixture thickness, not enough to take over. When you have just the right amount, you stop adding. And then you stir and keep stirring, and you stir some more, until the oil and wax come together. At each step there is a small moment of transformation that cannot be overlooked or rushed. And these moments should not be, because they are beautiful.

So Oscar worked in the kitchen, curtains pulled and lanterns flaring. Block sat on the counter, watching him. The healthy cats crept up from the staircase one by one to keep their eyes on him. Bear and Map sat and watched, but Pebble chirped at him and could not seem to settle herself down.

“This is for the City children,” he told them. “It will help, I think. At least for now.”

That was the problem. Nothing living lasts forever. The herbs’ power was natural and would fade after a time. Caleb had probably assumed that if something went wrong he would be around to fix it.

As soon as the salve was done, Oscar poured it into jars and set them aside. The night that had worked its way in around the curtains was still deep and thick–a good thing, as Oscar had plenty left to do before sunrise.

At the first touch of morning Oscar was ready. He put the remedies in a bag, poured water in a canteen, and tucked Block in his pocket. Then he found some paper and a pencil and sat down.

He studied the paper, as if words might manifest upon it if he only concentrated hard enough. He was not very good at writing. He had a thousand things to say to Callie and a hundred words to say them with. Not to mention all the things that he did not want to say.

This was the result:

Dear Callie,

      Had to go collect plants. Gone all day. These are for the children. Give each child both.

—Oscar

He looked at the note. Writing it had taken an eternity, and by all rights the words should have transformed into poetry somehow. There was so much else in his head—what the herbs were, how they were all helper herbs and now they were all going to help one another. He wanted to explain about the tea and the salve meeting in the middle, doubling in power, going at the spells from all sides. But this would have to do.

He exhaled and looked around the room. Now that the night’s work was done, a tendril of fear was beginning to creep up his back. He clenched his fist and closed his eyes and tried to breathe it away. Then his eyes popped open. He had one more thing to say to Callie. She would understand, if it came to that.

PS. Take care of the cats. Two in my room.

He folded the note and dropped it in the bag of remedies. If he left it in front of Callie’s door, she would find it first thing and could go treat the children.

That done, Oscar went downstairs and put out food and water for Crow and Cat, who were both sleeping.

“Wish me luck,” he whispered to them.

And then it was time.

The sack was loaded. He was ready. There was a hole in the magic in the northwestern strip of the forest. That’s where Oscar would go.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Hole

T
he marketplace was still fast asleep when Oscar left the shop, untroubled by the encroaching dawn. The giant bag he’d prepared was tucked behind the back entrance, still covered in the dull wool blanket Oscar had left on it to keep the whole thing looking as uninteresting as possible.

But really it was a very interesting bag, filled with everything he could find in Caleb’s office that had liquid or powder in it, as well as an enchanted leather sack with some of Caleb’s magical blankets stuffed inside, and an animal trap from Caleb’s special collection.

The soil was hungry. It wanted magic. Oscar would give it magic. Then it would not be hungry anymore.

To get to the northwest strip, Oscar had to walk behind the marketplace and past the village and keep going through the forest all the way around the City. This was a daunting prospect, more so when you had a giant bag strapped to your back. Though Oscar was used to going back and forth to the gardens, and this was not that much farther a distance.

Not
that
much.

Most of the forest lay to the east of the hill, except the narrow bands that wrapped around it on the north and south side like embracing arms. There was not much to distinguish the northwestern strip; it was the home of some scattered hazel trees, an overgrowth of shepherd’s purse, and the forest’s second-best patch of stinging nettle—though that was not a plant Oscar collected often. Nothing lay beyond it but the northern swath of barren plaguelands that separated the Barrow from the great sea.

Oscar walked on, farther north than he had been for several months, and in that time the wizard trees seemed to have aged hundreds of years. Maybe the trees around the marketplace had done the same; maybe Oscar was so used to seeing them he hadn’t taken the time to really look. But their majesty seemed not just old but worn somehow, like a throne in a castle ruin. Their bark was dark and peeling; their branches were sagging; some had wounds in the darkening trunks. As Oscar took in the trees, a sharp, gnawing, measureless feeling swelled inside him. A tree put a comforting branch around Oscar’s shoulder and gently named the feeling for him—sadness.

The walking was hard work, and his muscles began to mutter protests. That meant he had walked a long time, it meant he was growing closer, it meant that fear had gone from tracing a finger gently on his neck to wrapping around it with a cold bony hand. He could still escape—the fear was in front of him, and all he had to do was wrench free and run in the other direction. But he kept walking forward, straight into its embrace.

Finally, ahead of him—a hole in the forest. A swath of gaping sky where there should have been none. Like someone had taken a sword and put a great slash in the world.

There was no illusion here.

Oscar stood frozen as the emptiness crushed him from all sides. It felt like someone had reached his hand into Oscar’s chest and plucked out everything warm it could find.

Willing himself forward, he approached the first stump warily, stepping like the forest floor might disappear under his feet if he put any pressure on it. And why not—everything else that was essential had already disappeared.

The stump came up to Oscar’s knees. The top was jagged and splintery, a mismatch of edges and lines and points. It had darkened, and moss covered it like a blanket, like a shroud. The trees had always seemed so enormous, but without the tree part the stump looked the size of an ordinary table. And it was just a shell.

Looking away quickly, Oscar walked on to the other stumps, keeping his eyes on the ground ahead of him, trying to swallow back the things rising in his throat. Even though he was not looking at the missing canopy above him, he could still feel its lack crushing against him. And the quiet—the usual chirping, cawing, skittering, rustling, creeping sound of the forest was gone.

The sun seized its opportunity, boldly presenting itself to undergrowth that had no idea what to do with it, as if it was the sun that had been in charge the entire time. The other trees stretched their branches weakly, like children in a village after all the adults have suddenly disappeared.

It wasn’t just a hole in the magic. It was a hole in the world.

Oscar took a deep breath. Everything hurt; his body had done all the work it had in it for the day. But he could not rest—the ground was hungry.

The first thing to do was set the trap.

The trap was just a precaution, just in case all the magical items caused the monster to come out. Though Oscar was dearly hoping the daylight would keep the monster away—and then once Oscar had completed his task, it would never emerge from the soil again. If the earth wasn’t hungry anymore, it would not need the monster.

Really, the bear trap he had picked looked like a monster itself, made mostly of a jaw with terrible pointed teeth and a long chain dragging behind it as a tail. It should have been as heavy as an iron brick, but Caleb’s trap was as light as a cat, the long chain like velvet roping. Oscar wrapped the chain around the thickest oak tree he could find, then he placed the trap a few feet away and set it, as easily as pulling on a handle.
Click.
He covered the trap with leaves, and then he took the leather sack with the enchanted blankets in it and hung it on a tree branch right above the trap. If the monster did come, it should go for the most concentrated area of magic first, and then Oscar could do his work. The magic smiths had put out a sack of meat and gotten a bear. He would put out a sack of magic to get a monster.

Bait. Lure. Trap.

He reached into his pocket to give Block a squeeze and then picked a jar from Caleb’s workroom out of his bag: this one held arrowroot, rue, and some strange golden powder. He shook the jar—for no good reason at all—and then slowly scattered the contents carefully around the soil near the closest stump.

“Here,” he breathed. “Take it. Eat up.”

More.

Oscar jumped and looked around. It wasn’t a voice, or even a sound. The word was suddenly just there, pulling on him like an insatiable urge.

More.

Oscar’s breath caught. He looked around again, and then quickly opened a jar of some pink viscous fluid and drizzled it on the ground.

More.

Another, quickly. And another.

He scattered everything he could. He threw small glass tubes so they smashed, their contents drizzling into the soil. He spread powder everywhere, dumped potions at his feet. It was the entire mission of Oscar’s body to give the ground as much magic as it could as quickly as possible. It was messy business, and soon he was covered in the powders and potions. He could at once win love, succeed at business, expose treachery, and confuse a foe.

More.

He kept on, feeding the soil with potions and decoctions and globs of ointments and small little vials of mystery goo. He fed it everything he had, his heart thrumming, his head roaring, his chest heaving.

And then the bag was empty. It was all gone.

More.

There was no more to be had. This was his plan; this was supposed to work, supposed to sate the earth. Oscar sucked in a breath as the thing kept tugging at him, harder than ever before, so hard it might pull him apart. All he had left was the bag with the blankets, but that was for the—

Monster.

He felt it before he saw it—a dampening dark presence, a rotting smell infiltrating the air. Oscar whirled around. And gasped. On the other side of the wizard stump, a dark form was rising up from the earth. It was undefined at first, just a mass of soil, but as it rose, the form began to take shape. The monster was growing out of the soil like a tree out of the earth—there was no separation between the two. It picked up one leg, then the other, separating itself from its home, and then shambled toward the leather sack hanging from the tree.

Oscar’s whole body contorted. Every single muscle seized up; his bones locked together. Oscar was not going to move, not ever again. His eyes darted to the pile of branches on the ground where the trap was.

Please work please work please work please work please work please work.

The thing lurched for the bait. Its front leg slammed down directly on the pile of branches. The trap sprang, and the creature fell forward, landing on the ground with a muffled
bam
.

Oscar could not breathe.

The creature pushed itself up with its arms, and its head swiveled around frantically. It tried to tug on its trapped leg. And then an anguished suffocated noise emanated from it, one that shook Oscar’s bones.

Oscar backed away. His skin burst with sweat. He should leave; this would be the precise time to leave; he should turn and run. But he could not.

Run, Oscar.

The thing moaned and tried to crawl on the ground with its arms. Oscar squeezed his eyes shut and told himself to run now. But, still, he could not, and when his eyes popped open, the creature was crawling forward—one arm’s length, two. Groaning, it picked its way off the ground and stood up.

It had only one and a half legs now—where the bottom half of its right leg should have been, only a view of the forest remained. The creature spread its arms out, and its head pivoted slowly from left to right.

Then it reached into the earth, scooping up more soil into its arms. Which it used to start to form itself a new leg.

And then Oscar ran.

He did not think where he was going. His brain ceded complete control to his body, which had one task—
get away
.
Far. Now.
And in the most opposite direction from the monster possible.

He tore through the forest as fast as he could, skipping over rocks and stuttering across the fallen branches of hazel trees, skittering over clumps of shepherd’s purse, scraping himself on stinging nettle. It didn’t matter.
Get away. Far. Now.

But the thing was following him. He did not look, but there were four loud sounds in the air: Oscar’s frantic footsteps, Oscar’s heavy breathing, Oscar’s pounding heart, and a soft rhythmic muffled thudding. Earth against earth.
Boom-BOOM, Boom-BOOM.
The forest around him cowered at the thing’s approach, bushes bristled, branches snapped. Oscar willed his body forward,
faster, now, faster, you can do it.
He ducked around trees and skipped over bushes—but the creature followed him still. He should have been quicker, more agile than this great shambling stumbling stupid thing, but no matter what he did, the thuds stayed behind him.

He did not look.

A flash of something straight ahead—a change in the light. Oscar kept running, and it wasn’t until he was darting through the wall of trees into the empty air that he realized he’d reached the end of the forest. And, in front of him, the plaguelands.

The plaguelands looked just like they sounded, an endless desolate sea of dry dead earth and scattered rocks and a few pieces of rotting wood, of bright-beating sun and boundless blue sky. It was the world, after its end.

But—
boom-BOOM
—there was no choice, so Oscar plummeted. He yelped, the vacant air assaulted him, but he kept going. His feet kicked up dust as he ran, and he kept inhaling it, and soon his mouth and lungs felt as harsh and desiccated as the world around him.

About fifty steps in, Oscar stopped. Something was missing. He couldn’t feel the monster near him anymore, couldn’t feel much, really. No, there was no magic here, but it was even emptier than that. Nothing else lived in the land—nothing growing or breathing or even moving—and though the wind rushed around him, the air seemed as dead as the ground, like it had given up long ago.

Breath caught, body poised to spring, Oscar turned his head slowly back. The monster was standing a few steps in front of the forest, arms up, back hunched, legs stooped, faceless face angled toward the ground, as if trying to understand it. A cloud of dust stirred around its feet, and a halo of darkness hung around its body—it looked like the creature was slowly infecting the air.

Oscar stood there, heart slamming, sucking in poison dust. It was not like he had anywhere to hide. He was the only actual thing in the entire landscape in front of the monster.

And, he realized with a shudder, he was doused in magic.

He sucked in breath as the plaguelands dust stung at his magic-drenched clothes and skin, like hundreds of very tiny mosquitoes were sucking his blood.

The monster muffle-roared again, and it swiveled its head from one direction to the next, looking back toward the forest and then toward Oscar. Back toward safety and home, forward to feed its hunger.

Go back go back go back go back.

And then what would happen? If it went back?

Sophie’s eyes, the red shoes, a rustle-swish of skirts. Caleb on the floor, broken. Crow in the corner, bleeding and trembling. The shop in ruins. The gardens. Wolf. Oscar’s whole world.

Oscar inhaled. He felt a spark in his chest, a spark of something that had been there for so long he’d never bothered to notice it. It flickered and then flared.