The Whispering Trees (29 page)

But then she looked at her brother, his head on Mary's shoulder. There was no doubt in his eyes. No doubt at all.

Kara still did not trust the old witch. But she trusted Taff more than anyone in the world.

“To start,” Kara began, “we need to borrow one of your toys.”

B
ack at the hut, Taff whispered “Niersook” into the rabbit's ear and its tiny feet pumped the bicycle forward. Safi gasped with delight and clapped her hands.

This is all new to her
, thought Kara.
I keep forgetting that
.

Stretching his arm across the dirt floor, Taff measured the distance between the bike's starting and ending points.

“From the tips of my fingers to my elbow,” he said. “A little less, actually.”

“How far is that?”

“Mary said an arm's distance is about half a day by foot. So . . . a few hours?”

Kara grunted in frustration.

“Too long,” she said. “And that's assuming we're able to find Niersook right away.”

“And don't run into any trouble,” Taff pointed out. “Sometimes that happens to us.”

Kara slid a hand beneath her long hair and scratched the nape of her neck.

Why can't this ever be easy?

Breem had left for work just after dinner and would surely be gone until morning; Sordyr was pushing his workers to complete as many grimoires as possible before he left for the World. The children had exactly one night to sneak out of the village, find Niersook, get the venom, and sneak back. That plan had seemed unlikely to succeed from the very start, but now Kara knew it was completely impossible. The body of Niersook was simply too far away.

“It doesn't matter,” Taff said when Kara expressed her
concern. “We have to try anyway.”

“If Sordyr finds out what we're doing, we'll never get close enough to use the venom. This whole thing will be a waste of time.”

“Why can't you just fight him?” Safi asked. The diminutive girl's eyes glowed with a fierceness that Kara had never seen before. “I mean, not
you
. That would be foolish. But the monsters of the Thickety. Make them fight for you.”

Kara shook her head. “I won't do that. I've forced animals to do my bidding in the past, and they've gotten hurt, even killed. I won't put another living thing in jeopardy again. Not just to help me.”

“But they're not just helping you. They're helping everyone. Sordyr is destroying their home. They
want
to stop him. All they're missing is someone to lead them.”

Kara knew Safi was right; reaching out with her mind she heard the animals surrounding the village, hundreds of voices awaiting her command. Word of Kara's victories
against the notsuns and Imogen had made its way through the Thickety, and creatures once too frightened to turn against Sordyr were now emboldened and eager to fight.

All I have to do is call them. . . .

“No,” Kara said, closing her mind to their voices. “I don't want to be responsible for any more deaths.”

“Then you need to do everything in your power to stop Sordyr,” said Safi. “
Everything
. Otherwise all those people who die in the World
will
be your fault.” Safi paused as a new thought occurred to her. “Maybe that's what my vision meant. You'd never really help Sordyr. I know that now. But if you have the power to stop him and refuse to use it? That might be even worse.”

Kara picked up the toy bicycle. A thin new crack had emerged, running down the center of the rabbit's face along the left edge of the nose. Gently, so that she might not do any further harm, Kara placed the bicycle on the table.

“You're right,” she said softly. “If my powers can save
these people, I have to use them. Even if animals die.”

“What if we don't walk?” Taff suggested. He turned to Kara, a sly smile tweaking the edges of his lips. “I know you worry about these creatures risking their lives,” he said, “but surely you wouldn't mind asking one for a ride?”

They set out at nightfall.

Kara had begged Safi to stay behind, but she stubbornly insisted on coming with them. There was nothing Kara could do. Safi was the only one who knew the location of the tree that extended over the Divide, and every minute spent arguing was a minute wasted. They packed small satchels with food and water and made their way through the quiet village. There were surprisingly few Devoted patrolling the roads; Kara wondered if they had been recruited into grimoire-making as well. In the distance axes struck trees in a rhythm as steady as a beating heart.

It wasn't long before Safi stopped. The section of the
Divide before them was taller than anywhere else. Deep within the mass of branches a pair of eyes opened, a hint of blue in the darkness.

“This will work,” she said.

“Where's the tree?” Taff asked.

“What tree?”

“The one we can climb. You told us there was a tree that crossed over to the other side. . . .”

“
That
tree,” said Safi. “Right. I made that all up.”

Kara was too shocked to even reply. Taff, however, managed a soft, “There's no tree?”

“There's lots of trees,” said Safi. “Just none that we can use to climb over the Divide.”

“Then how are we going to get into the Thickety?”

Safi burst into a radiant smile. “That's the best part! That's the surprise! You ready?”

She withdrew a large object from her satchel.

“No!” Kara exclaimed, but Safi had already opened the grimoire. Strange words flowed from her mouth.
Kara felt herself jerked and tugged. Nausea clenched her stomach.

“What just happened?” Kara asked. Next to her Taff was bent over on his knees, his hands on his thighs. Kara gently rubbed his back.

“What did you do?” she asked Safi. “And where did you get—”

“Look!” Safi said, beaming.

She pointed toward the Divide. Kara examined it for a hole or other opening, but nothing was different.

“What?” asked Kara.

Safi rolled her eyes.

“
Look!
” she said.

Kara took in their surroundings, more carefully this time. The huts of Kala Malta were now in the distance,
behind
the fence.

The Divide hadn't changed at all. They were just on the other side of it.

“Safi,” Kara began. She took a step forward, her arms
outstretched. “You need to give me the grimoire.”

“Why? I can help you now!”

“You don't understand.”

“Sure I do!” Safi exclaimed brightly. “I'm a witch too! Isn't that wonderful?”

Clutching the grimoire in two arms, Safi skipped along the path, deeper into the Thickety.

They found the gnostors playfully chasing one another just over the rise. Kara knew that the fast, ostrichlike creatures were a perfect choice to carry them to the resting place of Niersook, but it was dishearteningly difficult to make a connection with them. The fault was hers. Gnostors were an innocent species that responded best to simple amusement, and Kara struggled to find memories of fun strong enough to build a mind-bridge. Those moments felt so distant now, as though they had happened to a different person.

Finally she remembered a time she and Lucas had
raced downhill after a major storm, slipping through the mud until they slid to a stop at the bottom, laughing gleefully. Although Kara could picture the event perfectly in her head—could even recall the precise pattern of speckled mud across Lucas's forehead—she was still hesitant to use it. The memory was one of her favorites, and she did not want to give it up.

We need these creatures
, Kara thought.
I have no choice
.

The mind-bridge snapped into place, and the memory vanished forever.

“These are the ugliest birds I've ever seen,” said Taff.

There were three of them, with fat, unwieldy stomachs improbably balanced on two thin legs. They walked with a wobbling gait, giving the impression that they were just one misstep from falling over.

“I don't think they're birds,” Kara said. “They can't fly.”

The largest gnostor stepped forward. Kara ran a hand along its umber plumage—not soft like the feathers of other birds but rough like toasted bread. Its neck, long
and graceful, split into two parts before coming together again, ending in a small head dominated by perpetually curious eyes.

None of the gnostors were the slightest bit Blighted. She wondered if their innocent nature acted as armor against the dark touch of the Thickety.

“Thank you for helping us,” Kara said.

The gnostor whistled.

“Sounds like a bird to me,” said Taff.

After checking the toy rabbit to make sure they were heading in the right direction, they mounted the creatures. Travel was difficult, the ground uneven and punched with holes. Their progress would have been agonizingly slow had they remained on foot, but the gnostors quickly navigated the unsteady surface by throwing the weight of their stomach from one side to the other.

It's not fat
, Kara thought.
It's a balancing mechanism
.

Once they had settled into a steady pace, the trees
flashing by in a dark blur, Kara spurred her gnostor next to Safi's.

“How long have you known that you're a witch?” Kara asked.

“Since I was six. That's when I was tested. I opened a grimoire and saw the words to create a soonberry pie out of nothing.” Safi shrugged. “I was hungry.”

“What did Sordyr do when he found out?”

“He didn't,” Safi said. “I pretended the page was blank. That was what Father told me to do. He said if I saw something in the grimoire and told anyone, the Forest Demon would take me away forever. I was terrified that I would never see Father again, so I lied. I told Sordyr that all I saw was a blank page, and he believed me.”

Kara looked at the girl with newfound respect. “You fooled the Forest Demon. That is not easily done.”

“I thought it would be harder, actually,” said Safi. “Don't you find it strange? He's forcing us to make all these grimoires, yet he can't use them himself. I knew the
page in my grimoire wasn't blank, but there was no way for him to know that.”

“He's not a witch,” Kara said, but she saw Safi's point.
There are many different ways of destroying the World. Why choose to do it with a weapon you cannot control?
A realization lingered there, just out of reach. Something important. Before Kara could make sense of it, however, Safi started to talk again, and the half-formed thought slipped from her mind.

“Things were different after that,” Safi said. She absentmindedly patted her gnostor, which whistled in appreciation. “I started to have dreams where I . . . did bad things. Things I would never think of doing in the real world. And sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night and find myself at the storehouses.” She looked over at Kara. “This must sound crazy.”

Kara shook her head. “The grimoire was calling you. It wants to be used.”

“After about a year, the dreams and the sleepwalking
stopped. It was like the grimoire just gave up. But then, the night after I showed you the storehouses, I woke up and heard something whispering my name. Not ‘Safi,' mind you. My
true
name. I had never heard it before, but I recognized it. How could I not? It was like all the things that are me had been transformed into sounds and strung together.” Safi touched her right ear, as though the word had left a pleasant imprint there. “I followed the voice to the clearing and opened the door to the first storehouse. My grimoire was waiting for me, right on top of the others. White as snow.” She smiled, and her teeth gleamed in the darkness. “The spell to make soonberry pie is still there on the first page.”

Kara glanced at Safi's satchel, noticed the way the girl's hand lingered near the opening.

“You can't use it again,” Kara said.

“It's mine.”

“It's evil.”

“Are you sure? How else could we have gotten past
the Divide? That's the reason I took the grimoire in the first place. I would never use it to hurt anyone. Don't be ridiculous.”

“I said the same thing.”

“Well, clearly, I'm different!”

A moment of silence, fraught with tension, passed between the two girls. Finally, Safi looked away. When she spoke again her voice was soft and compliant. “If you think it's that important, I'll get rid of the grimoire as soon as we destroy Sordyr. Until then I think we need all the help we can get.”

Kara wanted to tell Safi that it wasn't worth it, that she should bury the grimoire in some desolate spot she'd never be able to find again. But her practical nature, deeply ingrained by years in the Fold, intervened.
Who knows what dangers we're going to face? Having a witch by my side could be very useful. It might even save our lives
.