The Crimson Skew (The Mapmakers Trilogy) by S. E. Grove (13)

12

Tree-Eater

THE LONG DAY was spent in speculation, but nothing new could be learned while speeding northward through the Indian Territories. The travelers could only conjecture. With a sense of foreboding, they watched the darkening clouds, listened to their rumbling whenever the train paused, and felt the air thicken with humidity and the faint scent of sulfur.

At sunset, Wren and Errol withdrew to the neighboring compartment, leaving Goldenrod and Sophia alone. Calixta had remained closeted for most of the day in her own compartment—sulking, worrying, or plotting: Sophia could not be sure.

Now, as the darkness overtook them and the flame lamps burned low, Sophia asked the question that had filled her mind since that morning. “I don’t understand how people in the Encephalon Ages influence the Climes. I cannot picture it. What does it look like?”

Goldenrod leaned back. “I have never been to an Encephalon Age. I have no wish to see such a place.”

“But you have some idea of what it’s like?”

“I do,” Goldenrod said. “The Elodeans are conscious of the danger—we are well aware of how the world would be distorted if we chose to abuse our intuitions. The arts Wren speaks of are familiar to us—we simply do not cultivate them as they were cultivated in the Encephalon Ages.” A flash of pain and what seemed like guilt crossed her face. “I know of only one instance in which some among us tried. It did not end well. Those Elodeans were cast out; they live as exiles now, removed to a place where they can do no harm.”

“But what is the harm? Wren only spoke of keeping outsiders away.”

Goldenrod unlaced her studded boots with evident relief and drew her feet up onto the bunk bed. “I will tell you a story that the Elodeans tell to children—a story about the danger of these arts.” Sophia curled up in anticipation on the opposite bunk as Goldenrod idly tapped the bells sewn onto her skirt. “It is a story from the far west, the place we come from, and it is about a wise man—a great wise man who was beloved and revered by his people. He was known for his cures and his knowledge of the elements and even his occasional ability to foretell future happenings.

“One day, a man who laid stone went out to the field where he was building a wall between a farm and the great Red Woods. The Red Woods are trees so tall that twenty people standing at their base holding hands are too few to encircle the trunk.”

This was something else Sophia found hard to imagine. “Are they real?”

“Very real—I saw them myself on a journey to the western coast. I stood at the base of one and looked up so far into the treetops that the branches blurred and disappeared into the clouds.”

“Amazing,” Sophia breathed.

“They are wondrous trees, and they make wondrous forests, full of great clearings like vast chambers and soft pathways padded with their fallen needles. Such forests are formidable, with all manner of creatures, and so the stonemason had been hired to build a wall between the forest and the farm, to keep the pastures safe. But when he arrived at the field that morning, he saw that a whole tract of the forest nearest him had vanished. He stared in shock; the entire landscape had changed. Stepping forward, he saw the base of the many Red Woods still there—only the trunks and tops were gone. But the trees had not been cut cleanly. They were mauled and broken. The stonemason could see at once that this was not the work of men.

“He told the farmer what had happened, and word of this strange occurrence spread. The next day, more of the forest had been destroyed, and the next day even more. Well, you may imagine that this confounded them, so the people gathered and sought out their wise man, taking him to the field. He studied the ruined forest for a long time, a ponderous look upon his face. He walked among the savaged trunks, examining the remains of the trees. In his mind, the wise man knew that this happening lay beyond his knowledge. He had no notion of what had destroyed the trees. But a wise man, he reasoned, could not admit to ignorance. His people counted on him for an answer. He had grown so accustomed to their adulation and respect that he could not bear the disappointment that might result if he admitted to ignorance. And so the wise man decided to invent an answer.

“He told the people that he knew well what had destroyed the forest. It was a dangerous demon called ‘Tree-Eater.’ The demon emerged only once every hundred years, but when it did emerge, there was nothing that could be done. It would ravage the forest until it had eaten its fill, and then it would return to its cave, sated, for another hundred years.

“Naturally, the people were terrified. They responded as the wise man had hoped. Staying safely in their homes at night, they dared not emerge for fear of encountering the demon; and each morning more trees were gone, just as the wise man had predicted. The Tree-Eater had not yet eaten its fill.

“There was, however, one problem. A girl in the village—a girl no older than you are now—who was called Bumblebee, believed the wise man just as everyone else did, but she also believed that it must be possible to stop the demon from eating any more of the Red Woods. Bumblebee was not satisfied with the wise man’s advice to simply let the Tree-Eater eat its fill. She inundated the wise man with questions: What did the demon look like? Why did he eat trees? Did he eat every kind of tree? Could they offer him some other food to appease him? If not, could they lead him to a poison tree and end his destruction for good? The wise man answered her questions with elaborate explanations. The demon was a giant made of stone, and he ate only Red Woods, for only those could fill him. He had eyes of liquid gold and antlers upon his head that he used to tear the trees to pieces. ‘There is nothing you or I can do,’ the wise man said. ‘Trust me.’ Each time Bumblebee arrived to demand more answers, the wise man felt a growing guilt that gnawed at his heart: his lies could not be taken back. He was deceiving Bumblebee and the entire village. What if the force that had destroyed the trees was not content to destroy trees, but then destroyed the village, too? Though the wise man worried, his lies continued.

“And then the wise man’s fears were realized—albeit not as he had predicted. The villagers woke him in the middle of the night, pounding on his door. Bumblebee had gone to the edge of the woods in the middle of the night to confront the Tree-Eater—and now the demon had her in its grasp! The wise man, frantic and baffled, went with them. As he ran, a single question resounded in his mind: How could the Tree-Eater have Bumblebee in his grasp when the Tree-Eater did not even exist?

“When they arrived at the edge of the woods, the wise man stared in horror at the sight that confronted him. It was the Tree-Eater. As dark as smoke, as tall as a mountain, as hard as stone, the Tree-Eater towered over the Red Woods with his great antlered head and his long teeth; he dove down, over and over, breaking each tree with his antlers and then chewing it to pieces. He held Bumblebee in one of his stony, clawed hands. When the wise man approached, the Tree-Eater stopped. He crouched down, crushing the trees around him with his weight. As he leaned his massive head forward, the villagers cowered. The wise man, more out of shock than courage, stood his ground. The Tree-Eater stared at him with wide, golden eyes.

“‘What do you want of us?’ the wise man managed to ask. ‘Give us Bumblebee and you can eat all the trees you want.’

“The Tree-Eater stared at him a moment longer, and then, with a voice like the crashing of the ocean, it said, ‘You tell me what I want, wise man. You made me.’

“The wise man felt a coldness pass over him. And he realized that, however unbelievable, the demon’s words were true. He had made the Tree-Eater: imagined him, described him, and given him life.

“The wise man stared back at the demon, feeling both awe and fear. For a moment, he wondered at the power he had to shape the world, and the prospect of shaping it further shone as brightly as the demon’s golden eyes. But then he thought of Bumblebee, and he realized how the shaping of the world had a cost. There were people who believed him and trusted him, and what he made of the world mattered to them.

“‘You want your own forest, Tree-Eater,’ the wise man said. ‘You will give Bumblebee back to us. You will travel to the ocean and make an island there, crouched against the ocean floor, and the Red Woods you have eaten will spring from your stony shoulders, keeping you company for the rest of your days. This is what you want, Tree-Eater.’

“The demon looked at him for a moment longer, and then, with a great sigh that blew from his jagged mouth like a hurricane, he reached forward and placed Bumblebee on the ground. He rose, lifting his head up into the cloudless sky, and headed west to the ocean.”

Sophia sat in silence next to Goldenrod, imagining the great demon stalking away into the distance. She could picture his dark silhouette against the starry sky. “Bumblebee was very brave,” she finally said.

“Bumblebee is a seeker of truth, and the wise man is the soul of invention,” Goldenrod said. “There are many lessons in the story, but I have always marveled at how both the seeker of truth and the soul of invention are powerful, each in their own right.”

“But how could the trees have been destroyed before the wise man had invented Tree-Eater? Did something else destroy them?”

Goldenrod smiled. “What do you think?”

Sophia pondered. “I think it could be that the wise man had already imagined something like Tree-Eater, before even speaking of it, and the monster he imagined came to find him.”

“That would be a grave lesson indeed.”

“Do demons like Tree-Eater really exist? Is that what people in the Encephalon Ages do?”

“The story is meant to show the power of the imagination, for both good and evil. I cannot say if creatures like Tree-Eater truly exist. But you heard what Wren said—every intention finds its expression.”

Sophia drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. “I have imagined terrible things sometimes,” she said quietly. “I am glad I don’t have that power.”

“You may have more of it than you realize. When you learn further about Elodean ways, you will see how some of your intuitions already lean in this direction.”

Sophia had found no opportunity to tell Goldenrod what had happened after they had spoken of the two tokens Maxine had given her, and now, as the train rattled on in the dark night, she saw her chance. “Last night I looked at the antler and the tree for a long time, just as you said. I wrote down all my questions and my observations. And then I fell asleep holding the antler. I had dreams that were so real, they felt like memories. Were they really memories?”

Goldenrod’s eyes were bright. “What did you dream?”

“I dreamed of walking through a forest and reaching a house deep in the woods. A boy spoke in my ear, saying that we were home. Then in a different dream, the boy and I looked down into a valley with a cluster of trees. And then in the last dream, we ran from a forest fire. I was afraid of the fire, and the fear seemed to be a thing outside of myself that ran through the woods ahead of us.”

Goldenrod nodded. “Animals see fear as a living being—an entity—while we do not. Those were memories.”

Sophia smiled, elated. “So these maps are read while sleeping?”

“It is a way to begin—the sleeping mind is most open to these kinds of memories. What did the house look like?”

“The house in the woods?”

“Yes—the house the boy said was home.”

“It was set in a mound, so that part of the house was a hill. There were two windows and an arched door. And next to the house was an open space with a roof. There was a barrel collecting rainwater and a stack of firewood.”

Goldenrod smiled. “I believe you have met Bittersweet.”

“The moose is named Bittersweet?” Sophia asked, confused.

“No—the boy. Young man now. He lives in such a house, and though I have not been to that corner of the forest for more than two years, it sounds as though it has not changed much.”

“Then he is Elodean?”

“He is Elodean. And it is telling that this token Maxine gave you pertains to him.”

“Why?”

Goldenrod sighed. “He is the fourth Weatherer. Of those four Eerie healers, he is the only one who did not disappear in Boston. It was his family I went in search of early this year.”

—18-Hour 30—

GOLDENROD FELL SILENT, and Sophia knew that she was reflecting upon her failed attempt to save the Eerie in Boston. It visibly gnawed at her conscience, and no doubt she felt anxious, having finally returned to New Occident, to learn what she could about the fate of those missing friends. Sophia’s own conscience gnawed at her—she was well aware of how her own search was delaying Goldenrod’s own—as she prepared herself for sleep.

Sophia removed the remaining pieces of her raider costume so that she was wearing only her cotton shift. She undid her braids and put the leather ties inside her skirt pocket, then tucked her clothes into the compartment beside her bunk. Placing the wheel of tree trunk beside her pillow, she rested her fingers on its coarse surface. Gently, she tapped the pine face. It’s like a clock, she thought to herself as her eyes closed. A clock of the past that has stopped telling time. The long day that had begun before dawn caught up with her quickly, and she was asleep in minutes.

The dream was unlike any she had ever had. It was late winter. A heavy snow was falling. She was aware of the other trees around her; they were perfectly still as the snow fell, but their thoughts coursed through their cold limbs, into the soil and the damp air. And these were not the only thoughts she sensed: tranquil or urgent, lazy or quick, contented or hungry, the impulses of living things nearby filled her consciousness so that they transformed the stillness into a scene of humming activity.

This went on for hours. In some ways, nothing happened. The snow continued to fall. It accumulated on her branches, a comforting weight that covered her like a kind of blanket. The weak sunlight gave out slowly as the afternoon waned. Steadily, the temperature began to drop. There was no visible movement as far as she could tell. And yet, in other ways, the dream was full of busyness as the dense cluster of living things near her watched and felt and hungered and slept and woke.

The dream ended abruptly and shifted. Now it was midsummer. The landscape had altered entirely. Instead of standing surrounded by other trees, she stood at the edge of a field. She knew that the trees that had stood there before were gone, and she felt their absence without grief, but with a constant, unremitting awareness. Tall grass, heavy with flowers, grew now where those trees had grown, and a house made of those very trees stood not far away. Beyond it were more houses, and where they gathered in the greatest number rose a bell tower.

The air was thick with bees and other insects. She felt the same sense of busyness around her, hearing the bees and the flies and the trees and the grass and the nodding flowers among them, but now another activity overlaid this, like a trumpet sounding in an orchestra. Two girls ran toward her through the tall grass, one chasing the other, and their laughter rang through the warm summer air. One of them reached her trunk, touched it, and then embraced her, still laughing, her soft arms warm and poignantly fragile. She felt a pang of tenderness for this breakable creature. “I won!” the girl cried.

In her sleep, Sophia pulled away from the wheel of tree trunk, drawing her fingers under the thin blanket. She sighed, and the dream ended.