Steph is decidedly punctual, so when I arrive at the company mess hall and she’s not already sitting at a table, I’m surprised but not concerned. “Decidedly punctual” doesn’t mean “never a minute late,” and she could easily have been held up finishing some experiment at her arcana lab or chatting with a coworker.
When ten minutes pass and Steph still hasn’t shown, I get antsy. We’ve been eating dinner together every Waterday night for the better part of two years. After a month, we stopped making the plan—it was obvious we’d meet up at the company mess in the in-between time after her shift ended and before mine began. That way, no matter what else happened during the week, we’d have an hour to catch up.
It takes me twenty minutes to get worried. I sit uncomfortably for ten more after that, awkwardly shooing away tray-carrying coworkers who want the empty seat across from me. They’re serving fried brush moa today, and though the wafting steam from every passing portion should tempt me, I barely notice, scanning the room for Steph as if she’s somehow ended up at another table and is anxiously wondering what’s keeping me.
Another ten, and I know something’s wrong. Leaving the table, I go to find her. At this point, she’ll miss the company-sponsored carriage that carries her and other upper-level workers home at the end of the day. One time she tried to bring me on as a guest and was refused. She walked back and forth to work for almost two months in protest before I convinced her not to. No need to wear out good boots on my account.
As I follow the signs and arrows to the lab where Steph works, I realize I’ve never been there before. Never popped by to say hello; Steph never brought me for a tour. Of course, Steph hasn’t been to the milling floor where I work, either. She may be my closest friend, but our professional worlds share little overlap.
I hesitate in front of the door. There’s no rule that says I can’t visit the arcana labs, but it still feels wrong. The fact that any person inside could have me fired with a word plays no small part in that. But I know—absolutely know down to my bones—that Steph wouldn’t skip our dinner, so I knock on the door and ease my head inside like I’m afraid of what I might find.
Steph and I joke that to me her work may as well be magic, but I didn’t realize exactly how true that is. Inside the lab is equipment of incomprehensible purpose: planks of otherwood—identifiable at a glance to someone who’s worked it like I have—covered in thin metal rods topped by glass bulbs; an array of mirrors reflecting the light from a single candle up and along the high ceiling and into a quivering black box; a mechanical plane shaving thinner-than-paper strips of otherwood that fall into a bubbling cauldron of eye-searingly green liquid. When each strip hits the liquid, it puffs into smoke with a small bright flash as the arcanist next to the cauldron reads words I can’t hear from a tattered scroll.
All the time I’ve known her, Steph claimed that arcana isn’t technically magic, just science that interacts with a plane of reality so different from our own that it’s mistaken for magic. The Tree People supposedly practiced it before they disappeared, and even though that was centuries ago, they didn’t believe it was magic either. At least as far as anyone can tell from what little record they left behind. Looking at this scene, though, I have to call that pure owlshit. Arcanists can name their research whatever they want. I see magic.
I’m still goggling when a man maybe twenty years older than me steps into my view.
“Can I help you?” he asks. Not a rude tone of voice, exactly, but a flat affect that says he doesn’t expect he can or should.
“Steph Kuva,” I say, looking past him to see if she’s working at one of the tables. “I was supposed to meet her, and she never showed.”
A smile appears like someone is twisting their fingers in his mouth’s corners. “Oh sure, this is Steph’s lab. Great scientist. Why did you say you were looking for her?” When I repeat myself he nods sagely. “She left early. Wasn’t feeling well. Do you want me to take a message for her? Maybe she can get back to you when she’s in. To talk about… whatever you might talk about.”
He thinks I’m angling for extra work or something. “We’re friends,” I say, maybe a tad too defensively. “We were meeting for dinner.”
“Right, right,” the man says. “Well.” He shrugs. “I guess you know where to find her, then.”
I’ve been to Steph’s apartment plenty of times. If we’re going to shoot the breeze, it’s a lot more pleasant and private than my room at the boarding house.
“Sure,” I say. “I’ll do that. Thanks for your help, mister…”
“Arcanist,” he says. “Chief Arcanist Doolain.” He doesn’t offer his hand.
I smile back as coolly as he does and turn on my heel.
Steph getting sick and leaving early is an easy explanation, and it makes sense. If she was sick, she wouldn’t want to wait around for me to show up only to say she couldn’t eat dinner. But something about Doolain rubs me wrong. A sackful of things.
My shift is about to start, and while I want to check on Steph, I need my job. And at the moment, the job needs me. Otherwood can do a lot of things, but it can’t mill itself.
Exhausted as I am, I don’t go home and sleep when my shift ends, just slug down another mug of tea and light out for Steph’s apartment. We live in a mill town, but her building is about as far from the mill as you can get, brushing against the fringe of the forest. Normal trees, not otherwood, but it reminds me that I’m truly in the frontier now, even though I thought the town I grew up in was a real forest town as well. The forest around Steph and my hometown is a public park compared to this one, so vast that it feels endless, and that Steph says—in an arcane way—sort of is.
As I’m approaching the front door, a woman about my age is exiting, and I call for her to hold the door since I don’t have a key.
She eyeballs me, asks, “Do you live here?”
I’ve seen her dozens of times over the last couple years. “Brinnen Ott,” I say. “I’m here to see Steph Kuva.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, shaking her head, “are you here to clean the flues? My room could really use it—the chimney’s been sprinkling soot for a week. I left a note for Mr. Gunn about it, but—”
“I’m a friend of hers,” I interrupt. “She missed a meeting last night, and I want to make sure she’s okay.”
She doesn’t even try to hide her disbelief as she lets the door close behind her. The click of the arcanic lock is audible. “Steph Kuva? The accountant?”
“Arcanist.”
She shakes her head again. “I’m sorry, we’re not supposed to let anyone we don’t know into the building.”
She surreptitiously tugs the door to check the lock before she leaves.
I wish I didn’t feel so offended about her judging me. Thinking that because I’m not dressed as fancy as the people who live here, because I have sawdust under my fingernails and coloring my knuckles, that I’m a thief. Because—dammit—I’m going to have to break into Steph’s apartment.
While the trees don’t grow close enough to the building to provide access, they obscure the view from the back, giving me the privacy I need to hoist myself to a rickety wooden fire escape. Stupid they built it with wood—this building catches fire, the emergency egress is going to go up like matchsticks unless the builder knows something about wood that I don’t. Which is doubtful, given my line of work.
I make my way to Steph’s window. Though the front door has an arcanic lock, I know the inner doors and windows are all traditional. The arcanic locks are made from a specialized stone that can only be found in a few scattered locations and which bear what Steph calls an electico-magneticized property. All I know is that where the stones are quarried, no animals roam or plants grow, and the quarriers have a suspiciously high incidence of lightning strikes. Anyway, the locks are strong, and I’m glad I don’t have to try to get through one.
Instead, I jimmy at the lock with my pocketknife until I accidentally crack the window glass. Glancing around to make sure I haven’t drawn any attention, I gingerly poke the glass out of the frame, reach in, and unlock the window. I scooch through, and there I am in Steph’s apartment.
Ransacked is too strong a word, but someone has obviously given her place a once-over and put it back together far too hastily. Drawers and cabinets that Steph always closes fully sit ajar; documents that should be in neat stacks with ink stylographs arranged parallel to the paper edge lie strewn on counters and the tea table, stylographs askew.
Before, I was concerned; now I’m panicked. Wherever Steph is, I doubt she went there of her own volition. If she was forced to run away, she would have found some way to contact me. I’m certain of it.
Where could she be? Who would kidnap her? Why?
Whatever the answers are, her apartment seems a good place to start looking. If there’s a clue, this is where it would be, isn’t it?
The documents may as well be written in Vaalexi for all I can understand them, and if they meant anything to the people who took her, I assume they would’ve taken them with. I poke around Steph’s bookshelves, but though there are a few that have been replaced in the wrong order, nothing about them suggests a pattern. No secret notes scribbled on the inner covers.
A smarter man would leave it. Skip town. If someone disappeared Steph, they could do it to me too. With Steph gone, no one would even miss me.
From the moment I entered, I noticed her arcanic slate on the wall, but I finally realize what’s wrong with it: it’s blank. In the two years we’ve been friends, I’ve never once seen it uncovered by notes, equations, half-formed theories, and arcanic cul-de-sacs.
Whoever was here—whoever kidnapped Steph—erased it. Whoever erased it didn’t know that Steph taught me a little trick to resurrect the writing. It’s the only bit or arcana I know, a beginner’s practice operation, and even then I mess it up half the time. But Steph was patient, working with me, practicing, never showing frustration or laughing at my failure. This time, I need to make sure I execute the arcanic procedure perfect.
I carefully remove the slate from its wall hook and carry it to the room’s fireplace—every time I’m here I marvel at this; a fireplace in every room!—where I smear soot over the face. I retrieve a bottle of plantain whiskey from a kitchen cabinet, boil a dram, and pour it over the soot, wincing a bit at the waste of a liquor much finer than anything I can afford. Writing appears. A grid, numbers, three symbols arranged in a shifting pattern. Circles and half-circles and crescents of varying sizes. It only takes a moment for me to figure it out: a calendar tracking the phases and alignment of the moons.
The drawings end abruptly before the end of the month, with the moons in perfect alignment, the center one full, a half-waxing and half-waning above and below respectively. The sort of phase and alignment that folks take sweethearts out under for its uniqueness and eye-pleasing symmetry. I’m betting Steph didn’t mark that day because it’s pretty.
There’s my clue. Too bad I have no idea what it means.
I sit on a black polished rocking chair near Steph’s fireplace and stare at the slate. What do I know? Steph studies otherwood. Not what it does—everyone knows that: strong as iron but supple as silk; a few handfuls of sawdust keep a forge burning hot all day; a daily dram of the boiled sap adds years of life—but what gives otherwood those properties. Sure aren’t any other trees that act that way. Not to mention that most trees can be cut down—Steph’s also trying to find out why so many otherwood trees can’t be.
So Steph found out something about otherwood and the moons, a connection between them maybe. It sounds arcane enough to me, two things that shouldn’t have anything to do with each other but do. Pretty much the definition of arcanity.
It’s a safe bet that something is going to happen when the moons align, and an even safer bet that it involves otherwood. Except that’s as far as I can bring that line of inquiry before I hit a wall. I need to know more about what Steph researches, and maybe what other company arcanists research too. I need to know more about otherwood and arcanity.
I might not know the where or why of Steph’s disappearance, but I suspect I know something about the who. Whether he’s behind her kidnapping or not, Chief Arcanist Doolain is as full of dross as an owl pellet. He lied when he said she left early yesterday, and I want to know why.
Confronting him is a quick way to lose my job and maybe my life, so I can’t do that, but I don’t need to confront him anyway. He thinks I’m an idiot, so he won’t expect me to snoop around the lab. Problem is, he knows my face; I can’t just waltz in.
An even bigger problem is timing. The night Steph marked with the aligning moons is tomorrow.
I consider elaborate methods of sneaking into the arcanity lab: pilfering a custodian uniform from the locker room; forging academic records and pretending to be a prospective apprentice. When it comes down to it, it’s easiest to slip in when most of the arcanists are on their lunch break.
I hover around the lab, pacing the hall, acting like I’m heading somewhere, watching for Doolain. He doesn’t leave the lab. What if he’s so caught up in his work he skips lunch? I know Steph does that sometimes, showing up ravenous for our dinner dates, loading a tray with every option in the chow line. Just as I start to reconsider my disguise plans, I spot Doolain exiting the lab.
He glances my direction, and though I’m at the far end of the hallway and his route to the mess hall should take him opposite, my step hitches and have to catch myself against the wall. Doolain walks away without another look. Maybe he already forgot who I am.
As soon as he turns the corner, I rush to the lab. Confidently, I step into the first empty office I see and quietly shut the door. Through a small pane of frosted glass, I see silhouettes moving around the lab, arcanists at work. Luckily, there’s only a few, and they all appear occupied with their tasks. I can’t exactly stroll through the lab, but if I’m quick and quiet, I think I can get to Doolain’s office.
The office I’m in now is actually more of a storage room. Instruments of unknown purpose line shelves. Boxes sit stacked in corners.
I take one of the smaller boxes, something I can pretend is a delivery, and exit the office. Walking confidently but unobtrusively, I slip into the biggest office and pray it’s Doolain’s.
Lucky me, it is. The man’s office is messier than a sawtooth squirrel nest, papers and slates strewn everywhere. Corkboards on every wall, no rhyme or reason that I can see to the pictures and labels tacked there. The nearest is covered with arcanopics of early otherwood explorations. An image of the first company surveyors painstakingly chopping down otherwood—not an easy task. Another showing an electico-axe passing directly through an otherwood trunk. For all I know, that’s the exact moment surveyors realized only some otherwood trees fully exist in our world, that the rest—most of them, in fact—grow in that plane of reality where arcana springs from. Otherwood might be hard to chop down, but that otherwood is impossible to even touch.
On the part of his desk closest to his chair there’s a stack of papers that look weathered enough to crumble under a fingertip. I risk it and pick one up, and it’s obvious why he isn’t taking better care of them. Otherwood paper. I’ve never even seen it before, but I know that if it looks old, it must be ancient, an artifact from the Tree People. Touching it feels wrong, a violation—they’re practically mythical, the original inhabitants of this massive forest, vanished long before anyone from the south ever crossed the mountains.
Obviously, I can’t read a word of it.
The corkboard on the opposite wall sports a similar array of arcanopics, but smack in the middle of this set is a charcoal drawing of an enormous otherwood tree. Trees, actually, half a dozen trunks twining together like strands of rope and stretching upward, bursting into countless boughs and smaller branches. As I look closer, I realize that it’s not a real representation, but something more artistic. Branches formed from people, writhing in agony or ecstasy, mouths open in a prayer that could be of praise or for deliverance. Maybe all of it at once.
The pattern mesmerizes me, my eyes unable to comprehend the vastness and complexity of the branch system, trying to impose order where none exists.
The door slamming open jolts me back from the mental abyss. As dismayed as I am to be caught, I’m secretly relieved as well. In that last moment, I was sure I saw a massive body rising from within the tree.
Standing in the doorway now, of course, is Chief Arcanist Doolain. “The mind boggles to figure out how you thought you could traipse into my office unnoticed,” he sneers, looking me up and down pointedly. “To imagine a world in which you’d blend into this laboratory.”
Guess I wasn’t as slick as I thought.
“Where’s Steph?” I ask. No point being cagey now.
“Arcanist Kuva, I presume, is somewhere collecting herself and questioning whether this job is indeed the priority it should be. If you were truly the friend you claim, she would have told you that her work has been slipping recently. I never got a reason from her, but I suspect now that association with inferior minds contributed to the decline in her research standards.”
Ignoring his gibe, I say, “And I’m sure she didn’t indicate to you where she’s taking this sabbatical?”
“You’re her friend.”
We eyeball each other. I know he expects me to hit him—low-class workingman and all—but I’ve never thrown a punch in anger in my life. I’d probably break a finger. “Guess I’ll have to find her.”
I shoulder past him and nearly collide with two goons, each roughly the size of the desk I was just riffling through.
“Excuse me,” I say, futile as I know it’s going to be.
They each grab one of my arms. I don’t struggle, but that doesn’t stop them from hauling me toward the exit like a sack of spuds that insulted their mothers.
“If I even see you in the mess, you’re fired,” Doolain calls after me.
Much as I need the job, it’s the least of my worries at the moment. Steph’s whereabouts and safety is still priority number one. After that is watching out for rocks as I’m shoved out the mill front doors, sent stumbling down the steps, losing my footing and tumbling to the dirt.
“I’ll be speaking to my foreman about this,” I call to the goons’ backs. I won’t say shit, though, and they know it. They’re working for the mill and the mill makes the rules in town. Hell, the mill made the town.
Dusted off, my throat lubricated and pain dulled by a tall glass of cheap plantain whiskey, I lay down on my threadbare bed and stare at the cracks in the ceiling. How do these clues fit together? Otherwood, the moons, the Tree People. Whenever I feel like I’m about to understand, my fingers slip off the understanding like a mossy rock.
If Steph was here… if Steph was here, I wouldn’t need to worry about any of this. But she always has a way of helping me understand the basics, the same way I taught her to fix the rocker on her favorite chair so it wasn’t so swooping. I like to think that we help each other, that we complement each other, that there’s a reason two people who grew up in the same town but never knew each other except in passing would connect. Two familiar faces meeting in a timber company town, suddenly sparking as friends even though there’s no reason anyone from the outside could see that we should be.
I remember the last time Steph was over here, just a few days ago, when we both happened to have the same day off, an unlikely occurrence. We didn’t do much—strolled the Tree People promenade, gnarled otherwood trees canopying us, comforting and menacing by turns.
“Why would the mill founders build a promenade here?” I asked. “To remind everyone how creepy it is that we’re living in the middle of an abandoned civilization?”
Steph tilted her head, considering it. “That might be close. If there’s one place in town that reinforces how uncanny otherwood is, this must be it.” She trailed her hand along in the air, passing it through the ethereal tree trunks. I shuddered at the unreality of it.
“Cold?” she teased.
“I need a cup of tea.”
So we drank tea and shared a bowl of spicy pistachios. Steph ordered pickled grouse talon, and I firmly declined her offer to share that as well.
Back at my room, we laughed over more tea and stories from back home, swapping tales of people we both knew, marveling that our paths had never crossed.
“Two saws on different sides of the same tree,” I said.
“Listen to you,” she said. “Such a company man.”
“I am but a lowly mill-worker,” I said. “You’re the big fancy arcanist, exposing the mysteries of the universe.”
Her smile faded. I opened my mouth to apologize, to ask what I’d said wrong, but she stopped me.
“Is that our classbook?” she asked, pointing at the red-spined book on my shelf, one of just three. Of course she’d recognize it. She has the same one at her apartment.
“Do you have a stylograph?” she asked, crossing the room and picking up the classbook, flipping past the blurry arcanopics to the blank pages at the back. I pointed to a cup on the table, and she took the stylograph from it.
Turning so I couldn’t see what she was writing, she jotted down a few words and shut the book. Slid it back into place on the shelf.
I stood up, but Steph shook her head. “Don’t read it now. You’ll know when.”
“Okay, weirdo,” I said. And forgot about it.
There’s the classbook, still sitting on its shelf, Steph’s words still unread.
Oh, you have got to be kidding me.
Rows of iron lockers line the wall, packed with luggage, bags of mail, whatever things people store in locomotive stations. I’m about to find out what Steph hid here.
The classbook message was as simple as it was cryptic. An address. A set of numbers. The address brought me to the train station. The numbers are clearly a locker number and combination. I find the locker, glance around to make sure no one’s watching—the station is so crowded, I can’t really tell, to be honest—and spin the combination into the lock.
Inside the locker is a single large envelope. Not filled to bursting but not thin either. Concise, focused, exactly as I’d expect from Steph. Inside is technical arcanic information that I don’t fully understand—strange symbols and equations, graphs and foreign phrases. But there’s enough that I do understand to widen my eyes and set my heart racing. My arms and legs buzz like I need to run, to punch a wall. Because I read what Steph has discovered about otherwood, and I know exactly why she was kidnapped: they don’t want her to reveal what she’s learned.
If that was all they wanted, she’d be dead. But her research points me to another conclusion: they can use her alive. For a little while. Until the three moons are aligned and in the correct phases. Until tonight.
I read faster and faster, my eyes flying over the words and pictures, capturing important snatches and skimming the parts that I don’t need to know right this moment. Finally, I reach the last page.
A map. The mill, the river weaving through the forest and into it. The town. Empty patches that were otherwood forest before clearcutting. The expanse of untouchable otherwood. A gnarled and infinitely limbed tree that can only be the one I saw a picture of in Doolain’s office. That’s the spot. That is where Steph is going to be sacrificed.
I pack up the envelope, tuck it into my pants, and head out of the station. I’ll stash the envelope somewhere or post it to someone who can do something with the information—I need to figure out which. Right now, all I can think of is my next step. Steph hid this for me to find because she must have worried someone from the company would abduct her. She wants me to save her and I can. I know where she’s going to be tonight. I’ll get rid of the envelope, and I’ll go there. I’ll hide and lie in wait. When the company men come with Steph, I’ll ambush them and get her the hell out of there. It’s not a foolproof plan, but I have time to refine it. I can do this.
I turn a corner. There’s a sharp blow to the back of my head, and I fall to my knees. A second hit and the lights go out.
My head throbs so bad I don’t want to open my eyes, but I do anyway. It’s dark but not pitch. I’m outside, the area around me lit by one lantern and three moons. My cheek rests on forest detritus. Dead leaves in my ear, twigs tangling in my hair. My captor must be close, and I try to avoid giving away that I’m conscious, but a voice above me grunts that I’m awake, so I roll onto my back to see who it is.
I’m not shocked that one of the goons who hustled me out of the arcana lab and mill spoke or that the other one stands a few feet away, truncheon in one hand and knife on his belt.
I’m even less surprised when Doolain’s face appears above me.
“You could’ve walked away, Ott,” he says. His voice hitches a little before he says my name, purposely omitting the “mister.” Just to be an asshole.
“What kind of friend would I be if I did that?”
“A live one.”
Before I can wittily point out that I’m still among the living, he goes on. “I presume that for all your so-called friendship, you really don’t understand what Arcanist Kuva does. Do you understand arcana at all?”
No harm admitting he’s more or less correct. “I know it’s not magic.”
He chuckles. “And you’re the one Kuva chose to protect her research. What could she have possibly thought you would do with it?”
That he’s echoing questions I’ve been asking myself stings. Why did Steph leave the clue to her research with me? She respects my intelligence, but she knows I don’t have the sort of brain for grasping what she does. I can get out of jams, fix things that are broken, but I don’t know the maths and languages that a person needs to work arcana. The best I can figure is that she knew I’d be able to find the folder, and she hoped that I’d be able to get it to someone who could do something with it.
Bang up job I’ve done there.
I don’t mean to say it, but the words drop from my lips like chewed up moa gristle. “I thought I could help her.”
Doolain looks almost sympathetic. “You know,” he says, “if there were another path, I would take it. But the mill’s running out of otherwood, and all these trees are sitting here, untouchable, visible in our world but primarily existing on another plane of existence. Something happened to fix certain trees on our plane. Everyone who lives here long enough hears myths of the Tree People, their meddling with the other plane and the retribution of… something. But for one of our own arcanists to determine that it’s true? And, better yet, how to replicate it?” He shakes his head at what he clearly views as a foregone conclusion. “I’m not a cruel man. But I am a company man.”
Before I can say anything, I hear muffled agitation, and I know it must be Steph. Sure enough, she’s escorted to Doolain’s side by two more goons—is there a room at the mill where they cast these guys from a mold?
Doolain removes Steph’s gag, and she coughs and spits at his feet. “Brinnen,” she says. “They got you, too?”
I grimace. “We sort of got each other. Sorry, Steph. They followed me to the locker. They have everything.”
“I made copies,” she says, looking pointedly at Doolain.
“Sure you did,” he says dismissively, calling what is likely a bluff—she couldn’t have had time. To the goons, he says, “Now, since everything else is in place, if you’ll please arrange these two in their positions.” As he speaks, he looks past us, and I turn to see the strange twisted tree from Steph’s notes and the picture in Doolain’s office. In front of it protrude two tall posts hewn of otherwood. It’s not too hard to figure out what those are for if you’ve read Steph’s research. They’re going to sacrifice us to a being from the other plane, arcanically binding our consciousnesses to otherwood trees. It’ll only get them two new trees they can harvest, but if this works, I’m sure we won’t be the last. I wouldn’t want to be a street person or company town prisoner around these parts.
Of course, at the moment, I’m not exactly thrilled to be myself, either.
“I’m so sorry, Steph,” I say again as the goons wrangle us to the posts and strap us to them. “You counted on me, and I coughed up a pellet.”
“Stop it,” she says. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to clean up my mess. I should’ve never shared my research—I didn’t think the company would actually kill people for otherwood.”
I have to admit, even though I’ve seen some things on the mill floor, I wouldn’t have expected them to go this far either. Maybe it’s all Doolain. Not that it’s going to matter once our essence is ripped from our bodies.
“Did I miss anything?” I ask. “Some trick out of this?” One of the goons currently strapping me to the sacrificial otherwood post cuffs me on the side of the head, but halfheartedly, like it’s something he’s obliged to do. Not enough to actually shut me up.
“Sorry, Brinn,” she says. As if reading my mind that I’m hoping she left something out so Doolain will perform the ritual wrong, she adds, “Doolain may be evil, but he’s an outstanding arcanist. We’re stuck.”
“Shit. I guess it’s a unique way to go, at least.”
“Sure. Hasn’t happened in centuries.”
“Will you kindly shut them up?” Doolain calls.
We zip our yaps before the goons do it for us. It seems this is it.
Green and blue lights flicker behind us. Chimes tinkle and a cymbal repeatedly crashes as Doolain performs his aracanic procedures. Moonlight shines down steady and bright until suddenly it is far too bright and not at all steady. Flashing on and off like a signal lantern. Scents of brick-dust and mulch and burned cinnamon assail my nose. Wind rushes directly downward onto Steph and I. Dirt rises from the ground like rain, pelting my chin. My eyelids try to shut, but I force them open. Whatever happens next, I want to see it.
The air shimmers and then rips from the sky to the ground like a piece of cheap cloth. Then it’s whole again, but a vast figure stands before us, real and clear and solid, while everything else looks hazy as clouds viewed from underwater.
No animal, vegetable, or mineral serves as a proper analogue for the thing that regards Steph and me as if we are a strange and unwelcome growth.
Aspects of the being resemble things from our world. Its torso is thick, ursine in shape but covered in shining gold scales that tinkle melodically as it rouses itself. Downy pink feathers attached to no flesh form the shape of two tentacular limbs while another, segmented like a crab’s, stretches to the ground and splits near the bottom into dozens of black chitinous legs that hold the monster or god or whatever it is aloft. Insectoid eyes appear and disappear upon the body and limbs in a way that somehow feels both rhythmic and random, as if they only exist when the being needs them. There is no discernible head.
In the center of the body is a beak, sharp and hooked like an eagle’s, curling down and spiraling back into itself endlessly. My eyes can’t handle the looping, and my empty stomach heaves up bile. Beside me, Steph groans, and I hear the sound of her struggling, trying to pull herself free from the post.
Eyes pop into existence, surveying the otherwood trees, which look more substantial here. This is where they are meant to be, I realize. Scattered among the strong otherwood trees are a few spindly, wispy ones. Wan red light glows within them, and I swear I hear human voices pleading to be set free. These trees must be in our world, the ones with Tree People bound to them. What did they do that drove the being to trap them like this? What horrific mistake could they have made?
Thinking they could understand such a being, maybe. Thinking they could control it.
The eyes swivel to land their gaze on me and Steph. She shrieks, but then I hear her say, “I’m here, I’m here, it’s okay,” and I realize the shrieks are mine.
It is not okay.
Rope digs into my wrists as I pull, desperate to escape. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this. Not unbound fury and disdain. Hatred so strong I feel my soul putrefy.
The being speaks. No sound comes from it, and whatever information it conveys to me is not in words, but my pitiful brain warps the sensation into words to protect itself. To keep me from going insane. I pray Steph’s brain isn’t too proud to do the same.
“Vermin!” it roars. “Infestation! Fell the trees and halt the blight.”
Behind the words, I grasp meaning and intent words can only pretend to convey. Disgust that humans would pierce the veil and enter its world. The Tree People did what Doolain is trying to do, and now they’re trapped in trees here, connecting them to our plane, solidifying the otherwood in our reality. Stealing it from the being. And now we’ve come back to try and snatch away more. Does chopping down the trees free them? Are they trapped here forever? I tremble.
Why wouldn’t the being see us as an infestation? What recourse does it have beyond extermination? Is this all that arcana has ever been—sneaking into someone else’s world and running off with whatever we can grab? No wonder the history of the Tree People ends as abruptly as a carriage hitting a stone wall. How many ancient civilizations have we not heard about at all because they were wiped out so thoroughly?
I burn and freeze and melt and harden to stone. I go numb. I don’t know if time passes at all or if so much passes that it seems like nothing. I struggle to keep my sanity, to say goodbye to Steph, to do anything but scream.
The being shifts closer to us, as if Steph and I are the problem, as if we’re not victims here. Does it even recognize such distinctions? Maybe not, but for an instant, I understand something important. Doolain thought he was smarter than the things on this plane of reality, that he could make them do his bidding. He underestimated the being, and I know exactly what that’s like.
I screech again, but this time I form words. “You’re being tricked, you chump! Patsy! Sucker! Fool!”
I don’t know if it will understand the words but hope it will discern my intent. Which is not to insult this being that seems capable of squashing me like a mosquito, but to get its attention.
Horrifically, it works. The being casts its full focus on me, and it is all I can do not to wither to ash and crumble before it.
“This isn’t our fault,” I babble. “We’re being used, and the man using us is trying to use you—” Does it even know what a “man” is? “—He’s trying to steal your trees. The one behind us. Can you see him? That man and the others. They’re playing you to bind us to your trees, and then they can cut them in our world. We don’t want them—please, please understand!”
I jerk my head backward, trying to indicate where Doolain and the goons are, but I’m not even sure if the being can see into our reality, let alone affect it. If we survive, Steph will have a ready-made new career track, studying all this.
If we survive. Big if.
The being speaks. “What shall I do?”
Shit. I hadn’t gotten that far.
“Enlighten,” it says. I sense rage and disdain and… amusement? Is it mocking me?
“Stop them,” Steph says, her voice flat and firm and commanding, like an ancient warrior-priestess.
“If I obliterate them, you claim I will lose my trees.”
“So don’t kill them. Reach your fingers to our world and pluck them out like blood-engorged ticks. And then… do what you will.”
“Steph…” I say.
“It’s them or us, Brinn.”
It’s ruthless, and I know she’s right, but I really really wish she wasn’t. That hard voice: Did Steph discover something even worse than what she showed me? Do I not understand how evil Doolain and his employers at the mill are? Or has this experience changed her the way I pray it won’t but know it will and already has changed me?
I thought I had to save Steph, but she didn’t need saving. Not really. All this time, I thought she was helping me, that I was paying her back by looking for her now. But it isn’t just one of us that helps the other. We support one another like two trees weathering a storm because they’ve grown up entwined. A friendship stronger than otherwood.
Being here, in the presence of this being, makes it hard to focus.
It lowers its beak until it nearly touches my face. My heart races, my pulse thumping in my head so hard I think my brain might explode. Hyperventilating. Nausea. Vibrations rattling my limbs and jaw. I close my eyes and struggle to breathe. I might pass out, but being conscious and unconscious seem like such minute distinctions right now that I couldn’t say.
Silence. A thud, my knees hitting dirt and my face following. Blood pouring from what is surely a broken nose, but the prosaic, knowable pain is such a relief I don’t care. I open my eyes and I am in my own reality. The being is gone. So are Doolain and his goons.
I’m shaking and crying and retching. Gasping as I try to get a hold of my lungs, which are racing away from me.
“It’s okay.”
I roll onto my side, and there’s Steph, kneeling, head in her hands like she’s going to puke. I eyeball her, and she adds, “Fair enough, but we’re safe, at least.”
We both take a few minutes to compose ourselves. At first, I stare into the trees, but I don’t want that reminder, and looking at the moons is too vast a space. I face the ground, focus on a small white rock that moonlight reflects off of. I pick it up, put it in my pocket. Maybe it will be a good luck charm. Maybe it will be a reminder of what happened tonight. Maybe I’ll chuck it into a gutter in the morning.
“I’m really sorry I roped you into this,” Steph says, finally.
“What are friends for?”
She laughs. “Not this.” She stands, her knees popping. We’ve both aged tonight. I take her proffered hand and stand up myself. I feel like I’ve fallen out of a tree. We lean on each other and hobble toward town. As we pass an otherwood tree, Steph reaches out a hand that passes right through the trunk.
“What now?” I ask.
“That’s the question,” she says. “We get my research to someone who can do something… whoever that is. We try to stop this from happening again. Make sure arcanists everywhere know what they’re meddling with.”
“Will it work? Or will it just make more people like Doolain?”
She sighs. “I don’t know. All we can do is try.”
“What have you seen, Steph? What was that thing?” I ask, not entirely sure I want to know the answer.
She shakes her head. “Bad things, Brinn. Things I don’t know if I can explain, not really. But I’ll try.”
Into the silence that follows, my stomach rumbles.
“Good point,” Steph says. “I’m starving. Want to talk over dinner?”
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Timothy Mudie is a speculative fiction writer and an editor of all sorts of genres. His fiction has appeared in various magazines, anthologies, and podcasts, including Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Podcastle, Wastelands: The New Apocalypse, and LeVar Burton Reads. His nonfiction children’s book about the importance of dark sky preservation, If You Can See The Dark, was published by Appalachian Mountain Club Books in 2024. He lives outside of Boston with his wife and two sons. Find him online at timothymudie.com. | |