Cal told them to stay hidden until he and Lelani could recon. They were at the edge of the tree line and an open space materialized a few yards ahead of the last cluster of shrubs. Seth and Cat rested behind the skeleton of a snow-topped bush. The sky in twilight shifted from a light cerulean on the western horizon dabbed with traces of green and yellow, to a grayish blue above them, and finally a deep indigo in the east. The first stars that appeared in that indigo canvas would soon be covered as a cold front moved stubbornly down from the north.
Seth peered into the moist gray ceiling above them and was surprised to find himself thinking about his cat in the middle of this life and death struggle. They had dropped Hoshi off at the YMCA, where Lelani kept a room. He wondered if they had left enough food and water out, and if not, would anyone answer the mewling that was sure to follow. Girlfriends and models came and went, but Hoshi was one of the few constants in his life. The cat was always glad to see him, unlike his present company.
Seth resented every step dictated to him since Lelani entered his life. He had lost himself in the past forty-eight hours and couldn’t remember the individual he was only yesterday. His friends had abandoned him, his home was a cinder, dog-men were shooting arrows at him, and his only companions were a mystical horse-girl, a moody fascist cop, and his humorless wife. His past had nothing to do with the present. One day he earned a living photographing and fornicating with beautiful desperate girls, and the next he was running for his life on the yellow brick road. A massive disconnect had occurred-an alignment of stars against him. And strange as it was, this felt more real than the past thirteen years of his life.
Cal signaled the all clear.
The tree line encircled a pristine meadow; in the center stood a grand old tree. Unlike its counterparts in the woods, this tree had all of its leaves, green as on a moist August day. Around the tree was a small zone of healthy green grass, untouched by the weather. A few yards away sat a small white RV trailer hitched to empty air. Smoke wafted from a pipe on the roof. No tracks led to or from. Either no one was in or no one had left home recently.
Seth walked a few steps and felt a snap underfoot that didn’t feel like wood. The snow was spotted pink. He retrieved what had cracked. A bone. A slimy bone. Some animal, he thought. It was picked clean, notched with tooth marks and stray clinging ligament. He realized that there were bones all around him. He spotted a paw; a five-fingered paw-with opposable thumb.
“Uh, guys,” he said.
Cal hushed him.
“Shush yourself, man. There are pieces of some dude all around me.” That got their attention.
Lelani examined the bones.
“There are two people here,” she said.
“Fuck,” Seth said. “This place gives me the heebie-jeebies. Maybe the other sentries are worse than dog-boy.”
Cal examined the scene also.
Lelani discovered shreds of scaled clothes, a spear, and some netting.
“These are the other guards,” she said. “These items are from Aandor. One of them was a skilyte.”
“A what?” Cat asked.
“Swamp dwellers,” Cal said. “Not friends of Aandor.”
“Perhaps we have an ally?” Lelani said. “Rosencrantz?”
“No.” Cal picked up a thighbone and studied the nicks and scratches that covered it. “The gnoll got hungry.” Cal handed the bone to Lelani for confirmation.
“It ate its partners?” Seth asked incredulously.
“Gnolls are terrible allies.”
“Wouldn’t their leader know this?” Cat asked.
“Dorn probably ordered the gnoll not to harm them,” Lelani answered.
“And he didn’t realize it wouldn’t obey?”
“No. Treason and insubordination are rare in the Kingdom of Farrenheil. Dorn’s uncle enjoys putting people on trial for the most minor infractions. Execution is the family hobby. Thinks it sends a good message to the masses. Sometimes they even coax children to divulge their parents’ beliefs, then they arrest the parents and place the children in military orphanages. That’s how they maintain such a large army.” She threw the bone down with disgust. “What arrogance! They believe their whims can subvert nature. Their alliances with these base creatures will be everyone’s undoing, including their own.”
“Right now, that’s a blessing,” Cal said. “Two less sentries we need to deal with.” He studied the trailer. “I assume that’s where the mojo is?”
“Yes,” Lelani said.
“And odds are, Rosencrantz is in that trailer.”
“I’d take that bet,” she answered.
“I’ll go first,” Cal offered.
“No,” Cat responded. “We’ll go together. How much safer can it be in a forest with man-eating gnolls?”
Seth chuckled. Maybe not completely humorless, he thought.
He helped Cat stand and volunteered to be her crutch as he’d done often since they’d dispatched the gnoll. The other two needed to be unencumbered in case something sprang up. It made sense to everyone, and it helped alleviate the sour mood that sprang between them after he had refused Cal’s order to outflank the gnoll. It seemed like a team-player thing to do. Seth had a more practical motive for helping Cat. In the woods, you don’t have to be able to outrun a bear to survive an attack. You just have to be faster than the person you’re with.
They cut a path through the snow. The clearing reminded Seth of the Roman colosseum; the trees surrounding the clearing, bristling in the wind, were a thousand cheering spectators. This didn’t bode well for the four of them, who were on stage. Seth felt vulnerable. Cloistered in the canyons of Manhattan, a person can’t appreciate the reality of open ground. A tactical disadvantage when being hunted.
The trailer was about fifteen feet long and in need of a wash. Dents and dings decorated the pleated aluminum skin. Cinder blocks lifted the hitched end off the ground. Cal reached it first and was about to knock, when-
“Wait!” Seth said.
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know what?”
“I…”
“Are we just going to stand out here?” Lelani asked.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Cat said. She hobbled up and rapped on the door.
The vapors from their breath ceased in unison. Everything was silent. Then they heard clanging and banging within. The trailer rocked as the footsteps grew louder. The door creaked open and stopped at the limit of a chain, just enough space for a mouse to slip through. A single eye in the darkness took stock of them from the crack.
“No trespassing,” it said in a low raspy voice.
“We’re looking for Rosencrantz,” Cal said.
The eye considered them, shifting from one to the other.
“Wizards are a temperamental lot. They’re not like Jedi Masters-feed you soup and teach you tricks because you crash in on them. More likely to turn you into mice and feed you to their snakes. Go home… while you still can.”
“I’m well aware of the temperament of wizards, sir,” Lelani said. “My own master, Magnus Proust, has turned a few assistants’ heads prematurely white.”
The eye pondered this. “Magnus Proust?”
The door shut. A chain rattled, then the door opened wide. He was a short, stocky man, bald on top with graying sides, red bulbous cheeks, and a little gray mustache. His skin was tanned, as though he recently returned from a cruise. He wore red-and-brown plaid pajama pants, slippers, and a black T-shirt that said, What Is Good? in stark white letters.
“Don’t try nothing funny, or I’ll cut ya,” he said. There wasn’t a knife in sight.
“We’re not here to hurt anyone,” Cat replied.
The man took a long look at Cat and smiled. “You know, you’re the first people to show up around here that didn’t give me the creeps. You ought to see the things popping up lately. There’s a fucking gnoll in those woods. Kid you not. That damn thing howls at the moon and keeps us up all night. Sends shivers to my corns.”
“Not anymore,” Lelani said.
“You don’t say? Well, hot damn. That’s just great. The missus will be thrilled. Anything I can do to repay you folks?”
“Yeah,” Seth said. “Blast the evildoers, find the kid, get me my job and apartment back, and send everyone else home.”
“Uh… yeah,” the man said. “I was thinking more like snacks, maybe some Tang or hot chocolate.”
“Magi Rosencrantz, please forgive my companion’s outburst,” Lelani cut in. “Proust speaks very highly of your skills. We need help.”
“Well, I’ll do what I can, only… I’m not Rosencrantz. Name’s Benito Reyes. Friends call me Ben.”
“Can we see Rosencrantz?” Cal asked.
“You already have.”
The four of them looked at each other hoping someone knew what he meant.
“We have?” Seth said.
“Please don’t say he’s a skilyte,” Cat added.
“No. That’s Rosencrantz,” Ben said, pointing out the door.
The oak bristled in the wind.
“He lives in the tree?” Seth asked.
“No.” Ben pointed again.
“Rosencrantz is the tree?” Cat said.
“Boggles the mind, dun it?” Ben responded.
“Of course,” Lelani said. “I should have realized.”
“How do you talk to a tree?” Seth asked.
“It can be done, but I lack magical energies.”
“You can take your fill there,” Ben said pointing to a rusty spigot sticking out of the trailer. “It’s tapped into the lay line.”
Lelani smiled and went to the spigot.
“Are you the… what?… butler, gardener?” Seth asked.
“Same difference when your boss is a tree. Say, you folks must be pretty cold. Come in for a spell and warm up.”
“You go,” Lelani said. “I want to recharge my cache first.”
The trailer was filled top to bottom with periodicals, mostly yellowed with age: Life magazine, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, Time, Saturday Evening Post, Scientific America, Better Home and Gardens, Vogue, New Republic, New York Times, comic books, and countless trade publications from neurobiology to actuarial journals, going back to the turn of the twentieth century. They were stacked flat on the floor all the way to the ceiling, leaving just enough room for a single trail in the center. Seth spotted a copy of Action Comics number one, the first appearance of Superman. Each stack teetered and threatened the walkway.
Getting out of the wind was a good start, but Seth doubted any relaxing could be done in this mess. “Read a lot?” he asked.
“Actually I do,” Ben responded. “But these belong to him.”
“This is the tree’s library?” Cat asked.
“Yeah. It’s also a graveyard. All the pulp in here was made from Rosencrantz’s friends; other sentient trees like himself. Creepy, huh?”
“How depressing. And you live here?” Seth asked.
“Not exactly.”
Ben opened one of two doors in the back of the trailer. Sunlight and a warm breeze flowed through the doorway. They followed him in and found themselves in a spacious bright kitchen with terra-cotta floor tiles. The walls were cream-colored paper with pictures of bowls of fruit, sugar and flour bins, and other pleasant kitchen items, all rendered in lime green and lemon yellow. One photo stood apart, a black-and-white picture of a beautiful blonde in a one-piece bathing suit with a sash across her that read Miss Flushing, Queens. Open French doors revealed a patio with white wicker furniture overlooking a solitary beach and a beautiful sunset up on white crashing waves.
“Welcome to Puerto Rico,” Ben said.
“Holy cow!” Seth said.
“For once, I agree with you,” Cal added.
Seth stuck his arm back through the doorway and felt the cold sting of upstate New York. Once his mind accepted what had just occurred, he took off his jacket and claimed a padded lounge chair in the corner of the patio. “Finally, something good happens to me,” he said.
“May I use the bathroom?” Cat asked.
“It’s right in there, sweetie.” He handed her a crutch that lay in the corner. “My daughter sprained her ankle last year. You look like you could use it.”
“Thank you.”
“Ben, is that you?” came a voice from another room.
“Be with you in a minute, honey. That’s the missus,” he said with a smile. Ben poured them lemonade and made each one a plate of freshly made pasteles from a tray on the stove. “Just finished a batch before you came knocking,” he said. “Excuse me for a minute. Make yourselves at home.” He went into the bedroom.
Cal kept checking his watch and looking back at the trailer door.
“Take a breather, man,” Seth said. “Your brain’s still being edited. Relax.”
Cal considered him with a sour face.
It was in the forefront of Seth’s thoughts that the cop blamed him for the current situation. If everything they claimed were true, Seth would only have been thirteen at the time. How could a teenager be relevant to a covert mission? Seth turned from the cop’s scowl and studied the beach. A half-naked Puerto Rican girl, tanned and gorgeous, romped with her dog. Seth instinctively wanted to get his camera and pursue the opportunity. He watched-a neutered voyeur.
“We’ve got to go back,” Cal said.
“Let’s thaw out first,” Seth whined.
“Now.”
“Jeezus! I’m with the only guy in Puerto Rico who wants to work.”
“Can it. Let’s go.”
“You go.”
“You, too. You were there thirteen years ago. Might be important.” Cal hovered over Seth. He wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
Seth considered whacking the cop in the balls and running down the beach. He decided not to push his luck. “Well… so long as I’m important. What’s the plan?”
“We talk to the tree.”
“Of course. It’s so obvious. Do you speak Tree?”
“Lelani will figure it out.”
“Pretty convenient having your own living, breathing computerlike girl Friday. She’s like your Mr. Spock.”
“You’re only as good as the people who help you. Aandor, NYPD… doesn’t matter where.” Cal’s tone indicated Seth was the weak link on this team.
“What about Cat?” he sniped.
Cal’s expression changed, like a stick prodding a wound; Seth had struck a nerve. Cat was a liability to the mission. In Cal’s anal-retentive hierarchy, even Seth had more of a stake in this mission than Catherine.
“Quit stalling,” Cal said.
Ben came back from the bedroom and with him was a slip of a woman with a slight hump, in mismatched sweat clothes and slippers.
“Hey guys, I want you to meet my wife, Helen Flannery Reyes. Helen was Miss Queens, New York, 1966, you know. She gave those upstate girls a good run for their money in the Miss New York pageant, didn’t you, hon?”
Helen shuffled over to the men slowly and took Cal’s hands in hers. They were mottled and leathery, and she smelled of menthol. Seth was glad she chose to greet Cal.
“Don’t you pay Ben any mind,” she told them in a slightly slurred speech. Both men realized she was recovering from some sort of ailment, like a stroke. “He still sees me as that girl of seventeen, but you and I know there are a lot more miles on this ol’ bucket than he cares to admit.” She winked at them and smiled, mostly with the half of her mouth that was still mobile.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you Mrs. Reyes,” Cal said. “But if you could excuse us for a minute…”
“Are you leaving already?” Ben asked.
“Can you talk to Rosencrantz, Ben?”
“No.”
“Please, it’s very important.”
“I didn’t mean no, I wouldn’t, I mean I can’t. I inherited this gig from the former caretaker. Taught me everything I needed to do to maintain Rosencrantz’s comfort and health. I don’t even think the tree knows I exist.”
“Is this portal back to New York permanent?”
“It’s a fixed transfer,” Ben said. “It’ll still be there after you exit.”
“Could I impose on you to let Catherine rest here a while? Her ankle…”
“I’ve got some Aleve and a cold pack we can throw on that baby,” said Helen. “I think my daughter’s old air cast is somewhere in here, too. Hey, when you come back, Ben will build a bonfire on the beach.”
“Great idea,” Ben said. “We can trade war stories. I was in the Big One back in ’forty-four.”
“We’re imposing too much as it is, Ben.”
“What imposing?” Helen cut in. “We rarely get visitors anymore. The kids are so busy with their careers…”
“I’ve got eight bedrooms attached to this place,” Ben said. “You guys look like you can use a rest.”
“Yeah,” Seth said. “At least do it for Cat.”
Cal grabbed Seth by the cuff and pulled him toward the transfer. He smiled at the Reyeses and thanked them for their help while pushing Seth out the door. Seth barely managed to grab his coat before the cold breath of upstate New York kissed him again.