A Grave Tree (20 page)

When this was settled, at least in Ian’s mind, they set out walking.

The path they had once followed down Coventry Hill was overgrown and indiscernible, but they stayed on a north bearing according to Caleb’s compass.

The moon hung high in the starlit sky, and a chill had thoroughly worked its way through Abbey’s clothes by the time they reached the outskirts of what had once been Coventry City and started to pass the crumbled foundations of houses and the remnants of old, buckled roads with trees growing up the center.

Abbey stared at the basement shells with some dismay. What had happened that could level every single house in Coventry? She saw no remnants of building materials, furniture, or belongings, like she would expect to see if there had been some sort of natural disaster. After all, they were only thirty years in the future. Instead, it was like the houses had just been picked up—occupants, contents, and all—and whisked away to another world, leaving behind only their foundations.

Perhaps they had.

But how had the trees grown so big so fast?

“Where did you go while we were at the hospital?” she asked Ian.

“I was visiting an old friend,” he said.

“You knew that I was dead,” she said. “That I’m going to die, soon.”
At this point it might be of starvation
, she thought. Or from rabies. She eyed Russell, who seemed to be following her very closely, like an ever-present shadow.

“This is temporary,” Ian said. “A blip. We’re going to figure out a way to undo this messed-up future so you don’t die. We have to.”

“Where are our parents, Ian? Why haven’t they come back?”

Ian sighed and once again lifted his fingers to his lips to remove a phantom cigarette. “We’re not sure. We think your dad went to one of the wormholes to try to destroy it, and that he somehow got pulled to a parallel universe. At least that’s what your mom thought, and we know your mom tried to go after him, but we have no idea how she planned to get through, since she’s not an Alty. There
is
rumor of another Alty, but that’s unconfirmed.”

“And when were you going to tell us that our dad is an Alty?” Caleb demanded.

“In good time,” Ian replied tersely. “There are reasons we didn’t.”

“Like what?”

“Like that it’s hereditary, so as Damian suggested, one of you is likely an Alty too. If you had known that, you might have attempted to travel between worlds, and that’s extremely dangerous to try without training. In case you haven’t noticed, your parents haven’t come back. Sylvain, your mother, and I didn’t want one of the three of you deciding to head off to save the day.”

Abbey’s eyes filled with hot tears of frustration and starvation. “Please stop reminding me that my parents haven’t come back yet.”

Ian held up his hands. “Sorry. Sorry. I told you communication’s not always my strong suit. Like I said before in the courthouse, I never passed the trials either. Almost none of us have, except Sylvain, Mrs. Forrester, your parents, and a few other members of the Council. So it’s pretty much the stupid leading the blind right now.”

They continued walking, and the cold, hunger, and worry settled more firmly into Abbey’s bones.
Bring it on
, she thought. That was what she’d said from the warmth of Sylvain’s cabin, with her stomach full of stroganoff. It actually seemed a bit funny now. A small bubble of laughter found its way into her throat. She would not feel sorry for herself. She wasn’t starving. She was fine. A human could go for twenty-one days without eating. A little hunger was what time travel adventures and rescuing one’s parents were all about. She wrapped the material of her hoodie tighter around her torso. Jumpsuits seemed quite appealing right now.

“That evening that you went through the tunnels beneath Abbott’s Apothecary, Sandy was with you. Did she say anything interesting?” Ian said.

“About what? We already told you she said you’d been stalking her,” Caleb said.

“Yes, well, that’s not surprising. Did she do anything strange?”

“It looked like she dropped something in the tunnel just before the cave-in,” Abbey said.

“
Were
you stalking her?” Caleb put in.

“I’m not sure if we called it ‘stalking’ in my day,” Ian replied, his light hair glowing in the pale light of the moon.

“If you were, you should leave her alone. She looked really scared. She’s a good friend of our mother’s.” Caleb had puffed up his shoulders and gave Ian a sidelong glance as if sizing up how easily he could take the smaller man down.

“Yes, I suppose she is,” Ian said. “But that’s because your mother thinks she owes her.”

“We know she saved Mom’s life,” Caleb said, snappishly. His hungry voice. Starving Caleb was not always the best at controlling his temper.

Abbey looked around again for any sign of berries or animals they could eat, but the forest was ominously still and empty. She wished she’d studied botany more closely. There must be edible roots or plants around, but she had no idea what they looked like. There were always the beavers, but she couldn’t really imagine killing one of them. Knowing their luck, they’d turn out to be talking beavers or something like that.

Ian pursed his lips in a strange sort of smile. “I guess she did in a manner of speaking. Look, we think Sandy may be with your mother. Did they talk about that at all when they were in the tunnel?”

Caleb shook his head, and Ian fell silent as they trudged through the tall trees.

Sandy
, Abbey thought. Sandy, who was running for mayor, and owned a mining company, and was previously married to the man who owned the transplanetary space travel company and had died under mysterious circumstances. Was the fact that Sandy was potentially with her mother a good thing or a bad thing?

They took cover in a small abandoned foundation at around two in the morning, Ian having declared that they could go no farther without sleeping.

“At least we can have a fire,” Ian said, pulling out his lighter.

“Fat lot of good that’ll do,” Caleb answered. “What are we going to do? Roast Russell?”

“Yeah, if you all want rabies,” Russell said, snapping the air with his teeth.

They gathered fallen branches and built a small fire. The crackle and heat cheered Abbey a bit. Her stomach had gone into some sort of state of shock and she no longer felt the pangs of hunger so acutely. She tried not to run through the list of everyone who was missing—her parents, Farley, Mrs. Forrester, Mark, Sylvain, and Jake—too many times. She and Caleb would find them. All of them. In the morning. They had to.

She was drowsing off when several fur-clad heads popped up on all sides of the foundation.

“We’ve got ’em surrounded!” a shrill voice crowed. Spears and torches appeared next to the heads, then the people rose to their feet, forming a glowing circle around Abbey, Caleb, Ian, and Russell. Abbey’s heart rate lurched from relaxed to a painful staccato. There were at least ten of them. Too many to fight off.

“Just get up carefully. No funny business,” one of the men said.

They rose to their feet slowly, unfurling stiff limbs. Caleb turned in a slow circle, assessing the situation.

“We mean you no harm,” Ian said, his hands in the air. “We’re just passing through.”

“That’s what they all—” the man started, but he was cut off when one of the other men clapped his hand hard on the first man’s arm and pointed at Caleb, his eyes almost popping out of his soot-streaked face.

“It’s the Light. He’s come back for us,” the second man said.

Torches flashed and waved and then were thrust in closer, the heat bouncing off Abbey in waves, as their captors tried to get a closer look at Caleb, his orange hair lit up like a fiery halo.

“The Light,” came a woman’s voice, followed by an answering chorus of, “the Light, the Light,” echoing around the circle. Then, one by one, the people lowered their torches and dropped into kneels before Caleb, who turned again in a slow circle, his eyes wide and his mouth slightly agape.

“Have you come to take us to the promised land?” the woman called out. “The larders have run empty. We have been forced to work for food for strangers who have come to our land. We’ve been waiting for so long.”

Caleb still looked dumbfounded.

“Say yes,” Abbey hissed. “Go along with it. The promised land is Simon’s future.”

“Yes,” Caleb managed to stutter, and then took a deep breath. “Yes,” he repeated more steadily. “I’ve been there myself and it looks… promising.” He paused and winced at his own choice of words before drawing himself up to his full height. “We can begin to put into place plans for travel in the morning. In the meantime, if you have any food, we’d sure appreciate having some. We’ve come a long way under trying conditions.”

“Of course, sir. It’s Nevin here, sir. Matilde and Graham will be so relieved to see you. Our camp is only a few hours’ walk.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have any food on you, would you?” Caleb asked.

“’Fraid not, sir. The food we’ve been getting isn’t particularly portable.”

“All right then, let’s get a move on. These are my friends, and they’re here to help.” A tone of command had already infiltrated Caleb’s voice.

Abbey found herself marching through the trees sandwiched between three fur-clad men, while Caleb led the way with Nevin. She wasn’t entirely sure if the men were there to protect her or hold her hostage. There had been murmuring among Caleb’s people about dissidents and the need to be careful. Russell’s face was strained and solemn, while Ian wore his usual expression of fey curiosity.

So far, in the flickering torchlight, Caleb’s people apparently hadn’t noticed that their leader was about twenty-five years younger and considerably less scarred than he was supposed to be. Caleb asked Nevin low, intense questions regarding what had happened since he had left, and Nevin was chatting freely, unaware that Caleb knew nothing. Abbey had to hand it to Caleb. He was keeping his questions sufficiently vague so as not to tip Nevin off, and somehow had become more like the Caleb she had met in the woods in the fall, than her affable football-playing twin.

Nevin reported that after future Caleb had left, future Mark had headed off to Four-Valley Gap to scout out an another area that he believed had agricultural potential—just in case Caleb never returned. When Mark failed to come back, the group left their old campsite to look for him, but instead they encountered some strangers who were revitalizing the Granton Dam and offered food in exchange for labor. Since the food stores were dangerously low, Matilde and Graham agreed, and so the men had been working for the last month building a diversion for the dam. But just yesterday, three of the men working at the dam site came back to the camp and reported that Mark was a prisoner at the dam, along with the fellow they thought had originally helped Caleb with the move to the promised land.

Abbey contemplated this last bit of information. Were they talking about Jake or Sylvain? And was it present Mark or future Mark who was being kept prisoner at the dam?

Nevin continued. “Matilde and Graham are holding discussions as we speak to decide whether they’re going to the dam to free Mark or not. It’s a bit risky. Biting the hand that feeds you and all,” he concluded. “It’s a good thing you came back now, sir. We need to move to the promised land as soon as possible. We’re just this side of starving.”

The moon had reappeared from behind a cloud, illuminating the small clearing that they were moving through, and Nevin gave Caleb an appraising sideways glance. “Where were you, sir? What took you so long?”

Caleb didn’t answer immediately, but when he did his tone was firm and decisive. “The promised land, while better than here, has some rules and regulations that we had to work through. I came back as soon as I could.”

“When will we be traveling to the promised land, sir? The people who are diverting the dam… we don’t have a good feeling about them. We don’t know where they’re sending the water, and they have what Matilde and Graham and some of the other elders call guns.”

“I don’t know, Nevin. There are some problems. I need to discuss the issue with Matilde and Graham.”

*****

The diversion on which Mark stood blocked the river two kilometers upriver from the old dam and contained the river water in a vast new reservoir that extended far beyond his line of vision. The diversion itself was wide—the river had a breadth of at least seventy meters here—but it was a crude and flimsy-looking cement structure, barely half a meter thick. Mark could not see how it was possibly holding back so much water. It looked kind of like the Hoover Dam in miniature (but Mark doubted it had been similarly engineered).

To one side of the river, built into the riverbank, was a windowless three-story cement building. In contrast with the diversion, the building looked solid, well-designed, and modern. A large platform with a railing, like a sundeck, joined the building to the diversion, and iron walkways and stairs led from the platform around the building to the ground below.

Mark’s back ached, and his arms and forehead were bathed in sweat despite the cool night air. He lifted the mallet to strike another blow, trying desperately not to destabilize himself and fall into the deep dark waters of the new reservoir behind the diversion, or plummet off the other side of the diversion to his death on the rocky riverbed so many hundreds of frightening meters below him.

Falling into the water on the reservoir side would be preferable, Mark decided, but only marginally so. He would only have a few seconds to extract himself before he would be sucked into the churning waters beneath the platform where the water flowed into…
something
in the bottom of the building. In the dark he could not see what it was, but it was very loud.

The sickening ripple of current in the reservoir and undertow were visible on the surface of the reservoir water even in the limited light. But the riverbed on the downriver side of the diversion was almost dry, with only a small trickle of underground seepage.

The water was flowing into the building, but it wasn’t coming out again. Where was all that water going? Mark squinted at the building and then at the dry riverbed. That many cubic meters of water couldn’t just vanish… could they?