Treetalker chapter four
The long walk across the milky surface of the Library’s plaza took on a surreal twist as Garibart felt his perception of the greater universe sputter and go dark. From the moment he first took the scars at the age of twenty, he had not been disconnected from his Tree sense It felt as if part of his soul had died. Halfway across the stone apron, he froze, unable to take one more step away from his internal beacon of sanity. He bared his teeth and snarled up at the mirrored tower. How, he wondered, do the Wizards and the Librarians inside this compound not go mad?
Sanity battled curiosity and curiosity won. Garibart clutched his staff and leaned into the insubstantial wind. He pushed on.
At the bottom of the steps leading up to the main door, he paused to catch his breath and study the facade. If the building was alive, as the Lady Le’alba claimed, its sentience ended a mere fingers breadth from the mirrored walls. Whatever magic kept the mirrored panels spotlessly clean did not extend to the grime blackened plaza. A path had been worn into the grime. The scuff of many feet had polished a pale white trail up the steps, to disappear into the wall. Garibart could only assume a door lay hidden somewhere under all this magic.
He took a deep breath and followed the path.
He had no particular plan, no solid idea of what he intended to do. Something, he was, sure, would come to him.
At the end of the path, Garibart looked for a handle or a keyhole in the wall but found nothing. He stared at the grizzled old man in the mirrored surface with the puzzled look on his face and felt foolish.
Garibart took another step and reached out with his staff to knock upon the strange surface. His staff never touched it. With a loud hiss, the door swooshed aside. Cool, moist air cascaded around him for a moment before the heat of the afternoon sucked it away. Garibart peered into the dim interior only to discover yet another set of doors.
He considered the possible dangers before him. If he stepped past the first set of doors and they closed behind him, he would be effectively imprisoned. Did they think him a fool to fall for such an obvious trap? He looked around for something to use to prop the outer doors open.
One of the interior doors swung outward and a face under the now familiar red felt beret popped around its edge.
“Hey, I don’t have all day. Get in here. You are keeping the doors from closing,” the Guardsman growled in annoyance.
“Ahh, yes. My apologies. I was just admiring their magic. Your Wizards must be very powerful,” Garibart said, stepping quickly through the vestibule. He grabbed the edge of the door away from the Guardsman and pulled it out of his grasp, not quite trusting the Guardsman’s intentions. The guard backpedaled quickly to keep from getting trampled as the old man pushed his way into a large, high ceilinged room.
Garibart paused to look around in wonder. Lights dotted the high ceiling like stars. The floor and walls were highly polished stone. Everything gleamed as if a battalion of cleaners had been busy since dawn. He turned around. The mirrored wall was now a floor to ceiling bank of windows. He shook his head, trying to understand the magics of such a thing.
“What’s he got?” asked a second Guardsman’s, seated behind a stone altar.
“I don’t know. What you got?” the first man asked Garibart.
“I am not sure I understand. Am I supposed to give you something?”
“Why are you here if you are not a junker?” the guard asked suspiciously.
“My name is Garibart. I was told I needed to talk to the Librarian,” Garibart said, his mind racing. Junkers. This was why the Oneverse needed him to come here. Garibart put an innocent look on his face. “People collect things for you? What exactly, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Old tech stuff. The Wizards pay premium creds for stuff they think might be useful,” the first guard said.
“Really? I had no idea those old relics had value. I have a chunk of tech glass I am using as a door stop, back home. Do you think they would be interested in it?”
“I dunno. Does it have markings in it?”
“Like what?” Garibart asked in feigned confusion.
“Gods, just show him. We will be here all day, otherwise,” the second guard growled from behind his altar. Garibart edged closer, hoping to sneak a peak at what kept him so busy there.
“Not that way. Come here,” said the first guard.
He led Garibart to a wall further into the room and pressed his fingers into a small dimple set at the edge of a stone panel. The panel disappeared, sliding sideways into the wall. Beyond was a small, brightly lit room full of shelves. Garibart followed his new friend into the room. Odd pieces of metal and glass and pottery lay everywhere. Trash, Garibart thought. The Wizards collected ten thousand year old trash. The guard turned to check Garibart’s reaction. Garibart tried to look impressed.
“My, you have a lot of…”
“This is nothing. There are rooms and rooms of this stuff upstairs,” the guard said proudly. Here,” he said, tossing a chunk of light weight substance into Garibart’s hands. “Hold it up to the light.”
Garibart tipped his head back, closed one eye and held the object in front of his other eye. Lines of metal, fine as spider webs, clouded the glass that was not glass. Garibart handed it back.
“What is the substance, do you know? It is too light to be glass.”
“The techs say its transparent metal. Its the same stuff as the outside of this building. Old magic, that, from the before times,” the guard said knowingly.
Garibart raised an eyebrow. He turned around, studying the ancient junk. If you collected enough bits and pieces, he mused, would you have something whole in the end, or just a large random pile of flotsam washed up on shore by the waves of time?
Garibart exited the room and waited for the guard to close the panel behind him.
“What do the techs do with it?” he asked as they strolled back to the stone altar together. Garibart’s steps took him closer to the back of the altar, which neither guard seemed to mind or notice.
“They read it to see what it does.”
Garibart stopped.
“Those lines inside that stone are words?”
“No,” the guard laughed, “not human words, at least. The techs plug the bits into machines. Machines talk to machines.”
“No, do they?” Garibart breathed, hardly able to hide his dismay. Did these fools not understand that the old world had been dismantled on purpose? The gods only knew what demons they had already awakened.
“Might I look upon these wondrous machines? It would be a story to tell around the campfires at night,” Garibart asked. The backside of the altar came into view. The second guard sat at a desk, watching an array of panels with images embedded under their surfaces. Garibart puzzled over their meaning and then realized the human figures in the images were moving. Wonder of wonders. A distance-viewing machine.
“Nobody but Techs and Wizards get past the first level,” the guard said, touching Garibart’s elbow to guide him towards the front of the desk.
“Very understandable,” Garibart said faintly, wishing for just one moment of consultation with the Lady Le’alba. How much did she know about the technology inside this building, he wondered.
“Why do you need to see the Librarian?” the second guard asked, looking up. “He doesn’t stop his work just for anyone.”
“I am a teacher. I am writing a children’s book about the history of the Great Trees. Someone told me the Librarian was a student of the Ancient Times.”
“If the Librarian doesn’t know it, nobody does,” grunted the first guard in agreement.
The second guard studied his moving screens and after a moment, looked up.
“He says he is too busy. Come back in two days, midday.”
Garibart raised an eyebrow. Since there had been no audible exchange and any mind talk could be ruled out because of the interference, he could only assume the moving screens allowed for two way communication.
The old man nodded his head and turned towards the front doors. The door guard escorted him through the vestibule. As they approached the wall of glass, the magic doors slid aside. The heat of the late afternoon hit them like a fist.
Garibart turned and held out his hand.
“It was a pleasure meeting you. May ask for you next time I come?”
“My name is Uric, Uric Hollowan. I am always here except on Restday. Don’t worry about the Librarian. He doesn’t like to be hasty. He will see you next time.”
“You are an honest man and very patient with an old busy body like me. I’d like to buy you a drink, in thanks.”
“Why, that would be fine. Standing around all day is mighty thirsty work,” Uric said, licking his lips. “I get off at sunset.”
Garibart stepped off the edge of the milky stonework a few minutes later and strode down the dirt road back towards the center of town.
“Well?” Le’alba asked impatiently.
“I have an appointment with a glass of beer. There is a pub near here called the Flaming Chalice.”
“Two streets down on your left. What did you find out?”
“How familiar are you with the old technologies?”
“Intimately,” the Tree said.
“Did you know they have been buying up every scrap and shard of Ancient Technology they can get their hands on?”
“Yes.” She did not sound pleased.
“Did you know they have a machine that can talk to all those bits and pieces and tell them how to fit the pieces together?”
“I suspected,” she said after a long silence.
“Are they just grasping at random straws or is there a point to this quest?”
She did not respond.
“I need to know what I am up against, Lady,” Garibart insisted.
“The Citadels were programed with one primary goal. Protect the knowledge of the Technological Societies at all costs. At the time, it was perceived that the Great Trees were the most direct and dangerous threat to this goal. Embedded in the primary program was a directive to kill Trees using whatever means necessary. I do not think the current human occupants are knowledgeable enough to re-write this program so I can only assume the kill directive still stands.”
“Oh, by all the gods,” Garibart said, horror turning his insides to jelly. “They cannot… They must not…. Do they not understand that they doom us all, if they succeed?”
“Apparently not,” Le’alba said quietly.
*******
Chick caught sight of the vineman first. He squeaked in horror and tried to back out of the shack, but Dahni, wide eyed and frozen to the spot, was in the way and someone was behind him, pushing to get in.
“What’s going on? In or out!” hissed Gredda from out in the dark. “I got places I need to be and better people than you guys to hang out with.”
Chick stumbled into the room, retreating quickly to a spot behind Ally. Dahni let Gredda slide by as he clung, white knuckled to the a roof support.
“Holy. Mother. Serpent. What…?” Gredda breathed, staring at the vineman. It bowed its head graciously and waved at the three newcomers.
Gredda, blessed by the Mother Serpent with an endless supply of good humor, smiled and waved back.
Ally shook her head and tried not to smile. Things could not get any more ridiculous. Time for introductions.
“Guys, Mom. Mom, guys. You all might as well sit down. She won’t go away until she’s finished her lecture.”
Chick sat down hard on the cushion next to Ally.
“Oh, yeah. Well, moms, ya know,” he said vaguely, as if that explained it all, which it probably did, if one were used to growing up with a mother.
Gredda walked over to the vine mass and held out her hand.
“Hi, my name is Gredda,” she said.
The vine arm reached out and a vine hand wrapped itself very carefully around Gredda’s smaller hand for a moment. The look of wonder lit up Gredda’s face. Ally knew what she was feeling. If you didn’t know what it was saying, it seemed like a giant doll come to life.
“Tell her I know who she is. I am very pleased to meet her, at long last,” Le’alba said, obviously amused.
Ally dutifully repeated what she said. Gredda looked at Ally, a question on her lips.
A scuffle at the door that distracted them all.
Wendal shoved Dahni into the room.
“Move it, D. You’re letting all the bad air out. What the….” Dahni stumbled to a spot near Ally on the other side from Chick, as it became Wendal’s turn to stand, awestruck, in the doorway.
“Yeah, yeah, we know. There is a bush sitting on your favorite cushion,” Gredda said, sitting down next to the vineman. “Get over it and pull up a poof.”
The vine creature looked down at the pillow beneath its woody butt.
Ally covered her mouth, trying to suppress the giggle at the back of her throat.
Wendal sat between Dahni and Gredda, giving them all a look that begged for explanation.
Chick shrugged.
“Don’t ask me. Ally invited her,” he said.
“I did not!” Ally protested.
“Did you explain to her that the clubhouse has very strict no adult rules?” Chick asked accusingly.
“She is new to the mother thing. I don’t think anyone explained the rules,” Ally said dryly.
“Wait. Whose mother is this?” Wendal asked, having missed the first part of the conversion.
“Ally went into the Tree today,” Dahni explained patiently.
“I am not a total and compete dope, ya know,” Wendal said, punching Dahni in the shoulder.
“Well, now the Tree is her mother, so Ally has someone to answer to, at last.”
“What do you mean by that?” Ally asked indignantly.
“Uh, I mean, its good that you have someone looking out for you now,” Dahni said hastily.
“I can take care of myself, just fine!”
“No, you can’t,” said her mother. “You are wild and undisciplined. It is time to begin your schooling.”
“Sure you can,” Gredda said, unaware of the silent comment from Le’alba, “but everyone needs to have someone watching their back.”
“I am not going to school,” Ally growled at the vineman.
“What?” asked Wendal. “Who said anything about the Academy?”
“Oh, do shut up, Wendal,” Gredda hissed softly, her gaze shifting between Ally and the vineman.
“There are many kinds of learning. You need help, which is why I am here. I want all of your friends to hear what I say.”
“No!” hissed Ally, horrified. “Stay out of their heads!”
“Ask them. Do not decide for them. If you love them, you will allow them the right to say yes or no.”
“No.” Ally said stubbornly crossing her arms over her chest.
“Ask,” her mother insisted.
The vineman gestured around the table and then pointed at Ally. Ally glared at the vineman, then turned to her friends. They stared at her expectantly.
“She wants me to ask. I mean, you don’t have to say yes. It is totally up to you guys and I totally understand if you say no, because I know just how pushy she can be….”
“What are you talking about?” asked Wendal.
“Stop yammering, Ally and just ask,” Chick said.
“She wants to talk to you directly. She says I need help with…. the thing I have to do. She needs to teach you how to hear her. That means she has to make a direct connection to your brain for a little bit.”
The runners all stared at the vineman, worried looks on their faces. Ally expected a round of resounding nos, but what came next surprised her.
“Is it going to hurt?” Dahni asked, looking a little worried.
“Like your brain wants to climb out of your skull,” Ally nodded grimly.
“No, this will not be like your transition. One contact at the throat and I can give them petals to dull the pain.”
“What? You save your good torture for the people you are supposed to love?” Ally asked indignantly. Her friends were looking at her, a little concerned. Ally sighed.
“No pain. One poke and thats it. Plus she is going to be generous with the drug in her petals.”
Wendal perked up. Wendal had a thing for dreamstik and liked to experiment a bit.
“I’m in,” he said with a grin.
“You have a quest? Like a hero’s quest, in the stories?” Dahni asked Ally, obviously awed.
“Exactly like that,” said her mother, nodding the vineman’s head.
“Don’t lie to them!” Ally hissed at the vine.
She looked around the table at the people she counted as her closest friends. Everyone of them had the gleam of adventuring in their eyes, true to their runners character. “Look guys, this is going to be dangerous and I have no idea what I am going to do, which will make it all the more dangerous. I haven’t even figured out who the bad guys are yet.”
“I’m in,” sighed Dahni, looking love sick.
“No, you’re not,” Ally said firmly.
“Wait. Wait. I think it has to be all or none. Lets take a vote,” Gredda said.
“So,” Chick said, “she gets in our minds and teaches us how to hear her? Can we talk to each other or do we have to use her as the middle man?”
Ally looked at the vineman. That was a very good question.
The vineman cocked its head and tapped a vine finger on its chin for a moment.
“That can be arranged.” Le’alba agreed.
“Really?” asked Ally, the advantage to this suddenly dawning on her.
“I am going to assume she said yes,” Gredda said. “Any more questions?”
“Will our arms look like yours?” Dahni asked, staring at the scars curling up Ally’s arms.
Since Ally still sat in her undershirt, her arms were on full display. She rubbed them self consciously. The other kids studied them with interest. No one seemed repulsed.
“No,” Ally said, listening to her mother, “One poke just under the chin,” Ally touched the spot on her throat where the scars ended.
“So, if we learn how to Tree talk, will you come to our rescue any time we call?” asked Wendal.
“You were never alone. She was always there,” Ally translated. “If she can talk to us, she will be better able to keep us all out of trouble.”
Gredda looked up at this, that same unspoken question on her face.
“OK, then. Show of hands. Left for no, right for yes. Uh, Ally, you too. You get a say in this,” Chick said.
Three hands shot into the air, with Gredda’s following slowly.
Ally stared at all the right hands. Why were they doing this when they had a choice? Wendal smiled at her encouragingly. Ally pressed her lips together and raised her right hand.
“Right, then, it unanimous.” Wendal said, “What now?”
They all looked at the vineman expectantly and they were not disappointed. It now had a healthy mane of hair. The hair writhed and began budding. Flowers popped open and dropped their petals to the floor. The smell was intoxicating. Single vine strands slithered across the floor towards each of the children.
Chick and Gredda seemed calm enough, not flinching as the vines curled up their bodies. Wendal actually looked like he was enjoying himself. Dahni, however, watched the vineman transform, a terrified look of horror on his face. Ally grabbed his hand and squeezed hard. He pulled his eyes away and looked into hers.
“Just breath naturally. It won’t hurt. I promise,” Ally said. Dahni jumped as the vine found his leg and began curling up his body towards his neck. It circled his neck, over and over again, budding flowers as it went, until Dahni wore a fluffy collar of pink. Dahni’s eyes glazed over, his lids grew heavy and his chin sank into the bed of blossoms.
Ally sat up and looked around. Everyone seemed very relaxed. None of them even flinched when the vine buried itself in the skin of their throats. Ally shuddered and looked away. The vineman was watching her. Ally sniffed the perfumed air and frowned.
“I don’t feel different,” she said, puzzled.
“You are not like the other children. After initial exposure, your physiology shifted to accommodate the presence of the drugs in my petals. You are now immune,” her mother said softly.
Ally did not like the sound of that. She opened her mouth to protest when the vine man reached across the table and cupped her face gently in both its hands.
“I am sorry. The Fathers wish to see you,” whispered her mother as the vine man’s fingers buried themselves in her skull.
It hurt. A lot. Right before she passed out.
The fog was back. Ally found comfort in its cool nothingness. All too soon, a breeze shooed it away.
Ally found herself standing on a ledge on the side of a high mountain that rose up out of a vast flat plane. The mountain was so high she could see the curve of the earth far away on the horizon. She looked down at her bare feet, buried in a drift of snow and wondered why she did not feel the cold.
“Look up,” a soft chorus of voices entreated her. Ally looked up. The air was thin or nonexistent. Even though the sun hung high in the sky, she could see the moon and all the stars blazing brilliantly across the heavens.
“This is our domain. We are the Keepers and the Guardians,” whispered the voices.
The sun’s corona flared, sending streamers of energy out into space to lick at the planet. Just beyond the last breath of atmosphere, a planetary shield flared and the energy danced ineffectually over its surface. A star died a brilliant death, but its particle bursts bent around the shield. Stones the size of small mountains veered off and passed by, unnoticed by any who lived on the plane far below. Chaos ruled the heavens but something kept it at bay.
“Turn around,” said the voices. Ally turned. She faced a wall of ice. She peered into its aquamarine surface. Something, someone, stood upright, facing outward across the plane, ice white eyes staring sightless over the earth below. There were many such beings. They stood shoulder to shoulder, frozen yet alive.
“We are the Watchers,” rumbled the voices.
Ally turned her head left and then right. The wall curved gently away forever, the number of entombed seemingly infinite. Ally turned around. Her mother now stood on the edge of the precipice, her coppery hair sparkling in the star light, a pensive look on her perfect face.
“It is hard,” she said softly, looking with great sadness at the ones frozen in the ice, “to see the stars and not step off into the deep dark. They abide here, the Fathers, watching, waiting. Banished from the plane of the Mothers. Waiting for the Mothers to finish with the children of men, so that we might take our place by their sides. Waiting for humans to awaken into their…. purpose.”
Ally glanced back at the wall, puzzled.
“Aren’t they human? They look human.”
“They are Tree, as human as any Tree can be and they wait here, for the time when they can, at last, let go of their burden and turn their eyes to the stars forever. You must take that burden from them, daughter.” Le’alba turned and gestured to the plane. “This is your domain. We bequeath it to you.”
The plain came into sharp focus. The land was rich and fertile and alive with both Tree, and man.
“Me? By myself?” squeaked Ally in alarm.
“We are not leaving,” her mother reassured her. “We will always be there if you need us. But only as advisors. The direction will be yours.”
“I do not want this,” Ally said, shaking her head. “I am too small. I know nothing about ruling a planet.”
“Then we are all doomed,” the voices behind her wailed softly. Ally scowled. Her mother knew how to play dirty, bringing her here to listen to the chorus of guilt.
“You do not have to rule. Men must rule themselves. But they cannot see into the dark and therefore must walk blindly into the future. Your job is to give them direction. You must give the future shape and form, that they might walk with confidence,” her mother said, resting her hands on Ally’s shoulders.
“How to I do that?”
“Imagine the world, not as it is, but as it ought to be.”
Ally’s heart skipped a beat. This was the Imagine Game, the words were her father’s words. Or were they? Treetalker, he had been. Le’alba had been in his mind, even then. Ally twisted away from her mother’s gentle embrace and stared at her suspiciously.
“Why can’t you do it? Why do you need me? Isn’t this your mess?” Ally asked her mother. Her mother stared off over the plane, a sadness on her face.
“We are the Keepers of the Knowledge, Guardians of the Way.” the voices sang, “We see the future and the past, yet it is the Now, the Present that we fear. The Now sits at the center. All the threads of the past and the future wind through it. How can we heal this? To touch even one thread of the weaving is to risk destruction of the whole. Yet a canker grows here. To do nothing is to risk certain doom.”
“You are afraid? If you are afraid, then where does that leave me? You are ten thousand years old and I am barely twelve.” Ally said, trying desperately to make them see.
“Lenard Birch was a man of frightening intellect, you see.” her mother said in apology. “We were his children. He could not let us die. In his quest for survival, for immortality through us, his children, he stripped away the veils that protect an ordinary human mind. He gave us infinite knowledge and infinite sight. It destroyed many of us but those of us who emerged from his crucible, emerged as beings unconstrained by time. We exist as points of awareness stretched long and thin across all of existence and the one thing we will not, cannot do is commit suicide. We cannot touch the strands of time because it is forbidden to us. We risk our very sanity. Trees must stay sane. Do you see?”
“No,” Ally said stubbornly, suddenly feeling sick, because she did, in fact, have a suspicion of what her mother meant. All that knowledge had petrified them. Knowing the consequences of every choice in the ‘Verse forced them to make safe choices. After ten thousand years of safe choices, they had painted themselves into a corner. Now, every choice led to calamity. They could not act for fear of killing some part of their own future and it was making them crazy.
“We need not a hero, to battle our demons, but an Innocent. Wish a wish, and we will fulfill it. Imagine the future and we will steer the coarse, no matter what the cost.” the voices sang.
“Wait. You can’t change the future but its OK for me to go mucking about with time? That’s stupid. What if I make a mistake? You all may be willing to die, but I am not willing to be the one who kills you.”
Le’alba reached out to touch Ally’s cheek. Ally allowed it but barely.
“You are us, with only one difference. You are young, as we have never been young, and you remember what it is to feel emotions. What ever you choose to feel, whether it be love or hate or passion or rage or compassion or mercy, trust the knowing of it, trust the journey that has brought you to that point and use it. Trust in your instinct as we trust it.”
“Why do I get the feeling that you are tricking me in some way?” Ally scowled, flinching away from her mother’s hand. “What do you know that you aren’t telling me?”
“You must go into the future without precognition. I cannot tell you anything for fear of influencing the outcome. I am sorry,” Le’alba said. “But you will have help.”
Le’alba extended her fingers into the fabric of this place and opened a door. Chick, Gredda, Wendal and Dahni now stood on the ledge, shoulder to shoulder, eyes as blank as the Fathers behind them. The similarity did not escape Ally’s notice.
“Let them go,” Ally demanded.
“Do you wonder why of all the runners, only these four came to you tonight?” her mother asked. “I have chosen them to be your pack. Do you understand this word?”
Ally opened her mouth to say yes, but a very complicated concept of structured family connections rose to replace the simpler idea in her child’s mind.
“Uh, now I do,” Ally confirmed. Her mother smiled serenely.
