Isle of Wysteria: The Monolith Crumbles (23 page)

The bud blossomed into a black flower, which swayed up towards his face.

Akar closed his eyes and opened his mouth, and the flower plunged inside. Snaking down his throat, he forced his body to withstand the unnatural sensation as the long stem forced its way into his gullet, finally ending with a prickly clump of roots that tickled his throat on the way down.

Only once it was done did he allow himself to gag. For a few moments he heaved in silent agony, his eyes bulging with pain as if he would die. Then, slowly, a smile crept across his face and he exhaled. A sickly green fog roared out of his mouth, settling down on the floor and soaking into the living wood. The family tree stirred for the briefest of moments, then settled into a deep slumber.

Safe now from prying eyes, he allowed his mind to actually think again. She had trained him how to compartmentalize his thoughts during the day. To lock himself away deep inside, creating a surface persona that only felt love and esteem for the family he served. Only now, during the night could he truly be himself.

“Take this veil, that you may walk unseen.”

He reached into the jar and pulled out a pair of boots and a cloak made of living black thorns and dressed himself in them, covering his head with the cowl. Had the Buckthorn family tree been watching him, he would have suddenly vanished from her perception.

“Take this weapon, that you may wound your enemy.”

He pulled out one final bundle from the pot, a handful of iron spikes and scrolls.

Inside her lavish bedroom, Dahlia lay sprawled out as she slept, her foot snagged in the gossamer curtain, her hair caught in her mouth. Woad stood there with a palm leaf, gently fanning her as she snored.

Almost imperceptibly, a shadow slipped in through the sleepy doorway and formed up behind him.

“It is time,” Akar hissed excitedly.

Woad stepped aside as Akar skimmed over to her bedpost and looked over her.

“Are you certain they will not overhear us?” Woad asked nervously.

Akar released a blanket of green fog over Dahlia. Her face pinched in discomfort, then went limp. Her snoring tripled in volume.

“Sleep well, tyrant.”

Akar spun around to face the other man. “I have paralyzed every woman in the household. I give you my word that you are safe until morning light.”

Woad stood there for a moment, his hands tightening on the palm stalk as he struggled within himself. Then, his decision made, he set down the leaf and followed Akar out into the hall.

As still as the grave, and just as quiet, the other men were all gathered on the main veranda. Only the dim misting of their breath in the starlight betrayed a living presence.

“I thank you all for coming,” Akar said, startling many of them. Their eyes darted around, as if they expected some ambush from the shadows.

“Why have you brought us here?” Woad asked, rubbing the festering wound on his arm.

“To show you something.”

Akar leapt up on the railing and motioned to another giant tree across from them. Despite the late hour, lights were still on within, and navy personnel could be seen drinking and singing. Their laughter carried faintly on the wind, little more than a whisper by the time it reached the Buckthorn tree, but bitterly present nonetheless.

“Look at them,” Akar began. “Those navy rats burned their forest and killed their children, and how do the women treat them? They let them sleep in warm soft beds, with full bellies and clean clothes. We have served those same women night and day. Working ourselves to death. By our sweat and blood are their fields harvested, their meals cooked, their homes cleaned. And what do they give to us? Moldy food, filthy rags, foul straw, and the lash.”

Akar could see the men struggle in their hearts against his words. A lifetime of lies and justifications were not so quickly eroded.

“Are we not worthy of at least the portion afforded to the enemy?” he said again, louder this time. “Are we not also people of this island? When this forest was attacked, did we not defend it with our own hands?”

Some of the younger men began to nod in agreement. Many of the older ones backed away.

“You should not speak ill of your Matrons,” Yew warned, scratching the scars on his stooped shoulders. “You will bring the lash down on us even harder than before.”

“This is their world,” another added. “It belongs to them. We are only trespassers.”

This only emboldened Akar. “Do you know why the women treat the men of the navy with dignity?”

The men looked at each other, unsure of how to answer. Even Yew was stumped.

“Because they demand to be treated as equals.”

“The women will never love us in their hearts,” Willowood coughed as he leaned against his crude crutch. “They will always hate us, as Milia herself hates us.”

“To be born a man is a sin,” another added.

Akar laughed. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am beyond caring what the women have for me in their black hearts.”

To emphasize his point, he pulled back his cowl, giving them all a good view of the brand on his cheek. “They scalded my heart until it was beyond feeling. They can hate me all the days of their cursed and unnaturally long lives for all I care.”

Akar jumped down to their level, startling a few of them. “But they will TREAT me as an equal, regardless of their rank feelings!”

“Your words are brave, young one,” Tanoak coughed sickly, revealing a mouth vacant of any teeth. “But they have no bite to them. The women tolerate the navy only because they need them. Once they are no longer of use to them, they will discard them like a sour pit.”

Akar stood up straight. “Oh yes, they need the navy for the moment. But they need us every day, a thousand times more. This island could not last a week without our labors. Without us, no more children would ever be born. They have no future without us, and they should be mindful of that. The problem is they have had us under their boots for so long they have forgotten how essential we are.”

Akar flung open his cloak and held out the spikes and scrolls. In his other hand he presented them a hammer. “We will remind them.”

“What is that?” Yew asked.

“A message. It means that you will live under their heel no longer. The women will allow us to stand alongside them, or they will stand alone. They can lord over a dying forest, childless and barren, until the last leaf falls and this place becomes nothing more than a shameful memory of dust and cinders, or they can give us what we demand.”

Akar was pleased to see a fire kindling in the hearts of so many, but others resisted.

“You will bring the wrath of Milia down on us,” Tanoak coughed, looking around ominously. “If we were meant to live as they do, Milia would have blessed us with magic as she did her daughters.”

Willowood nodded. “He is right. You must learn your place. It is the natural order of things.”

Smugly, Akar leaned back against the railing. “And what if the order was a lie?”

He allowed the thought to marinate among them.

Yew stepped in closer. “What are you getting at?”

Akar grinned. “Have you not heard? A baby boy has been born to the new Queen. A man-child who can use magic.”

The men gasped. Many covered their ears, as if they feared to be cursed by the mere hearing of such a thing.

Akar strode in among them, his arms outstretched. “The women feign to hide this from you, because they know what it means.”

Now their eyes were fixed firmly upon him. “What does it mean?”

“It means they are wrong about us. It means the church has lied to us. If a man can use magic, then we are not animals. We are people, and the women were wrong to treat us as they have.”

The men looked at one another in astonishment.

“I do not promise you victory,” Akar continued. “I only promise you the opportunity to stand up and claim what is yours for the taking, should you dare to believe you can have it. Freedom will never be given to us, not in a thousand generations. We will either stand up and claim it for ourselves, or we will curse our sons and our grandsons to live the same miserable lives we have lived. Now, my brothers, answer me this. What future will you leave to your sons? Freedom, or slavery?”

The men went deathly silent. Barely a breath passed among them.

Finally, Woad stepped forward, and took one of the spikes from Akar’s outstretched hand.

“This morning,” he said angrily, turning to the others, “my Matron nearly shot me dead for sport. Seventeen long years I’ve served her, and I mean no more to her than a stool or a crate. I am not a person, I am a thing. I only now see that it is because I have allowed myself to be treated as a thing. I’m not afraid to lose my life. Not anymore. Because I realize now that I don’t even have a life to lose. I am twenty-nine years old, and I can’t even write my own name. I’ve never had a real meal. I’ve never slept in a real bed. Chances are I would not live out the year anyway. So, how am I to spend my last season before the stillness takes me? Cowering and polishing? No! No more! I will gladly trade the days I have left for a chance to live free, even if it is just for one day! No, even if it is just for one hour! For one moment!”

Taking the hammer, Woad lined up the scroll and spike, and with a deep guttural roar, rammed it into the living wood of the tree.

The men cheered. A hoarse and sepulchral sound, feelings bound up and locked away, a lifetime of injustice, was now given voice. They pushed forward nearly as one, driving the spikes in until they were all used, then taking turns, driving the spikes deeper and deeper into the trembling bark.

The group of older men holding out grew smaller and smaller, until only Willowood remained.

Akar offered him the hammer. “Will you join us?”

Willowood took up his crutch and scooted forward. “You have doomed us all. The powers of the entire world could not defeat the trees of this forest with ten thousand warships, what chance do we have? They will crush us flat like dung flies.”

He looked them over judgmentally, then his face hardened further. “…but…if we are to be doomed, then I would rather die as one of you, than stand with the leaf-witches against you.”

Willowood took the hammer and with a scream struck a spike with all his might. The men of the Buckthorn family cheered as one.

* * *

Alder had difficulty focusing his eyes through the cloud of pain that seemed to envelop his senses. Gradually he became aware of a cool wet cloth being gently stroked across his sweaty forehead.

“Athi?”

“Shh, it’s all right, I am here,” she said soothingly, giving him a lingering kiss on the lips.

Alder had to break the kiss to cough painfully.

“Please, tell me, what can I do for you?” he requested.

Athel shook her head. “Oh no, I don’t need anything.”

Alder turned his head towards the window, the dark horizon was brightening with the gathering light of morning. “Did you watch over me all night?”

“And most of last evening. You are a lot sicker than you’ve been letting on. You should not have tried to hide it from me.”

Alder shook his head. “No, this is unacceptable. I must get up. You have so many duties to attend to. I cannot become a burden to you.”

Athel placed her hand on his chest. “Stop it. Just stop it, okay?”

Alder coughed again and settled back in.

“You’ve always taken care of me,” Athel said gently. “Now let me take care of you.”

Alder coughed again, his body shivering with cold. “You are too kind.”

She stroked his brow as she looked him over tenderly. “No, I’m not kind enough. Not nearly for what you deserve. Just tell me what you want and it’s yours. Anything in the Queendom.”

Carefully, Alder reached up and placed a clammy hand against her cheek. “I already have more than I ever wanted.”

Athel felt her heart brimming over, and a tear fell free, running down her cheek. As she fell on him to kiss him again, she thanked Milia in her heart for having been blessed with such a wonderful man for a husband.

“You know,” Athel said, wiping her face off, “if you keep saying romantic things like that, it’s going to cause a scene in front of everybody.”

Alder looked over and noticed with her free hand she was griping her staff in an official manner.

“You’re holding court right now?”

“I have to. It was the only way I could spend time with you.”

* * *

In the royal court, King Buni tilted his head to one side, his dog-like ears flopping over as he stared at an empty throne.

“Queen Forsythia thanks you for fulfilling this request so promptly,” Snowberry Forsythia relayed as she stood next to the throne in her formal wear, clearly uncomfortable with this assignment.

“Um…okay,” King Buni stammered, looking again at the empty throne. “Is the Queen…invisible?”

A few of the Wysterians chuckled to themselves.

“No, my niece is holding court through the forest. Everything I hear and see is passed onto her.”

King Buni shrugged and scratched behind his ear. “Whatever. Bring them in, I guess.”

His guards clapped their paws together, and a dozen large crates were wheeled in, Mina and Balen showing them the way. “This is the latest synthesis,” she announced to the court. “A combination of Hazari, Advan, and Mesdan sorceries.”

As a crate was opened, Nikki leaned over in interest from her desk. “Are those Hazari lightning arrows?”

“Originally, yes.”

Unable to quell his curiosity, Balen walked over and picked one up. The metal shaft shimmered in every color of the rainbow as the light caught it just right. “Sparkly.”

“I thought these were reserved for the royal guards to the Hazari throne only,” Nikki asked.

King Buni’s guards bristled at this, but a quick bark from him stilled them.

“The world is changing,” he announced for all to hear. “The things we once kept hidden away we now share freely. That is how it must be in this new Alliance.”

Nikki was handed a tablet for her to sign off on the delivery.

Curiously, Balen reached his finger out to check the squishy, blunt tip.

King Buni held out his paw. “Be careful…”