Liar's Harvest (The Emergent Earth) (17 page)

Anne unzipped her jacket. “Getting warmer.”

“Yeah,” said Chuck. “And the air’s less dry. It’s like winter doesn’t go any further than Henry’s yard.”

I put my hand on a nearby tree. “It’s more than that. I’m no expert on the local plant-life, but I’ve been out in these woods plenty of times and I don’t recall seeing any trees this size before.”

Anne and Chuck came over to see and the wisps patiently stopped where they were.

The trunk of the tree I was looking at was larger than I could put my arms around. It looked like an oak to me and must have been at least sixty or seventy feet tall. The canopy was so dense that I couldn’t see the night sky through it.

The woods around Henry’s place weren’t all that extensive, maybe a few miles across, and were made up of trees with pretty slender trunks, pines and birch mostly. I would have remembered seeing something as massive as this before. And it wasn’t the only one we’d passed.

Anne knelt down at the base of the tree. “Take a look at this.”

I squatted next to her. Growing in the fork between two massive roots coming off of the trunk were three flowers, all growing out of the same thick stalk. Each flower head was an open-ended bell, like a pitcher plant, but pointing slightly downward. The flower itself was white and inside were slender threads that glowed with a gentle golden light. It was faint, but when cupped between my hands the light filled my palms. They smelled like summer.

Anne gently stroked one of the flowers and then looked up at the massive oak tree. “These woods don’t exactly feel sinister to me, you know? I mean, they smell goosey as hell, but they seem nice. Like an unspoiled nature preserve or something.”

Chuck snorted. “Nature preserve? There’s nothing natural about it. And everything unnatural that I’ve ever seen has tried to kill me. I don’t think being pretty is the same thing as being safe.”

Anne stood up and brushed crumbs of loose soil from her jeans. We resumed following the wisps. I felt a little easier as we walked, since Patrick’s intuition about these kinds of things had always been good, and I suspected that Anne’s would prove to be no less reliable.

The wisps led us for a few more minutes and I noticed that we were actually getting closer to them for the first time. They had stopped.

We approached slowly, weapons in hand, eyes and ears peeled. The woods were hushed and the air had gone as still as a held breath.

The wisps were hanging high overhead in the center of a clearing, illuminating the open space. A log lay on the ground, partially covered by vines and leaves. As we stepped into the clearing, something darted out of the woods and jumped up on the log.

It was a red fox.

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A
nne glanced at me in surprise. “Didn’t you say that a fox gave that package to Leon in the cemetery?”

“Yeah.”

“You think it’s the same one?”

“I’m betting it’s the same creature, yes.”

The fox stared at us and wrapped its tail around its haunches, seemingly content. Its eyes shone as though reflecting light that wasn’t there. The world changed.

The sun appeared on the horizon and rocketed into the sky in the space of a few seconds, turning the night into noon, hot and bright. At the same time the trees around us vanished and were replaced by an empty plain as far as the eye could see in all directions. Nothing but hard packed dirt, cracked and dry. Not a single blade of grass grew on it. The fox sat in the same place, but now on the dusty ground since the stump had vanished with the trees.

In front of the fox was a package, wrapped in the now familiar pale leather. The package was square and had a lump on top.

Chuck pointed his pistol at the creature. “What the fuck, man? Where are we?”

I took a deep breath and found that I could still smell the woods and the night air. “I don’t think we’ve gone anywhere. I think it’s just showing us something. What do you think, Anne?”

“I don’t know.” She had her gun leveled at the fox with one hand and the other pressed to her nose. “But I can tell you that this is more intense than anything I’ve ever sensed before. My whole face is going numb.”

On the ground, the package began to unwrap itself. As I expected, inside was a book. On top of the book was dried green lump. It was the package that Piotr received. The lump vanished and the book began to smolder and burn. A beam of white-hot light shot skyward and then the book was gone, reduced to ash. The beacon, summoning the Devourer.

Clouds appeared overhead, spreading rapidly from an inky hole where the beam of light had touched the sky. Within moments rain began to fall, slowly at first, but then quickly building to a raging downpour.

Nothing touched us. Despite seeing the sheets of rain ripple across the flat plain and hearing the hissing roar of the storm, we remained dry.

The cracked earth turned dark as it greedily drank in the moisture. The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun and the sun came out again. All around us the ground became soft and rich.

A second package appeared in front of the fox. This one was a tube. It unrolled and revealed a seed shaped like a cruel thorn. The leather roll disappeared and the seed sank slowly into the ground like a stone through mud. A sapling sprouted and grew until it took the shape of a man with Leon’s face. Prime.

All around us more saplings began to grow. Just a few at first, but their numbers doubled and doubled again, until they stretched to the horizon. Each became a crude stick man, half the size of the one with Leon’s face.

Bloody bones of all shapes and sizes began to appear in the hands of the stick men. Each was passed from wooden hand to wooden hand until they reached Prime, who then stacked them at his feet, carefully arranging them into a huge mound. When it was completed, Prime opened his hand to reveal a brilliant green pinpoint of light. It jumped from his palm into the mass of bones.

The stick men vanished. Prime vanished. Only the bones remained. The sun overhead plummeted downward, past the horizon, and smothered us in darkness once again. Alone with the fox and the heap of bloody bones. The mound trembled and rocked as though something inside were struggling to get free.

The fox yawned, pink tongue curling towards the roof of its mouth. We were back in the woods, bathed in the blue-green light of the wisps overhead.

Instead of a fox, there was now a man seated on the log. His face was covered by an African tribal mask, carved from wood with dried grass hanging from the sides like long strands of hair. Several spiders were carved into the mask on the forehead and cheeks. The man was naked except for the mask and a loincloth. His exposed skin was black and his chest was painted with the outline of a huge white spider.

From behind the mask, the man said, “Once upon a time, gods walked under the sun and the moon. Great and small, terrible and beautiful, they covered the world, creating a savage paradise for their kind. They had dominion over all of the plants and all of the animals save one. Man.”

I blinked and the man was gone. In his place sat a Native American wearing a headdress of fur that covered his head and draped down across his shoulders. The headdress was the skin of a coyote, with the empty muzzle hanging low over his forehead and nose.

“Man was different than all of the other animals. Where man gathered, the light that sustained the gods waned, making them weak and ill. So the gods sought to get rid of man by many different means, both subtle and cruel. But one god was not like the others and found that he alone was not weakened in man’s presence. And this god, who was the most clever of them all, secretly began to teach man to thrive instead of withering under the gaze of the gods. As man spread over the face of the land, the clever god found shelter from the other gods in man’s shadow. Outraged by man’s encroachment, the strongest gods summoned the clever one, not knowing that he worked against them, but only that he could walk among mankind without sickness.”

In place of the man sat an Asian woman wearing a robe of fox fur, the skin around her eyes painted red and her lips painted white. The collar of the robe was made of nine fox tails that fell in a cascade down her back and across her shoulders.

“The other gods were mightier than the clever one and so held his life in their hands. They told him that the tide of man was now too great to stop and that they would soon be forced to slumber as man destroyed that which sustained them. But they had a plan, which they thought very sly. They would give the little god a sack of terrible things, and when only he was left awake, he would go among mankind and find those whose hearts hungered to use them. And in using them, man would sow his own destruction. Though he did not want to, the clever god was bound by his word and more than his word, and so he did as they wished.

“For many seasons he walked among men and watched them as they grew in power and numbers. They built grand cities and raised vast armies, and when the god saw this, he knew his time was near, for war breeds hatred and desperation enough to twist the hearts of men into shapes that were of use to him. And he began bestowing gifts from the sack he had been given. But time and again the men he chose failed to understand the gifts, or understanding them, refused to use them. Many years passed as he toiled without success and in his secret heart he was glad. Until a great war came and a man was found who understood his gift and embraced it. And his gift was the most terrible of all.

“In their desperation and their hatred, his masters had added it to the sack, but he knew that they had been foolish to do so, for neither man nor god would be safe from what it would bring. But he had no choice. When he found a heart that called a gift in the sack, he was compelled to draw it forth. And so the end of everything loomed nigh. But he was clever by nature, and so he found another man, a hunter who could be drawn to the right place at the right time, and who would spoil the gift before it could be used. And he did. Almost. The world was spared, but something happened that none of the gods had foreseen. Before the gift could be destroyed it tore a hole in the sky into another place. A place filled with magic, the sustenance of the gods. And that magic rained down on the parched earth and made it fertile once more. It fell in a great deluge and for the first time in centuries, mankind’s numbers were no match for it.

“The world began to wake. The clever god was afraid that his master’s plans had succeeded and that his shelter in mankind’s shadow was soon to come to an end. Worse, he still carried the cursed sack and before he could think of what to do, another heart called out for a gift, which he was forced to give. So he did the only thing he could and returned to the hunter that had served him well before. And he hoped that the hunter could rescue them both before it was too late.”

My mouth was dry and my heart was racing. “How does the hunter rescue them?”

The woman who was also a fox smiled very slightly. “He finds the Heart of the Forest. All who seek it must begin at dawn. The wooden man has woken the forest, but he must not possess its Heart.”

“Where is it?”

“That’s all of the story that there is, Hunter. Be clever. Be swift. The forest will test all of those who attempt to win the Heart.”

“And if I fail?”

But there was no one left to answer. Only the flash of a fox’s tail as it disappeared into the woods.

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