“That’s a cheerful thought,” Sofia said.
Just then, Mistress Jane appeared in front of them. As always with winking, there was no puff of smoke, no flash of light or sound. One second she wasn’t there, and the next second she was, dressed in her usual yellow garb and her shiny red mask. Her face was pulled into a genuine smile. It gave Tick the creeps.
“Looks like I miscalculated a bit,” she said. “Guess I’m not perfect after all. We need to be on the other side of that.”
She pointed at the stone face to their right. The wall was maybe forty feet high, with several spires of rock stretching toward the sky from its top edge. Though it had a menacing feel to it, the slope didn’t seem too steep, and Tick thought they could probably climb it pretty easily.
“Follow me,” Jane said as she headed in that direction, lifting up the bottom folds of her robe as she walked and carefully avoiding chunks of rock strewn about the desert floor. “And remember, Atticus—don’t try anything.”
When neither Tick nor anyone else made a move, Jane stopped. Her body stiffened, and some kind of unspoken warning seemed to flow from her, back at them like a misty spray of poison. She didn’t need to say a word.
As one, Tick and his friends stepped forward and followed her.
~
The heat was stifling, an invisible fire that suffused the air of the world, filling Tick’s lungs with every breath he took. Once they reached the slope of the red wall, he realized it was much steeper than it had originally looked. Amazed at how easily Jane scooted up its face, he determined to do just as well.
Grabbing rocks that blistered with heat and finding footholds aplenty in the cracked and creviced stone, he found climbing wasn’t so bad. About halfway up the wall, he looked down to see Paul and Sofia right below him. Master George was struggling a little, mainly because he was trying to keep his suit from getting dirty, but the darker patches of sweat under his arms revealed that his suit would need a good wash anyway—though Tick doubted they’d be seeing a Laundromat on the other side of this wall.
What am I thinking about?
Tick asked himself as he continued to climb. Laundry? Sweaty armpits? He needed to stay focused.
Jane reached the top ridge above him and disappeared from sight, kicking a trickle of rocks down the slope with her last steps. Tick squeezed his eyes shut until the rocks passed; a couple of pebbles nicked his forehead. He pulled himself up the last few feet and stood on the top edge of the wall, taking in the sight before him. Sofia thumped the back of his leg.
“Scoot over, Tick,” she said. “Give us some room here.”
Tick stepped forward, too focused on the strange setting below him to respond to Sofia. The ground slowly sloped from where he stood, leading to a wide depression surrounded by squat, scraggly trees that barely clung to life, their sparse leaves more brown than green. Scattered across the dusty ground of the natural bowl formation were several groups of people, each group focusing and working on various stations that couldn’t possibly have looked more out of place.
Computers and monitors covered tables scattered around the ground. Other platforms held large, silver machines he’d never seen before, each one loaded with odd appendages and dials and switches. Several viewing screens had been set up, tall and square and white, perched precariously on metal stands. Tick feared the slightest wind would topple them over. In the middle of each screen, Tick saw something he recognized: a small metal rod attached with a suction cup.
Spinners. Devices from the Fourth Reality, spinners used some kind of laser technology to project pictures and video. Jane had said she wanted them to witness something, but Tick hadn’t thought they’d be watching it like
that.
Sofia and Paul were standing next to him now, scanning the area as he was. Master George finally made it to the ridge as well. Tick heard him grunting and gasping for breath behind them.
“What’s that in the middle?” Paul asked, pointing.
Tick looked, and when he saw what Paul was pointing at, he couldn’t believe he’d missed it before.
It was a statue of a tree, maybe four feet tall, and made of the blackest material Tick had ever seen. There was no blemish to its darkness, no dust, no flash of light or reflection. Every inch of it was pure black. The trunk of the tree was about a foot thick, and its limbs shot off starting halfway up, branching out over and over until the outermost tips were as thin as toothpicks.
“That’s plain weird,” Sofia said.
“What could she possibly be doing with all this junk?” Paul asked. “Especially a stupid sculpture of a tree?”
Master George had finally caught his breath. “Whatever that tree is, I suspect it’s the most important thing down there. It gives me a very bad feeling.”
“It’s so black it doesn’t seem real,” Sofia said.
Tick noticed Jane had walked all the way down to the outermost group of people next to a row of computers but was now coming back. Her red mask still had that creepy smile, like she was a kid at Disneyland and having the time of her life.
“Come down!” she called. “I’ve got chairs for you!”
Tick exchanged looks with Paul and Sofia. Jane sounded way too cheerful, way too nice. That scared Tick almost more than when she screamed at the top of her lungs.
“Off we go,” Master George whispered, giving the three of them a gentle push from behind.
When they made it to the bottom, Jane gestured toward a man holding four folding chairs in his hands, two in each. He had black hair and unusually thin eyebrows, and he wore a faded red T-shirt and jeans. As he started setting up the chairs, Jane introduced him.
“This is Frazier Gunn, my most loyal servant. He’ll be in charge of ensuring you all witness today’s events. I’ll be too busy to see to it myself. But let me make this clear—if you cooperate, no harm will come to you or the Higginbottom family. However, one sign of trouble, and Frazier . . . has his orders.”
Tick’s hatred for her burned inside him, and he had to suppress a rising tide of Chi’karda. He pushed it away, feeling an icy chill settle in his gut. Completely dejected, he numbly walked to one of the chairs and sat down, saying nothing, ignoring everybody. All he could see in his mind were images of his family.
“That’s the spirit,” Jane said. “The rest of you sit down. The show will begin shortly.”
“What
is
the show?” Master George asked, not having moved an inch at her command.
“Sit, George,” Jane replied. “You’ll see soon enough.”
Paul and Sofia sat down on either side of Tick, their faces looking half confused and half angry, and maybe a little curious as well. Tick couldn’t help but wonder what they were thinking. If the roles were reversed, would he think them selfish if they refused to fight Jane because they didn’t want to risk the lives of their families? He hoped not.
“Hey,” Paul whispered as he leaned toward him. “Look at that tree. It almost looks like it’s made of liquid or something. Does funny things to my eyes when I stare at it.”
Tick moved his eyes in that direction. The black sculpture was fascinating this close up. The tree was deeply dark, its details crisp, the edges finer than they naturally should be. Every branch, from the thick parts where they connected to the trunk to the needle-thin tips, which looked sharp enough to impale rock, almost seemed to move in an unseen breeze, tricking his vision as he scanned the sculpture from top to bottom, side to side.
“It
is
weird,” he finally said to Paul.
He felt like he wasn’t looking at something in the real world. It reminded him more of animation, something done with the most advanced computer technology available. It made him queasy; he finally looked away. Jane’s workers bustled about the area, checking dials and switches, typing on keyboards, adjusting the screens. But no one came within a few feet of the black tree. No one even appeared to look at it.
Maybe they are as terrified of it as we are,
Tick thought. What could it possibly be?
Actually, one person
was
looking at it. Jane stood on the edge of the temporary complex, almost hidden from his sight by one of those movie screens. Arms folded, her mask showing that unreadable expression, she seemed to be concentrating on the tree. Tick would’ve given anything to see her real face at that moment, or better yet, to read her thoughts. What was going on here?
“Tick,” Sofia said quietly.
“What?” He cringed—he hadn’t meant to sound so harsh.
Sofia’s head snapped around to glare at him. “Okay, you know what,
Atticus?
I know they have your family, and I know you’re stressed to the max. But being rude to us isn’t gonna help anybody.”
Tick knew she was right, and for about three seconds hated her for it. “Sorry,” he finally muttered.
“It’s fine. Listen, what can you do with this power of yours? The Chi’karda. We haven’t really had much chance to talk about it.”
Paul leaned forward to put his elbows on his knees, looking their way. “Yeah, man, it seems like you learned a lot more about it since last time you gave us an update on e-mail.”
Tick shook his head. He didn’t really want to talk about it, but he forced himself to do it, hoping he could get his mind off his family. “It’s crazy. I feel this really warm burning in my chest, like hot air is swirling around in there. In my basement, I concentrated on it, tried to picture things in my mind. Like it was something I could grab with my hands—my pretend hands, I guess. Then I threw it at her. It was all mental—just like acting out images in my head.”
“I couldn’t really tell what was happening,” Sofia said. “I felt something, like a big surge of energy or electricity. And I could tell Jane was struggling against an invisible wall of whatever. But it wasn’t like you were shooting balls of fire.”
“Yeah,” Paul added. “Why can’t you just shoot balls of fire? That’d be nice.”
Tick ignored that, trying to decide if he dared say what he’d just thought. “Well, there might be something.”
Sofia gave him a puzzled look. “What?”
“You know how she keeps saying she can sense when I use the Chi’karda?”
Sofia and Paul both nodded.
“I think she might be bluffing.”
“Really?” Paul asked. “Why?”
Tick tapped his chest. “There have been a few times when it swelled up inside me, and I had to fight it off. She never said a word about it.”
“Maybe she can’t sense it unless you actually use it,” Sofia suggested. “Or throw it, or whatever it is you do.”
“Yeah,” Tick said. “Still, maybe I can play with it a little bit. Test it out a little and see if she says anything. I bet she’d give me a warning before she actually did something to my family.”
Paul grunted. “Dude, you sure you wanna risk that?”
Tick looked at him, surprised at how glad he was Paul had asked that. He hoped Sofia felt the same. He hoped they understood how careful he had to be.
“No, but I think I have to try. Next time I can trigger something in here”—he tapped his chest again—“I’ll try it a little.”
Sofia looked like she was about to respond when a loud humming sound cut her off.
Tick’s hands instinctively covered his ears. It wasn’t so much the volume of the sound as the
vibration
of it. A deep, thrumming toll, like a massive bell had been struck just feet away. The noise had an underlying buzz, too, as if the same bell had upset a nest of gigantic wasps.
“What is that?” Paul shouted.
Tick didn’t know for sure, but it seemed like the source of the horrible sound was coming from . . .
He saw dust and pebbles bouncing on the ground. He had no doubt.
It was coming from the black tree.
~
It took a lot of persuading, but Sato finally convinced Mothball and Rutger to accept Tollaseat’s offer to stay overnight and return to headquarters the next morning. They were anxious to get back and hear about the results of some secret meeting Master George had run off to, but agreed that one night wouldn’t hurt.
But the promise of a warm fire in a cozy house, and the promise of more desserts from Tollaseat—maybe even a story or two—sealed the deal. And Sato loved the idea of sleeping in one of the gigantic—and soft—beds upstairs. His cot back in the Bermuda Triangle always made him feel like he’d slept on a concrete floor.
They’d just sat down in the living room, plates of cheesecake balanced on their laps, cups of hot tea steaming on the end tables, and a large fire crackling in the brick hearth, when Rutger brought up for the tenth time what Sato had said earlier about wanting to help in the fight against the Bugaboo soldiers.
“What made you say that?” the man asked, not caring that his mouth was full of cake. “You were just being nice, right?”
“I thought it a very kind gesture, indeed,” Windasill said. She held her cup right below her lips and blew across the hot tea.
“Why do you keep asking me about it?” Sato turned to Rutger. “It just ticks me off that they’ve done so many bad things. I want to help. Why is that so hard for you to get?”
“I just meant—”
“Isn’t that what we’re about?” Sato snapped. “The Realitants? Aren’t we supposed to help people?”
Rutger’s eyes widened in surprise. “Well, yes. Of course it is.”
“Then quit asking.” Sato forked a bite of cheesecake into his mouth, then took a sip from his cup.
He had no idea why he felt so edgy and irritated. He shouldn’t feel embarrassed that the real reason he wanted to help was because of Tollaseat’s story about watching his own father be killed. No one had been there to help Sato when the same tragedy had happened to him. He felt obligated, but not in a forceful, guilty way. It was more that he felt a connection to Tollaseat that wouldn’t go away.
For the first time, his feelings solidified into one easy statement in his mind: He wanted revenge. And by fighting the Bugs who had killed Tollaseat’s father and were connected with the woman who had killed his own father, maybe he could find it.