Page 38 of The Salt-Black Tree
And thunder over far-off hills, like some giant creature turning over in its stony bed.
If Nat died in a car accident, would Maria Drozdova become young again?
OhGod,Nat wanted to whisper, but that was stupid. Instead, her mouth opened, and what came out was a single, drawn-out syllable. “Fuuuuuck.”
Baby’s rumble said she agreed. A flash over shadows that might have been hills waited eight long seconds to send more thunder tiptoeing through the hush. Baby’s headlights dimmed once, twice, as if cat-blinking.
Nat fumbled for the gear lever, her neck creaking as she rested an arm on the bench seat’s back, peering out the rear window. Thankfully, Baby reversed with no problem, and Nat got the car at least in the right lane, though if anyone came along at high speed they were probably both goners. Slowly, in fits and starts, the trembling all through her diminished. A faint pull began—fortunately, the way she and Baby were already pointed. There was no more lightning, but she didn’t know where in the hell she was.
If her mother wanted Nat to hurry up and bring the Heart, she was certainly making it difficult. But then again, frustration could make you work against your own best interests. It happened all the time.
Including, apparently, to divinities.
Maybe Maria could tell what Nat was thinking. It was a parent’s trick, helped along by the fact that most toddlers are really bad liars. Being with someone twenty-four-seven since birth probably had something to do with it, too. Or maybe Mom somehow justfeltsomeone in Spring’s Country, since it was hers too.
“But for how much longer?” Nat heard herself murmur, and her right hand flew up, cupping over her mouth and sealing tight as if she could trap the words, jam them back down her throat, negate them somehow.
Baby idled comfortably, content. Her headlights showed the ruler-straight road tapering to its vanishing point like an art class illustration of perspective. The scent of sage rode a knife-sharp chill—Nat had read that desert nights were cold, and the air here was much, much drier than the dripping Northwest forest. How far had she traveled? Could she get to anywhere in the world from Spring’s Country, or just anywhere in America?
A pale approaching sparkle in the rearview forced Nat to shift the car into drive and press on the accelerator, despite the fact that she had no goddamn idea where she was. Still, at least this road was traveled, and indisputably human. Even if she was lost, there would be a sign sooner or later.
Nat was also, still, completely alone, except for that distant headlight-glimmer in the rearview mirror’s watery depths.
The solitude was frightening to a New York girl who had never slept away from home until a few days ago. Just how manyshe couldn’t tell—did time warp in that in-between space of moonlight and soft hills, or just distance?
And yet… Nat Drozdova found out she kind of liked the loneliness, and couldn’t wait to eventually find out more about her private traveling dimension. Especially once her heart stopped pounding, her hands stopped shaking, and Baby’s headlights discovered a freeway on-ramp sign, whispering its location into the desert night.
She was in New Mexico. Just north of Albuquerque, in fact.
And another soft tugging, different than the arcana-urge, was building in her bones.
NOT DEFEATED YET
Winter’s hand lay heavy upon an iron-gray, perpetually unsleeping city. Meteorologists nattered on about precipitation, inversion, and trends; newscasters bubbled with glee while retail workers groaned inwardly. The houseless shivered, attempting to burrow into any shelter they could find, and any mortal might be forgiven for thinking there had never been any such thing as summer, only the endless cold.
Freezing rain coated skyscrapers, roads, houses, stores, and any other surface unlucky enough to feel the weather’s ire, twinkling viciously as a divinity’s sharp silver boot-toes. The keyholes of parked cars or outside doors were coated, windows filigreed, roofs groaning under a fresh weight. Every drop was merely feather-heavy, true—but there was strength in numbers, especially when added to a blanket of snow compacting under the assault.
The peculiar hiss of droplets solidifying as they hit glass slithered against the window of a hospice room. Safe on the other side, an elderly man dozed on a pink-cushioned bench—it had taken tortuous mortal hours to reach the Laurelgrove again, and Leo would not attempt a return to the shattered, slumped ruins of a yellow Brooklyn house.
As long as the electricity lasted, though, the machines inside mortal buildings kept to their work. Lightbulbs blazed, heaters struggled to breathe through vents and rooms, and hospitalmachines continued transcribing the electrical ephemera of heartbeat and lungfill with greenish traceries while singing in soft rhythmic beeps.
On a much-bleached cotton blanket, a thin hand twitched. Papery liver-spotted skin moved uneasily, drawn tight over bones become almost wholly mortal. Yet a flame still burned in Maria Drozdova’s wasted body. Her belly, oddly distended, echoed the motion, and had she been fully conscious the agony—something inimical pulsing, enclosed in flesh becoming perishable—might have triggered another round of frantic medical activity, vital signs described and palliatives administered.
Her eyelids fluttered, rose halfway. Blue sparks filled her pupils, answered by two tiny reflected dots on the ceiling’s acoustic tiles, though strictly speaking, the elder Drozdova was not…there.
All her flinty will and iron determination focused inward, clutching at a subtle, invisible space that had been her sole domain since her forgotten coalescing, so long ago upon another continent. Silent alarms blared, and all her waning resources collected like raindrops running down a window.
But it was so cold, and her strength had faded alarmingly. She hadn’t expected the process to be so quick, or so agonizing. The child should have returned by now; not only was the maggot dawdling, she was also invading theStrana Vesny, and she had stolen her mother’s beautiful blue chariot.
Get out,Maria Drozdova howled, the cry struggling through layers of weakness, shadows with papercut edges crowding her fevered almost-dreams. The lovely green hills, the bright vernal moon, the crisp stainless road and glitter of cool water between grassy banks, was warping and shifting to obey a new incarnation.
Get out, you little bitch. This ismyrealm. Get out, get out, get OUT…
The last straining effort paralleled that which had brought the worm forth on a tide of golden-laced ichor a little over two mortaldecades ago, a wringing expulsion. Maria’s spine arched, the machines at her bedside belatedly noticing distress and hurrying to remedy inattention. Her pulse skyrocketed, and a gurgle spilled around the plastic proboscis plunged into her throat.
Leo, chin almost touching his sunken chest, did not wake. He was an old man, after all, and exhausted from the effort to reach his beloved’s side through a wintry city wasteland.
Maria’s feet writhed under the bedding; her hands lifted, fluttering arthritic birds. A choked whimper, the blue glow in her pupils intensifying before she sagged, lapsing into semiconsciousness.
