Page 54 of The Salt-Black Tree
The tree loomed above her. It stank of salt, and of rotting flesh. Nat’s stomach cramped. A thin soundless rustle in the branches like the pressure of her pulse in her ears, the ash-heap giving way slightly underfoot. Her calves ached as she slipped, regained her balance, and stepped into corkscrewed, tortured branch-shadows.
Up close, the saline-weeping trunk sent up tiny curls of steam. The tree shimmered with heat, and Nat’s face felt tight and shiny. How anything could burn in this humidity was beyond her. Shewanted to take a deep breath, but the reek of this infected bayou-pocket clawed at her throat, her stomach rolling over and over.
Nat Drozdova coughed, choked, and lifted her right hand. One small fist, flesh shining-frail, reached through shimmering, simmering shadow.
She knocked on the trunk. It gave resiliently, like an overripe fruit’s splitting flesh, and if there was anything remaining in her mortal stomach she would have lost it right there. Her knuckles tapped a second time.
Oh, ugh. It’s awful, it smells bad, I hate this, Mama I hate this, why did you—
She didn’t have time to finish the thought. The branches, released from torpor, swarmed downward with eerie silence. Her hand sank into the bark on the third tentative tap and bark crawled up her arm, warm and rasping as a feverish cat tongue. Roots exploded from the pile of cinders, her boots submerged and ankles clasped in sticky, irresistible fingers.
The world turned over with a sickening crunch and Nat was dragged upward, her head slammed against the trunk’s yielding hard enough to daze. It dangled her upside down as a viridian snake hissed, water foaming as the huge creature thrashed too far away to render aid—or take a mouthful.
She didn’t even have time to scream before saline-weeping bark crusted over her.
The salt-black tree swallowed her whole.
PROMISE FULFILLED
Maria Drozdova sucked in a tortured breath as the intubation, slick with mucus and traces of bright mortal red, was drawn free of her esophagus. Baba’s long, skinny fingers attended to the task with a certain amount of facility and efficiency, but no excess gentleness.
Once it was done, she laid the medical detritus aside. The machines quieted; even they knew Winter was not in a mood to forgive interruption at the moment. Mortal doctors and nurses went about their business in the rest of the Laurelgrove, apparently forgetting this room with its window—charging more for daylight was an ancient practice—even existed.
For now.
The window, though it had been sealed for safety and to keep air-conditioning or heating costs lowered, also understood it was better not to test the beldame’s patience. It stood wide open, letting in a harsh refrigerator glare and frigid breath from the ice holding New York trapped in a pale, bony palm.
Down the hall the elevator dinged; cat-soft footsteps prowled from its jaws. They didn’t click or clank, but it was obvious they were a pair of black boots with shining silver toe-caps. Taking his time, the thief strolled past rubes who ignored his presence, and he hummed a lullaby of the old country as he approached.
Maria’s papery eyelids lingered at half-mast over faded, bloodshot blue eyes, their pupils merely, humanly black. Babasmiled down at her, smoothing the hospital pillow. Next to the window, standing in the freezing wind but not shivering, stood an old man with a full head of gray hair.
Leo lit a hand-rolledmakhorkacigarette. Maria’s gaze flickered balefully to him at the snap of the cylindrical silver lighter, but for once he ignored the glare. A striped scarf wrapped several times around his throat; he had kept the several layers of flannel button-up and chunky knitted jumper since his woolen peacoat was elsewhere. He smoked in silence as the harsh rasp-crooning lullaby drew near.
Maria’s hand, scrawny as Baba’s own, lifted, fingers flutter-waving.
“Hm?” Baba leaned down. Her lips were unpainted today, corpse-bluish. They curved in a gentle, predatory lynx-grin. “What’s that, little Maschka?”
“Salt… black,” the old Drozdova husked. “The tree. She… will…”
“Oh, your little girl might surprise you yet.” Baba touched the sheet folded neatly over a blanket-top. It wasn’t as snowy asherlinens, but there was no Vasilisa the Beautiful to launder here, no Dascha the Green to frown at stains until they cringed in shame. “You raised her to welcome the Knife, didn’t you. Sent her toCatholicschool, of all things. All that guilt.” The beldame paused, and her whisper was harsh. “But hope is a weed, and so is love. Someone loved that girl, I think. At least, enough to matter.”
Maria’s gaze stuttered back to Leo. Hatred burned in her blue irises; her thin wrinkled lip lifted.
“Not enough,” Leo murmured in the language of the old country. “There is dirt in my mouth, Grandmother.”
“As if it’s the words that matter.” Baba spoke in the same tongue, her accent thick and countrified, before she snorted. “Silly manchild.”
The humming paused at the half-open door. A soft knock, asif he visited a beloved invalid, a grandmother or elderly aunt. A shadow slid through the iron-gray light of deep winter—weather event,the ecstatic newscasters were calling it,once in a century.
Baba could have told them differently, that these things happened whenever she damn well pleased. But what would be the point?
Dmitri Konets stepped into the room. His dark hair was slicked back, his suit was brushed, pressed, and sharp-creased; the tattoos were visible on the backs of his hands, some slipping down his fingers to the last knuckle. Others peeped from under the neckline of his snowy shirt, the top button undone and the collar crisp but not overly formal. The only new addition was a black backpack clinging to his right shoulder, humming with unhappy force. His tie was extremely loose, black as a night-hunting shark, and he carried a clutch of ragged winter-dead weeds ripped from under the snow in Princo Park.
A little girl with honey hair had often spoken to the cats there, though her mother told her it was all imagination.
Dead thistles also lurked in the bouquet, added from the yard of an abandoned lot on South Aurora where a haunted house listed and leered. Dmitri spared a quick flicker of a glance at the old man near the window, looked again—it took less than a heartbeat—before his attention turned to Maria’s bed. His grin sparkled, wide and white, lacking any kindness or amusement at all.
Despite that, a great deal of pleasure lurked in the expression. “Mascha, Maschka, my darling Maschenka. It’s beentoolong.” He hitched the bag higher on his shoulder.
