“Right! Wow,” said Zita. “Well, I’m glad we got that cleared up. Just so we know. Who we are. You’re Alexandra, and you lost your son. I’m Zita, and I lost my mother. So we’re a pretty good team, don’t you think?”
She didn’t wait for a response; instead, she leapt up from her bed and walked to the bowl on the dresser, her eyes glued to the foggy mirror with the scrawled words on it. “Okay,” she said. “What’s next?”
The words appeared, written in the fog by the spectral finger of the deceased Dowager Governess, and Zita blanched to see them, though now that she knew the identity of the spirit, it seemed to make a kind of cold, eerie sense. What’s more, she felt like she’d found a new well of sympathy for the woman, deep in her heart, and she understood. Now she understood.
CHAPTER 15
The Sway of the Blighted Tree
“Eat,” the Elder Caliph repeated. “And be free.”
More people had arrived; the line had grown so long that it snaked away from the Blighted Tree like a long, rippling ribbon. Prue recognized more faces in the crowd: the Spokes who had carried the rickshaw when she’d first arrived, the girl who’d given her flowers when she first stepped into the Mansion. They all stood quietly and obediently, one behind the other, waiting for their time to be fed the strange substance by the hooded Caliph. The ever-present HUM continued unabated in Prue’s mind, and her vision swam as she teetered by the tree and tried valiantly to reconstitute her thoughts. The Elder Caliph, Elgen, had taken the spoon of Spongiform from the acolyte and was holding it some few inches from Prue’s lips.
“Esben,” murmured Prue. “I need to get to Esben.”
“Esben is safe,” said Elgen. “He’s in good hands.”
This seemed to shake Prue from her swoon. “He’s hidden. You don’t know where he is.”
The man was growing impatient. The fungi quivered on the proffered spoon; it was a glowing brownish green. “As we speak, your friend Esben is being fetched and brought here. Soon he will be united with his old compatriot, Carol, and the reconstruction of the mechanical boy will commence. We’ve achieved your directive, Prue. We’ve done it together.”
“No!” shouted Prue, deeply shaken. “That’s not how it was supposed to happen!” The HUM grew louder; a shimmering rainbowlike aura had overtaken the margins of her vision. She wasn’t sure what was happening; she was feeling the world giving way.
“It’s all foretold, Prue. It was all written, long before you arrived. See: Even now, your friend the badger is here for the fungal communion.”
Sure enough: There was Neil, shipped to the front of the line, preparing to receive his dose of Spongiform.
“We are the eyes and ears of this forest, Prue. No action goes unnoticed. Surely you didn’t think we wouldn’t follow you, wouldn’t want to find out where you were keeping your ursine treasure.”
Prue stared wildly at the badger; he seemed oblivious to her presence, so great was his desire to receive the substance being fed him. “This can’t be happening. This isn’t happening. I must be dreaming. This isn’t real.” The words came flowing from Prue’s mouth; she couldn’t shake the HUM, the incessant ticking from the surrounding acolytes. The ticking grew louder as she felt two figures come up behind her and hold her shoulders, hard.
The Elder Caliph persisted, “Your life, one way or another, is forfeit, Prue. Your mission is finished. Your sentence had already been written; think of this as a commutation of that sentence. In exchange for a lifelong devotion to the birthing of the One Tree. Yes: The Mansion has already turned against you. They did the moment you started speaking that hogwash about reviving the ‘true heir.’ Do you think for a moment that they wouldn’t want to defend their positions? Do you think for a moment that your black magic interests wouldn’t strike fear in their hearts? Feed on the Blight and save yourself from a fate worse than death.” Elgen held the spoon to her mouth. She could feel the cold moistness of the Spongiform touching her upper lip. “Come now, Prue. Just eat it.”
PLEASE, thought Prue, and she felt the grass below her feet spring to life. It wrapped around the feet of the Elder Caliph, and he choked back a shout of surprise. He merely needed to look down at his ankles for the grass to release its hold, though; new tendrils sprouted below Prue’s feet, and suddenly she realized that it was her feet, instead, that were now tied to the ground.
“Foolish,” said Elgen. “You have no power here.”
He nodded to one of the acolytes at her side, and she felt fingers curling around her neck, under her jawbone. She felt her mouth forced open. The ticking emanating from her captor was jarring in its volume. She strained to see his face; it was covered in a silver mask.
“Who are you?” she managed. His grip tightened; her mouth was opened wide now. The fungi made its way into her opened lips; she felt the cold of the spoon on her tongue.
Elgen answered for her: “They are the voice of the Wood, Prue. The sons and daughters of the forest. The midwives of the new world. And now you will join them.”
Prue let her body go slack; her jaw slid open to receive the Spongiform.
She felt the hands at her jaw loosen their pressure. The bodies at either side of her seemed to relax, assured of their subject’s surrender.
And that was when she acted.
The weird fungus had barely touched her tongue, an acrid, bitter flavor spreading out through her taste buds, when she spat it out with all the power she could muster. It exploded into little pieces and spackled the gold mirrored mask of the Elder Caliph before her. Simultaneously she jabbed her elbow as hard as she could into the stomach of the acolyte to her left and felt his body crumple at the waist. Pivoting to her right, she faced her second captor and, despite a prevailing instinct to not hit anybody, let alone someone wearing a mask that looked decidedly hard, she seized her right hand into a taut fist and slammed it into the acolyte’s masked face.
The mask, seemingly made of crystal, shattered.
The face beneath was revealed.
“Brendan?” she managed, completely shocked. The red beard, the quiet eyes, the tribal tattoo on his forehead. It was all there.
Whatever energy, whatever momentum she’d collected in her adrenaline-fueled surprise attack on the Caliphs of the Synod was gone in that moment. She was floored by shock and despair. Her hand, aching from the strike, fell to her side. The HUM was everywhere. She stared into the Bandit King’s eyes in disbelief, trying to find her old friend somewhere in there. His eyes were still, almost lifeless. The ticking seemed to grow from his eye sockets, from his nostrils, and it soon became the only thing she could hear.