The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray
“We’ll be fine,” Ann agrees, taking the torch from me, ready to run.
“Might be treacherous for the sightless one.” The fairy lifts a lock of Wendy’s hair and puts it to her nose, inhaling, then gives it a lick. “Leave her behind. I’ll look after her.”
Wendy holds fast to my arm.
“I most certainly will not,” I say.
The fairy flutters near my mouth. “She’ll only slow your passage.”
“I’ve had enough of you, I think.” I blow hard and the green shining beastie tumbles through the air. She curses me as I lift my gown and run for the boat, pulling Wendy quickly behind me.
“Right,” I say, stepping into the pitching craft. “We’re on our own now. Let’s keep our wits about us. There could be traps. There could be trackers—or worse.”
“But what about your power, miss?” Mae asks.
Felicity takes a seat and tucks her sword between her feet. “Precisely. We’ll serve notice if they’re foolish enough to trouble us.”
“We don’t know that I’m a match for them,” I warn. “We know nothing about the Winterlands at all, really. The magic isn’t always within my control, and I don’t want to have to employ it unless there’s no other choice.”
I look about at the solemn faces of my friends, and I suddenly feel small. I wish there were someone else to carry this burden. The passage ahead is impossible to see clearly; the mist sits heavily on the water, and I hope we’re not sailing into a terrible mistake.
“Ready, then?” Bessie calls. She’s got one foot on the boat and the other on the narrow ledge.
Ann hands the torch to me again. I secure it near the front of the boat to light our way.
“Cast us off, if you please, Bessie,” I answer.
She gives us a sharp shove, and the boat drifts out into the river, away from any safe harbor. We scramble to places at the oars. Pippa stands at the bow and peers through the mist. Felicity, Wendy, and I work the same oar, grunting with the effort. The water’s weight makes it heavy to move but soon we ride upon the river. The mist thins, and we marvel at the great masses of glistening rock that rise on either side of us like the enormous weathered hands of a forgotten god.
The only color in this bleak landscape comes from the primitive paintings that stretch along the inside of the cliffs. The boat passes pictures of terrifying specters, their cloaks spread out to show the souls they’ve devoured. Water nymphs tearing the skin from a victim chained to a rock. The Poppy Warriors in their tattered knights’ tunics and rusty chain mail. Black birds circling over battlefields. Amar’s likeness stares out from the rock—the white horse and the ghastly helmet—and I wish I’d not glimpsed it. There is so much drawn here, an entire history, that I cannot possibly absorb it all. But one image does catch my eye; it shows a woman standing before a mighty tree, her arms stretched out in welcome. The mist thickens again and I can see no more.
“There’s something ahead!” Pippa calls. “Slow your pace!”
“I’m not…a sailor…or a…pirate,” Ann pants between strokes.
We turn on our planks to see what it could be. A vast rock formation fronts the gorge. It has two holes at the top and a wide hole at the bottom, like a screaming face.
“Aim for the mouth!” Pip calls over the rush of water.
With a whoosh, the boat hits a sudden drop, and we’re pushed along by a faster current. Mercy screams as a wave of water crashes over the side of the boat. There’s little we can do against the fierce tide. The boat rocks and turns round till we’re dizzy.
“We’ll be dashed!” Pippa shouts. “Steady!”
“We have to row into it!” Felicity shrieks.
“You’re mad! We’ve got to stop—” I say.
Water splashes into me. It smells of sulphur.
“I’m an admiral’s daughter, and I say we need to row into it!” Felicity barks as if she were a commander.
“We’re getting closer!” Pippa calls. “Do something!”
“You heard Felicity—row into it!” I shout. “All your strength now. Don’t hold back!”
We heave with all our might, and I am surprised by the strength in our arms and hearts. We match strokes, and soon, we’re able to right ourselves and head for the gorge’s tall, slender mouth. Four hard strokes and we’re through. The river calms, carrying us deep down into the Winterlands.
We shout in exultation of our victory over the river, and as there is no one to tell us to temper our outburst, the cheer echoes for a full minute.
“Oh, look!” Pippa calls.
Colored light streams through the sorrowful sky. Gloomy clouds have given way to swirls of purple and indigo, pink and gold. And there are stars! Several of them shoot through the heavens and fall away. It is vast. I feel small and insignificant and yet larger than I have ever felt before.
“It’s beautiful,” I say.
Pippa throws out her arms. “To think we might have missed this.”
“We’re not back yet,” I warn.
Water nymphs undulate beneath the river’s surface, the soft, round arcs of their silvery backs peeking through like a reflection of the starry sky above.
“Oh, wot’s that, then? Mermaids?” Mae asks, peering into the water’s depths for a better glimpse.
Ann pulls her away from the boat’s edge. “You don’t want to know.”
“But they’re so beau’iful!” Mae stretches a hand toward the water.
“Do you know how they stay so pretty? They take your skin and bathe in it,” Ann announces.
“Blimey!” With a horrified expression, Mae snaps her hand back and gets to her rowing.
The river rounds a bend. Fog rolls in again, as thick and white as clouds. The boat comes to rest beside a patch of frozen shore.
“Can you see anything?” Pippa asks, cupping a hand over her eyes and peering through the brume.
“Nuffin’,” Bessie answers. She holds fast to her stick.
“Anything could be out there, waiting,” Ann says quietly.
The boat will go no farther. It seems to have decided the destination for us. A plank lowers and we scramble off. The ship drifts back into the blanket of fog and is gone.
“Wot we gonna do now?” Mae asks. “’Ow we gonna get back?”
Bessie gives her a quick slap on the arm. “Shut it! We’re goin’ on.”
The fog is heaviest here; the landscape intrudes like a phantom. We walk through a barren forest with trees like stunted ghosts. Gnarled branches pierce the mist here and there. It’s quiet. Not a sound penetrates except for the ragged cadence of our breathing.
Something brushes against my shoulder, making me gasp. I turn round, seeing nothing. It comes again. Above me. I look up to see a bare foot swaying.
“Oh, God,” I gasp.
A woman’s body hangs from a branch. Sharp twigs wrap themselves around her neck, securing her to the tree. Her skin has turned the graying brown of the bark, and her fingernails are curved and yellowed. Her eyes are closed, and I’m grateful for it.
But she’s not the only one. Now I see them in the mist, all around us. Bodies hang from the trees like ghastly fruit. An unholy harvest.
“G-Gemma,” Ann whispers. Her eyes are wide and I can sense the scream that she’s holding back, that we all hold back.
Pippa looks at the bodies with a combination of revulsion and sorrow. “I’m not like that. I’m not,” she says, starting to cry.
Felicity draws Pip away. “Of course you’re not.”
“I want to go back. Back to Spence. To life. I can’t be here anymore. I can’t!” Pippa’s on the verge of hysteria. Fee strokes her hair, tries to comfort her with private murmurings.
“This is where them ghouls would’ve taken us if not for Miss Pippa,” Bessie says. With a sharp pull, she rips a bit of filthy fabric free of a corpse’s hem, wraps it around her stick, and hands the stick to Ann. “You light it so we can see. I don’ like fire.”
Ann pulls matches from in
Bessie is adamant. “I’m not goin’ through there wif no torch.” I lay my hand on the stick and put the magic to its purpose. The torch flares to life.
I am repulsed, and yet I have to know, so I reach toward the swinging arms of one of the bodies. I touch the cold, hard hand, and in my fright, a bit of magic escapes. The body jerks, and I jump back.
“Gemma…,” Ann gasps.
A fierce wind shakes the bodies in the trees, rattling them like leaves. Their eyes snap open, black as pitch and ringed in blood. A dreadful chorus of high-pitched shrieks and moans and low, angry growls of suddenly wakened beasts rises in the forest, clamors in our ears. Underneath it all, I hear a terrible refrain scratching itself into my soul: “Sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice…”
“Gemma, what did you do?” Ann wails.
“Turn back!” I shout.
We’ve gone no more than a few steps when the path disappears under our feet.
“Which way?” Mercy shrieks, running in circles.
Wendy stumbles forward, feeling the empty space with frantic arms. “Don’t leave me, Mercy!”
“I don’t know!” I shout. Circe said to stay to the river, but she said nothing about this. Either she lied or she doesn’t know. Either way, we’re alone, without aid.
Suddenly, a voice drifts through the din, calm and clear. “This way. Quickly…”
A path of light appears in the frozen grass and ice.
“Come on! This way!” I call. Brandishing the torch, I hurry through the trees, following the thin ribbon of light. Bodies kick and grab at us, and it is all I can do not to scream. A man reaches for Pippa, and Felicity’s sword is swift. His severed hand flies, and he howls in outrage.
I would howl myself but it’s as if I have been struck dumb with fear.
“Go!” I croak, finding a small sliver of voice at last. I push my friends on and run after, staring only at their backs, not daring to look left or right at the hideous things that swing from the trees.
At last we reach the edge of the gruesome woods. The din quiets to a gasp and then to nothing, as if they have all drifted back into the same sleep.
We take stock for a moment, leaning on each other, sucking cold air into our lungs.
“What were those things?” Pippa manages to say between breaths.
“Don’t know.” I wheeze. “Might have been the dead. Souls lured here before.”
Mercy shakes her head. “Weren’t like us. Didn’ ’ave no souls left. Least I ’ope not.”
Bessie points ahead. “’Ow will we get through that, then?”
Blocking the way is a wall of black rock and ice as tall as it is wide. There’s no going around it as far as I can tell.
The wind whispers again. “Look closer….”
At the base of the enormous cliff is a tunnel hung with blood-streaked rags.
“Follow…,” the wind urges.
“Did you hear that?” I ask to be sure.
Felicity nods. “It said to follow.”
“Follow it where?” Ann peers doubtfully into the dark tunnel.
No one charges ahead. No one will be the first to push aside the foul rags and step into that narrow crevasse.
“We’ve come this far,” Pippa says. “Would you stop now? Mae? Bessie?”
Mae pulls back. Bessie shifts from one foot to the other.
“Bit dark, innit?” Mae says.
“I think we should turn back,” Wendy whispers. “Mr. Darcy will be hungry.”
“Will you shut it about that bunny?” Bessie barks. She nods at me. “Was your idea, wuddn’t it? Findin’ this tree? You’re the one wot’s supposed to lead.”
The fetid wind blows the rags toward us. The tunnel is like a starless night. There’s no telling what could be waiting for us in there, and we’ve already experienced one hideous surprise. But Bessie’s right. I should go first.
“Right,” I say. “We go on. Stay close behind me. If I give the word, run back hard as you can.”
Wendy has found her way back to me and still clings to my sleeve. “Is it terrible dark, miss?”
It is funny that she should be afraid of the dark when she cannot see it, but I suppose that is the sort of fear one feels deep in the soul.
“Don’t worry, Wendy. I shall go first. Mercy will lead you in, won’t you?”
Mercy nods and takes Wendy’s hand. “Aye. Hold tight to me, luv.”
My heart hammers against my chest. I take a step inside. The tunnel is narrow. I can’t stand to my full height, and have to move stooped. “Watch your heads,” I call back. My hands feel their way. The walls are cold and wet, and for a moment, I fear I am in the mouth of some giant beast, and then I’m shivering all over and near to screaming.
“Gemma?” Fee’s voice. In the pitch-darkness I cannot tell where she is. She sounds miles away, and yet, I know she can’t be.
“Y-yes,” I manage to say. “Keep coming.”
I pray we’ll be through it quickly, but the tunnel seems to go on forever. I hear a faint murmur under the rock. It sounds like a snake hissing, all ss, though I swear I hear sacrifice and, once, save us. I can’t hear the footfalls of my friends anymore, and I’m in a panic, when at last a dim shaft of light falls. There is an opening in sight. Relief floods through me as I tumble through the slender gap, followed by my friends.
Pip wipes at the muck on her sleeves. “Horrid tunnel. I felt the hot breath of some foul thing on my neck.”
“That was me,” Ann confesses.
“Where are we?” Felicity asks.
We’ve come out on a windswept heath surrounded by a circle of stony peaks. A light snow falls. The flakes cling to our lashes and hair. Wendy turns her face up to it as if it’s a blessing.
“Oh, that’s nice,” she murmurs.
Dark, heavy clouds sit above the cliffs. Sharp veins of light pulse against them, and thunder sounds. Through the thin veil of snow, I see it: An ancient, weathered ash tree, as thick as ten men and as tall as a house, rises majestically from a small patch of green grass. Its many branches stretch out every which way. It is commanding; I cannot look away. And I know that this is the tree in my dreams. This is what Wilhelmina Wyatt wanted me to find.
“The Tree of All Souls,” I say in awe. “We’ve found it.”
The snow pelts my face, but I don’t care. The magic hums sweetly inside me as if called. The sound wraps itself around my every sinew; it pulses in my blood with a new refrain I cannot yet sing but long to.
“You have come at last,” it murmurs, as softly as a mother’s lullaby. “Come to me. You need only to touch and you will see….”
Shards of lightning cut the sky around us. The power of this place is strong, and I want to be part of it. My friends feel it too. I can see it in their faces. We put our hands to the ancient bark. It is rough against my palms. My heartbeat quickens. I shake with this new power. Overcome, I fall.
She is before me, bathed in a gentle light, and I know her at a glance. The white hair. Blue eyes. The colorful dress. The world falls away until there is nothing but the two of us burning brightly in the wilderness.
Just Eugenia Spence and me.
* * *
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
* * *
“I’VE WAITED SUCH A LONG TIME FOR YOU,” SHE SAYS. “I nearly gave up hope.”
“Mrs. Spence?” I say when I find my voice at last.
“Yes. And you are Gemma, Mary’s daughter.” She smiles. “You are the one I’d hoped for—the only one who can save us and the realms.”
“Me? How—”
“I will tell you everything, but our time together is brief. There is only so long I can appear to you in this form. Will you walk with me?”
When I look confused, she reaches out a pale hand. “Take my hand. Walk with me. I will show you.”
My hand inches toward hers and grazes the cold tips of her fingers. She ta
“I thought you were”—I swallow hard—“dead.”
“Not entirely,” she says sadly.
“The night of the fire,” I say. “What happened after you sealed the door?”
She steeples her hands as if praying. “I was taken by that foul beast here, to the Winterlands. All the creatures had come to see the exalted Eugenia Spence, high priestess of the Order, now a lowly captive of the Winterlands. They meant to break me, to corrupt me and use me to their wicked ends,” she says, her eyes flashing. “But my power was greater than they knew. I resisted, and as punishment, they imprisoned me inside the Tree of All Souls.”
“What is the Tree?” I ask.
She smiles. “The only spot within this forsaken land that also belongs to the realms, to the Order.”
“But how?”
“If you would understand the present, you must come to know the past.” She waves her hand in a wide arc, and the scenery changes. Before us, like the image in a pantomime, is a land newly born.
“Long before we slithered, pink and mewling, into this world, the realms existed. The magic was; it came from the land itself and it returned to the land, a never-ending cycle. All was in balance. There was only one inviolable rule: The dead who passed through this world could not remain here. They had to cross or become corrupted.
“But some of the dead could not relinquish their hold on the past. Afraid, angry, they ran, taking refuge in the most desolate part of the realms—the Winterlands. But it did not kill their longing for what they could not have. They wanted to return, and for that they would need the realms’ magic. Soon, the wanting turned to coveting. They would have it at all costs. You know of the rebellion and what happened here in the Winterlands, I trust?”
“The Winterlands creatures captured several initiates of the Order and sacrificed them here. The first blood sacrifice,” I answer.