CHAPTER THREE [indica]
They hid in the shade of a towering giant sequoia, and once they were certain that nobody was following them they all sat down on one of the tree’s massive coiling roots.
“What was it, Nell?” Ozzy demanded. “What did you see?”
Nell was still wide-eyed and dazed. “You didn’t see them?”
“I—” Ozzy frowned. He remembered… what did he remember? He remembered the clearing, the bonfire, the smell of woodsmoke. But it’d all gone blurry. He shook his head to clear the fog, but doing so only made the memory retreat further back into his mind.
“I can’t remember,” he said simply. “Who did you see?”
She looked down, chewed her lip, then back up at him. She spoke slowly, measuredly: “Just—just some people I know.”
For a moment no-one said anything.
Then Ozzy spotted something around the bend of the sequoia, leaning against the massive tree’s trunk. A guitar? He went to inspect it. It was a guitar, an ancient acoustic guitar. Someone must have left it there—but when he got close he saw that it wasn’t really propped against the trunk, as he’d first thought. It was more that it appeared to have grown right out of the ground.
“Guys, come look at this.”
Nell and Byron wandered over. The guitar’s body was made of rough dark wood and covered in moss; its strings were thin vines stretched taught. Roots fed into the ground from its base—it really did look like it had sprouted from the soil—and its tuning pegs looked like re-purposed seashells.
“I think we should leave it,” said Nell.
Ozzy nodded. It seemed sensible.
Then Byron reached out and plucked at one of the guitar’s strings. The sound it made was impossibly loud, a discordanttwangthat cleaved the summer air in two and reverberated in their ears long after the initial sound had faded.
“What the hell, man?” said Nell.
Byron winced. “Sorry.”
One by one, they emerged from under the sequoia. The air was dripping with birdsong and late afternoon warmth. There was a river nearby: a cascading white-water brook bounding through the trees, spraying rainbow foam into the air. For a few minutes Ozzy, Byron and Nell simply wandered, Nell in the lead, Ozzy and Byron close behind. They kept to the riverbank, following the river’s meandering path…
“Are we going the right way?” Byron demanded.
“I’m pretty sure.” Nell didn’t sound sure at all.
“You’re just following the river.”
“Well you’re following me! I didn’t tell you to follow me, did I?” Nell scowled. “I don’t wanna lead.”
“Are you kidding me?” Byron groaned. “Fine. I’ll lead.” He nudged her out of the way and continued along the riverbank.
Nell snorted. She slowed her pace as Byron took the lead.
Ozzy fell into step beside her. “You all right?” he asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“Uh. I just—I—” Ozzy broke off, then lowered his voice. “Listen. Who was it? Back in the field? I didn’t get a good look.”
Nell squinted at her feet. “Don’t worry about it,” she muttered.
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because.” Her voice took on an icy edge. “We’re gonna get to Marauder’s Cove, and we’ll probably get separated, because that’s how it always goes, and chances are you won’t see me ever again—and after a few days or weeks or whatevers have gone by you’ll forget that one day you were with a girl who saw something that scared her more than anything else in her entire life. And that’s the way it should be.”
Ozzy opened his mouth but he had no words.
“Just don’t worry about it, okay?”
“Well, how about—”
“I said don’t worry about it.”
Ozzy chewed his lip for a moment, then drew in a deep breath. “How about we don’t get separated when we get to Marauder’s Cove?”
“What?”
“Well, like—what if we stick together? We can make a pact or something.”
“A pact?” Nell sounded like she was about to burst out laughing—but then her face softened. “Are you serious?”
“Why not?”
For a moment it looked like she couldn’t make up her mind on how to feel. But then she grinned, and Ozzy was grinning, too, as he bumped right into Byron’s back. “Hey!” Ozzy shouted. “Watch where—”
He broke off and froze, paralyzed.
Standing before the three of them was a man far too tall to be an ordinary man. He had a thick, flowing grey beard. A purple-and-orange turban. Long pointed elf ears. Hooved goat legs. “You’ve wandered into a strange, strange neck of the woods,” it whistled, in a voice that sounded like it’d been spoken in a vast cave millennia earlier. “Perhaps it’s the heat. Or perhaps you’ve all had a bit too much to smoke.”
Ozzy reached for Nell’s hand, but Nell had already turned and broken into a sprint. He tried to follow but stumbled over a root, staggered, and by the time he’d recovered his balance she was gone.
He span on his heel, but the turban-clad goat-man was in front of him—no, behind him—no, standing on either side, his peeling laughter dripping down from the trees like falling leaves.
Ozzy ran.
He didn’t look back—just ran and ran and ran until he was alone, until the only thing he could hear was the rustling of branches in the hot summer wind. He gasped for breath, wiped the sweat from his face.
There was no sign of the goat-legged man. Or of anyone else for that matter. The trees stretched out endlessly around him.
“Nell?” Ozzy shouted. “Byron?! NELL!”
His voice came bouncing despondently back to him. He was alone.
J. Herrera Kamin 