7. What the Trees Knew
Chapter seven
What the Trees Knew
Hiro
Another scream tore through the trees.
Then another, right behind it, higher and rawer than the last.
I'm coming. I'm coming. Hold on.
The wind shifted off the slope ahead, and it carried a new scent into me, under the salt and the gun oil and the green crush of the leaves.
Copper.
Blood.
I had spilled enough of it to know it in the dark with my eyes shut. But this blood was hers. I knew it the way I knew my own name before my mind could argue.
Someone cut her? No! I’ll fucking cut them open!! And all their family! I’ve got to get there faster!
The ground was too slow.
Fast, almost in a blur, I planted a boot against the nearest trunk and ran three strides straight up the bark, then caught the lowest limb with both hands and swung up onto it.
Come on! Push!
The branch bowed deep under my weight and flung me higher.
I let it throw me.
Then I ran the trees.
The canopy became a road only I could see. I jumped from one branch to the next before the last one finished bending, riding the bounce of each limb into the leap for the one ahead.
Pine needles whipped my face.
Cold air tore past my ears.
Below me the forest floor dropped away into black, and I stayed up where the moonlight lived, weightless as smoke off a snuffed candle.
Nyomi’s screams grew closer.
A branch dipped under my heel. I rode it down and let it sling me across a gap no man should clear.
For half a breath I hung over nothing, arms wide, the whole dark island spread beneath me. . .then I dropped, and my boot found the next tree.
I ran on.
Her scream came again.
Even closer.
For one breath the screaming sounded like her laugh in the kitchen, the way she threw her whole head back when something caught her funny, loud, unbothered, and alive. Then it broke back into agony, and the wrongness of it nearly tore me out of the trees, and under it now came chanting.
Many voices wound around her cries like rope around a throat.
What are they doing to her? And why are they chanting!?
Then suddenly all this red came up to meet me.
What the fuck?!!
Tons of hooded people in red.
They rose out of the branches ahead.
Out of the black between the trunks.
Out of every place the moon refused to touch.
More people than I could count. All hooded figures in deep crimson. Their capes lifted and pooled on the wind, moving through the high limbs as easily as I did.
Somehow they sensed I was coming, and had waited up here the whole time, patient as spiders.
The fucking Silent Ones.
“I don’t want to kill you.” I sneered at them. “Get out of my way!”
A man spoke on my far left. “The Tiger is fine. You should turn back and arrive with the Dragon.”
That voice sounds familiar.
I looked at him and wished I could see his face under the hood’s shadow. “Who cut her?”
“That was part of the ritual that she chose.”
“What ritual?”
“Turn back, Hiro. We must focus on the ritual.”
“If you all don’t move, then I will go through you.”
The Silent Ones remained where they were. The branches held them high above the forest floor. The moonlight touched their crimson hoods and silvered the edges of their cloaks. The wind stirred their capes. The figures stayed still.
Unease crawled through me.
People facing violence usually revealed themselves. A jaw tightened. A shoulder lowered. A hand drifted toward a blade.
These people offered me something else. They watched. They waited. They held their places among the branches as if the forest itself had grown them there.
The feeling reminded me of mourners gathering around an open grave.
Patience.
Sad acceptance.
Expectation for suffering.
Every one of them seemed to know exactly how this night would unfold. Every one of them seemed to believe I would eventually understand.
One figure lowered their head, and sympathy softened the gesture. The sight chilled me more than any weapon. “Go back, Hiro.”
“What the fuck is wrong with all of you?” I frowned. “I’m not going to just turn around and walk away, when she’s in pain.”
A woman on the left spoke. “We all should save our energy for the Fox’s people, not fight each other.”
Another hooded figure nodded. “We are all on the same side.”
“Move!” I leapt to the next branch.
The first one crossed the branch toward me with both hands open, reaching to catch me.
His mistake.
I seized the reaching wrist, wrenched it down across the limb, and drove my elbow through the hood where a jaw should sit.
“Ahh!!” He dropped, crashing down through the branches into the dark.
“Get out of my way.”
More gathered.
A woman balanced on a branch. “The Tiger is fine.”
“It doesn’t sound that way.”
“She has made a sacrifice.”
No. Not her. Not for our war.
My heart ached. “What sacrifice would our Tiger ever have to make? We’re the only ones to sacrifice. The enemy is our father.”
“Hiro, please turn around.”
“No!!”
Nyomi. . .what did you do?
Guilt almost suffocated and choked me.
Goddamn it. What did you fucking do?
Two more closed from either side and then attacked.
I went flat to the branch and let them sail over me, then hooked a heel behind the knee of the one on my right and sent him off the edge.
The one on my left twisted in the empty air. The red cape flared like a wing, and he or she landed soft as falling ash three limbs below.
The rest watched and waited.
This is going to get me nowhere.
I didn’t want to kill any of them, but I had to get to Nyomi. Fast, I charged the nearest one, a tall figure who had not yet moved. I feinted high and drove a fist at his throat.
He turned his head a hair's width and my knuckles grazed silk.
I hooked low for his ribs.
His elbow was already there, folding my punch down and away like he had known the angle before I threw it.
“Get out of my way!” I snapped a kick at his knee.
He lifted the leg, let my shin pass under his foot, and set it down again exactly where it had been. He never hit me back. Not once. I threw everything I had at him, and he gave me nothing to break.
The others only flowed around the edges of it, slipping my fists, folding under my kicks.
Another caught my wrists and let the force carry past them.
“Goddamn it!!!” I fell away and landed on the ground.
All of them dropped down and surrounded me.
"Hiro." A woman's voice came from behind me. "Stop. You will hurt yourself. We need you for the battle."
"Get out of my way!" I went after her.
She twisted out of my reach.
“No more time,” a man whispered. “Plan B.”
Huh?
They closed around me.
All of them.
And then they began to fill the air with this soothing sound. "Shhh."
“What?” I looked from left to right and then behind me. This soothing sensation entered my mind. I had to shake my head to get it out. “What are you fucking doing to me?!”
“Shhh,” they murmured together, and the soothing sound rose from every red figure, spilling into all of my pores and calming me so much I wanted to go to sleep.
"Shhh."
“Get out of my way.” I tried to rush forward, but my legs turned slow and heavy.
"Shhh."
“Shut up!” I hit at the air and grabbed a branch.
“Shh.”
I went dizzy.
The wind turned warm.
The branches above drifted a mile away.
“Shh.”
I blinked a few times as my head went dizzy again.
“Stop it.” I swung to another branch and barely missed it. I climbed on top of it and found my balance.
A hooded figure jumped to my branch. “Shh.”
I went forward. . .so. . .damn. . .slow. . .and my fist pushed through the air like it moved through deep water. I swung again, and the arm barely answered.
No. Not now. She needs me. She's right there—
The figure easily dodged it. "Shhh."
No. . .
My balance melted away.
“Shhh.”
I fell back and felt myself going down through the canopy, slow, the way I had come up but backward. Branches passed me one by one.
“Shh.” A few of those figures caught me.
Hand to hand, the Silent Ones lowered me through the dark like they were laying me into the earth.
Gravity drowned my senses.
I could barely move.
“Shh.” They had me.
I tried to break free but nothing worked. “What. . .are. . .you. . .doing to me?”
“Shh.”
Two of the Silent Ones gently grabbed my shoulder and I couldn’t even attack them as my lids fell heavy over my eyes. “Nyomi. . .”
“Shh.”
The last things that reached me, before the world hushed down to nothing, were the smell of her blood and the sound of her screaming.
And my whole body gave out beneath it.
I’m so. . .sorry. . .
And I feared that when I woke up. . .her ghost would be smiling at me.
Noooooo. . .