The Skrayling Tree: The Albino in America Read online

  Deeper and deeper we went into the wild rush of white and green while all around me great boulders and pillars of rock rose up, their scale shifting back and forth in the unstable water. This was no ordinary natural phenomenon. I knew at once that I had effectively left one world and entered another. It was becoming impossible to orient myself as the rocks changed size and shape before my eyes, but I did everything in my power to continue my pursuit. Then suddenly the thing was before me, the size of the Titanic, and I had been struck a blow directly to the head. I felt myself grow limp. I thrashed my tail to keep my bearings. Then another current was pushing me up towards the surface, even as I fought to dive deeper.

  Unable to sustain the descent, I let the current take me back towards shore, exhausted. Fwulette knew we had failed. She seemed sad for me.

  “Go with good luck, little sister,” she said.

  The Salmon Wife returned to her realm, her head slightly sore and, for reasons best known to herself, her humor thoroughly restored.

  Fwulette thanked, I called for my own body and returned to the house as fast as I could. We had no telephone, of course. The nearest was miles away. I had no other means of pursuing my husband’s abductors, not a single hope of ever seeing him again. I was not the only one whose life had changed totally in the last few hours, but this understanding made my loss no easier. I felt horribly ill as I began looking for my clothes.

  Then I saw something I had not noticed in my haste to rescue my husband. Ulric’s kidnappers had lost something in the struggle. Presumably I had not seen it earlier because it had fallen down the slats in the stairs and now stood upright against a wall: a large round thing, with the dimensions of a small trampoline, made from decorated deerhide stretched on wicker and attached to its frame with thongs. It was too big for a shield, though the handles at the back suggested that purpose. I had seen the Indians carrying similar shields but in closer proportions to their bodies. I wondered if it was what was called a dreamcatcher, but it lacked any familiar images. It might even be a holy object or a kind of flag.

  Made of white buckskin with eight turquoise stripes radiating from a central hub, at the boss was what appeared to be a thunderbird framed by a tree. The entire thing was painted in vivid blues and reds. Ornamented with scarlet beads around the rim, with more colored beads and porcupine quills throughout the design, it was of superb craftsmanship and had the feel of a treasured possession. Yet its purpose was mysterious.

  I left it leaning against the wall while I went upstairs to bathe and get some clothes. When I returned to the main part of the house, the sun was everywhere. I could hardly believe I had not been dreaming. But there was the huge deerskin disk, the cracked glass, and other signs of the fight. Ulric must have heard them come in and delivered himself straight into their hands. There was no note. I had not expected one. This was not an attempt to get ransom.

  I was now ready to walk to the filling station. I could do it in under an hour. But I was also reluctant to leave, fearing that if I did so I would miss some important sign or even Ulric’s return. It was possible that he could have escaped from his captors after all and been dragged up to the surface as I had been. But I knew this was really a forlorn hope. As I prepared to go, I heard a sound like a car approaching, and then came a knock at the front door. Hoping in spite of all realism, I ran to open it.

  The gaunt figure who raised his bowler hat to me was dressed in a neat black overcoat, with black polished shoes and a copy of the local newspaper under his arm. His hard black eyes shifted in the depths of their sockets. His thin, peculiar smile chilled the surrounding air. “Forgive me for coming so early, Countess. I have a message for your husband. Could I, do you think, see him for a moment?”

  “Captain Klosterheim!” I was shocked. How had he known where to find me?

  He bowed a modest head. “Merely Herr Klosterheim, these days, dear lady. I have returned to my civilian calling. I am with the church again, though in a lay capacity. It has taken some time to locate you. My business with your husband is urgent and in his interest, I think.”

  “You know nothing of the men who were here in the night?”

  “I do not understand you, my lady.”

  I loathed the idea of being further involved with this villainous ex-Nazi who had allied himself with Ulric’s cousin Gaynor. Was he the supernatural medium Ulric had sensed? I doubted it. His psychic presence was powerful, and I would have detected it before now. On the other hand he might be the only means I had of discovering where they had taken Ulric, so I drew on my professional courtesy and invited him in.

  Entering the big main room he immediately went towards the huge artifact the Indians had left behind. “The Kakatanawa were here?”

  “Last night. What do you know?”

  Scarcely thinking, I took a double-barreled Purdy’s from the cabinet and dropped in two shells. Then I leveled the gun at Klosterheim. He looked around at me in surprise.

  “Oh, madam, I mean you no ill!” He clearly believed I was going to blow him apart on the spot.

  “You recognize that thing?”

  “It’s a Kakatanawa medicine shield,” he said. “Some of them think it helps protect them when they go into the spirit lands.”

  “The spirit lands? That’s where they have gone?”

  “Gone, madam? No, indeed. They mean here. These are their spirit lands. They hold us in considerable awe.”

  I motioned with the gun for him to sit in one of the deep leather armchairs. He seemed to spill across it. In certain lights he became almost two-dimensional, a black-and-white shadow against the dark hide. “Then where have they gone?”

  He looked at the chair as if he had not known such comfort were possible. “Back to their own world, I would guess.”

  “Why have they taken him?”

  “I am not sure. I knew you were in some kind of danger, and I hoped we could exchange information.”

  “Why should I help you, Herr Klosterheim? Or you help us? You are our enemy. You were Gaynor’s creature. I understood you to be dead.”

  “Only a little, my lady. It is my fate. I have my loyalties, too.”

  “To whom?”

  “To my master.”

  “Your master was torn apart by the Lords of the Higher Worlds on Morn. I watched it happen.”

  “Gaynor von Minct was not my master, lady. We were allies, but he was not my superior. That was mere convenience to explain our presence together.” He might even have been a little offended by my presumption. “My master is the essence. Gaynor is merely the vapor. My master is the Prince of Darkness, Lord Lucifer.”

  I would have laughed if I were not in such bizarre circumstances. “So do you come here from Hell? Is that where my husband is to be found—the Underworld?”

  “I do come from Hell, my lady, though not directly, and if your husband were already there, I would not be here.”

  “I am only interested in my husband’s whereabouts, sir.”

  He shrugged and pointed at the Kakatanawa artifact. “That would no doubt help, but they would probably kill you, too.”

  “They mean to kill my husband?”

  “Quite possibly. I was, however, referring to myself. The Kakatanawa have no liking for me or for Gaynor, but Gaynor’s interests are no longer mine. Our paths parted. I went forward. He went back. Now I am something of a watcher on the sidelines.” His cadaverous features showed a certain humor.

  “I am certain you are not here through the promptings of a Christian heart, Herr Klosterheim.”

  “No, madam. I came to propose an alliance. Have you heard of a hero called Ayanawatta? Longfellow wrote about him. In English ‘Hiawatha’? His name was used for a local poem, I believe.”

  I had, of course, read Longfellow’s rather unfashionable but hypnotic work. However, I was scarcely in the mood to discuss creaking classics of American literature. I think I might have gestured with the gun. Klosterheim put up a bony hand.

  “I assure you I am i
n no way being facetious. I see I must put it another way.” He hesitated. I knew the dilemma of all prescient creatures, or all those who have been into a future and seen the consequence of some action. Even to speak of the future was to create another “brane,” another branch of the great multiversal tree. And that creation in turn could confuse any plans one might have made for oneself to negotiate the worlds. So we were inclined to speak somewhat cryptically of what we knew. Most of our omens were as obscure as the Guardian crossword.

  “Do you know where Gaynor is?”

  “I believe I do, in relation to our present circumstances and his own.” He spoke with habitual care.

  “Where would that be?”

  “He could be where your husband is.” An awkward, significant pause.

  “So those were Gaynor’s men?”

  “Far from it, my lady. At least, I assume so.” He again fell silent. “I came to propose an alliance. It would be even more valuable to you, I suspect. I can guarantee nothing, of course…”

  “You expect me to believe one who, by his own confession, serves the Master of Lies?”

  “Madam, we have interests in common. You seek your husband and I, as always, seek the Grail.”

  “We do not own the Holy Grail, Herr Klosterheim. We no longer even own the house it is supposed to reside in. Haven’t you noticed that the East is now under Stalin’s benign protection? Perhaps that ex-priest has the magic cup?”

  “I doubt it, madam. I do believe your husband and the Grail have a peculiar relationship and that if I find him I shall find what I seek. Is that not worth a truce between us?”

  “Perhaps. Tell me how I may follow my husband and his abductors.”

  Klosterheim was reluctant to give away information. He brooded for a moment, then gestured towards the round frame. “That medicine shield should get you there. You can tell by its size it has no business being here. If you were to give it the opportunity to return to where it came from, it might take you with it.”

  “Why do you tell me that? Why do you not use the shield yourself?”

  “Madam, I do not have your skills and talents.” His voice was dry, almost mocking. “I am a mere mortal. Not even a demon, madam. Just a creature of the Devil, you know. An indentured soul. I go where I am bid.”

  “I seem to remember that you had turned against Satan. I gather you found him a disappointment?”

  Klosterheim’s face clouded. He rose from the chair. “My spiritual life is my own.” He stared thoughtfully into the barrels of my shotgun and shrugged. “You have the power to go where I need to go.”

  “You require a guide? When I have no idea where they have taken Ulric? Less idea than you, apparently.”

  “I lack your grace.” He spoke quietly, though his jaw tightened as if in anger. “Countess, it was your husband’s help I sought.” Something struggled in him. “But I think it is time for reconciliation.”

  “With Lucifer?”

  “Possibly. I opposed my master as my master opposed his. I scarcely understand this mania for solipsism or how it came about. Once half our lives were spent contemplating God and the nature of evil. Now Satan’s domain throughout the multiverse shrinks steadily.” He did not sound optimistic.

  I thought him completely mad with his weird, twisted pieties. I had made it my business to read old family histories long before I decided to marry Ulric. Half the von Beks, it seemed, had had dealings with the supernatural and denied it or were disbelieved. A manuscript had only recently been found which claimed to be some sort of ancestral record, written in an idiosyncratic hand in old German; but the East German authorities, unfortunately, had claimed it as a state archive, and we had not yet been able to read it. There was a suggestion that its contents were too dangerous to publish. We did know, however, that it had something to do with the Holy Grail and the Devil.

  Again he gestured towards the medicine shield. “That will take you to your husband, if he still lives. I don’t require a guide. I require a key. I do not travel so easily between the worlds as you. Few do. I have given you all the information I can to help you find Count Ulric. He does not possess what I want, but what I want is in his power to grant me. I hoped he would have the key.”

  I was losing interest in the conversation. I had decided to see what the Kakatanawa medicine shield could do for me. Perhaps I should have been more cautious, but I was desperate to follow Ulric, ready to believe almost anything in order to find him.

  “Key?” I asked impatiently.

  “There is another way to reach the world to which he’s been taken. A door of some kind. Perhaps on the Isle of Morn.”

  “How did you think Ulric could help you?”

  “I hoped the door through to that world is on Morn and the key to that door would be in your husband’s keeping.” He seemed deeply disappointed, as if this was the culmination of a long quest which had proven to be useless.

  “I can assure you we have no mysterious keys.”

  “You have the sword,” he said, without much hope. “You have the black sword.”

  “As far as I know,” I told him, “that, too, is in the hands of the East German authorities.”

  He looked up in some dismay. “It’s in the East?”

  “Unless the Russians now have it.”

  He frowned. ‘Then I have bothered you unnecessarily.”

  “In which case…” I gestured with the shotgun.

  He nodded agreeably and began walking towards the front door. “I’m obliged to you, madam. I wish you well.”

  I was still in an appalling daze as I watched him open the door and leave. I followed him and saw that he had come in a taxi. It was the same driver who had brought us from Englishtown. I had a sudden thought, asked him to wait, and went inside. I wrote a hasty note to the children, came out, and asked him to post it for me. As Klosterheim got into his cab, the driver waved cheerfully. He had no sense of the supernatural tensions in the air, nor of the heartbreaking tensions within me, the impossible decision I had to make.

  After watching them drive off, I returned to the house and picked up the medicine shield. I had no interest in Klosterheim’s ambitions or any conflict he was engaged in. All I cared about was the information he had given me. I was prepared to risk all to let the shield take me to my husband.

  Almost in a trance, I carried the thing through a blustering wind that tugged and buffeted at it, down to the jetty. Then I stripped off my outer clothes, threw the shield into the water and gasped as I flung myself after it. Feeling it move under me, I climbed onto it, using it like a raft. The wind wailed and bit at my flesh, but now the shield had a life of its own. It felt as if muscles began to form in the skin as it moved rapidly across the water out towards the island we had visited. I expected it to follow its owner into the maelstrom.

  Had the medicine shield come completely alive? Did it have intelligence? Or did it intend to fling me against the rocks? For now it seemed to protect me as the cold water heaved and the cold wind blew.

  My fingers dug deep into the edges. Even my toes tried to grip parts of the frame as it bucked and kicked under me.

  Then I felt it lift suddenly and move rapidly out to sea, as if it hoped to escape what threatened us. My fingers were in agony, but I would have clung on dead or alive. My will had molded me to that huge woven frame.

  All at once it was diving. I had no time to catch my breath, and I no longer had gills. It was going to drown me!

  I saw the high jagged pillars of rock coming up towards me, saw massive dark shapes moving in the swirling water. I cursed myself for an irresponsible fool as my lungs began to fail. I felt my grip on the shield weakening, my senses dimming, as I was dragged inexorably downward.

  CHAPTER TWO

  On the Shores of Gitche Gumee

  Nine by nine and seven by seven,

  We shall seek the roots of heaven.

  WHELDRAKE,

  “A Border Tragedy”

  Suddenly I had burst back out
of the water into blinding light. I could see nothing and could hear only the wild keening of a wind. Something icy had me in its grasp. Frozen air wrapped itself around me and effortlessly ripped my hands from the shield. My willpower was useless in the face of such a force. I did all I could to get my grip back, but the wind was relentless. If I had not known it before, I certainly understood it now. This was a sentient wind, a powerful elemental, which clearly directed its wrath specifically at me. I could sense its hatred, its personality. I could almost see a face glaring into mine. I could not imagine how I had offended it or why it should pursue me, but pursue me it did.

  There was absolutely no resisting that force. It snatched the shield away and threw me in the other direction. I believe it intended to kill me. I felt myself strike water, and then I had lost consciousness.

  I had not expected to awake at all. When I did, I felt a surprising sense of well-being, of safety. I was lying on springy turf, tightly wrapped in some sort of blanket. I could smell the sweet grass and heather. I was warm. I was relaxed. Yet I remained calmly aware of the danger I had escaped and of the urgency of my mission. In contrast to my earlier experience, I now felt completely in control of my body, even though I could barely move a finger! Had I reached the realm where my husband had been taken? Was Ulric near? Was that why I felt safe?