The Changelings Part 16

"I feel like I'm being rocked in a rocking chair by a grandma I never had. This is just ... so incredible. No wonder you were vibing all that happiness. I'm like, on cloud nine right now." He smiled contentedly at me; and for the first time, I realized how truly beautiful my friend Tony is on the outside. I've always known how beautiful he is on the inside. But with the clothes and the gla.s.ses and everything, his outer gorgeousness was sometimes too easily hidden.

"You're really beautiful, you know that, Tones?"

"I was just thinking the same thing about you."

We both smiled.

"What are two gorgeous bombsh.e.l.ls like us doing out here in this f.u.c.ked up forest full of messed up creatures, anyway?" I asked.

"I don't know. But as much as I'd like to stay here and hug this tree all day, we really need to get going to that other waypoint." Tony broke the connection, pulling away from the tree and standing up straight. The light on his face faded out and he became regular old, serious Tony again.

I sent a big thank you up to the tree as best I could, hoping it could read my mind and feel the grat.i.tude I was trying to transfer through my arms, and then stood to join Tony.

"When do you think the others will get to the first waypoint?" I asked. I had half expected them to show up while we were there.

"I don't know. From the look of the map, it seems like maybe an hour or two after us. We were just lucky to have met those gnome things."

"Yeah, well at least they didn't try to eat us."

"Did you see their teeth?" Tony asked, s.h.i.+vering at the memory. He started walking through the forest again, glancing back to make sure I was following.

"Yeah, disgusting. I've never seen anything like that before. Makes me want to keep Mister Biggles out of the garden forever." Mister Biggles is my old cat who loves to go and lay right smack in the middle of my mom's flowers. It always made her crazy because his fat b.u.t.t always squashed them, but it made me laugh. Thinking about one of those lumpy gnomes with the dirty, sharp teeth coming up from behind and ... ew. Poor Mister Biggles. "Should I call my mom and tell her to keep Mister Biggles in the house?" I was only half-joking. I had to believe that as much of a pain in the a.s.s as I was to my mom, she was worrying about me now.

"No. First of all, you don't have a cell phone, so you can't; and second, all you'd do is freak her out. This forest isn't normal. There are no gnomes in Florida or we would have seen them or signs of them a or someone would have. This is some ... enchanted place or something. Once we're out of here, life will go back to normal."

"Enchanted forest, eh?" I'd bet old Walt Disney had never envisioned this kind of s.h.i.+t going on in his enchanted forests. Maybe a few dwarves, sure; but nasty-toothed gnomes? Vampires? No, I think not. Face it Tones a life is never going to go back to normal after this. We've seen something we shouldn't have. This forest. The Green ... this connection with the trees. It's alive, and I don't mean alive like just living. It's alive like aware alive. I don't know if I'll ever be able to look at the world the same way again." The Green seemed liked the perfect name for this weirdness around us.

"You're probably right. I'm not sure that we fully appreciate what's going on here right now, but I'm not in the best frame of mind to figure it all out. I just want to focus on finis.h.i.+ng this thing and getting out of here. Must be my survival instincts." He took his axe out of his bag as he walked along.

"Why are you getting your axe out?"

"I think it's a good idea to keep it handy. When those gnomes showed up, I was totally unprepared. We're just lucky they weren't killer gnomes a otherwise I would have been dead meat."

"Well, you would have had some nasty bites on your ankles for sure, but I'm not so sure about the dead part."

"I'll bet even an ankle bite from those little things would be deadly. Those teeth ... " Tony shuddered.

"Yeah, you're right. It would be like being bitten by that dragon thing. What was it called? We saw it on Animal Planet one time."

"The Komodo Dragon a bites its prey and then leaves it, tracking it for days until the bacteria poison in its saliva destroys the prey's blood and eventually kills it. Then the dragon moves in and ... "

" ... munches on the easy prey."

"Exactly. Easy prey." Tony held up his axe. "I'm not going to be easy prey for the rest of this trip. Anyone who gets in my way ... " SWOOs.h.!.+

Tony swung the axe in the air. I was glad I was far behind him at that particular moment, because the axe was all messed up. A sound filled the air, like a humming, and a blue shadow hung in the air where the axe had just been. It was like a laser light show or something, only with less defined lights and more afterglow.

"What the f.u.c.k was that, Tony?"

Tony was staring in amazement at the blue streak that was quickly dissipating. "I have no idea."

"Do it again!" I urged, unable to keep the glee out of my voice.

Tony swung the axe again, but nothing happened. He lifted it up towards his face, staring at it curiously. "Did I imagine something happening last time?"

"Not unless it was ma.s.s hysteria and I'm imagining crazy s.h.i.+t too. Try again."

Tony swung it a third time. Nothing happened.

"What did you do different?"

"Nothing I'm aware of."

"Look at your feet. Are they in a different position?"

"No, I haven't moved."

"Did you swing it softer or harder?"

"Nope."

"What were we talking about before you swung it last time?"

"I was saying that I wasn't going to be easy prey anymore."

"Okay, say that again and then swing it. Maybe there's a magic word in there."

Tony held the axe above his shoulder and to the right. "I'm not going to be easy prey anymore." He swung the axe, and I thought I heard a very slight hum.

"Did you see that?!" asked Tony, excitedly.

"Was that some blue there?" I asked.

"I think I saw some. Not as much or as bright, but some."

"That is so cool." I pulled my stick out of my bag. "Maybe I have a lightsaber too." I swung mine around, but nothing happened. I gave Tony's magic words a try. "I'm not gonna be easy prey!" I swished the stick out in front of me, back and forth, giving some high-quality forward jabs too for good measure.

Nothing happened.

"Oh well ... figures. Finn gets vampire killer arrows, you get a lightsaber axe, and I get a stick. That Dardennes guy had it in for me from the start."

"Jayne ... "

"Come on, Tony, you know it's true. When it was time to pick weapons Niles put Becky in front of me. Becky. She's, like, half my size."

"Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration."

"You know what I mean."

"No, you're right. She's definitely smaller than you, and we were supposed to be picking by size." He shrugged. "Your weapon will be valuable for something, I'm sure."

"Yeah, for what? Digging up mushrooms?"

Tony laughed at my disgust. "Just keep it handy. I don't thing we'll be lucky enough to get through to the fourth waypoint without meeting anything else along the way. A sharp stick is better than nothing."

He was right. I took his advice and kept my stick out. I continued to wave it around as we walked towards our next destination, trying different techniques to see if I could wake it up, but nothing worked. Stupid stick. Those gnomes had called it Dark Blackthorn or something, though, so I held out some hope for my little friend, the sharp stick. It did look like a giant thorn a a really giant one. I decided to call it Blackie. It was black a a weird color for wood, plus I had a little black Pomeranian once, creatively and named Blackie. He was tiny but he was bada.s.s. The postman refused to come onto our property because of old bada.s.s Blackie. Best dog ever. He died when I was twelve, but I still remembered him well.

After walking for about an hour my stomach began growling. "I'm hungry. Can we stop for lunch?"

"Sure."

Tony stopped, stepping off our trail to go sit on a fallen tree.

I sat down next to him, and we opened up our bags, deciding immediately to eat an actual meal this time since we were starving. We'd gotten one quarter of the way through this test and still had another full meal and most of the side bits remaining. I had one bottle of water left; Tony had one and a half. We could afford to splurge on the calories.

We had finished eating and were packing up our wrappers when we heard a sound. Tony grabbed my arm to stop me from moving anymore. We both listened carefully to see if we could hear anything else.

The noise came again. It sounded like voices.

"Quick," whispered Tony. "Get behind that root!"

The end of the fallen tree that we'd been sitting on was a huge root, taller than me. Piles of leaves and other branches had collected around it, making a small mountain of debris to hide behind.

Tony and I hunkered down, looking out between a crack in the cover towards the direction of the voices. They were coming from the path we had been following.

Two figures appeared out of the dark tree shadows. One of them was Niles, wearing full camo gear and carrying an axe very much like Tony's a only much bigger. Walking next to him was another dwarf, similarly dressed, but younger-looking. He was also carrying an axe, holding it in a deceptively casual way that told me he knew how to use it.

I looked at Tony and nodded at his axe. Tony looked down and then nodded back at me. Apparently Tony had the weapon of choice for commando dwarves around here.

Niles was talking. "They came this way for sure. They couldn't broadcast their trail any louder. Idiots. We'll make quick work of them if the others don't get to them first."

"What about the other humans?" asked the younger dwarf, practically running to keep up with Niles' longer stride. Even thinking that made me want to laugh, because if you've never seen a long dwarf stride, you haven't seen funny yet.

Tony shot me a stern look, probably vibing my humor. He was right a last thing we needed was two axe-wielding army dwarves up our a.s.ses. Even though they were little, they probably had low centers of gravity, and I didn't think Blackie would be any match against their weapons. I quickly choked down my hysteria, amazed at how quickly it went from inner laughter to abject fear.

They were soon gone from our immediate vicinity, but Tony and I stayed put, whispering so we wouldn't bring them back with further inept.i.tudes.

"f.u.c.k! What should we do now?" I asked. This test had gone horribly, horribly wrong. We weren't being tested ... we were being hunted. And that was a whole other deal altogether. I was going to have to survive just so I could kill Dardennes when this was all over. The concept of life or death was way, way too far into the land of the unthinkable for me to even remotely consider right now, even though my rational mind knew it was my current reality. I tamped it down, shoving any distress I was feeling to the back of my mind to panic about later.

"I'm not sure what we should do. I guess we can't keep going in that direction. They could stop and we'd come right up on them. And from what Niles said, it sounds like they're tracking us and so are other ... people, or dwarves, or whatever. Who the h.e.l.l knows? Dammit!"

"Easy Tony. Now's not the time to take up swearing. Your mother would be so very disappointed in you." I wiggled my eyebrows at him.

Tony shook his head impatiently. "Shush. We need a plan. Help me make one."

I put my hand on the root of the downed tree that we were hiding behind. I don't know what I was expecting, but I was a little surprised to feel something there a an energy. I grabbed Tony's hand to link him up with me.

"What's that?" he whispered.

"It's that tree energy, I think."

Tony frowned. "But this tree is dead."

"I don't think anything in this place is completely dead." The energy was faint and it didn't bring to mind anything in particular, but it was definitely sending something out to me a something I could feel. I looked around by my feet. What is the connection? Are they linking with me through the trees themselves? Or is the ground under my feet and my hands on the tree making some sort of circuit? I wished I had paid better attention in science cla.s.s last year. We had made a circuit in our lab. Tony kicked a.s.s with that stuff, but if I asked him about it now he'd probably get cranky. I should probably stop worrying about it so much and start figuring out how to get the h.e.l.l out of here. I let the tree go so I could focus.

Tony had his map out and was trying to get an idea of where we were. He pointed to a spot that was about two inches from the second waypoint.

"I think we must be about here. I calculated, roughly, about how long it took us to get from the camp where we spent the night to where the gnomes were and where the first waypoint was. Based on that, I'd say we're here." He pointed to a spot in the middle of the darker green area.

I looked around me. It sure was green here. And dark. "Seems like it could be right." I wasn't good with directions, so that's the most help I could be; but Tony understood. He'd been lost with me at the wheel enough times back home.

Home. Mom. Mister Biggles. School. Safety. I never appreciated that stuff before. I had hated it all a well, except for Mister Biggles a but now I didn't have it anymore. Regret was beginning to have a very bitter taste.

"Stop worrying about that c.r.a.p; just help me figure out how to get out of here," said Tony, frustrated.

I pushed him, silently admonis.h.i.+ng him for vibing me.

"Come on," he prompted, folding the map up and putting it back in his bag. "We should go this way." He gestured behind us, into the darker areas of the forest.

"Are you sure? It looks really dark in there." I won't lie. I was pretty scared at this point. All the tree love had left me and now I was just feeling cold and alone a very alone, in a big place, that had mean little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds with bad att.i.tudes running all around us carrying deadly sharp things. My grip on Blackie tightened as I followed behind Tony. "So what's the plan, then?"

"We're going to circle around a bit to the west and then angle back in when we think we're perpendicular to the waypoint."

"Do you think the others are okay?"

"Well, it doesn't look like Niles found them yet, based on what that other dwarfy guy said, so maybe they're fine."

I had to hope so. As much as I didn't trust Jared, I didn't want the others to be harmed just because they'd decided to stay with him and ditch us. It was better anyway a with all of them we would have been like a herd of elephants cras.h.i.+ng through the trees. I was glad it was just Tony and me, although I was hoping really hard that I was going to see Spike again, and under better circ.u.mstances.

We walked for another hour, picking our way carefully across logs and branches and through brambles and other sharp pokey things. I had scratches all over my wrists, neck and face. I was glad I had jeans on to protect my legs. My hoodie protected most of my arms, but I had pushed up the sleeves a bit because I was so hot. All this walking and climbing over s.h.i.+t was making me sweat.

"Are we there yet? How much longer?" I whined. This was like road trips I had taken with my parents when I was younger that seemed to go on forever.

"I think we should turn back east soon a not yet though. I'm not sure. I wish I could see above the trees."

I thought about this for a minute then came to an abrupt halt, grabbing Tony's sleeve. "Why don't we climb one?" Looking up, I could see that some of the trees would be good candidates. They had lots of branches.

Tony looked up too. "I was never much good at climbing trees. I panic when I get above ten feet."

"s.h.i.+t. Me too. But I think we should try anyway."

Tony cinched up his backpack, making it tighter. "Fine. Let's do this. Which tree?"

I picked the one that had the most branches. It wasn't nearly as big as the one we'd hugged earlier. I walked over and put one hand on the trunk.

"h.e.l.lo, Tree. We need to climb you to see above the forest. I don't want to hurt you or be disrespectful, but it's important." I tried to send my thoughts into the tree. I got only an answering glow back. I'm not sure if it was a response, permission, or what a but it didn't feel angry or anything, so I figured we were good to go.

Tony just watched me, not saying anything. As soon as he saw me start climbing he walked over to the tree too, putting his hands on its bark. "Hi, Tree. What she said. I'm ... uh ... gonna climb you too."