Shadows of the Dark Crystal Read online

  Her footsteps crunched alone as she made her way, and the night came full into its prime. As the shadows grew even darker, she sensed something else lying in wait within the belly of the Dark Wood. It had a presence, of course—all things of Thra did—but this was different, somehow. Its melody did not fall in perfect harmony with the rest of the song of Thra, but Naia could not yet put it into words. Alone, without Kylan to worry about, nearly blindfolded by the night, Naia felt her inner eyes opening, seeing, sensing. Yes, the Dark Wood sang the song of Thra, but notes were off-key, as if it had forgotten parts, or was too distracted—too disturbed—to fall back into tune. As she listened to its song, it brought a familiar scent to her mind—a dark and primal hollow scent that quickened her heart and her step, urging her silently to find Kylan and reach the Black River as soon as she could.

  “Naia?”

  The voice paralyzed her, a wisp of cold air tickling the backs of her arms. She turned toward it, wary in disbelief but unable to deny what all her senses were telling her. A Gelfling boy stepped out of the tree cover, exactly her age, with matching clay-colored skin marked with Drenchen spots and speckles. His locs hung at his shoulders, and he wore a beautifully embroidered black-and-violet soldier’s uniform. Naia’s breath was stuck in her throat, her heart leaping.

  It was Gurjin.

  Chapter 14

  “Gurjin, wha-what are you doing here?” Naia asked, running to hug her brother. She frowned when she felt his arms against her shoulders. His embrace was cold to the touch, almost like stone, even through the fabric of his tunic. She pressed her hand against his arms, but the coldness refused to dissipate. “What’s happened to you?”

  “I’ve been lost in the forest for days,” he said. “I’m trying to find my way back to the castle.”

  “But you’re a soldier, shouldn’t you know . . .”

  Naia trailed off, stepping back. Something had flickered in Gurjin’s eyes, deep within, invisible except to the eyes of her heart. She could feel something was wrong. He didn’t react to her retreat, remaining where he’d been standing, arms at his side. The wind ruffled the trees above, and moonlight fell through, hitting spots on his tunic and face. In that brief moment she saw his skin was pale, his eyes deep and hollow, and his tunic, so recently resplendent in its ornament and fine embroidery, lay in tatters.

  “You looked upon the crystal veins,” she whispered. “Oh, Gurjin . . .”

  “Naia, there’s something I have to tell you,” he said. “I must return to the castle.”

  His voice was as cold as his touch, empty and withered. He spoke the words with a sightless gaze, and Naia turned away, not wanting to look deep enough into his eyes that she would see the flickers of darkened light.

  “The castle,” he repeated. “Do you know the way?”

  Naia knew what she had to do. She took her brother’s arm in hand and shook him.

  “Gurjin, you need to come with me. We need to find my friend and we need to leave the Dark Wood. We can help you . . . I don’t know how, but we can help you. All right?”

  He fell behind her as she tugged him by his cold hand, resuming her course for the Black River. She could only hope her sense of direction was strong enough to get her there. With her brother’s stone-like feet and disinterested gait, she would not be able to rely on him, though this should be territory he was most familiar with. Though Stone-in-the-Wood was at the center of the Dark Wood, the Castle of the Crystal lay in the western branch of the sprawling forest. Surely the soldiers that guarded its halls also knew the wood by which it was surrounded!

  But she’d found him—and with him, they could stand before the All-Maudra and clear his name, and the name of their clan. Everyone would know the truth.

  “Everyone will be so glad to know I’ve found you,” she said, smiling suddenly. “We can show everyone you aren’t a traitor to the Skeksis—”

  “He is a traitor.”

  Naia stumbled when Gurjin’s hand slipped out of hers. When she turned, she cried out in surprise. Gurjin was gone, and standing in his place was Tavra of Ha’rar, though her white and silver robes were in the same state of disrepair as her brother’s tunic had been. Her broken wing dangled uselessly at her back, and her expression was void of any life save for a grim, rising look of anger.

  “He’s not,” Naia said, backing away. “Where’s Gurjin—who are you?”

  Tavra did not attempt to close the distance as Naia took another step back, though her voice seemed just as loud when she repeated the four terrible words.

  “He is a traitor.”

  “No,” Naia said, refusing to be bullied by the Vapra. “It was someone else, or . . .”

  “Are you so sure?”

  Now Gurjin—or whatever ghostly creature had taken on his appearance—stood behind her, and she spun before she collided with him in her retreat. His uniform was complete again, no longer in shreds, though the jewels that lined his collar and breastplate were cracked, glinting in the dim light with shimmers of violet.

  “I’m sure,” she said. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “I’m the traitor,” he said.

  Naia’s breath left her when he grabbed her by the shoulders, holding her firmly in place with fingers that constricted around her body like vines. He fixed her with his blackened eyes, and she could smell the earth on his breath, soil and crystal and fire from the deepest reaches of Thra. When he spoke, it was as if he pulled the words from the corners of her heart, from the dark spaces where she’d hidden her secret fears.

  “I’m the traitor,” he repeated. “Traitor to the castle. Traitor to the Crystal. Traitor to all of Thra.”

  “No,” she pleaded. She tried to close her eyes against his gaze, but he had locked her into it, and within she could see the Crystal. Its song was a drowning call, pulling her toward it, whispering echoes of the doubts that lay within her, numbing her fingers as she tried to draw the dagger from her belt.

  “You cannot save me,” Gurjin hissed. “You’ll meet with the All-Maudra empty-handed. You’ll stand before her alone. Our clan will be marked as traitors, and it will only be a matter of time before the Skeksis come for retribution—”

  “No!”

  Naia’s fingers found purchase on the hilt of her dagger, and she thrust . . . but the blade met only the trunk of an upright root. Gurjin had vanished, and where the blade split the bark of the root, dazzling purple light poured out. Naia yanked the knife free and spun to face Tavra, toes digging into the dirt of the forest floor.

  “You’re not strong enough to save him,” Tavra said with a sneer of disdain. “Now run. Just like he did.”

  Though the implication filled her with dread, every nerve in Naia’s body was telling her to take the opportunity and escape this awful place filled with the nightmarish apparitions. She bolted, acting on instinct, sprinting as fast as she could away from the ghostly Vapra soldier. Vines and roots reached for her as she ran, scratching and grasping after her, but she tore free of them, refusing to be caught again. Tears came as she heard the echoes of Gurjin’s words in her mind, but the breeze on her cheeks as she ran dried the saltwater away, and she tried with all her might to leave it behind her in the wood.

  “Why?” she cried, knocking away another branch as it reached to ensnare her. “Why is this happening? What do you want?”

  In the forest to the right and the left, she saw figures, more shadowy shapes, taking on the forms and faces of people she knew. Her mother, her father. Her sisters. Maudra Mera, Kylan—and then she heard voices, shouting, crying, echoing through the depths of the wood as she raced to escape it. Some she recognized, and some were strange—

  You cannot save me . . .

  I won’t accept it . . .

  Through the din she heard Gurjin’s voice. It was unmistakable, and the words it uttered struck her like stones:

  I
’ll tell everyone the Skeksis are villains. I’ll turn them against the castle. Even the All-Maudra.

  “No,” she cried, but her voice was growing hoarse. “No—”

  Her brother’s voice did not let up.

  Just you wait and see.

  Amid all the other faces, she saw one creature she didn’t recognize. It was a hulking spidery thing, looming above the other Gelfling ghosts, with four monstrous arms and long square-tipped fingers. On every surface of its body grew sprouts of trees, weaving in and out of its flesh and bursting into branches and diamond-shaped violet leaves. The being stared into her with piercing otherworldly eyes, and when it tilted back its long-necked head and opened its mouth, it let out a sonorous moan so loud and miserable, it shook every tree in the wood.

  I must rejoin the Heart of Thra.

  Terrified by the vision, Naia mistepped and yelped in surprise as the earth gave way to a sudden valley. She tumbled in a ball of arms and legs and locs, finally landing with a groan on a hard rippled surface. Unsure if she was broken, or maybe dead, she remained still, waiting for her head to stop spinning. She wanted to cry, but she didn’t have the time. She had to find Kylan and Neech, and get out of the forest before it brought an early end to their journey. The phantoms . . . Had they been real? Some enchanted creature taking on the forms of Tavra and her brother? Or had the shadowy figures been an illusion caused by her own mind—her fears taking form under the power of the crystal veins that plagued the land?

  “Naia?”

  Naia leaped to her feet, holding her dagger before her with energy she hadn’t realized she still had. Almost close enough to touch, Kylan crouched, hands up to protect himself. They faced each other, both breathless, both prepared to fight or flee.

  “Stay away from me,” he warned. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “Kylan, it’s me!” she said. “Naia . . .”

  “How do I know you’re not another shadow?”

  “How do I know you’re not?”

  He moved away from her. The sorrowful, haunted look in his eyes was emotive—living. She felt the rigid muscles in her body relax as she recognized the expression. He’d seen the forest’s phantoms, too. Carefully she lowered her dagger, and a chirrrup came from his sleeve and out flew Neech, still glowing gently, gliding through the air to Naia’s shoulder. Relieved and exhausted, Kylan let down his guard. She reached out and squeezed his shoulder to prove it, to both of them. When she did, she could feel he was warm to the touch. Naia could only imagine what nightmares the forest might have brought Kylan. She hardly wanted to think about the ones it had conjured for her. The voices. The four-armed monster. She pushed them out of mind, hoping to clear her senses enough to get them out of the wood safely.

  “From the look of it, you’ve seen what I’ve seen, or something like it,” she replied quietly. “Are you all right?”

  He let out a long breath and curled his lips in, then out.

  “I think so. Where are we? What is this?”

  The clearing was made entirely of the thick roots here, tightly packed against one another in a huge spiraling basin, squeezing out all other plant life. At the very bottom of the bowl grew a warped angular tree. It had leaves that matched the shoots and saplings Naia had seen in the highlands and throughout the forest, but this one was different. It was bulging at the base, in lumps and protrusions that looked like half-formed limbs or faces. Four knobby branches sprouted from it, two on either side, spread wide as if the tree were grasping toward the sky with four arms and hands full of diamond leaves. In the dark of the night, lit only by the moons and stars overhead, it looked as if it were moving, slowly reaching toward them.

  She thought, inescapably, of the monster she’d seen in the wood. She hoped it had only been a vision. She shivered to think that it was a real thing, somewhere out there, watching them with its penetrating eyes.

  Rejoin the Heart of Thra, it had said. What did that mean?

  “What is that?” Kylan asked, shying away from the four-limbed tree. Naia wanted to do the same, but she was reluctant to look afraid in front of her friend.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “A better question is why did the trees bring us here to see it?”

  The clearing had been quiet for a beat, but now the rasping sounds of the crawling roots and vines simmered up again. Naia felt the roots shift beneath her feet as the entire basin constricted like a knot of rope when one end is pulled. The echoing moan they’d heard before they’d been carried away came once more, but now it was so nearby, Naia could feel the sound vibrating against her chest and making her whole body shiver. As scared as she felt, though, there was something apart from fear in her.

  “It’s in pain,” she said, her mind clearing with the realization. “The tree—the forest—or something—it’s calling for help. I saw those shadows, the phantoms—but I also saw inside the root of the tree, and it was the same as the crystal I saw in Sog and in the Podling burrow . . . Look.”

  Naia knelt and cut into one of the roots at their feet, prying back the thick bark so Kylan could peer inside. As she expected, the tightly packed grain within the core of the root was veined with traces of the violet mineral. It looked like filaments of purple ice had frozen inside, spreading in forks and webs almost like the embroidery Naia had seen on the cloak of Gurjin’s shadow.

  “The crystal vein,” Kylan gasped. “It’s here, in the wood. It’s darkened this tree . . . this tree that makes up all of the Dark Wood?”

  Naia thought of running, of escaping. Of getting out of the wood with their lives. But then she thought of the Nebrie and its mourning wails just before it had passed. How lonesome it had been in its rage, just before it had died through no fault of its own. Afraid, but resolved, Naia shouldered off her pack and sat cross-legged beside the root, placing both hands upon it.

  “I’m going to dreamfast with it,” she said. “And then I’m going to try to heal it.”

  “That’s a bit dangerous . . . ,” he began, but shook his head, thinking better of it. Instead, he said, “Can I do anything to help? The last time you did this, it didn’t work out so well.”

  Naia nodded to her pack. “If there’s danger, grab a bola and make the best of it.”

  Her friend hesitantly drew the rock-and-rope weapon with a stern-faced resolve. He stood over her with the bola in hand, looking back and forth into the wood that surrounded them. Should anything actually come for them here, she hoped he would find it in him to swing the bola heroically, but in reality she hoped she would be able to sense it from within the dreamfast quickly enough to rescue them both. Still, his determination to do his part was endearing . . . and maybe a little charming.

  Leaving Kylan to protect them, Naia turned her attention to the smooth-barked root before her. It was quivering, as if trying to yawn but unable to find its mouth, humming with the unvoiced cries of anguish that coursed through the miles and miles of the plant’s sprawling body. Even as ready as she thought she was, hands pressed against the tree’s skin, the recent memories of the ghosts that it had manifested made her reluctant to make contact. But she wasn’t going to let reluctance or fear stand in her way. She had let the Nebrie down, and the ruffnaw—she wasn’t about to let the Dark Wood down, too. If she could calm the chaos in its heart, they could finish their journey in peace . . . and maybe, she hoped, come a step closer to understanding just what was happening in their world.

  Bracing herself, Naia closed her eyes, opening her heart and mind to the tree. It sensed her contact, and with a hungry, maddened surge of energy, it lunged to swallow her whole.

  Chapter 15

  In a rush of memories and emotions, feelings and experiences that were unlike anything that could be felt by a Gelfling, Naia fell into the tree’s consciousness as she might ride a raft over the side of a waterfall. The texture of the earth. The fluid breeze. The warmth and cool of the days and nig
hts.The crawling of creatures and the tickling of their breaths as they lived and died within the forest, the predators and the preyed upon—fliers, buzzers, diggers, even walkers—with their Gelfling-light footsteps through the spongy understory. Then the fall was over, plunging her deep into the basin, suspending her in time as she sank deeper and deeper into the heart of the tree. Ninets seemed to pass like seconds as Thra orbited its three suns—some trine cooler and some warmer as the suns changed configurations at the center of the system.

  When Naia regained her bearings, she was still floating. She felt the forest all around; the tree was the forest, she realized, with roots that crawled every inch of the rich wood, and branches that reached between and above even the highest sentinel trees. It had been the first sprout to grow here, in ancient Thra. Its name was Olyeka-Staba. The Cradle-Tree.

  For the moment, drifting in the dim current of the great tree’s memories, it seemed calm, hardly the dangerous pulling aura that had conjured the tumultuous phantoms she had seen. Being within the gentle memories reminded Naia of the naps she would sometimes take in the pools in Sog, dozing underwater in the cool shallows. She felt almost as though she might fall asleep . . . but that thought alone sparked her wariness. The Cradle-Tree might have been the foundation of the Dark Wood, but it had been calling to her, sending nightmares to her in its torment. Lashing out in the madness awakened within it by the crystal shadows. It had tried to deceive her before, and nearly succeeded—this comfort was likely another attempt.

  Cradle-Tree, she called to it. Show me your pain. I want to help.