

THE BONE CELL

RICHARD FUTCH

# THE BONE CELL

Published by Richard Futch at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 Richard Futch

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# Chapter 1: Wake Up Call

There was still about a half hour until dark and Ian came over the Mason's back fence, through a cat-tail-filled ditch, and then down a seldom used path to where the trail widened. Connor pushed his bike behind a bramble hedge and made his way through a cut in the tall grass off to the right, passing beneath the overhanging branches of an old oak. They came together at the discarded length of sewer pipe that had been there since forever and from there it was nothing to the tree.

Neither said a word as they broke through the remaining grass fringe that encircled the stand of pine, willow and water oaks. They looked up at what was left of the tree house. That summer was long gone. Now it hung there like a loose, broken tooth, just a jumble of dangerous jags of warped wood and long-lost fun. The last hurricane had really done it in.

"Well, what do you think?" Connor said.

"I doan know," Ian replied and kicked at the ground. He looked into his friend's face. "A gopher maybe?"

"You ever seen one?"

Ian admitted he had not.

"It had wings. You din't see 'em?" Ian shrugged. "A bat, maybe?"

He shook his head, stared into the tree, said, "I doan think so..."

Fifteen minutes later, just before the streetlights were due, a peculiar rustling whispered down from the upper reaches of the closest pine. As both boys strained to pick through the shadows up there, one suddenly took the shape of a gigantic black bird, as big as a Labrador puppy, inching its way into the dying light. The only thing that broke its perfect, midnight hue was a pair of brilliant yellow eyes like honey in a dark barrel. It blinked down at them and cawed. Then, incredibly, it said, in English, "I'm glad the both of you could make it."

The boys looked at one another and took a coordinated step back.

The bird shrugged its wings into a hunch along its back and bristled the feathers along its spine. Then it fanned its wings, revealing for a split second a large hole through the middle of the right one. It hopped down to a lower, thicker branch and fixed its eyes back on them. "Please don't be alarmed," it said. "I wish neither of you any harm. I hope you will forgive my dream-intrusion last night, but desperate times call for desperate measures."

They managed a nod.

The gigantic crow uttered a short, throaty caw and ruffled its ebony feathers again. "I know you think you should be going soon, but please give me a moment. I have a few tricks that tend to make Time a bit...flexible, " and with that it dropped down to eye-level and began its tale.

# Chapter 2: Where the Road Ran

Down past the pond, according to this strange bird, you could still see where the Old Shadow Road trailed weakly back into what had long ago been the Deep Back. This road had been built for logging initially, and later on, had been the only link to a spur of the Illinois Central rail line. But now, if you didn't include the few scattered, rotting cross-ties here and there that poked out of the ground like stumbling-block tombstones, you'd never know it ever existed at all. "And I was young then, my lads," it said in its strange, sad, almost human voice. "Fresh from the egg. I remember learning to fly as log wagons carted cypress stumps out of the swamp ages and ages ago." It made a dry click in the back of its throat and scratched its beak quickly back and forth on the branch where it stood as if sharpening a knife. It was then the boys noticed that one of its claws was useless, crippled, and pulled into a tight knot at the ebony underbelly.

It was also then that the boys noticed another more disconcerting strangeness. There was no breeze, no other sound really, other than the bird's voice. A cloud bank that had been skirting across the face of the new moon had gone no farther. There was no sound of crickets. The boys stepped closer together and another step back.

The crow noticed and said, "As I told you, I know a few tricks with Time, which proves lucky for me as I can't tell you everything you need to know in one regular moment." It cocked its head to the side like a dog and the eyes seemed to grow even yellower, verging to the tip of orange. "But you have to understand I would not have called you had it not been absolutely necessary.

"You see my companion and I have a problem, a very bad problem. However, not insurmountable, so I don't think we're done just yet." It shook its feathers out again and let them ride back smoothly into place. "I'll cut straight to the facts. Your talent has not gone unnoticed." It paused as the look of wonder spread across both boys' face. A dry cackling laugh escaped it. "You thought you held this in secret?" It cawed again, that weird half-laugh they recognized now as some bridge between mirth and amazement. "Doubtless, you had to think others suspected, your mothers, your friends?" It ruffled its wings again, shaking itself out until it was roughly the size of a grown beaver. "Ahh, but you were not certain..."

Connor managed to find his voice. "What was that about we?" he said. The only thing he could think of at the moment.

"Oh yes, my companion and I," the crow replied. "She's shy...uncomfortable around people. Perhaps you'll meet her later."

Ian, a ball of tension, could control himself no longer. "What is this all about anyway!" he stammered, grabbing hold of Connor's arm at the elbow. For a moment it looked like they would bolt off into the paralyzed twilight.

"Please listen and I will tell you," it said. "You have a very great talent, boys. I know you can feel it. But I beg your patience. Rest assured, you'll soon know my point." It glanced up at the frozen cloud bank stuck to the moon. "If you're still interested, that is."

The boys looked at each other and struck a mental bargain. "We got a little while," Connor said.

"Good!" the bird squawked. "First I must tell you about the Church."

# Chapter 3: The Church

"Now it sits broken in ruins deep in the forest about four miles from here, but once boys, it was simply magnificent! All marbled stone and brick, scrolled woodwork and stained-glass windows! And to top it all, beneath it an endless system of tunnels and corridors that wormed underground beneath the thick foundation for reasons unknown. It was built a very long time ago by a foreign woman in fulfillment of a promise to God she'd made years before."

The boys looked at one another, mystified and a bit unnerved by the thread of this strange tale that sounded a lot like something out of the Brothers Grimm. They'd seen the movie about these German storytellers and had a book of their tales hidden in a small box and buried beneath the drip-line of an old gnarled maple not far from here just because it felt right. And knowing what they did about witches and goblins and other creatures known to feed themselves on waylaid children, they began to be a little afraid.

But the crow continued on, seemingly unaware. "The problem was the woman's husband. He was a round, boastful, lazy man who hated work, having never done any. And even as he whined and complained, his wife secured them passage on a ship leaving for the New World, as they called it." Something silent passed between the boys. New World? What was this crazy bird talking about? "As far as she was concerned," the crow continued. "Her mind was made. But to help satisfy this lazy wretch she also purchased a huge tract of land for logging." This last word came spitting out as if it tasted bad and smelled worse.

"Her plan was to build a great church in the wilderness, and no expense was too great. She hired architects and masons from far and wide, had stone imported from quarries deep in the Black Forest and the Tantagal Range. By the time she arrived with her family one fine spring it was almost complete, and she was delighted to find the small town that had sprung up along the outskirts of the church alive with happy workers and their families. When the services finally began, all these people entered in a great, hushed awe. Children talked in whispers. Sweet old couples bowed their heads as they entered through the huge, oaken doors..."

Here the crow stopped and stared out into the strange stillness as the boys watched it. "But only for a while," it whispered, closing its eyes as if concentrating on the glory that had come and gone. When it opened them again its voice was damp with sadness.

"And now I need to tell you a little about myself," it said.

# Chapter 4: The Crow's Story

"As you may have guessed, since I've made no introduction, I have no name. In fact, I've never known any animal or bird that did. I was born the last of five chicks, the runt. But oddly enough, I did not stay as such. I can leave no mystery alone; it is my weakness. And this church was something like I'd never seen. So when I wasn't hunting or perfecting my flying skills I would sit atop a sycamore and watch the work going on down there. It really intrigued me, all that order from chaos, not to mention the steady stream of men in and out of a sort of cellar door, shovels and lanterns grasped in their sweaty, dirt-grimed hands.

"Let me add, curiosity has made me a collector, boys. We, crows I mean, are known for our hoarding of trinkets, and even though I know it makes little sense stockpiling worthless objects, I still can't break the habit. Regardless, by the time the Church was ready, I had a beautiful little hole in the crook of a hickory where I kept a lot of things I found. Not much more, really if the truth be told, than wooden nails and bits of colored cloth, but occasionally I would turn up an actual coin or belt buckle. Many was the night when I would nestle down in the hole and root through my things until daylight.

"It was also around this time I first saw the woman and her brood. She had a high, bright laugh and twinkling eyes. An attitude of confidence and calm. I thought it would be fine to have her looking over me and I envied the children.

"When the services finally began I would sit high in that same sycamore, amazed by the sounds I heard coming from the huge stone building. I had never experienced anything like it before! Sure I was familiar with all the songs of other birds, but being a crow, I tried not to pay much attention to something I'd never be any good at. Better to stick to thievery and bullying because as you can tell, my voice is rather throaty. But the music I heard now paled all that I'd heard before. It brought images to my mind I'd never known existed," and here it paused for a moment to gauge its audience. Ian seized the opportunity to ask a question that had been burning in his mind ever since the bird had first begun its tale.

"So how do you do it?" he asked, stepping suddenly forward.

The crow again tilted its head in that weird mechanical way as its feathers slowly settled about it. "Do what?" it asked.

"Stop Time."

The crow actually threw back its head this time and barked out an eerily human laugh. "Is that what I said?" It fixed its yellow eyes hard upon them.

"Well, at least you said something like that," Ian replied. "And just look around...you've got everything stopped around here! Everything except us! And from what you're sayin', you're hundreds of years old too!" and with that Connor stepped up to his friend's side.

The crow raised its wings and patted at the air as if requesting quiet at an unruly town meeting, even though a glint of humor played in its eyes. "First of all," it said. "It's not actually stopping Time. It's more like stepping into a fold in Time. Imagine the inside of a tightly spun knot. You're in no danger, and you're not missing anything on the Outside. And as to the uhh...other thing, I am very old. You have to believe me, these things I tell you are true. Don't forget I have a favor to ask, one of the utmost importance.

"What sort of favor?" Connor asked.

"Well, my friend, that part takes a bit more explanation."

Ian looked at Connor and the older boy scratched his head. This was all getting too weird, but then they spied the cloud bank, right where it'd been the whole time the crow was speaking, frozen in place against the moon, and nodded in agreement. Wasn't weird where the wild things were? This time it was Ian who spoke. "Go ahead," he said.

The crow dropped from the branch to the ground. "I have to tell you how things went bad..."

# Chapter 5: The Fall

"The Fat Man wasn't necessarily evil at first, but laziness oftentimes opens the door for evil things which follow. And it wasn't his laziness alone that set what has become our problem in motion. His character simply made him easy prey for people who were already, to their very core, evil.

"Remember, he only agreed to come to the New World (again that phrase) after the purchase of the timber enterprise." The crow spoke the last two words with such venom that the frozen cloud bank actually slid a little farther to the left, but then the huge bird ruffled its feathers in agitation and the motion ceased. The bird nodded at the dim moon and continued, the anger in its voice cutting rents in the air.

"This operation murdered huge tracts of forest and all the unnumbered multitude of animals and birds that lived within its depths. Oh, it was a horrible time for the birches, the oaks, all the maples and pines, the huge pecans and delicate chinaberries! A terrible time!

"I lost many close friends.

"But as, again, frequently happens when laziness is involved, the whole thing slowly ground to a halt. And although gutted, the forest lived on. The town flanking the edges of the Church was mostly clapboard shacks filled with masons and lumberjacks, and although many of the tree-killers filtered away when the logging business failed, the ones who stayed behind proved the worst of the lot. They began hunting and trapping for meat and skins. Many more of my friends and acquaintances disappeared. Many more of the good people moved away.

"Luckily, though, for the remaining few like me, many of these killers sold their bloody wares at a trading post closer to the river's mouth and stayed there. The wonderful woman forbid the sale of alcohol anywhere near the Church and town, and since many of these scallywags stayed glassy-eyed with spirits most of the time anyway, they chose to move along rather than face her and the law troop she commanded. But she unfortunately turned a blind eye to her husband. Who stayed around.

"He ate and drank to delirium. Some feared him on the edge of madness, remaining indoors for large stretches of time, becoming a pale, though fat, shade of the sloth he'd first been. Now, I believe he was simply biding his time. Perfecting his poison, so to speak.

"Because, you see, the youngest boy, their son, disappeared while swimming one day. His body was never found. And with his disappearance, the woman's health soon declined. And with this decline the newly-built Church with its wonderful music slid into disrepair. Sometimes when I close my eyes and concentrate, I can almost hear it as it was. On some dark nights I can almost see it! I picture her now, the woman with her two remaining children scarcely reaching her shoulders, entering the Church with the townspeople flowing in behind like a tide pulled along by the moon.

"And then she was dead.

"One day I spied the oldest daughter coming alone to service, wrapped in a grief that hung so heavy and thick around her I could scarcely breathe. The crowd that followed looked defeated. Grown men held their hats in front of their faces like shields, tears coursing down their faces. Women crying openly into handkerchiefs. And that was the last of the music. Later in the week a small area was fenced off in a grove of elms and they buried her in the late afternoon shadow of her beloved Church.

"Things got worse immediately.

"No one came to the services any more, as if it represented what was forever lost and they could not bear it. The priest left with the children, realizing the drunken wreck of a husband would do nothing for them. More and more, dangerous-looking men began making their appearance. The remaining good families moved away.

"The churchyard grew wild and unchecked. The shrubs cast gangly spines above the stained-glass windows and scraped the dormers with long, bristled thorns. Brambles and honeysuckle overran the lone headstone in the cemetery. A sudden storm late one night sent a huge water oak branch crashing through the priest's study. And as the newly-built Church withered and died, so also did the town. Houses stood vacant and open to the weather. Sheds collapsed upon themselves in storms, wells became inexplicably polluted and stagnant. Rumors of ghosts and werewolves proved enough to stop the few remaining vagrant children from venturing too deep into the forest.

"And soon the church was lost to the world.

# Chapter 6: A New Season

"As you probably figured, regardless of the hunting and trapping, it was quite impossible to be done with all of us. Up until the woman's and then the town's death most had moved to the deeper parts of the forest, well away from the racket and danger. All except the most curious or foolhardy left the business of Man to Man. I, however, was of a different mind.

"I could not stay away. I watched as the grass grew high around the massive front doors, as the trails became choked and impassable, as the Church wormed its slow way to obscurity. I watched for many seasons as it sat abandoned, squatting deeper and deeper into the wilderness that crept back with the slow deliberation of a stalking cat.

"I still lived in a maple not far from the graveyard. I heard occasional whispers in the forest but paid little mind. But in saying this, but don't get me wrong. I readily believe in spirits. Even then I did. But I'd seen no sign. As I said, all was silence. At night the Church was nothing more than a darker shadow set among the many others. And on some nights, when the moon cast down a gentle, velvet moth-light through the trees, it looked neither haunted nor dangerous. It just looked sad. Forgotten.

"So as I told you concerning me and mysteries, eventually I made up my mind to go inside. Which proved harder than I imagined. On the day the priest left he had bolted the front doors with a lock I had no hope of undermining. But there was one place. For a long while the branch that had caved in the roof to the annex had hung there, the bark sloughing off and leaves falling away until now it finally lay stripped and dead across the hole it had made.

"I flew over to the roof top and perched there, poking and scratching about, trying to get a view into the gloom within. I could see nothing. So with no other alternative, I puffed up my courage and hopped down into the darkness. I clipped something on the way down and landed in a tumble on the wet, tile floor. The smell of mildew and rot was nearly overpowering, the darkness worse. Gradually my sight grew clear and I found myself claw-deep in a mud puddle skim which covered what remained of the study. I could still smell the ghost of burned wood floating on the air. A water-warped, three-legged chair canted against one wall. There was nothing else left in the room except odd patches of paper swollen to nearly the size of cave mushrooms. A door in the corner of the room stood ajar, and a ghostly light outlined the frame. I hopped through the mess toward it and found a passage that emptied out to a side door near the vestibule. I poked my head through the opening.

"Above the choir loft I could see where the organ had been. Most of it had been removed just before the church was vacated, but the pipes remained. All three-hundred and sixty-five of them, ranging in size from no larger than a twig to the size of small pines lined up side by side in a forest grove.

"I hopped over to the first row of pews and looked around. Another door stood across from where I'd entered, also slightly ajar. It was a much thicker door and the smell wafting from within was muddy and dank, wet stones, dripping passageways. I knew immediately: the door to the tunnels below.

"But the strangest thing remained: a small oak had sprouted up through the pulpit's floor, just then illuminated by an early afternoon slip of sunlight from high up through the stained-glass. Its leaves swayed back and forth in a breeze I could not feel, and even then I could hear the whisper of its magnificence. It called to me in the Voice of Leaves and I came on as if hypnotized. Just looking at the sapling brought my breath in sharp jags, and I could feel my heart racing. With no thought at all I suddenly took to the air, climbing higher and higher, circling pillars and sailing through rails of stained-glass sunlight. As I made my way along the edge of one corner of the beautifully-wrought ceiling I suddenly saw it on a dusty window ledge. A crumpled ball of leaves, a bit of cloth, a huge knot of twine all pressed and laced together into a neat little nest. Upon landing I immediately saw a bobbing shadow within a nearby crack in the masonry. And that was when the mouse stepped into the light.

"The mouse?" Connor said.

"Indeed," the crow replied. "And what a mouse."

"The one from the dream?" Ian asked flatly.

The crow's yellow eyes widened and it shook its ragged head. "You didn't tell me..."

The boys looked at one another and then back to the crow. In answer they simply shrugged.

"Well, yes," it admitted. "I'm sure that's the very one. You see, she plays an important role in this business. Let me tell you how she got inside..."

# Chapter 7: How the Mouse Got In

"Up until the moment the church was abandoned she'd lived in the base of a rotten log not far from the cemetery. But when rains made the place unlivable she decided inside would be a much better place than outside. Like me, she too had been called by the singing and music, but the whole while I'd had no idea she lived nearby.

"She was born in the attic of a small, clapboard shack near the northern edge of the forest and even if it had been a bit drafty during the winter, it had always been dry and, I soon found out, that has always been one of her chief concerns.

"Another late fall thunderstorm finally spurred her to action. She told me she could smell it coming on the wind and determined that she would get inside the Church before it arrived. But she had to be very careful. Along with the electric smell of the approaching storm came also the distinct odor of cat. There is no smell like it, I assure you. It made her hair stand on end, her nose to twitch.

"She raced through the thick, overgrown grass, stopping halfway to the Church, and as she ran along the side of it, she sniffed and poked her head into every available niche, finding nothing promising along the whole front wall. But thankfully, no cat either. At the side wall, however, things were different. Here, the workers had left large stacks of wood piled about in random stacks. Plenty of places for a mouse, or creatures that liked to eat mice, to hide.

"She leaned against the cornerstone, trying to calm her rapid breathing but the worry would not go. Finally, only the thought of another night alone in the cold muddy puddle beneath the rotten log was enough to get her going again. She checked around the first pile of wood she came upon. It was stacked far above her head, dwarfed only by the looming Church itself and the sprawl of clouds racing above it. Then she caught the whiff of another, more lethal, odor hanging on the breeze. The decay of death. But very old, almost indistinct. Almost.

"There was a crack at the bottom of the pile of lumber and the mouse stuck her head in only after a careful pause. The smell of the tiny weight of death lingered on the edge of invisibility. It was dark and gloomy within and it took several seconds for her eyes to adjust, but when they did she found herself at the beginning of a rather crude trail that ran back into a tangle of boards, bricks, and mortared stone. It disappeared back along the Church wall and she could see where several large objects had been pushed or pulled out of the way a little farther down. The work was plain.

"Rats.

"And with this new, disquieting revelation she finally made out the stench of their former occupation. But, seemingly, they were long gone. For some unknown reason they'd quit the trail. Which was exceedingly strange since rats aren't ones to change their behavior unless forced to. At this juncture she considered giving up the search and heading back to the hollow log, but the distinct rumble of thunder in the distance changed all that. The rain was coming and she knew turning back now would be to surrender to another cold, wet night shivering beneath that tree stump. So she squared her shoulders and pushed ahead.

"No more than two turns into the curling, ragged passage she felt the slight pull of cool air trailing past her and knew the trail had to lead somewhere. The decay was heavier here and the source seemed to lie just ahead. Hardly able to coax one paw in front of the other, she crept forward...and came face to face with a ghastly sight. Wedged firmly into a crack in the mortar against the back wall were the skeletal remains of a large rat! Its bones were the only evidence left of its existence, even its fur had blown and scattered away. Apparently it had tried to squeeze through the rent in the foundation here and in its haste or carelessness had gotten stuck. And subsequently starved to death.

"The mouse stepped back and studied the skeleton, fearing the thing she had to do. The thunder was really picking up outside and the rain would soon follow. The current of air rifling past seemed proof enough that the passage twisted along to somewhere inside the Church. The only thing left to do was remove the obstacle. Or at least enough of it to squeeze by.

"The bones had shifted down and many were now only piled atop one another in what remained of the vague outline of the rat that had once owned them. She reached up with trembling paws and grasped the biggest bone. She pulled hard and it snapped away from the rest, spilling the mouse to the ground. She got back to her feet and pulled another bone free, jammed it back into the pile for leverage, and in this way managed to clear a space big enough to pass through. The passage wound through the remaining wood pile and then into the wall itself like a gigantic snake. She punched blindly through long-abandoned spider webs, coughing and sneezing along great expanses of darkness.

"And this is how she eventually found the ledge.

# Chapter 8: Trouble

By now both Ian and Connor sat close together on a broken limb which had only recently fallen from an otherwise healthy-looking gum tree. They were mesmerized by the dream-like surroundings: the whirr of the cricket in the grass never wavering from its one, constant note; the stilled clouds at the moon's flank; the light in the sky constant, unchanging. But strangest of all, they had to admit in the stillness of their minds, the sudden, perfect logic it made to sit calmly on this frozen edge of night and listen to a bird tell of an ancient Church and events long past.

The crow closed its beak and brilliant yellow eyes for a moment. Then it opened them and stared at the ground. Bent to clean its beak again. It fluffed out its feathers and gently let them resettle before turning its attention back to the boys.

Connor spoke first. "So what you're telling us has something to do with the dream last night?"

The crow nodded but did not speak.

"And this dream we both had has something to do with this problem you were talking about?" Ian added.

Again, the crow nodded. "Correct," it cawed. "These are only details to the pieces I tried to send, but I don't know what got through. I just gave it everything I had and hoped for the best."

"And the best is us!?"

The crow's eyes sharpened to pinpricks. "At this time...maybe for all time...you're the best chance we've got."

"But what's all this talk about the mouse and the Church got to do with you?" Ian said. "And what's it got to do with us?"

"It's all a part of the Trouble, lads. And I don't think I should be asking your help without letting you know what you're getting into." The crow made a somewhat comical attempt at a shrug itself. "So...? Would you care to hear the rest?"

You bet, both boys thought in unison, unaware they'd not spoken aloud.

So it is that strong, the crow thought, catching the vibration of their thought up its spine. They don't know the power they possess. And even though they were indeed its last hope, it would not force them. That is what the magician had taught all those years before, and it was a law that would not be broken at this late date with so much riding on an uncertain outcome. It pretended ignorance of their telepathy and hurried on with its story.

"While we were enjoying our sudden good fortune the town began to take on new residents. Strange men moved uneasily near the Church in the deepest parts of the night and it wasn't long until the Fat Man made his appearance. One day I was inspecting my treasure hoard and heard voices caterwauling through the forest. I could tell they were making their way closer. I eased from the hole and hid behind a tuft of leaves. And that's when I saw him make his waddling way through the knee-deep underbrush, sweating like a madman and trailing a group of three hairy trappers behind him.

"He had a sling blade in one hand and he ripped and slashed his way to the massive front doors. The band of men behind him pulled up tightly. He turned and pointed at one, said something to another, and after a somewhat troubled search pulled a ring of keys from his greatcoat. Even from my perch high above, I heard the dry rasp as the bolt was drawn. Then with a heave, he bent to one of the doors and forced it back. They squeezed inside where I heard more muffled talking and laughter.

"That's when I made a nearly fatal mistake. Because, you see, watching them break into my beloved Church was the last straw. I hopped along the branch where I'd been hiding until I was stupidly exposed and began cawing my loud displeasure. I don't know how long I carried on like that, but when something suddenly told me to stop I looked down and the whole group was once more standing outside. Looking up at me! A trapper beside the Fat Man pulled a musket (I know now, then I only saw a long, metal pipe, from the folds of his coat) and pointed it my direction. I saw a puff of smoke and a great BOOM filled the air! At that same instant I was rocked by an incredible, ripping pain in my wing and fell backward and down. Luckily I fell into my hoard chamber where the men couldn't get at me or I wouldn't be here to tell my story now.

"When I came around it was grave-dark and my wing was a living agony. I could hardly move, and all that night I lay delirious at the bottom of my hold, feverishly coming to know the as-yet unknown truth of death.

"But the next morning I was still alive.

# Chapter 9: The Rescue

"I was in and out of consciousness for a long while and I remember the pain and the foggy passage of light and dark. Thousands of deaths haunted me: I saw the woman in shining white the day the Church opened; my mother close by my side, whispering salves in my ear as she faded away; many of my friends that were no more. And in the end, always round and round, the Fat Man and his hooligans.

"Finally it was thirst and hunger that brought me back to the living. I fought first into consciousness and then, after a lot of trouble, to my claws. The wing was a screaming agony as I staggered through the coins, tin cups, metal trinkets and scarves, but eventually I stood unsteadily before the entrance to the hoard chamber, looking up and out onto a bright, crisp day.

"I closed my eyes and stretched out my wings, fighting through the nauseating pain that radiated out, focusing on the squashed melon-looking opening just above my head. It took a long time but I did finally feel myself slowly coming round. When I felt I could wait no longer I heaved myself into the air, the injured wing kicking off a strip of bark in the tight confines and shooting such a wave of excruciating pain through my body I almost blacked out. But when my head steadied I found myself teetering on the edge of the entrance. I waited, clutching that curled rim until the grinding explosion of pain ebbed.

"First, I tried calling out. There was only a slim hope the mouse would hear me, I knew that, but I croaked until exhaustion and heat forced me back inside. But as unluck would have it, as I was turning back, I lost my grip and fell again into the grayness of the hole. I bounced and slid down to the bottom of my treasure heap and lay there with the knowledge that I was surely resting in my grave.

"When I came around again it was to a confusion of shadows. I tried calling out again but my throat was too parched to manage even a whistle. I groaned and tried to squeeze back into a corner, all the while straining in the darkness to make out the shape of the intruder. On the instant a shadow crouched next to me and I was suddenly sure I was dreaming. The mouse! I could just make out her trembling whiskers in the gloom and straightaway felt her tiny, strong fingers playing along my breastbone, searching out my injuries. I faded away again as I felt her strong arms embrace me.

"It was full night when I regained consciousness again, the mouse's faint whispering the spark that brought me around. 'Drink, drink,' she said, one paw behind my head as she held the half-shell with the other. She tilted it up to my beak and when the cool water slipped down my throat my mind came suddenly, agonizingly, alive. Immediately I was sick with a grinding hunger.

"The mouse moved into the shadows and retrieved something, brought it back to me cupped in both paws. A large, beautiful, moldy chunk of bread! My stomach turned somersaults, my eyes bulged. She broke off a small piece, soaked it a terribly long time in the acorn-shell filled with water, and held it out to me. I swallowed it whole and croaked for more. She gave me another and a couple more mouthfuls of water, all the while warning me to slow down. That I was safe now, that she wouldn't leave me. The next thing I remember is the sunlight streaming in through the entrance.

"For just a moment I thought the whole thing had been a dream but that didn't last long. Because now, added to her typically trembling whiskers, was another altogether different face of worry. I squeaked weakly and she hurried across the floor, picking up the small piece of bread she'd left warming in a ray of sunlight. I'd hardly finished when she said, very quietly and urgently, "We have to go. The cat is about." My heart almost stopped. It'd been lurking. I knew because I'd seen it. A huge, black beast with a stub of bone for a tail, a coat reeking of madness. And cats could climb!

"I agreed, at the same time realizing that she could have left any time she wanted, but how was I? With my wing quite useless I could neither fly nor climb. Hopeless, it seemed, and I told her so. But she had a plan.

"She'd been with me four days and nights and had seen the cat nosing around twice, she said. It was this that caused me to suddenly realize how much danger I'd placed her in, I begged her to go, to just leave, to save herself. She would have none of it. She pointed to the huge, round shape resting in the shadows of an old leaf pile in the corner and I suddenly understood. My treasures weren't for nothing! She'd threaded together from this and that a ball of string and said she fully intended to lower me to the ground herself! Without another word she hustled me into an upright position and slung one end of the twine underneath each wing before bounding it up tightly around my body. While she was thus occupied I took time to notice she'd also pushed together a whole mess of junk into a sort of crude stairway on up to the entrance. Now if only her strength held out!

"I managed to stand upright on wobbly legs (the mouse steadying me every step of the way) and we crossed through the chamber and began the slow ascent to the entrance. After a lot of huffing and puffing and ringing of ears, we finally stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the rim, gazing down. The distance was indeed great but at least there was no sign of the cat or the horrible trappers around. No time like the present. I slipped over the edge and with just a few fits and starts she surprisingly lowered me down to the base of the tree to no bad effect. I lay there huffing and puffing, as if I'd done all the work, and watched as she raced headfirst down the trunk toward me. Within seconds she was at my side. Now she was in a state of high tension, eyes darting side to side, whiskers trembling. I could almost hear her heart. Because I knew. Injured and out in the open is a terrible combination. She quickly pulled me to my claws, stripped the string away, and began to hurry me toward the Church.

"I pulled her suddenly to an abrupt halt when my head cleared momentarily. She turned on me with a seriousness I'd never seen before and attempted to tug me on. I didn't move. There was only one way inside the Church, I remembered that now. Through the broken roof. Impossible. I was already so out of it I could barely stand so I could only imagine how she felt. She leaned in close and hissed 'Hush up, you fool! The door's open a crack! Come on! The Men never closed it all the way when they left last time. Come on! Come on! We have to hurry!' And she pulled me hobbling and hopping through the tall grass and weeds up to the massive doors. Her story proved correct and in no time we were inside.

"Of course her ledge was completely out of the question. Just by the look on her face, I could tell she was almost done. She did manage to get me down the long aisle to the pulpit where the oak was. Around the trunk I now saw a nice crack just big enough for either of us to squeeze through one at a time into the crawlspace below. We did so a few minutes later and quickly pushed back to a quiet, dark corner, and immediately fell asleep.

# Chapter 10: A Short Alliance

"When I woke I had the distinct impression we were not alone. The feathers at the back of my neck were standing on end. I could feel another presence there with us in the darkness. Regardless, I didn't want to wake the mouse unnecessarily so I tried to lie still and quiet, telling myself it was just my imagination. And I'd almost succeeded when I saw it.

"The scream caught in my throat at the many legs, the cluster of shining eyes hovering close by. The mouse started from deep sleep at my movement and I hushed her with my good wing across her face, whispering that our lives depended on silence even as the many-legged shadow inched our way! It had seen us! By this time the mouse was to her feet, and seemingly on instinct she stepped out in front of me as I whispered for her to make a run for it.

"She simply shook her head and turned for battle.

"When she spun around it was upon us: a monstrously huge spider, bristling with hooks of coarse black hair ridging the length of all its eight legs, its head crowned brilliantly with a nest of faceted, gleaming eyes. It was enough to strike one dead and the mouse fell back against me, suddenly realizing our fate was already written.

"But nothing happened. Time dragged by several unbearable moments and behind my closed eyes my life raced. Another minute went by, and another! After what seemed like several lifetimes I managed to open my eyes and saw the monstrous shadow looming above us! It inched forward and, incomprehensibly asked in a hissing, though hardly evil voice, what we were doing in its lair.

"I mumbled something about begging your pardon as the great head bobbed grotesquely in front of me 'Ssssssoooooooo," it replied, rising up and shaking dust from its body.

"'Are you going to kill us?' I asked.

"'Of courssssssssssssse not. Your blood would sssssssssspoil long before I sssssssssucked the good out of you,' it said and made a sinister buzzing deep in its throat that sounded almost like laughter. 'I've jusssssst never ssssssseen you here before.'

"I explained we'd been too tired to climb to the ledge, that we would be out of its way as soon as possible, as the great head ducked up and down, side to side. It admitted that 'yes' it had seen us there. Just never here. I shuddered to think of this great beast living so close and nobody the wiser. It backed away several shuffling steps.

"'Don't be ssssssscared," it said. 'I really have no interesssssssssst in you.' A scratching sound from the direction of the pews shifted the spider's attention. It growled low in its throat. "The cat'sssssssssssss back...' it warned and scuttled a few more steps away.

"Good God! A cat! And a spider! And us trapped beneath the floor! There are not words to describe the terror!

"I managed to wriggle free of the mouse and stumbled away from the corner. The spider was already a ways down toward where the tree had broken through the floor. The mouse hissed for me to stay put, but there was really no question now. I'd heard enough rumors. It was time to put a face to the monster. I sidled up alongside the spider as close as I dared. It turned its head toward me and backed farther into the gloom as I approached. Its breath was harsh and rapid. I raised up and looked through the opening.

"Sharpening its claws on one of the pews in the middle aisle was a thing that made the spider seem a mere annoyance. It was indeed a cat, but it surpassed all stories. This thing was a dark black mottle of mangy fur, thinned in spots to red, angry flesh. Both its ears had been ripped to tatters and its head was misshapen, as if the devil himself had half-mashed it sometime in the past. Practically the size of a full-grown raccoon, its razor-sharp claws flailed away at the pew. And then I saw its back end. A waving shard of bone protruded from its rump, all the skin and hair ripped free from some atrocity. Now it stuck out hard and dirty, still performing as a tail though it had long ago obviously failed at that task.

"I looked back in horror at the spider standing close by. 'Soooooooyouseeeeeeee,' it said in its hissing tongue. 'It comessssssssssssss.' And yes I could see. The beast had its head to the floor, steadily padding down the aisle toward our hiding place.

"It smells us," I said, suddenly realizing.

"'Ssssssssssseemsssssssssso,' the spider answered, hunching down now and growling low in its throat again. The cat was almost to the first riser. Our crack happened to be in the third and we were already far too close to the entrance for safety. I backed away and squeaked a warning to the spider. Its only reply was another deep-chested growl. A chill rushed over me and I hurried back to the mouse. We squatted in the darkness, trying to make ourselves as small as possible in the midst of this terrible nightmare.

"But I kept my eyes on the creature hunkered down there in the thin shaft of light. It was largely motionless though its legs did vibrate as if readying for a spring. Surely, I thought, it's not thinking of attacking! The cat was easily five times its size! Nevertheless, it began to rock back and forth, actually groaning now. A moment later a monstrous claw slid through the rent by the tree, scratching at the floor inches in front of the spider's foremost legs. And just before it pushed forward and the cat's ragged body blocked out the light entirely an ear-splitting scream filled our dark hiding place. There was a sudden flurry of violence near the opening, punctuated by brief slats of light that gave nightmare flashes to the surroundings. Then the shadows came apart and a second later neither the cat nor the spider was anywhere to be seen.

"I searched the darkness, hoping to find the spider hunched somewhere nearby but it was no use. And it was as I bent to attend the horrified mouse that I heard the familiar, grating voice in my ear.

"'Ssssssssothat'sssssssolved,' it said. I spun around. There was a smudge of blood in the dust. I looked into its face as it lowered its ponderous body to the floor. It did not appear hurt but there was the blood. I thought I heard the mouse mumbling something in the background and then realized it was the spider. 'Got'em, got'em,' it was saying over and over. I watched its razor-sharp fangs glint in the thin light and suddenly knew the blood I'd seen was not its own. Surely it hadn't bested the cat, or had it? It answered with the sound of steam escaping warm pipes in the winter. 'Cccccccertainlyssssssssssssso....' it said.

"We stayed put until the sun went down. As the last gray light drained from the windows, and then as the purple shadows grew to cover the floor and walls, we sat and waited. Eventually the spider assured us the cat had gone, but we didn't take the news to heart. Too many legends surrounded the creatures. The spider laughed this off, saying it held no truck with such tall tales.

"We finally dared to make our way to the shadowed crack in the riser. The spider scurried across the floor like some dusty cockroach and without another word was up and through to the other side. Scant moments later I heard its slippery voice assuring us, 'It'sssssssssssssafe, it'sssssssssssssafe.'

"One at a time, the mouse and I squeezed through the opening. After a quick glance around I found the spider's massive shadow lurking underneath a nearby pew. I smelled the air and came up with nothing. And I was just turning my attention back to the mouse when the racket started up behind me.

"Something big hit the floor over where I'd seen our dusty friend and then a mad scrabbling ensued as what I found to be two opposing shadows locked together in a writhing mess. High shrieking howls and grunts knocked off the walls as the mouse and I scrambled for cover. There was a final rising wail and a terrific scuffle which followed and then nothing but a great, suffocating silence filled the space.

"The mouse suggested frantically that we make for the crack in the wall. Since I had no real hope of reaching the ledge by flying, it was clear our only hope lay in her plan. Without another word, I hopped toward the crack, shooing her ahead with both wings. At the base of the wall I turned and took a moment to scan the darkness one last time. Not a single thing was moving. Then my courage broke and I raced with the mouse to safety.

# Chapter 11: Witness to a Kidnapping

"The next morning I stood on the ledge, peering out into every corner of the Church. Where I thought the fight had started I could make out a small dark stain and what appeared to be a tuft of black hair underneath the pew. That was it. There was no other sign, and I'm sorry to say, to this day, that was it. I never saw the creature again. The cat, however, is another story, but one that will have to wait. Because at that very moment we heard the men approaching.

"Within minutes they barged inside like a thunderstorm and I saw the Fat Man was missing. But the others did have two prisoners. A little girl and her father, it seemed. Straight away they knocked the man to the floor and laughed. One of them held a short length of rope that was tied around the little girl's waist. Her father lay there breathing in great straining gulps. The little girl wept. Every once in a while one or another of the men would kick the poor man where he lay. The whole thing made my skin crawl.

"Leaving the prisoners to their current states, the men pulled away to talk among themselves in loud, but incomprehensible fits and starts. When they were finally finished the biggest one walked over to the man and forced him to his feet. The little girl was quiet and no longer crying. My heart burst for her, and even then I tried convincing myself that only by remaining quiet myself, and most importantly alive, could I have any hope of helping them. Much good that did.

"The Big One demanded something of the man but got only a refusal. The poor girl's father got smashed several times in the face for his troubles, and being that I could take no more, I slunk back from the ledge and hunched down with the trembling mouse. The voices below got louder and louder. Several times I heard the dull thump of a kick. A couple more harsh yells. Then nothing. Dead silence. Time slipped by and I crept back to the ledge. They were silently gathering their captives together and leading them down the center aisle. Forcing them all the way to the pulpit, near where the tree grew through the floor, and then, as one, moving off into the shadows. Toward the door that led down into the tunnels. Though I couldn't see, I could hear someone wrestling the huge bolt on the door back, a few more mumbled curses, a sudden spark in the darkness and the room was awash in the flickering glow of a torch someone else had pulled out of a holder by the door. It cast mad, dancing shadows on the walls. Then they moved forward, again as one, dragging the man and his daughter off into the waiting darkness.

# Chapter 12: Getting Past the Door

"The mouse and I puzzled over this problem the rest of the day. But to no avail. What could we do? All those men against just the two of us. They were gone a long while but when they did finally return they were not in their right minds. One straightaway passed out across a pew. Another clouted some unsuspecting fool across the face with the back of his hand and watched him go head over heels to the floor. As I watched, flinching with each blow, I couldn't help but notice their number short by one, the little girl's father. He was nowhere to be seen. She was crying again and it was just heartbreaking. Only when the sun began to set did they leave, the little girl calling for her father as she was pulled through the door and outside until her voice eventually faded away.

"I hopped to the ledge. I tossed over my shoulder that I thought I'd have a look around and although my wing was still weak I thought it would carry me the short distance to the floor. She came rushing out to stop me but by that time as was off. I missed the back of a pew on the approach and fell to the floor alongside it, luckily landing on my good side. I slowly righted myself and hopped to the middle aisle knowing full well I was done for if the men came back. Or if the cat returned. I was, as you say, a sitting duck. But I tried to cast these thoughts aside. Our home had been invaded and the the violation was deep. We had to make them leave somehow. Hopefully forever.

"As I made my way closer to the pulpit I could not help but marvel at the oak. Its leaves were of the darkest green and the trunk was almost serpentine. The branches, of which there were exactly six, didn't grow out of the rippled trunk so much as corkscrew into the light. Each limb was curled and twisted upon itself, giving the weirdest impression of motion. Hopping closer, I saw where the seventh branch had been broken away. One of the drunks had flung a flask and lopped it off. Now I could see what looked like a thin stream of blood oozing from the break, staining the bark all the way down to the floor above the spider's lair. Never before or since have I seen anything like it...." The bird trailed off to silence.

"What about the door?" Connor pressed.

The crow came back to itself and watched them silently for a moment or so. "The door," it said, "was constructed of heavy, cross-cut oak, just like the ones in front, but completely laced through and through with inlays of steel. It was also perilously heavy, I have no doubt. A large, brass knob and lock-plate were screwed into the cross-pieces. A prison door.

"I could not imagine wrestling the thing open. I'd seen the men fighting to get it back and knew the mouse and I together would be no match for it. Nonetheless I hopped into the shadows and strained hard to find any crack, any hole, any anything that would allow us through to the other side. The daylight continued to drain away as I searched. Soon the mouse joined me and I told her what little I'd discovered. No holes, no cracks, no vents. Whatever fate awaited the man it appeared we would be locked out of it. Until, that is, the mouse turned her eyes upon me and pointed at the big brass knob. Simplicity, you see. All I had to do was perch there on the knob as it practically turned itself and watch in amazement as the door slowly swung open as effortlessly as a leaf blown along on a fall day.

# Chapter 13: Into the Tunnels

"A penetrating darkness waited on the other side. A rush of foul air rifled past, thick with the stink of rot and standing water. Like a well going bad. I whistled into the darkness and the sound bounced away to unknown depths, leaving my feathers a bristled ridge along my back.

"I stepped up to the threshold and considered the possibilities of what lay beyond. If the men came back while I was down there, the tunnels would most likely be my tomb. The mouse sensed my intention and begged me not to go, but something had a hold on me that I could not shake. I crossed the threshold and that is when I saw it.

"Off to the right and just down a short landing, a light-green mist painted its ghostly presence on the sweaty brick and earthen walls. The mouse's pleas from behind became more and more distant and with each passing second I found it harder and harder to pull my eyes from the misty light. It had no real shape, but pulsed with a hypnotic intensity, and after another minute I could see it appeared to mark a particular path in the murk. It shone with a pale radiance within an archway of brick and tiled floor.

"The mouse bumped into me coming up from behind. The ghostly glow blurred and warbled below me in the tunnels as she tried to hold me back. I pulled up short and told her I would go, that she was free to come along if she wanted, and if not, she should wait upon my return. But preferably from the ledge. Her face fell and shoulders slumped, resigned suddenly to what she'd feared.

"And with that I turned back to the misty light, hopping a couple of paces ahead to peer into the mysteriously-lit depths. The lit corridor appeared to be the only one of a number of others that was completed. The rest were mere dirt floors and crumbling walls.

"I passed down into the dark tile corridor, amazed at the many reflections cast off by the bits of glass and mica embedded in the walls. And even as I watched, the corridor began to grow dim as the ghostly light receded down a steep cut of steps. I followed it, the mouse close behind.

"At the bottom of the stairs was an open, round room with a number of openings branching off in all directions. Many of the bricks that lined the walls and floor were cracked or missing entirely, piled along the corridors here and there. The walls ran sluggishly with moisture. Thick fungus clung in a fuzzy scum everywhere. The light pressed itself into one offshoot and we raced to follow so as not to be left behind in the cavern's black heart.

"Events continued like this for a short while, with us rushing along, trying to stay within the pale circle of light as it moved into the darkness. It led us on a race through twisting, sweating corridors, and then once through an odd, open area that raised gooseflesh beneath my feathers. By the time we came to the black row of doors set deep in the earthen wall, we were exhausted. The green mist pulled up to one of them and danced around it like an insect to a light. This door was very similar to the one above too, though fitted with cypress rather than oak. Better, I thought, for the damp. But then again, for what purpose? The light contracted into a tight ball and began to slide down in weird tendrils to a now distinct crack between the door and floor. And then it began to push through, taking our only hope with it! To be lost in the darkness down here was sure death. In desperation we raced over to the door and scratched at the rock threshold. It was too tight. We tried the door itself. There was no handle, no knob. A huge lock place was screwed solidly into the cypress and steel frame. And then the light was gone and the darkness closed around like a living thing!

"The sudden click which followed was like a breaking twig, seeming to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. Next thing I knew the door was swinging wide! The room beyond was engulfed in the strange green glow and a figure moved in its depths! The little girl's father! He came to the opening and watched us cringing by the corridor wall. He gave a slight nod in our direction, turned back inside, and sat down heavily on a rusty bunk fixed to the slab wall along the back of the cell. The place reeked of rot and darkness, even now as the green glow pulsed around him. There was a nest of coiled chains on the floor at his feet.

"I found the man staring deeply into my eyes. A trickle of fingers seemed to tickle my brain. And then he spoke. 'My little friends,' he said very carefully, as if he didn't want to alarm us any more than he already had. 'You've come. I wondered if you would. I thought I felt something inside the Church but I was not sure.' It was then I noticed that though he spoke, his lips did not move.

"He reached into his shirt pocket and flicked a rain of bread crumbs down onto the damp floor. He watched sadly as we made quick work of this offering. Then he said, 'My pretty ones, so you've come to save me.' And smiled.

"It is hard to recall what came next. Perhaps it was our first experience in a time knot. Regardless, both the mouse and I were swept away in the rush of story he told us.

# Chapter 14: The Magician's Tale

"'My little girl and I were kidnapped,' he said in that deep, wrapping gloom. 'The Fat Man and his hooligans were lying in wait for us as soon as we disembarked from the ship. You see, I am the one who bargained for the land this Church sits upon. I knew Madame DeBorque. I also knew her husband, and I sorely misjudged him. And for this miscalculation my daughter suffers. It quite drives me mad. I don't know where they've taken her, though, and that is the only reason I'm still here. These chains were useless. And so was that,' he added, pointing to the heavy door now swung wide in the corridor. His lips began to quiver. He put his hands over his eyes and there was nothing more for a long time. By this I mean that nothing else came to my mind. Nothing but a low hum.

"He finally looked up and continued his story in a slow jumble of images that painted his history as effortlessly as if he'd been whispering them in my ear. I witnessed some sort of argument with a crowd of men in fine clothes, and then a hasty packing of items one would need on a long journey. Next an endless stretch of water, of troubled seas, as the two huddled in the dark, him comforting the little girl as storms raged without. Then there were drifting images of the two leaving a ship and meeting another group of men. The Fat Man was not among their number, but I did notice him hovering in the background, far up in a curtained window a stone's throw from the commons. And next, a more sinister meeting in some other unidentifiable location. I recognized a few of the hooligans from the Church and the raving Fat Man in a large, dark room. When, through an equally dark door, the little girl was led in I watched her father collapse to the floor. He begged the Fat Man to leave his daughter alone, to let them settle the affair as men. The last part of the vision was of the two being pushed and dragged through the forest undergrowth, the Church glimpsed occasionally through the trees. Then the stream of memory stopped, and I was left to gap into the darkness, hearing nothing but the man's slow, tortured breath. His eyes were swollen and glazed.

"I could not help myself. In fact, I did not comprehend my action until it was done. I suddenly jumped from the floor and landed on his knee. He put a hand to my beak and I watched as a crumb of bread suddenly appeared between his fingertips. And when he addressed me this time, his lips moved and I could understand every word! And it's since been like that to this very day.

"He told me he'd had every intention of dealing with the woman but had learned of her death upon his arrival. Something he hadn't been aware of in France. A curious circumstance since most times, he told me, he could see things that had happened or were about to happen. He could escape chains. He could open locked doors. He could talk to animals and birds. But he'd failed his daughter. It was heart wrenching. Unforgivable, he said sadly. For in addition to being some sort of businessman he was in truth, foremost, a magician. It was this information that the Fat Man had only recently learned, and by the time of their first meeting he'd already decided to abandon the timber enterprise. Too much work for too little profit.

"Here's the thing. The Fat Man had heard rumors that a large pirate's treasure was hidden somewhere in the region. He pictured untold wealth at a minimum of effort, especially if he could get someone else to find it. He'd hired the hooligans. He'd set up the Church as the base of operations. And then, of course, all that was left to do was kidnap the magician and his daughter and hold them until the man saw fit to sniff out what the Fat Man wanted.

"The magician, on the other hand, told us he had no idea where or even if such a thing even existed. Magic didn't necessarily work like that, he let us know. It was highly complicated and sometimes dangerous, but it was not something to be trifled with. By this time there were questions budding on my tongue but I had no idea how to actually communicate with this strange man. In the end I simply opened my beak and began chirping away.

"I pressed him on why he didn't just leave, for surely, if he possessed the power to lead us to his cell, he could just as easily search out his daughter. He just smiled sadly and shook his head. He said there were certain things he could do and others that he could not. Many times, in fact, the very thing he searched out would be the very thing which eluded him. And the more frantic a search, the more the doors in his mind locked tight. He knew searching the tunnels would be fruitless since the men had taken his daughter away. He did not tell me how he knew this and I did not offer what I'd seen. And as far as going after her...?

"'Little bird,' he said 'I do not go after her because I will not find her. The Fat Man is lazy but he is also cunning. But his hunger for the treasure will keep her safe, I believe. I have to wait until their return and somehow convince them I can do this thing he proposes.'

"Why then, I asked, had he led us here? What was the purpose in that? A bird and a mouse against magic and men. It was preposterous. He just shook his head and kept smiling down sadly. Finally he said, 'I'm really not sure, little bird. Perhaps it was only because I needed the company..." He leaned forward and whispered as if binding us together in conspiracy. 'Also, I require some acorns from the oak which I saw growing in the Church. I hope you will be kind enough to bring them to me.'

# Chapter 15: The Oak

"I will not go through the details of our departure from the tunnels. Suffice to say we left the same as we entered, chasing the tail of that mysterious green mist. The magician, of course, refused to come, and on our leaving was once again sitting with his head in his hands, staring off into whatever dim future he could perceive.

"We made good time going back and when we finally stood before the partially-opened door that led into the Church, the mouse was panting horribly. It was then I realized how filthy we'd gotten in the tunnels, we were dirt and dust from head to claw! Peeking around the door jamb, I found the Church empty, and from the radically different cast of light through the stained-glass, I realized we'd been gone longer than I expected.

"The mouse scrambled out ahead of me, glad to be free of the dank corridors. She hurried directly to a small pool of light on the floor and laid out, arms and legs outstretched, soaking up the warmth we had frightfully missed in the tunnels. I, too, hopped out of the darkness as fast as I could; for the first time, truly aware of the bone-deep cold that had ruled below. A great shivering overtook me. In dread, I recalled what the magician had asked of me. I would have to go back. There it was, suddenly admitted.

"The mouse soon rose from the floor and without another look in my direction, headed off for the crack in the wall that led up to the ledge. I determined not to tell her of my plans. She had risked her life, perhaps senselessly, for my mad venture and I would not willingly place her in such danger again.

"I looked back at the open door. The hooligans would suspect foul play, or perhaps, magic. There was nothing I could do. I only hoped the little girl was okay. And it was as I was standing there thinking these thoughts that I heard the great creak of grinding hinges and watched as the massive door slowly swung shut with a flat, hollow bang. So, he was indeed powerful. How much so I had no clue..." and the crow paused as the boys looked on from their stump. They sensed something hidden but neither would mention the fact.

The bird continued, "Perched on the first row of pews I took to studying the oak. It had grown amazingly fast since I'd first seen it. Already it had split the floor and riser in three wide cracks that ran out from the lair's entrance. The trunk had lipped over these ragged edges and forced the planks even farther apart so that the closest ones were buckled. I also saw the place where the branch had been broken had all but healed. But this frantic push through the floor had seemed to unbalanced the tree a bit. Limbs now twisted and curled out of every nook and cranny, each one bursting with new buds, and the bark had rolled and folded upon itself, forming scales as hard as turtle shells close to the floor. I could almost hear the faint squeak of stretching fibers within the branches. I could smell the sweet, heavy sap running powerfully through its arteries, and then another wonder! Clusters of small budding acorns dotting the ends and creases of every limb! I stood, enraptured, as the rest of the day passed into memory with scarcely a realized moment.

"I must have dozed because it was full night when I regained my senses. A numbing silence gripped the Church. The moonlight cast a pale, milky shade across the liquid darkness. I left the pew and hopped closer to the oak, glancing underneath pews as I passed them and straining my eyes into every corner as I went. I soon found a change had overtaken the tree. In the course of those few short hours the tiny acorn buds had grown to size! How had he known? Or, perhaps, how had he fixed it? But these vexing questions were useless. For surely time was short if even Nature had chosen to speed itself along like this! The thought of the tunnels snaking below brought on a fresh wave of dread, but my course was clear. And so resigned to my fate, at that very moment I caught the first, faint impression of the green mist as it began to leak underneath the ever-widening crack in the heavy door that led back down into the tunnels.

# Chapter 16: Near Disaster

"There was nothing left to do except grab the acorns. I studied the many clusters near my beak, amazed to find each one a mirror of all the others! All uniform, perfect, no cluster larger or smaller than another. Weird. I felt the familiar rush of that quiet fear and I knew if I dilly-dallied much longer my courage, or foolishness as I now saw it, would bend me in another direction. I snatched a small cluster loose and headed for the door.

"The journey back to the magician's cell passed without event and very quickly. Perhaps it was merely that I didn't pause and question the intelligence of going on like I had before. No, now I was only satisfying a promise I'd made and the sooner done, the better. I was also terrified the men would return. I could almost feel them like a part of myself.

"It wasn't long before I stood in front of that ponderously heavy door in the tunnels. It was tightly shut as before, and no light issued from beneath the tiny crack at the floor line. At first I thought the mist had led me astray and I stood there fretting about all the many things I could fit inside my head, fearing the magician would be dead and that his mission was all for nothing.

"The familiar dry click of the lock stopped me in this line of thought, and I watched the door swing back on its huge, rusty hinges. Seconds later I saw the magician. He was completely enchained. His arms, legs, across his chest; there was even a giant clasp secured firmly about his neck! He gently clapped his hands together, beckoning me. What passed between us then was simply unworldly. No words or sounds really, nothing that could remotely pass as language. Just a mutual understanding. The magician convinced me of these hidden things that fly in the face of common sense. Things I believe you boys can pull off with hardly a second thought.

"He took the acorns and tucked them away in a fold of his pants. 'Thank you, little bird,' he whispered. 'But you should have waited.' It was only then that I put two-and-two together. The chains, his frantic expression. He was expecting them! His eyes verified as much and without another thought I scuttled out of the room. Fleeing down the dripping corridor, I heard the massive door slam shut. I was once again alone. Making a mad dash back for the Church door. I'd hardly made the landing of the final turn when I heard their familiar, horrible laughter! They were already inside! And me so close!

"I pressed flat against the wall and sidled down to where the light leaked in from the opened door. The voices getting louder all the time. I could make out a wild flickering of orange just ahead. In two hops I'd be at the threshold. I thought I heard the little girl crying and inched forward. Looked out through the door into the Church. It was no comfort. There were three of them at least, though the voices were hard to pinpoint. Torches kept the shadows leaping about me.

"I saw two alternatives, neither of them very promising. One, I could stay down near the wall and hope in the darkness no one spotted me. Given that the green mist still clung about me, I didn't place too much hope in that direction. Two, I could bolt through the door and pray my wings would carry me to safety. The men were already near the pulpit, seconds from the door! No time to think! And I realized I really had but one choice, and hiding here was not it. Their slapping footsteps came around the first row of pews.

"It was then I did the craziest thing of my life.

"I darted across the threshold into plain view! To this day I do not know why. The plan I'd had consisted of sticking as close to the wall as possible and trying to sneak out while they were otherwise engaged. Nothing in my mind had suggested simply leaping from the darkness with the last, faint traces of the mist still clinging around me! Immediately I registered the concern on their faces over the open door. And my sudden appearance only bumped them from concerned to absolutely astonished. Blocking my passage was the biggest and ugliest of the lot. His bloodshot, pig-eyes rolled back into something as close to surprise as his numb brain could manage, and while we stood there, eying each other in silence, he turned and yelled something over his shoulder. Seconds later, too late by just a little, did I see what he actually meant to do. He kicked the door closed and I tried to jump free.

"I didn't make it.

# Chapter 17: The Magician's Last Help

"We're nearing the end," the crow croaked a bit sadly. "And still you have no idea why I've subjected you to such a long and twisted tale. For that, I'm thankful for this time knot, and I'm also thankful for your patience and attention. Listen," it said. "We're almost done.

"The pain was like stars exploding because you see, the man had slammed back the door and it had taken me all the way to the jamb where my claw was crushed. I came to on the cold, musty-smelling floor a few feet from the yawning tunnel door. Gulping like a fish breaking the surface of a pond, coming into a world that is completely outside its comprehension. The first thing I saw was the green mist pulsing stronger than ever. I was completely engulfed now, it having grown so thick around me it was as if sparkling cobwebs filled the air. The second thing I saw was the whole group of men frozen in place, captured in the magician's web like the insects they were. All staring sightless, rooted in place as if their feet had frozen through the floor. The little girl included, two hairy arms gripping her tightly. And as I was ensnared in this strange phantom of a dream, I moved with the same syrupy, sluggishness that you often find in such places. Everywhere was absolute silence. I pushed myself upright on my good claw noticing suddenly how cold the air was. The last breath each man had breathed was ghostly-white and trapped in a fuzzy cloud before his face, but mine continued to stream out in tight little gasps.

"There was nothing to be done as far as saving the girl. I had to get away. But every time I inched forward my claw jarred in agony and stars burst in my eyes. I made for the crack in the wall, even then feeling the mist thinning before me. Mere inches away from safety I heard a startled shout from behind and went down, sprawling against the thick baseboard. I pushed inside and crawled as far back into the hole as I could. Then I used my good claw and my beak, pulling and tugging myself up through the space in the wall to the ledge above.

"I fell into the mouse's chamber in such a terror she had to pin me to the floor. She could not calm me. Eventually I slipped into a weird, seemingly hypnotic, state (she said) that she could not rouse me out of. The next thing I knew I was lying close to a tiny splash of light near one of the stained-glass windows. The pain was still unbearable and I was only dimly aware that she had wrapped the claw with strips of bandage covered with a sticky sap she hoarded for cuts and bruises. It did very little if anything.

"I developed a fever. Nightmares overtook reality. Within the cold confines of that pain I would suddenly find myself lost in the snaking tunnels below the Church, crying out to the magician to no avail. And all the while searching through those terrible corridors, the mist becoming dimmer and thinner until the darkness was almost complete. As each second passed I felt myself getting weaker. Finally I was alone in the darkness, blind and paralyzed as the walls closed around me. During one of the worst of these phantoms, I began to hear a voice coaxing me from the darkness. I gradually became aware of the mouse's presence before me, patting my head with a wet cloth. She told me something terrible was in the air,that I needed to pull myself together.

"As reality replaced the stuff of nightmare, I stumbled through an explanation of what had happened. I told her about the oak, the acorns, the magician's request. I finally got around to the disaster at the Church door and the weird circumstance that had allowed my escape. But as I told her these things I slowly melted under her terrified gaze, and I knew there was something worse.

"A storm of another kind was on the way.

# Chapter 18: The Eve of the Storm

"It came on very slowly, I remember that one was peculiar from the start. The world outside seemed to grind to a standstill. No crickets chirruped in the grass, no birds or squirrels bickered in the trees. The penetrating silence that had engulfed the Church when the men disappeared into the tunnels was not confined there. It hung around it like a great, choking fog that wrapped tighter and tighter with every passing second.

"And to make matters worse I could hardly move. I'd been sadly mistaken earlier to believe the gunshot could not be matched. The smashed claw was a monster of a whole other magnitude and I lay there throughout another long night hardly aware of anything except that agony. When I was able I asked the mouse the question that had plagued me: Had she seen the little girl? She said she'd heard her crying as the men had led her down into the tunnels, but upon their return she had not been with them. I suggested that perhaps the magician had bested them and found some other way out, but I knew that was folly. The mouse had seen them reenter the Church and leave out the front door. The memory of the one who'd slammed my claw in the door was crystal sharp in my mind. In his face I'd seen a madness not encountered since the day I'd happened upon an opossum snared in a trap. It had obviously been there for several days before I came upon it and although delirium was evident in its eyes, it had also been extremely, cunningly persuasive as it begged me to come closer. To set it free. I didn't. I knew to go near that animal that day would have been suicide. The desperation and madness had been a living thing in its eyes, and something wild had invaded its soul. The man had had that same deadly look, and the only relief I could find was in the fact that he'd not been the one holding the little girl when I made my somewhat clumsy escape.

"The mouse said they'd been gone two full days and nights. And what of the mysterious stillness in the air? We both knew a storm was coming but nothing in our combined experience had prepared us for this one's fury.

"The mouse went in search of food and I was left alone with increasingly weird and fragmented thoughts while the shadows crept across the length of the Church's walls and floor. This foggy period of unease continued until I realized she was back. And she had something to tell me. There were ghosts about, she said. She could hear them sliding in and out among the trees, rooting around in the undergrowth. She'd heard cries and moans spilling from as far away as the Old Town Cemetery. There were horrible smells issuing among the pines. Little tendrils of malevolence that bloomed into wicked shapes as the eye moved past.

"Then came the voices. Far off at first, but increasingly closer. Loud, angry. There seemed to be more than one argument going on, but we could make no sense of any of it. And as the mouse had warned, the wayward ghosts and other spirits were loose and closing also on the Church. In between the ranting yells of the approaching men and the steady pattering of drops against the nearby windowpanes, I could hear ghostly whispers, their smoky bodies slithering against the glass, their dangerous invitations to join them in the night.

"The men finally kicked their way inside, dripping with rain and cursing blackly. And as their sputtering torches flung ghostly whips of light in all directions, I squinted into the darkness trying to get an idea of how many there were this time. Five, I saw. And worse, the Fat Man was among them. The little girl was nowhere in sight. There was a lot of finger-pointing between the Fat Man and the Ugly One, the one who'd slammed my claw in the door. Soon their argument drowned out the others.

"The Fat Man shook his head angrily and fished around inside his coat pocket before pulling free a small bag. He flung it down with an angry thump on the pew beside him, and the Ugly One broke off his shouting. What followed was a much quieter disagreement conducted mostly by the Fat Man. He didn't look good for his exertions, all panting and red-faced, and it wasn't long before he (in mid-conversation) he collapsed into the pew where the bag lay.

"The Ugly One turned to the others and uttered what must have been a command. They began picking up some of the tools they'd thrown down in the aisles during the various arguments. Then they pushed past where the Fat Man sat wheezing, making their way toward the pulpit. Between the torches and the weirdly muted light sifting in from outside, it was a chaotic scene down below. From where I hunched on the ledge I could get no handle on their intent. But I did feel I had a clue.

"Things were coming apart. The Fat Man's plans were going awry. The Ugly One yelled something back in his direction and when there was no reply, he rushed back to the Fat Man's pew. He bent toward him and muttered something indistinct. The Fat Man made no response. I saw what I thought to be the Ugly One picking up the small bag. The others, concerned, moved closer as if to investigate but were stopped short by him. He pulled them into a tight circle. Several minutes later they broke as a group for the tunnel door, threw it wide, and started down into the darkness.

"I remained hidden until the sound of their voices faded to wavering echoes. Never in my life have I felt more helpless. I knew they were going for the magician but there was nothing on the earth I could do to stop them.

# Chapter 19: In the Grip of the Storm

"The wind started around dark. It howled against the windowpanes and the rain came down like it was hungry. I could vaguely make out the shadows of trees twisting in the fury through the rain-splattered stained-glass. A thunderclap boomed, shaking the whole Church, followed by a steady barrage of even bigger raindrops. I backed away from the window for safety. This one would be a monster.

"Trying to ignore both the pain in my claw and the roaring assault outside, I dragged myself to the mouse's chamber entrance. She was waiting just inside, squeaking miserably to herself. The men were gone but the Fat Man remained where they'd left him. Even though the light was thin and cast about it didn't take a genius to know he was dead. We made our way back to the ledge and looked down. His head was tilted at an awkward angle and his mouth was wide open as if still fighting for that last breath. The trek through the forest and the subsequent argument had obviously done him in.

"Another violent peal of thunder broke close by and a lightning bolt broke the spine of a tree outside, ripping it asunder with an ear-splitting crash. A gust of wind followed, bending the very glass in the window frame. The front doors suddenly blew back with a burst of wet leaves and I watched in horror as a familiar, dreaded shape darted inside as if chased by all of hell's demons. The cat! It paused menacingly a few paces inside the doorway and began licking at its mangy fur. I watched as its bony tail waved about in the gloom. Then it suddenly quit licking and looked up with a snap of its neck as if it'd heard something. It commenced to sniff along close to the floor, all the while inching farther along the aisle, deeper into the Church. It was no more than three pews from the Fat Man when the sensation seized me.

"Suddenly the interior of the Church came alive with the green mist! All the cracks and crevices I had not been able to see until now, even the door that led down into the tunnels and which was below and hidden by the balcony, were obvious. And along with this impossibility I felt something else completely grappling for control of my body! I tried to back away from the ledge but I could not move. The mouse was no longer at my side. Panic seized me! I was suddenly cut off from reality, embedded in some terrible trance-like phenomena.

"The only thing left in my control was sight, but it oddly seemed to come from everywhere at once! As if I'd become a ghost myself, left to drift along the rafters to the ceiling for the coming sprawl of centuries. I gazed in amazement, soaking in both everything and nothing at once! Incredibly, I saw myself now huddled close against the brickwork that lined the window. My eyes were closed, the mouse still nowhere to be found. The cat was spooked, crouched down almost into a ball. Its hair standing in a ridge along its back. The glow intensified and in the absence of sound a great pressure bloomed in my inner ear. I felt a bolt of extreme sadness mixed with anger seize me and watched as the entire stained-glass window blew out of its frame in one huge piece with a solid sheet of wind and rain driving behind it. Barely missing my 'real' self, it arched out into the empty air and came apart at the seams when it hit the floor below. I saw flashes of light spark throughout the mist, and glass blew out in a slivered shower. The cat barreled down the aisle and back out into the storm.

"I felt something tear inside me then, something somehow both searingly hot and icy cold at the same time, and then I was sucked away from my ghostly vantage point and slammed back into my real body, slumped near the wall and pelted by the rain. I came back to my true senses in complete confusion, pummeled by the rain, all the while pushed ever closer to the edge of darkness by howling gusts of wind I've never heard or felt matched before! Almost blind with panic, I called out for help. I knew within mere moments I would be either blown off the ledge to the Church floor below or sucked out into the fury of the storm outside. Flying was out of the question. And as usual, the mouse (appearing as if from nowhere) saved my life at the risk of her own, pulling me roughly through the rent in the wall back to her chamber. We rode out the rest of the storm clutching one another tightly as the wind raged with unparalleled vengeance outside.

# Chapter 20: Aftermath

"A long while after the wind died down we heard voices. I eased away from the mouse and crept to the ledge. When the men entered the church their loud talk fell away to whispers. I knew why because I could see him too. The Fat Man was washed in the sunlight, sprinkled in tiny sparkling shards of glass that glittered and winked. But it was much different than it had been in the night. Now instead of ghost-like he was actually forbidding, another potential monster to contend with.

"I looked them over quickly. No magician and no little girl. A dizzying wave passed over me. I waited, trying to get a grip on myself as they gathered around the dead man. They poked at him and prodded him and finally left him where he lay. The last one out shoved the doors closed and finally we were alone. Even then, something told me we'd seen the last of them. That we were finally quits.

"Needless to say, I was useless. The smashed claw mixed with everything else had reduced me to nothing. For the next few days the mouse served as my nurse, again. She scurried around daily fetching fresh bedding, stocking our food supply, looking out for danger. By the time I was better I could see she was fairly bursting with a secret.

"And when I asked it came pouring out. What she told me sharpened the images that had been so loose and unconnected in my mind. I remembered how the window had been dashed out of its frame, and the dead man lying below. I remembered the terrible cat and the ominous absence of the magician and little girl. All the things I'd thought nightmares, now confirmed as real. And I also saw the fear burning in the mouse's eyes. It was also then I became aware of the smell.

"The front doors had been closed inexplicably closed since the storm and now it was uncomfortably warm. The Fat Man was spoiling down below. The mouse also whispered of more ghosts in the air, and some strange, mysterious presence that she could not explain. She begged that we should leave. I tried to quell her anxiety by urging her to tell me why she let things build for so long rather than letting me know earlier. I thought the question would give her pause, but she shrugged me off immediately. She would hear none of it. We should leave! she demanded. It was clear that she would not stay another night in the Church. And I also found out she'd been planning our departure while I was incapacitated. Since the window had been blow out, all I had to do, she assured me, was make it to the tree flanking this side of the Church. I was still a little shaky and the claw throbbed unmercifully, but I told her I believed I could make the tree. And the rest of the plan, I wondered?

"Not to worry, she informed me. During my recuperation she'd built up a store of food. Far enough away from this place for safety, she was quick to add. I didn't like the idea of abandoning the Church, but if she believed there were ghosts and other spirits about, who was I to say any different? I'd seen enough already to take her at face value. If she believed it was time to get out, then so be it.

"However, the thought of sleeping in an unfamiliar place was unsettling. The mouse agreed but insisted. She said the green mist still appeared in the deepest part of night, carrying voices within it that she could not understand. I chose to take it no further than that and assured her I was game. What I didn't tell her was that I would be coming back. The voices in the mist...I was pretty sure I knew whose they were, and even had half a mind I'd be able to understand them without too much difficulty.

"We agreed to meet underneath the oak beside the north wall, and the mouse disappeared soon after through the seam she used to get to the bottom floor. I hopped out to the ledge. A bit of sunshine cut a slash across one side of the Church and suddenly the lonely emptiness of the vast place did seem dangerous. I looked down into the shadowy depths where the vague outline of the Fat Man stood out better than the other shadows. The air was indeed growing ripe.

"At the pulpit, catching the last rays of light reflecting in from the stained-glass windows, stood the oak, swaying restlessly in the phantom breeze which rocked it slowly this way and that. But now it no longer bore any obvious scar of the branch that had been ripped away. Now it was healthy and bursting with leaves, more like a bush, really, than a tree. Its continuous rustling produced a mere vague whisper, but although I strained my ears I could not make out any message or intention. Regardless, I had to leave the mystery for another day because in the state the mouse was in, I owed her to speed along.

"I turned to the ragged hole where the window had been. The sun had passed behind a thick cloud bank, leaving only a reddened smudge against the sky. I stretched out my wings, pulled the claw as tight as as could to my underbelly and launched out into empty space. I made the tree safely and by the time I heard the tell-tale patter of the mouse tapping at the base of the oak, I was already waiting in the crook of a low branch."

Here the gigantic bird stopped and the boys watched as it plucked several crooked feathers from its glistening coat and dropped them to the ground. Connor finally spoke when it became obvious the bird would not be forthcoming. "Did ya'll ever go back?" he asked.

The bird raised its head, its eyes glinting like two diamonds. "Oh yes," it said. "But that is not a story for now." It looked out strangely into the weird darkness.

"So there were ghosts?" Ian ventured. The crow nodded very slightly, as though there was more to it than that.

"So what do you want us to do?" Connor said. It had been a long story, and time knot or not, it was time to go home.

"First," the great bird said, "I want you to go home and sleep on the things I've told you. You know we are in need. I believe you can help us, but I'm not willing to bring you along against your will. I'll meet you here tomorrow if you're still interested.

"Something's wrong at the church," Ian whispered softly.

The crow hung its head and whistled sharply. "Yes!" it said. "The oak is dying! And somehow, for some unknown reason, we are bound up in its fate. I can feel myself getting weaker every day. My eyesight, my hearing, all fading. It is the same with the mouse and even as old as we are, it is still hard to let go. Especially where there remains a thing undone."

The time knot slipped then, began to unravel in real time. The cloud bank alongside the moon edged away. The gently lapping water at the pond's bank splashed, and the frozen streetlights flickered violently several times before bursting to full life.

They were now officially late.

"You must go!" the crow squawked. "There's no time! Run! Go home and think on what I've said!" and it dove out of the pine, making for the thicker woods on the far side of the highway without another word.

They watched it go standing side by side. Mysteries were indeed piled high. And much better ones than either of them had dreamed of in the tree house or safely in their beds on quiet nights. Connor finally broke the silence, saying what they both already knew. "C'mon man! Let's get outta here! We're late!"

Ian nodded, still watching the giant crow as it faded into the darkness. It was only a faint pinprick smudged against the lighter purple sky for another moment until it melted away entirely. They turned and ran back to their bicycles and made off pell-mell to their homes.

# Chapter 21: Beginning the Thing

Connor knew when Ian got to his house without even fully realizing it. He high-trailed it to the front door. Ian was just reaching for the doorbell when Connor threw the door wide, pointing his finger and laughing. "Got'cha!" he yelled as the smile spread across his friend's face.

"Yeah, but you thought I was gonna knock!" Ian shot back, pointing his own finger.

Connor nodded. "C'mon!" he said excitedly and they raced back down the hall, Ian with a quick 'hello' to Mrs. Williams as she rounded the corner to close the front door she already knew she'd find open.

Minutes later Ian stood restlessly just inside the bedroom doorway as Connor rooted around in his closet, throwing junk over his shoulder like a dog digging for a bone, searching out his rubber boots. Ian already had his on. However, there was one more thing Connor half-feared they'd also need. "Ah hah!" he exclaimed triumphantly, pulling the police-duty flashlight from the depths of the toy box. The smile on Ian's face slid away, forming a map of concern that reached all the way up to his brow.

"You doan think..." he began, shuddering as the rest of the thought went unspoken. Connor shrugged his shoulders and studied the floor. The vacation when they had gone down into Carlsbad Caverns in Arkansas came vividly to their minds.

"You never can tell," he said quietly.

Ian dropped his voice to a whisper also and closed the door. "You doan think it wants us to go down there, do ya?" The image of twisting underground tunnels and dank passageways had haunted his sleep all night.

Connor shrugged again and cast his friend a worried glance. Best to change the subject. Any more of this and they were both likely to chicken out. "Got in trouble last night?" he asked.

"Nah, not much. Dad just tole me I better have my butt home tonight when the streetlights come on. You?"

"Same." Connor paused, biting his lip. He tried to look away but Ian stepped closer and touched his friend on the shoulder.

"You think it'll be back." It was not a question.

Connor nodded.

"Okay. So we go, right?"

"Yeah."

"Where you gonna put that thing?" Ian said, pointing.

Connor looked down curiously as if he'd already forgotten. "Oh yeah. Mom'll really think we're up to no good if we leave with this in the middle of the day," he said, holding out the flashlight.

"Here," Ian said, pulling his shirt tail out and grabbing hold of the barrel. In a wink the flashlight disappeared to the small of his back. "Ta da!" he exclaimed, turning around with his arms outspread.

"Yeah, good. Can't see a thing." Connor grinned. "Okay, let's go. Mom!" he yelled as they both pushed through the doorway. "GOING OUT!" and they raced down the hall, beating it to the front door as Mrs. Williams threw safety tips at their backs.

They decided on the most covert trail they knew. This was, after all, serious business. Spy business, like James Bond. Because believe it or not they'd spent a long time the day before listening to a gigantic crow tell them an amazing story. And according to this same bird, their help was needed. So, both proud and fearful, they made their way through the thick brush at the end of the street around the corner. It could only be the Buffalo Wallow Trail this time, just in case they were tailed.

It got its name because tale had it real buffalo had created the wonderful, slick and grassless hollow near where the concrete steps sat inexplicably abandoned on the hill. Everyone agreed it surely looked big enough for buffalo to have made and the eerie steps completed the curiosity. No one knew how they'd come to rest atop the slight rise. There was not a house in sight (construction on this side of the neighborhood had halted over fifteen years before because, supposedly, of a conflict with a dead man's will) and not even the oldest kid had a clue as to their purpose. They were simply ancient, maybe even as old as the crone who lived at the end of Tassel Street. The only time she put her porch light on was Halloween (though no one ever visited there), and some believed the steps were part of an altar she used for witchcraft.

"Ahh, I'm caught!" Ian grunted. Connor, standing bent-backed amid a solid cluster of brambles saw his friend's shirt was pulled up to his chin. A large thorn bush had "hat-racked" him as he attempted to push through. It took the better part of five minutes to free the boy at the expense of a torn shirt collar and a shoulder scrape. "Mom's gonna kill me," he said as the two rested at the high side of the Wallow. Connor nodded solemnly as he studied his own filthy clothing. The trail had lived up to its name. It seemed all the rain of the week before had drained here, just below the silky surface that appeared so incredibly solid until you put one foot down. Like someone had gone over it with a polishing rag. A lock-step advance plunged them through the glimmering surface with a loud, froggy burp and they spent another fifteen minutes fighting through the knee-deep mud until they finally clamored and fought their way to the other side and drier land.

"Maybe the Wallow was a bad idea," Ian said, scraping the gumbo mud off his boots with a stick.

"Yeah, you're right, but the worst part's over. Let's just get to the tree house."

They trudged past the concrete steps that led nowhere, not even faintly chilled by the ghost stories now as they were too busy fighting off the horde of flies called on by the meaty-smelling mud. Ian voiced the thought both boys felt. "That bird better be there," he said menacingly as they sweated along.

The tree house, approached from the direction of the Buffalo Wallow Trail, looked to be no more than a scattering of lumber stuffed into the upper reaches of the blasted pine. The sun had just passed its zenith and threw long shadows across the grass as its daily slide began. Thankfully, the wind had also picked up, slowing the assault of the mosquitoes. The temperature had also dropped several degrees, and here was another stroke of luck: no one else was around. The place was all theirs.

They came into the clearing where the crow had told its tale and kicked around in the dust for a moment, checking the ground for fresh prints. As luck would have it, there were none other in the dust except their own and even a couple large scrawled scratches that could only have been made by the crow. That, at least, proved they weren't crazy.

Didn't it?

Connor kicked the old, rusty Folger's can they'd used as a nail jar during the tree house job. It spilled out a little brown water as the boys milled about. They looked at each other and shrugged. The crow had said 'today' but not when 'today.' And yesterday had been much later.

So they went on to other things. Connor stood at the pond's edge, flinging stones they'd collected from the roadway while Ian swung lazily back and forth on the huge, ship-rope Connor's father had gotten for some forgotten purpose long ago and they'd spirited out last month.

They were so involved that they didn't even notice the crow until the sound of its ponderous weight settled suddenly into the middle branches of the closest pine tree. Connor forgot about the stone he held in his hand, and Ian let go the rope and dropped to the ground. Neither said anything as they gathered near the fallen branch they'd used as a bench the day before.

The crow whistled high and rusty, as if surprised they'd returned at all. Then it dropped down, settled in the dust at their feet, the faintest hint of its strange twisted grin showing in the creases around its eyes. "You came back!" the great bird exclaimed. "There was a question!"

Ian looked to Connor and Connor looked back, nodded. In this way the spokesman was chosen. "Yeah, we came back," Connor said. He kicked a pine cone by his foot. "But we don't know why. We're just kids," he admitted.

The crow clucked deep in its throat. "No matter, boys. The fact is, you came."

The bird took a sharp breath and puffed itself out. Both boys watched as it went through its ritual, preening its feathers, examining its underbelly. But there seemed an underlying nervousness now. It fretted with its feathers while the boys looked on silently. Several minutes slid by before the silence was broken, this time by a simple question.

"So you will help?" the bird said.

"What is it you want us to do?" Connor replied.

The crow sighed long and deep. "As I told you, the tree is dying. And with it, so are we. The mouse is already very weak. With every leaf that falls from the oak I feel the end getting ever closer. Now, we don't even dare venture inside..."

"Why?" Ian broke in.

The bird looked away, not meeting their eyes. "The cat is back." it paused. "It has grown very crafty."

Connor was tired of the game. "What do you want us to do?" he demanded.

The crow chortled, dropping its crippled claw into view. The time had come to speak plainly. "I need you to come with me to the Church. You have to save the tree."

Their sudden laughter blew apart the black pall that hung so thick in the air. "That's It!" Ian howled. "All this because you want us to save a tree!?"

"Not just any tree, boy. Our tree."

Ian shook his head. "C'mon, we're just kids. Like he said," pointing. "Wadda we know about trees?"

"Perhaps nothing, perhaps everything. That is not for me to know. But you were the ones in the vision," it said.

"You saw us?" Connor asked incredulously.

"I did."

"And in this vision, what did we do?"

"That was not clear."

"So...?" Ian began, not knowing where to go with the remark. Then, "We have to be home before the streetlights come on tonight. We'll be in serious trouble if not."

"I know," the bird chirruped. "I'll use the time knot as best I can. There is nothing else I can guarantee. Just know you are our last, best hope."

A quiet moment passed. Somewhere on the other side of the pond a bullfrog issued a throaty challenge. A tiny breeze tickled through the spine of the broken pine. "Well...let's do it," Ian said at last. "If we're the ones, then we're the ones. Where is this place?"

"I'll show you," the crow replied, already fanning its wings.

# Chapter 22: Reaching the Church

It didn't really take them very long to get there, most likely because most of the distance traveled was inside another of the crow's mysterious time knots. They'd not even been aware of it until reaching the highway which separated the neighborhood from the forest on the other side. That was when Connor had glanced down at his motionless watch. He was still shaking his wrist slightly when Ian touched him on the shoulder. Connor looked up and found his friend pointing down the road. A solid line of cars were motionless before them as if they'd all found a place and sudden reason to park and sit for a while. A cement mixer third in line had a fixed pole of smoke standing rigid from both pipes. There was no sound, no motion in the nearby trees.

The crow was nowhere in sight.

They crossed the highway and made straight for the four-wheeler trail just to the side of the hollow stump. Bending down to examine it, they soon found the arrow the crow had promised them would be there. It pointed to the other path. This one thinner and harder to see. It must have been beaten down by the likes of raccoons, rabbits and other small animals, but if you hunched over and kept moving it was nowhere near as tough as the Buffalo Wallow.

The eerie silence followed them along the trail. They passed by a cluster of squirrels, no more than two feet away and the animals didn't even twitch a nose. The boys simply looked to one another and everything they thought flowed between them. What they'd long known as the Glance now raged within them.

The old, deserted ghost of a town was a stranger sort of business. If the crow had not warned them of its existence, they'd have moved through without a clue. The lost town had sunk into the dense surroundings, melted under the slow crunch of Time. Only here and there were what must have been the broken, rotten, and long discarded remnants of the precious town the woman had built. Now the Fat Man's evil held sway.

The long-lost wagon-rutted lane that had obviously arrowed through town had disappeared, but if one looked closely its course could still be seen. A solid line of gnarled pecan trees marched away on what must have been both sides of the old logging road. There were many gaps and a burst of undergrowth and vines choked large swaths of the ragged clearing, but the old lane was there. You could just see it. The houses, sheds, and shops had also long since fallen in and been reclaimed by the forest, but the musty humps and matted clusters of brush lent clues as to where the more significant of these buildings had been. The stillness and silence inside the time knot made the boys nervous. They felt as if they were passing through a graveyard, and would not have been the least surprised to see ancient, moaning shapes flitting about among the shadowed curtain of trees that seemed to beckon them closer to some ghastly secret.

They came across the second boulder a short time later. It poked a broken, moss-covered side from a moldy hillock set close into a nest of young willow trees. Stained black from the weather. They approached cautiously, neither taking the lead as they crept forward.

The bird was still nowhere to be found. A nagging urge passed between them to turn back but the Glance forced them on. Momentarily, in that no-time, they came to the stone and saw what was etched upon it: the familiar arrow unmistakably pointing off to the deeper parts of the forest.

They peered through the depths surrounding the great columns of trees, already dark, the sun refused passage down here at the forest floor. Ribbons of cold tension began threading through them. Ian reached over and ran his finger through a clump of thick moss eating into another, smaller boulder and it came away filthy black. He wiped the smear along his pant leg. "What are we doin here?" he whispered to no one in particular.

They followed the direction of the arrow.

The going was soon much tougher. They had no compass and the only way to determine a hopefully straight line was to mark a tree in the distance and head toward it. This proved easier said than done. Uprooted and broken trees, thorn bushes, and snakelike vines blocked them at every step. By the time they reached the next marker, luckily, they were both sweating terribly. "Man," Connor said, pulling up alongside a tree. "This is ridiculous. We were just flat lucky to find that thing," he said, pointing at the marker stone.

"No kidding," Ian replied, picking a thorn from the heel of his right hand. And as he began looking up, still fidgeting with the thorn and fixing to say something else, his mouth fell into a gaping O and his eyes followed suit. He seemed to be staring at something just over Connor's right shoulder. Without thinking, Connor ducked and jumped away from the tree he'd just been leaning against. He pulled up alongside Ian and turned to look back.

Pinned to the tree before them was a fox squirrel, frozen there like a trophy on the wall. It was a big one, so old its fur had reached a perfect match point with the bark. Its eyes appeared glassy and distant but that was not what had stopped Ian in his tracks. From out the corner of the squirrel's mouth hung what looked to be most of a large, dead lizard.

"Will you look at that!?" Ian yelled. Connor grabbed his friend's shoulder as the boy tried to move ahead. There was just something wrong with this.... Ian turned to his friend, wide-eyed. "Have you ever?" he began.

"No. Never. I thought they only ate acorns and, I don't know...grass?"

They studied the tableau again. A squirrel eating a lizard! What was all that? And with this new wonder came also something darker. An accompanying hint of danger. Connor looked at him and Ian shook his head.

"Kinda late to turn back now." Ian scratched his head and peered back into the afternoon's fragmented light. They'd left no obvious markers behind them, not a single one. Very quietly, so as to avoid panic, Connor turned back the other direction, shivered, and said, "You remember which tree it was we were heading for?"

Ian faced that direction, scanning the area. He ducked his head and squinted with one hand shading his brow. "Yeah...doan worry. It's that one over there," he said, pointing. "The one that branches off right above that big hole in the side. You see it?"

"Oh yeah, there it is. For a moment there...guess the squirrel threw me." He paused. "Man, you ever seen anything like that?"

"You'd know if I had."

They were quiet for a moment afterward, still chancing a look at the squirrel though neither really wanted to. "You can feel it, can't you?" Connor said.

"Yeah. We're lost. We didn't mark any trees coming in."

"Uh huh...hope we find that Church," Connor finished, putting both their fear to words.

After marking six more trees in the distance, and still finding nothing even vaguely resembling a clearing in which an old Church would sit, the opportunity for panic broadened its horizons. From their torn and dirty clothing they already knew a lot of explaining would be in order. They just hoped, now, to get that chance.

It was then they began to wonder if the giant bird had tricked them. After all, what did they really know? They pushed closer together, fighting and kicking their way through and over the underbrush and fallen trees. At last the forest began to thin a bit. A moment later they broke through a twisted copse of trees into another clearing. They pulled up like a shot.

The Church rotted before them like an old ship slowly sinking below green, grassy waves. The once beautiful landscaping was now nothing more than shadow and thorn, there was no plan left. Shrubs grew wild and thick about the Church's massive base and just to the left of a mas of thick honeysuckle, the boys could see the rusted, iron fence surrounding the lonely cemetery.

What was left of the buckling, crumbling walls was coated from top to bottom with the same thick, black moss as had covered the path-finding stones earlier. The once sturdy wooden doors were now completely rotten; the entranceway had, in fact, collapsed upon itself, forming a gap-toothed arch that yawned away into the darkness. There was no stained-glass left, no ornamentation whatsoever. But it was not the work of man that held the boys. It was the tree.

It had taken over, you see. It had sunk its roots deeply into the damp loam beneath the rotten floorboards and set out to conquer. And to what effect! No longer was the Church guardian of the clearing. Over the long years, Time had set things on their ears. While the Church had grown slumped and lost, the tree had grown monstrous. Huge, knotted limbs twisted and curled out of every crack and hole torn in the masonry's crumbling hide. The entire roof which had once domed above the sanctuary floor had given way and in its place was a crown of thick, green leaves blowing and rippling like a huge bubble squeezing up through the broken rafters. A mass of limbs stretched skyward, while others served as a balance of sorts, setting chunks of floor as platforms around the elbows of shield-like bark. But the crow had not lied because there were many thin patches in what was visible of the massive tree's foliage. Some sections were in fact limp and strangled-looking. Regardless, the sickened tree still gave the very real impression of holding what was left of the derelict Church upright. All, that is, except the pastor's quarters where the crow had first gotten inside. Of that structure there was little left to speak of. Bits of foundation showed through here and there, but the walls and roof had long since wasted away. The huge, crumpled skeleton of a long dead tree lay trapped in a web of thorn and thistle. Large mounds of protruding vines and mulberry bushes grew upon the mass that had become of both the building and the tree.

The boys stared in the half-light of wonder and fear.

This was not what they had expected. An old building, sure. Maybe like a couple of the wrecks work crews tore apart downtown, but nothing like this! Because, and they really had to face the truth, if anything in the world could be haunted, then this ancient church surely was! The crow's ominous words came back to the boys then. It had said the Church was abandoned, that the cat was back. That the creature had become crafty.

Ian shivered and looked at Connor. The older boy looked back. "We're supposed to go in there?" Ian asked, dumbfounded. Connor just nodded, pausing to point a shaking finger at the ancient site which stood before them like doom personified.

"Man...I doan know..." Ian said, not even making a move to swat the fly that buzzed loudly around his left ear. So had it not been for the flapping of wings at that very instant, the whole course of events would have probably gone far differently. But it did come, accompanied by a flashing shadow in the grass a few yards away. And with it the forest sounds suddenly erupted to a strange, natural symphony that made both boys yell and grab for one another in surprise.

# Chapter 23: What the Boys Found

The crow wasted no time getting to the point. It was panting, straining for breath and eyeing them desperately as it fanned the air because it read their fears perfectly. "I know! I know!" it squawked, bouncing around in the grass on its one good leg. "It's not what you imagined, worse yes, but really, don't be afraid! It's not so bad!"

"Not So Bad!" Connor shouted. "What are you talking about?" He pointed across the overgrown clearing. "Look at that! And you want us to go in there?! Are you crazy?"

The crow threw its wings high above its head and squeezed its eyes shut. Then it stood there, balanced on one leg until the shouts died out amid the ridiculous pose. When the bird addressed them again it was with a deadly seriousness. "This is no fairy tale, boys," it said. "This is no story you can put away till daylight to see how the scary part ends. This is real. This is the reason behind everything I told you. And there is nothing to be done about it...it is what it is. If you will help us, you'll have to go inside. As I told you, the cat is back and it makes any pilfering around in there by the mouse or me extremely dangerous. But not for you. What chance would a cat have against the likes of you two?" The crow finished off its appeal to their manliness and closed its beak. There was nothing left to say.

The boys looked at one another, as opposed to walking off, and the crow took this as a step in the right direction. Its whole life was hanging on a hook before its very eyes. If the boys turned away, its fate was sealed.

And as was becoming their habit, no words passed between the boys. The Glance only intensified, and when they finally turned their eyes back to the bird, the decision was still not clear. "Okay, here's the thing," Connor said. "We'll go in there and look around, even if we don't know what we're looking for. But this is no joke: we have to be home before the streetlights come on. That's just straight-up fact."

The crow nodded its head vigorously. "Yes, yes, yes!" it said. "It should be no problem. Of course, you were aware of the time knot on the way over?" A nod from both. "Good, good. Just so you know, not much real time has passed since you left the tree house. I'll work up another one soon, but I didn't think you'd want to ramble around inside the Church with it so quiet and all. I know it's not the most welcoming place..."

"Uh huh," Ian replied, switching his gaze from the bird back to the brooding Church. "I'm just glad it's daylight. I wouldn't be caught dead here at night."

"Oh yes, and I'll do my very best to keep it that way," the bird said.

Ian leveled his eyes back on the bird. "So you really have no idea what we're looking for."

"Sadly no."

"Well," Ian said and whistled. "There's no reason to waste any more time lollygaggin around here." Without another word the boys turned and struck out for the ruin.

"Be careful, boys," the bird whispered to their backs.

It wasn't that hard crossing the overgrown clearing if you didn't mind the vines, but the ominous, black stone facade moldering away in this shadowed light was anything but welcoming. The crumbling wreck seemed to rear up before their eyes, home now to God only knew what.

The remains of another tree rotted wetly in the thick blades of crabgrass that punched up through the ground, near the broken archway that held what was left of the doors. When Ian kicked at the porous, barkless hide, his foot simply broke straight into the spongy interior. "Man, even the trees here are ghosts..." he whispered. Connor made no show that he'd heard. He simply stepped over the log and crept carefully up to the doorway. There was only darkness within. He turned to his friend.

"You still got the flashlight?"

"Yeah," Ian replied. He pulled it out and stepped up to the doorway. He clicked it on, shined it in through the broken archway. The place was a shambles. Most of the roof had caved in and taken the pews with it. Broken, scattered pieces of lumber and furniture were everywhere, coated in dust, cobwebs, leaves and broken branches, bits of fragmented stained-glass, and a blanket of mildew that breathed out through the archway like the dead breath of a mummy.

But at least nothing was moving.

Ian squeezed Connor's shoulder. "Doan forget about that cat," he said.

"Don't worry. It's right here!" he said, touching his temple with a forefinger.

They pressed in through the doorway.

The tree from the outside was but a shade of itself in the collapsed room. Only in here could one truly see the effects of the sickness. Many huge, gnarled branches were completely bare of leaves, and some of the older ones had broken away entirely, adding to the clutter on the floor. Connor trained the light along several of the larger, healthier-looking limbs, working backward until finally finding the colossal trunk, now completely choking what had been the pulpit and what remained of the choir loft.

"It's so big..." Ian mused into the swirling, mildewed air.

"Yeah, I've never seen anything like it."

"So..."

"Yeah?"

"You see anything looks important?"

"How would I know?" Connor said. He trained the powerful flashlight beam around in an arc, cutting a wide swath in the huge darkness around them. Rubble filled every niche, had blown into every corner. To the left of the collapsed pulpit, underneath the only balcony that looked like it would survive the next storm, another darkness yawned out of the shadows. They both knew what that must hold. The beam remained frozen on the smaller, more lethal darkness. "Guess we better check it out," Ian said miserably.

Connor nodded, all the while squinting hard into the darkness that waited for them. The route to the back wall was no easy go. A lichen-wormed branch had fallen, smashing several rows of pews to broken slats and sawdust, its many fingerling branches making a climb through them near impossible. They moved closer, first sloughing through a foul puddle of bubbly water almost ankle deep near one end until another drift of broken planks afforded them a makeshift platform toward the far end near the wall.

It was then they saw the scattering of hair.

Connor trained the beam as Ian squatted down, breaking loose a rotted branch. He poked it into the hairy mass and peeled it off the wet wood like old newspaper scraped from a garage floor. He held it into the light.

Cat hair.

"So..." Ian said, dropping the stick. "We should be pretty close."

A ruffling flutter on the wind gave both boys pause. They turned simultaneously, looking up. Through the tattered ceiling of branches, leaves, and broken walls, they still had a pretty clear view outside into the half-gloom. And if you put a little imagination into play, it really was not so hard to imagine where the window had once been, set firmly into the wall several yards above the last row of balcony seats. Through this opening they could see the crow, far out and above them in the uppermost reaches of a magnificent red oak. How they'd even heard it at all was an even bigger mystery. Connor was the first to speak. "Watchin' us through the window," he said.

Before Ian could reply a rush of reeking wind blew through. Clearly coming from the deeper darkness where the door waited. They could just see it from here, they would have no trouble reaching it now.

And that is when they saw it.

A vague light began to build within the darkness. A vague, green light. It seemed to be coming on, getting brighter, pulsing slightly and taking on substance. Closing on them from the tunnels, its odd shape defined by the entrance through which it came. It was obvious that at least a little of the door remained. Of course it was a rotted mess, but the metal frame still feebly managed to hold what was left of the wood together. But it would pose no obstacle. Long, zig-zagging cracks yawned away from the steel support and through every seam.

The eldritch light settled just inside the doorway and thin drifts of green fog spilled out across the floor, soon covering the boys' ankles and continuing on. "Just like it said," Connor recalled dryly. Ian said nothing. He simply rummaged around in a nearby pile of broken lumber and pulled free a short length of wood in a rough shape of a chair leg. He handed it across to his friend who took it without comment, staring past the broken door into the tunnels beyond. It took no more than a minute to secure another weapon, this one much like the first.

And so armed, the boys moved forward. Into the tunnels where the light waited.

"Do ya hear it?" Connor whispered.

"What?"

"Water's not dripping anymore. No sound. We're inside another time knot." He turned his eyes down. "Look at the flashlight," he said. Ian looked. The beam was fragmented to particles, as if a snowstorm of ice shavings had gathered in the mildewed air. Everything sparkling green, but no real substance. The ice-like shavings simply vanished a short ways ahead as if they'd never really existed in the first place. "Well that sucks," Ian said. Connor nodded grimly and flicked the switch to Off but the pattern of light remained fixed in place, disengaged now from its maker.

"What are we getting' ourselves into?" Connor asked aloud for the first time, though he'd asked this same question to himself a least a hundred other times. Ian stepped up to clear the rest of the way to the door. It took exactly two swings.

# Chapter 24: Following the Mist

It was just as the crow had said, there was no mistaking the tunnels snaking away from the back wall. Ian cleared the dust from his eyes as Connor edged forward, but went down hard on his butt, slipping in the thin layer of scum that coated the smooth tiles. He was back on his feet in an instant, his pants even muddier and a good deal wetter than they'd been after the Buffalo Wallow Trail. "Man, be careful," he said. "The floor's a mess!" He scraped away some of the muck and wiped it on the wall next to him. It didn't hold on the slick, sweating surface and plopped soundlessly back to the floor. Ian stepped carefully through the doorway and stood next to his friend, holding the club vigilant at his side. The mist had receded into the closest dank corridor. "I doan like this," he said, unable to hide the tremor in his voice.

"Yeah, me neither. But we can't go back now. It's just like the crow said. We really must be its last chance."

"Uh huh," Ian said. "Lucky us."

The corridor stretched back about ten feet and made an abrupt left. The walls here were much moldier than inside the Church, and it was suddenly chillier too. Everything was wet, but the worst was the silence of the time knot which made the place even more tiny and claustrophobic. The green mist backed away and around the corner, leaving behind only a faint glow. "Let's go," Connor said, starting forward with Ian at his heels, glancing back into the darkness every few seconds to assure himself that no one or nothing was coming up from behind.

"Doan forget about that cat," Ian said again.

"That's all I'm thinking about."

The first little bit wasn't so bad, even though the descending, crumbling stairway leading down into the stifling darkness was enough to curl your hair. They found the half-lit corridor they next entered roughly the same size as the entrance from the Church and in fairly good repair. However, there was a good deal of mud and water on the floor, so you had to be extra careful moving along. The real danger, it seemed, hung above their heads. Bricks littered the corridor everywhere, having fallen from the ceiling or rounded walls years or perhaps minutes before. There were probably many more ready to let loose, and the boys hoped the stasis of the time knot would keep them from being knocked on the head.

The mist led them down a short succession of like caverns, all of them muddy and saturated with mold but none in serious disrepair. They had even begun to feel an unwarranted streak of bravery when they happened upon another, more forbidding, corridor just a ways beyond. Both boys blinked at one another in dismay.

This tunnel's ceiling had sagged and finally collapsed to half its original size. "Okay, this is not good," Ian croaked. Connor gulped and continued to stare. If they were lucky they wouldn't have to crawl but they would have to walk doubled over. And the mist wasn't giving them much of a chance at consideration either. It leaked easily away into the smaller tunnel, leaving the remaining darkness to clutch tightly around the boys. They already knew the flashlight was useless, the time knot had canceled its influence. But there was no turning back. As before in the forest, there had been too many twists and turns to attempt it.

They were as trapped as the crow had been, now.

And the mist wasn't waiting.

They ducked down and charged on, neither willing to let the eldritch glow get too far ahead. The idea of being cut off and blind down here lost in Time and darkness, below the earth, held a terror they had not truly faced before. Why, it could be years until someone found them, if ever. They surged ahead.

It didn't take long for the tunnel to widen out again, but even so, their situation hardly improved. The section even on the "good" side of the cave-in was by far some of the worst they'd seen. And again, it was getting colder. Connor rubbed his wet pant legs vigorously.

The glow continued along its way.

The walls were completely black now, the bricks swollen with nests of spongy mold and moss. Insects of all colors and curious long-legged spiders were frozen in masses, jello-strands of clear liquid streaming from ceiling to ground. There were no tiles here at all. The corridor was no more than a cave, sliding along underground to God only knew where. They gripped their clubs tighter and continued.

Switching back and forth between steadily worsening corridors, they followed the weird light. There was no way to tell how far they'd come, or even how long they'd been down. Claustrophobia was worse too. The corridors never got any bigger and each additional branch seemed intent upon squeezing tighter still. The construction down this deep also became suspect. Soon there were no bricks at all above their head, only occasional cypress-beam supports that had weakened over the long haul of years, their lengths sway-backed from the weight pressing down from above. And everywhere remained the intense penetrating silence of the time knot.

The mist remained well out in front, never speeding away so that the boys were racing ahead dangerously, but then again, not slowing down much either. It seemed resolved to a purpose the boys would be forced to face, all other choices having long since fallen by the wayside. Only once during this journey did they actually come to a complete halt, staring wildly about as the mist continued on its unerring course. This was when they broke from the confines of one filthy corridor, suddenly surrounded on all sides by a strangeness neither could put his finger on. They pulled together instinctively and ducked their heads as if half-expecting a blow. Then they raised their eyes and their mouths dropped open.

A chamber loomed above them.

The glowing mist poured through this weird, sprawling place, even though the ceiling was lost high above their heads in a darkness not even the glow could penetrate. And even though the walls peeled around in a vast circle, the room's diameter was simply unbelievable. No one had built this chamber. That was clear. The ragged walls were testament enough. No, this had been naturally, or more likely, supernaturally, formed. Its sheer scope of height and width was unnerving even in the half-light of the eerie glow. No longer was there the pressing doom of claustrophobia lurking close around their bodies, now there was just a sense of vastness all around them. Of exposure.

But further exploration was not to be had since already the mist ducked into another tunnel across the way and was gradually sucking its light from the chamber. The boys had been standing still for too long. The nightmare image of them lost in this subterranean darkness returned. "Come on man! Let's go!" Ian shouted. Forgetting about the pot-holed floor, they raced toward the light, terrified of losing it now, and thankfully, finding it finally pausing like an impatient dog waiting for its master to catch up.

What they found when they got there was hardly welcoming. Inside this new branch the walls and ceiling had totally collapsed. They would have to crawl. And from the looks of it, a fair amount of digging might be in the bargain too. A creeping fear made its way through them like a venomous spider searching out a nest of birds. "Oh...no," Ian said. They bent to their knees in the muck and slime that filmed the ground. The bad spot looked to be no more than twenty feet or so, and the mist was waiting in what appeared to be a more substantial cavern just on the other side. "Looks like it just caved in around here," Ian observed. "If we can just make it through--"

"We'll what?" Connor asked. "Be in a bigger passage on the other side? So what."

"We doan have a choice."

"Right. So...who's first?"

"You're the oldest," Ian replied, only managing a tight, strained grin in the darkness.

"I knew you were gonna say that," Connor said, backing out of the jagged mouth of the tunnel and standing up. Then, without another word, he wrenched the flashlight down, breaking the grip the beam of light had on it. It was made out of steel, one of the big, heavy-duty types. In a pinch it just might come in handy for digging. Or at least prying. The cave-in looked big enough to squeeze through, but then again...

Connor looked back at his friend. "You're gonna be right behind me, right?"

"Right behind ya."

"Well, let's get this over with. You never can tell when that thing will get tired a waiting." And he crawled through the tight crease in the wall. The first ten or fifteen feet weren't so bad, but he saw right off they'd misjudged the extent of this crumpled section. Soon, the boys were a good twenty feet into the passage and it didn't show any signs of widening. They were squeezing through like sausage in a skin and both prayed it wouldn't get any smaller. Getting stuck here would be the end. The bird couldn't help them and neither could the weird mist. The story of the rat came back in force, stuck there in the darkness until its skin fell away. The thought brought Connor to an abrupt stop and Ian bumped into his feet from behind. "Hey!" Connor called over his shoulder, trying to keep his adrenaline in check. "I'm gonna try and scrape some a this dirt away from the side. Hold on a sec."

"Okay," came the muffled reply. "Just hurry." A half-beat of silence followed. Then, "Man, it's dark back here!"

"I'm on it," Connor said, scraping away at the closest side of the tunnel with the butt of the flashlight. In fact, so engrossed in the job, he didn't recognize the sound for what it was at first. But when he did, fear froze him up inside. He almost dropped the flashlight. The steady, grumbling purr was unmistakable. He thought of the club he'd left behind to cart the light. He whispered frantically over his shoulder. "I think something's in here!"

"Like what?" Ian's muffled voice wasn't close enough to make anything any better.

"I'm thinking that cat!"

"Great! But I'm telling you, we can't go back! It's pitch black back here!"

"Yeah...you said...look, pass me the club." Several seconds later Connor felt the weapon digging in under a rib. He moved over so Ian could finish pushing it through. The strangled purring was now clearing coming from the end where the mist waited. And adding to his fear, the strange, green light appeared to pulse more rhythmically now, almost as if demanding the boys speed up.

So with one hand gripping the club and the other scrabbling for purchase in the tight chamber, Connor pushed ahead. He managed to get the palm of his right hand cupped around the club for no better reason than it was the easiest place to grab it. The passage was even tighter now and every inch was like pushing through a sewer pipe. No more than five feet from the end and he did get stuck for several fright-filled minutes until Ian was eventually able to push him free from behind. Connor was calling his thanks when the attack came. Luckily, Ian didn't hear him and never quit pushing.

Connor jerked his head back in the direction of the blood-curdling scream that had assailed him, his arm involuntarily flexing, thrusting the club forward like a projectile. What greeted him as both he and the club popped out of the tight passage was nothing he'd ever encountered before. The cat had grown ragged and mad over the long course of centuries. Its wild, bloodshot eyes burned red flames into the tunnel and Connor saw it had long ago given up its ancestry. Now it was no more than a ghoul, its mangy fur grown so old and thin it did little to hide the leathery skin stretched tight across bone, pocked and blown through with holes as if someone had long ago blasted the creature with a shotgun. The eyes were testimony of disease, caked with a green gunk that leaked from their corners. Its teeth were blackened stubs, jutting from the crooked mouth. And it was coming for him.

He flinched tight and the club went sailing right in front of his nose, his hand actually slapping him a lick across the chin right before the cat's wail went high and wild. And because his eyes were closed he had no idea what was going on. Oddly, he heard screams coming up from behind, and upon opening his eyes, noticed the green mist was still there.

The cat, however, was gone.

Ian came railing through, crash-landing on his shoulder. He groaned, rolled over, and faced the rough-hewn ceiling above. And he began to shout. "Where Is It! What's Goin On!" rolling back to his stomach and elbow-crawling out to where Connor was. His eyes frantically darted about the chamber.

"The cat! It was the cat!" Connor managed.

"I doan see it! Where'd it go? You think it's gone?"

"I doan know, maybe." Then a pause. "You notice something...?"

Ian raised up and squatted on one knee. "Yeah, we're not in the time knot anymore." They looked at one another with unspoken dread. "But it's still so quiet..."

They both peered into the darkness. "Yeah," Connor said. "And getting darker."

Immediately Ian was up and helping his friend to his feet in the bigger tunnel. "Okay," he said. "We gotta go! Wherever that's headed," he said pointing at the mist, "has gotta be better than here!"

"You got that right," Connor said. He saw the club lying by his left foot. Even in the dim light there was no mistaking the mat of dirty hair caught along one splintered side. He snatched it up and banged in against the wall. The hair remained entrenched. But without another word they rushed into the receding shadows, chasing down what little remained of the mysterious, guiding glow.

# Chapter 25: The Bone Cell

With the time knot gone their panted breaths and pounding feet within the dripping corridors was actually worse than the silence. The claustrophobia had been bad before, but nothing like this. Now they could hear the things trapped underground with them, all the scratching and slithering things just out of their range of sight. The eerie, pulsing light made constant switchbacks, darting in and out of corridors not much bigger than the one they'd just fought their way through. And now they had Time racing along beside them with all its added sounds and sensations.

Then the mist stopped. It was hard to say exactly how they knew, but it did, throbbing frantically within what appeared to be the oldest corridor yet. And the boys could see the reason. This end of the tunnel system had obviously been built for entirely different purposes than the ones before. A single, narrow artery reached away to lose itself in the far reaches of the mist. The walls on both sides were pocked with the rusted and rotted remains of countless heavy, dungeon-like doors. The closest were sealed tight. No windows, no doorknobs, just huge, heavy doors crammed tightly into the rock walls. However, a single door, in the heart of the glow, yawned open on a complete darkness of which the mist held no sway.

The boys turned and looked at one another.

"What d'ya wanna bet that's where they kept the magician," Ian whispered, moving forward.

Connor followed, zombie-like. They moved up to the door. The light in the passage was still strong but the chamber itself seemed to choke off most of its power. The cell was not much bigger than a walk-in closet. The floor was dirt, the walls and ceiling granite. Rusted chains hung from the back wall, and along the side wall nearest the door were the remnants of metal brackets and all that remained of a bench. Ian stepped inside, his eyes darting about the space. In the far right corner was a pile of old tools. Or, at least, what was left of them. Shovels and picks, mostly, although hardly a handle remained in the lot. Most were worm-eaten to drifts of dust.

The light from the corridor pulsed faster, almost as if trying to voice what it was incapable of speaking. Connor joined Ian inside, pushed a loose stone into the space between door frame and floor. You could never be too safe...

"This is where it happened," Ian said. "Just like it was that night in the dream...the men down here in the darkness. They were digging here!" He turned to face Connor and his eyes danced with the knowledge they now held. "They killed the magician and buried him here, his daughter too." He pointed to the corner. "There's the picks and shovels they used," he added matter-of-factly. He gripped his club tighter and walked across the dirt floor, trying not to disturb the phantoms that didn't seem so far out of reach. The mist became like a strobe. Connor looked down at his own club with the cat hair buried in its side and nodded his head. He could see it too. He watched as Ian poked among the old tools, watched also as his friend slid one end of his club into the empty socket of a crude shovel head. He jammed it in tight, banged it once on the floor, and threw it down. Put out his hand for Connor's. Connor tossed it over and bent down to pick up the shovel while Ian fashioned a pick.

Because it was suddenly clear, the reason they were down here.

And without another word they began to dig, all the while enveloped in the wild, pulsing glow that burned in the corridor outside like a well-stocked bonfire. No more than two feet down they hit the first root. Initially, they thought it was just more stones, but after clearing the dirt away the root was obvious. An oak root, too. They'd seen enough of them. They looked at one another in wonder.

"You doan think..." Ian began, his eyes begging the other to tell him different.

"I think so."

"But how? This deep down? With all this rock?"

"I doan know. How far have we come?" Connor asked. "We've been twisting around the whole time. Maybe we're not that far out!"

"Maybe, but that still doesn't explain that chamber we came through on the way here. Man, we couldn't even see the ceiling!" Ian scratched at his forehead, the dirty hand leaving a trail of shadow across his face, rendering him savage in the ghostly light. Connor just shrugged.

They went back to it and, in fact, made pretty good progress at first, despite the roots. But there were more and more the deeper they went, even if they did become more web-like. And still a little deeper down the webbing of roots seemed to have somehow displaced the very soil itself, leaving behind something very much like a shroud or fishing net. Only when the gleam of dirty yellowed bone showed pale withing the net did both boys immediately pull back.

At that moment the Glance took full possession of both, their eyes glazing as the vision raced through their heads. The as-of-yet hidden details of the crow's story were suddenly clear: the magician taking the clutch of acorns from the crow and swallowing them one by one, then a vast turn of years as the tree grew larger and deeper, searching out the essence of the man, its master, and finally, the touch in the underground darkness of root to bone, and last, the agony of the tree's find.

They were indeed bound together, this magician and the oak. After all these long years they had finally joined. To share the same fate, it seemed. And somehow it was up to the two, sweating, dirty boys knee-deep in the hole to put things to rights. It didn't make sense, but there was nothing left to do except dig in and finish the work they now knew had gone so long undone.

No doubt more than one person was down there, even though both were now no more than a jumble of loose bones bound up in the strange root-netting. The outside lining which sealed the grave pulled away relatively easy, but as they dug deeper it became harder and harder to separate the tough fibers from the bones. They to on a fury of manic energy, clearing out the space around the clutch of bones, shoveling frantically at the rock and dirt, tearing through tangles of lesser roots as they went.

When they were finally able to extract the bundle (it was in fact too much like a cocoon to be denied) they laid it just inside the doorway and collapsed against the walls, breathing heavily as they reclaimed their senses. The mist's ghostly pulse slowed now, drawing back the glow to a constant, but much lighter, bruise upon the walls.

"So this is it?" Ian said looking at the bundle of bones. "This is what the crow sent us down here for? To rescue this bag a bones?"

Connor was opening his mouth to reply at the very instant the glow winked out entirely, leaving them in total, utter darkness.

# Chapter 26: Finishing the Job

There is a funny thing about absolute darkness. It is complete. It is not nearly the same as being shut up inside a closet or other small room with the lights out, trembling among shadowed furniture or hanging clothes. No, it is different. It is suffocating. The closest either had come before was when they'd both gone on a vacation to Arkansas several years before with Connor's parents. On the way a sign had proclaimed them within five miles of Carlsbad Caverns. That had been enough.

The sole entrance to the wild, snaking nest of tunnels happened to lie in a rift between two huge rocks set at the very foot of a two-mile bend in the Smokey Mountains. The shaft dropped seventy feet straight down, accessible only by way of a long spiral staircase. Once at the bottom, the tour guide had pointed out a running stream which slipped through a crack in the wall. He said the fish had been tested and all were blind. The darkness here would do that to you, to anything, or anyone, left down here, given time.

Then he'd turned out the lights.

It was still easy to recall the collective gasp that had gone up among the group. There were no shapes or shadows, not even one's own hand pressed flat to the bridge of the nose. There was simply nothing except the pressure of the touch. That was the moment terror had begun to build, threatening to break out of their chests and bound loose among the rock walls.

Then the guide had snapped the switch back to life, engulfing them once again in welcoming light. The next several minutes had been spent in laughter and good-natured ribbing of the other's cowardice in the dark. But they'd sure been glad the lights were on.

Now, here they were again, with that old monster, only this time it was far past the moment when the terror froze to stone in the back of their throats. They were fast edging into the territory of true panic. And here there was no guide to casually snap the lights back on.

"Connor...?"

"I'm here," came the voice, disembodied in the darkness.

"What are we gonna do?"

"I doan know. Let me think..."

"Well, you better think fast," the words so soon swallowed alive by the monstrous dark.

Seconds ticked off to minutes, minutes raced away to—and they found the Glance worked better now, seemed to reach its fulfillment. It was as if each were peering directly into the other's mind, as if, in fact, they were merely peering into their own inner thoughts. This revelation, and the Idea, flashed into being at the same exact instant.

"Connor?" Ian said, leading his friend.

"Yeah, I know."

The sound of fumbling around in the darkness reached Ian's silky black corner. A second later a loud metallic click ran a smooth beam of light strongly against the granite ceiling. The other end of the flashlight gravely shone encompassed in Connor's hand. And even in the shadows, the smile that crept to the corners of the boys' cheeks was like the first welcome thing that had ever shone its face to the light of day.

"OOHHH YEAH!!!" Ian shouted, clapping his hands and doing an intricate jig in the gloom. It didn't take long for their new reality to set in. "Good thing we're not in the time knot anymore," Connor said in a somewhat more somber tone. "Let's not get too excited. We still don't know how to get out of here." This spoken fact brought them both to silence. They glanced down at the root-net of bones.

"Well, there's got to be a way," Ian said, pointing down. "Otherwise what's the point of us getting that?"

Connor ran the beam of light upon the pick and shovel, then crossed over so that it fell upon the bones. Something began to come together in their minds, almost as if a bridge were slowly being crossed. And though they could not see the other side, they could almost feel it. "Ohhhhhhhh!" both muttered in unison. The revelation, although momentarily mind-numbing, made their escape suddenly clear. Connor brought the light up to Ian's face. "There is a way, doan you feel it?"

"I do."

Without another word Ian gathered up the shovel and pick from the floor as Connor moved toward the bones. "How long you figure it took us ta get down here?" he threw back over his shoulder.

"Doan know. Couldn'a been more'n an hour or two." The rusty tools clanked together in the darkness. "What you figure?"

"Bout the same. Still a long way to drag this thing," because suddenly that much had come undeniably clear. They had to take the bones with them. And the tight spot? They'd dig through, by God.

"Right," Ian said aloud. "And then we walk right outta here." He bent down. "Grab that end and I'll get this one." They needed to get moving. The time knot was gone and that meant Time was running as always. The woods would be no easy go in the darkness. And of course the cat was still down here with them...somewhere...waiting. Connor heaved up his end of the burden.

And so for the next long while they plodded through the tunnels (the 'tight spot' handled quickly with the shovel and pick; they'd simply pushed the bundle through with one pulling while the other pushed from behind), almost supernaturally aware of each and every turn, sometimes before the approaching passage was even visible in the gloom. The Glance set deeply within their minds and after the first little bit it actually felt like they could have turned off the flashlight and still found their way out.

They felt more than saw the monstrous chamber from what must have been fifty crooked yards and two corridors away. By that time the bundle of bones had become as light as an infant. No word was passed, but the complete telepathic link they'd somehow achieved down here in the dark filled their heads with much more than words could provide. They knew each step before they made it. The stifling dark was now no more than a mild nuisance to be calmly endured.

By the time they reached the familiarity of the tiled floors they were not even breathing hard. The fear they'd felt that day in the cave was now an alien thing they could hardly understand at all. Then they rounded the last corner and Connor switched off the flashlight. Their mutual sigh of relief was very loud in the quiet corridor. They could make out rails of sunlight through the open cavern door. It was still daylight!

They hauled the bundle the remaining short distance to the doorway, and set it just inside the Church entrance. Then they paused for a moment just inside to let their eyes adjust to the new light, though it was hardly needed. Light, dark, nothing seemed to matter that much now, not with this new Sense. Talking was also mostly a waste of time. They both knew what needed to be done.

Ian placed a hand on Connor's shoulder when they stepped into the Church proper. "Look at that," he said quietly. On the floor, already blown into a pile of rubbish close by was a tuft of familiar and old, matted hair. Right next to it lay three black feathers.

There was nothing more to indicate a struggle.

The boys looked at one another fearfully, then turned their gazes to all the lost corners of the creepy Church, searching out anything slinking up unawares. They found nothing.

"So let's finish this," Ian said, grabbing hold of the root-net of bones.

It took a lot of muscle and sweat because the ground was very knotty and full of foundation castoffs, roots, and rocks. Several times the crude shovel slipped from its groove, and the pick was more dangerous from the start, but as the sunlight diffused away toward night, the ragged hole in the old cemetery grew slowly big enough to accept its load.

They gently lowered the root-net into the fresh hole in the previous cemetery of one. Now it would hold two more. Surely this hallowed ground had been the object of the magician's and little girl's spirits longing in the years since their deaths. Hopefully this escape from the bone cell would set them to rest, hopefully it would also be enough somehow to save the tree. The boys covered over the bizarre package with the same studied, respectful silence with which they'd dug the hole. Then they stood at the side of the slightly-raised mound.

"I guess that's it," Ian said.

"Yeah. It's all we can do."

"Uh huh. But I do wish the crow was here..." They both glanced into the shadowy canopy above.

"Well, let's get out of here," Connor said.

They trailed through the forest with the same uncanny purpose with which they'd escaped the catacombs. Only as they crossed the highway did the sun finally dip behind the tree line and the shadows really began to stretch themselves out. They separated at the hedge in the Thompson's yard (as filthy as pigs and scraped and scratched as roosters after a barnyard fight), both in a mad dash to beat the streetlights home.

Chapter 27: From There To Here

The rest of that summer passed away to fall. School started and slowly but surely the holidays came and ushered out the old year. There was an agonizing stretch between Mardi Gras and Easter Break and then (like a bird returning to the nest it made the previous year) summer was upon them again.

Both a year older. A year wiser, perhaps.

They'd not seen the crow, had not been back to the Church, had seldom even spoken of either. In fact, they very rarely spoke of anything anymore, at least when they were alone. There was really no need. The Glance was still with them, stronger than ever. They held long conversations without uttering a word. Thoughts, ideas, secrets passed between them unchanged.

They found they had to be careful around other people. Even their parents. What others had merely been faintly aware of before was hard to miss now, and they did their level best to hide it from the world. It was a gift to be neither discussed nor examined, a reward of sorts for pulling off what they had done.

Whatever that had been.

Because ever since their discovery of the bone cell they had no knowledge of the crow. There had been no further visions, no requests. Their dreams had been empty of its presence. However, they still ventured out to the remains of the tree house every now and again.

Such as today.

Ian stood on the bank, plunking stones into the mirrored surface of the lake, savoring the rippled patterns that rolled away in those great circles. He turned around. Connor came creeping up around the dusty, beaten clearing near the copse of trees, a smile covering his face. "Thought I'd get away with it this time," he said and laughed.

Ian smiled back. "Close," he admitted. "Very close."

Silently Ian turned back to the game of thrown stones and Connor joined him. They both spun around simultaneously a second later.

The crow sat at the top of the pine. Its head was completely white now, but other than that it looked just fine. Its spread its wings and the boys saw the gap in the right wing, a gap that would have very neatly held three, long flight feathers. There was also a strange, discolored hump on its back. "You're alive!" both boys cried simultaneously. The bird cackled and glided down from the pine to land in a cloud of dust at their feet. Its yellow eyes were sparkling brightly.

"Indeed I am! Thanks to both of you!" it replied. It hopped on its good claw a few bounds closer. "You've changed. I can see the makings of men in the both of you now!"

"Where have you been?" Ian asked, barely able to conceal his own excitement. They'd both believed the bird dead. And then because he could no longer contain himself. "What has happened since then?"

The bird squawked and fanned the air with its wings. "It's been a year and seven days exactly! You were brilliant, simply brilliant!" As it exclaimed the lump on its back began to take on shape. "But before all that," the bird said, "I must introduce a friend of mine," and what turned out to be a tiny head lifted away from the black feathers. The mouse looked at them with unblinking eyes.

"The Tree lives, boys!" the crow cawed triumphantly. "The barren limbs have sprouted again! The air inside the Church is once more alive! Animals have returned to the clearing! Oh it was a wonderful job, my boys!" and the crow danced a clumsy circle in the dust, the mirth in its eyes echoed in the mouse's too as she hung on tightly. Ian cut the merriment short with an abrupt question.

"It's time you told us the truth," he said. "Who are you? The both of you? Who are you really?

The crow stopped its dance. Its yellow eyes gleamed. "The gift has been substantial, I see. This Glance of yours has become almost visible. It hangs about you like a ghost." It stopped speaking and looked at the ground. "Of course you already suspect much of it..." it admitted.

"The magician," Connor deadpanned. "The magician and his little girl. What's left of them is in you...somehow." Ian reached over and touched his friend's shoulder.

The crow looked into their eyes and this time its humanity was undeniable. It said humbly, "I hope you will use this thing wisely."

"Tell us," Ian implored. "We did what you asked. We've waited long enough."

"Indeed. I do owe you this explanation. But the truth is, I don't truly know myself."

"What did the magician do to you?" Connor whispered.

"Like you guessed. He saved a fragment of his daughter and himself in the mouse and me. Sometimes I seem to have a wisp of him in the deepest parts of my mind, but it appears he is still very wily. And mysterious. But what's left of him is well and even more nimble now that you two have saved the tree. The mouse says the same about the girl, and, as you can see, we are still very much alive. In fact I can't say that I've ever felt better."

"But your wing, you're all white..." Ian began.

"Nothing but old age and a fight," the bird cut in.

"It was the cat, wasn't it?" Connor said. "When we lost the green mist in the tunnels...you were fighting the cat."

The crow tipped its beak. "Yes," it said. "I couldn't be sure what the creature was up to, and I could feel you two on the verge of success. I brought it to that loathsome creature with everything I had." The crow visibly shook at the memory. "And thankfully I have not seen him again, but I don't believe it's gone for good. The thing bides its time, for what I do not know."

Ian snapped his fingers, recalling the vision they'd experienced in the bone cell. "The clutch of seeds! The one the magician asked you to bring him! Somehow the roots searched out the bones! And when the Tree learned the truth it began to die!"

"That's how I see it too," the bird agreed. "But the Church is once more ours. The Tree is alive and healthy. The spirits are now at peace, and the mouse and I have just to wait for whatever purpose these many years have led us to." It paused and looked with love upon the two boys standing before it. "But first we have to thank you, the mouse and I, and the spirit of the little girl and the magician. We stand at your mercy because everything would be over had not you saved the day." And with that the crow bowed deeply.

Connor could not let the opportunity pass. "What about the treasure? Is it still out there?"

The crow cocked one yellow eye their way. "I have no clue, but sometimes the magician seems to think so."

"And what about the time you went back inside the Church after the hurricane? What about--?" but the crow cut him short with a loud caw and a wink.

"You two never forget anything, do you?"

They admitted nothing.

"Ummm huh, well that, by boys, is a tale for another day. Perhaps when you're a bit older because lives get long and complicated, and this fact alone places the same burden on such stories. And if you couldn't already tell," the crow finished, "It's a long way from there to here."

the end

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