Alex Grecian - The Black Country

“She’s upstairs. You sent her there.”

Jessica looked up. There was no upstairs.

She hiked up her skirts and straddled a branch that was as big around as her body, swung her other leg over, and hoped Peter wasn’t looking her way. There was no time for modesty. Her feet touched the floor and she gauged the distance to Peter again. Closer, but it was going to take a while to navigate through the sudden thicket, and she was worried about the smoke forming behind the boy. She considered kicking off her shoes. She could move faster that way, but the floor was covered with splinters, some of them huge, jagged, dangerous. Bare feet would quickly become a liability.

“Peter!”

“Yes?”

“Look around you. Look for a fireplace poker or a stout stick.”

She watched him swivel his head around, then he disappeared from view as he bent from the shoulders to look at something. She heard him stifle a gasp of pain. He must have wrenched his bad shoulder even more. She continued to make her way toward him, but too slowly. Her hip still hurt from her fall at the Price home, but it took her weight.

“I found this.” Peter’s head popped back up into view and he raised his good arm. He was hefting a long flat iron bar, twisted nearly in half, with wicked hooks set at regular intervals. It was the mount for the inn’s fireplace tools. It had been securely bolted to the mantel, and Jessica wondered at the force necessary to wrench it loose and bend it. She nodded, excited.

“Yes, that’s brilliant. Can you use it to lever yourself loose?”

“I don’t know.”

“I can’t see what’s pinned you down. I can’t help.”

“Come closer.”

“I’m trying, but there are too many branches in the way. I’ll be there as soon as I can, but you must try to help yourself.”

The boy swallowed hard, and his head disappeared once more as he bent to his task. He could only use one arm and he wasn’t a heavy boy. He didn’t have a lot of upper-body strength to put into the effort. On the other hand, he was skinny enough that she hoped he might be able to slide out from behind the tree limbs if he could create just a little more space for himself.

“Peter,” she said. She pulled herself up onto a limb and balanced, teetering there for a second, looking for a place to put her other foot. “Hurry, Peter.”

“It’s a little bit loose now,” he said. She still couldn’t see him and she held on to a solid branch beside her, going up on the toes of one foot, the other foot still dangling in the air. The smoke was denser now where Peter was, but it had thickened imperceptibly. She hadn’t realized that she couldn’t see the stones left from the crushed fireplace until they were gone. She couldn’t tell if Peter was standing or was still bent over his task. Then she saw shuddering orange tongues flicking in and out of the smoke. The great broken tree was on fire!

“Peter!”

“I’m loose!”

“Move!”

“Which way?”

“Toward my voice!”

“I can’t see where you are!” Then, softer: “My arm hurts.”

“Peter, listen for me and follow my voice.”

“I can’t!”

The air in the room wavered as flames licked out toward Jessica, and there was a rending sound as if two trains had gone off their tracks in unison, locked in combat. She lost her grip on the branch and slipped, fell hard against the trunk of the tree, and the breath went out of her. She shook her head and sat back up. Her leg was bleeding.

“Peter!”

No answer. Her leg didn’t hurt much. No broken bones. She’d live. She pushed aside the smallest branches near her, and a bird’s nest fell out of them and rolled to a stop at her feet. It was empty, useless. She kicked it aside, and it bounced off an oddly shaped bundle trapped in the branches three feet from her. She made her way to it and reached out, touched it. It was white and soft, like a pillow. Like a pincushion. Bennett Rose was on his side, resting on the floor of his inn, his apron pulled up over his head. Countless thin branches, none of them any bigger around than Jessica’s thumb, had skewered him through his chest and abdomen and throat. Blood, more than she had imagined could be in a person’s body, had trickled, was still trickling, down his body, pooling on the floor, shiny and black. She rolled him over, the branches resisting her, and pulled the apron from his face. One scraggy branch had been driven through his eye, and something clear oozed from the corner of it down the side of his nose. His other eye rolled and looked up at her and she screamed.

Rose twitched his hand as if to reach out to her, then he went slack by degrees. His legs never moved, but his hands fell loose, then his arms, then his upper body seemed to relax and his head lolled on his neck and the scraggy branch plucked its way out of his eye socket and whipped a spray of blood at Jessica.

She backed away and bulled her way through the top of the tree, headed toward the murkiest part of the room, the smokiest, where she thought she had last heard Peter. The tree had settled and shifted, rolled slightly to one side, and she no longer knew where she was in relation to anything else, but the smoke was her guide.

The inn had never seemed so large to her before.

She pushed on a branch and it sprang back at her and struck her across the eyes. She cried out and felt tears welling up, running down her cheeks. Where was Peter?

“Miss Jessica?”

She turned at the sound of his voice and looked up. Peter was balanced on the huge branch she had fallen from. He was practically hanging there, his good arm wrapped around an overhead tree limb, shirtless and grinning down at her with his hair wild and smoky, his face and his furrowed chest smudged, like some wild boy from the jungle. His shirt had been tied around his neck and made into a sling to support his damaged arm.

“Peter? How did you. .?”

“He sent me for you. Because I’m smaller. It’s easier if you go this way. The branches are more broken over here.”

He grinned again and scampered along the giant limb. Jessica followed him and, gradually, the branches did thin out and she began to smell fresh air. She hadn’t realized how warm she was until she felt a lovely cold draft against her wet cheeks.

And then she was outside.

The far wall of the inn was completely gone, vanished under the crushing weight of the centuries-old tree, buried in a tunnel somewhere beneath her. Peter ran past her, his feet bare in the snow, and stopped at the side of a man who stood with his back to her, slightly stooped under a weight. The man turned and she was relieved to see that it was Dr Kingsley. He was cradling the small still body of Anna Price. He looked at Jessica and then down at Anna and he smiled.

“She’ll be all right,” Dr Kingsley said. “We were lucky the tree knocked us out of there before it did its nasty work on your inn.”

“How did. .?”

“The branches really are somewhat sparse over there. I was able to get to young Peter, but he was very brave to find you.”

“He made this out of my shirt,” Peter said. “My arm feels better.”

“Is anyone else still in there?” Kingsley said.

Jessica shook her head. She didn’t know whether Peter had seen Rose’s body and she didn’t want to say anything out loud. The children had already been through enough.

Kingsley nodded. She watched his breath drift away on the breeze. “Well, then,” he said, “the boy has no shoes and the girl has had a shock. We ought to find shelter for them. And quickly.”

There was another tearing sound from the inn and some part of the tree invisible to Jessica crashed down, sending a shower of sparks into the night air. A portion of the wall caved inward, and fire sprang up to take its place.