Chapter Thirty-Nine
Jane stumbled through the trees. Far ahead, a tree rose above the others in the dead forest. The closer she got to it, the higher it loomed, towering above her like a mountain. Jane, an East Coast girl who hadn't traveled much, (except for a disastrous family reunion in Texas) looked on in amazement as it blotted out the sky. Its limbs were bare, but a swirling black cloud buzzed around its base, reminding Jane of a swarm of flies. A hoarse cawing filled the dead air, and it wasn't until Jane got closer that she realized what was going on.
She paused, unwilling to enter the clearing that surrounded the mighty trunk. A vast cloud of crows flew around the tree. The branches around the base of the tree were filled with dangling, odd shaped objects. They were hard to make out through the screeching birds, but as Jane squinted her eyes, they became very clear. They were bodies, the bodies of men, women and children, and of animals of all sorts and sizes. One of the human bodies in particular was the bird's focus, however. It wasn't as old as the others. It had dirty, shoulder-length air. It wore modern clothing, white slacks, and bright red, casual pumps. A particularly vindictive crow perched on one shoulder, almost delicately picking at the corpses face. Jane stared at the scene in horrified fascination, poised to run if the birds decided to come after her.
Then the dangling legs feebly kicked, and Jane's stomach heaved. She stumbled back into the trees, her hands pressed against her ears. It wasn't Daria, she was sure of that. But, who was it? What should she do? Then her mind made a leap. The Fashion Club! It might be one of the missing girls!
Jane looked frantically around her for rocks or broken branches, any thing to beat those devilish birds away. Even now, though, she didn't have the nerve to break off a branch from one of the trees. Not finding anything on the ashy ground she could use, she swore silently, but slipped off her jacket. Her heart in her mouth, she slowly stepped out of the trees, eyes darting all around her, her jacket dangling in her hand. For one long moment, she was unnoticed.
Then a group of birds broke off the main flock, heading directly at her.
Surprising herself, she took the unexpected, and charged right at them, screaming. The flock exploded, scattering in all directions. Their shrill cawing took on a note of confusion, then abruptly everything became silent.
"You'd better run! Er, fly!"
After all the noise, the sudden silence engulfed Jane, smothering her. Looking ahead, she grew dizzy. The tree was still large, but no longer the titanic size she had thought it was earlier. The bodies still swung from the branches. A macabre collection of men, women, children, and of all types and sizes of animals. Tattered clothing of skins and greyed cloth fluttered in the faint breeze caused by the slight swing.
But Jane's eyes focused on the obviously modern body. It also swung slowly, revolving on its hide rope. Dirty brown hair, streaked with white and grey, flowed past its shoulders. Its fingertips were worn down to bloody stubs. Blood had stained the crotch and legs of the filthy white slacks. This was the corpse that had the bird picking at its face.
"Brown hair, must be either Sandi or Stacy, if she let her hair down."
Then the face and front swung into Jane's view, and Jane dropped to her hands and knees, gagging and vomiting, proving she was still alive in at least one respect. When she was done, she stared intently at the ashy ground, wishing she could forget what she had just seen. She doubted she ever would.
The only sound in the world was the creaking of the bodies on their ropes. Jane opened her eyes, but kept them firmly focused on the ash covered ground. A hoarse whisper came from above her, from something that Jane absolutely felt should not even remotely be able to speak.
"You've come."
"Sandi? Sandi Griffin? Is that you?"
A loud, agonized screaming was her only answer. Jane clapped her hands over her ears, in a childlike gesture as the scream went on and on, echoing in the clear sky. The raw agony pierced Jane to her core, images pounding into her mind. Sandi, Quinn, Stacy, Tiffany. The storm. Getting lost. Finding the cabin. Relief at finding shelter. Then the cold, the fear, the hunger.
Betrayal.
Murder.
Stacy's insanity. Sandi's attack on Quinn. Quinn staring down at Tiffany, before she knelt besides her and . . .
Her own scream echoed Sandi's for long minutes. Only the keen sense of time running out was able to yank Jane out of the ghastly vision, for the protection of her own sanity. She felt sorry for the torment the girl above her was feeling, but she just didn't have time for it.
"Sandi? Sandi! Damn you, stop that screaming!"
To her surprise, there was an abrupt silence as the screaming stopped. Jane's hearing still rung painfully, and it was only after some minutes that her hearing returned, that the utter silence of the dead world enshrouded her again. No, not total silence. There was still the faint creaking of the bodies swinging on their ropes, and Sandi's quiet sobbing.
"I am, like, you know."
Sandi's pathetic attempt, even here and now, at her "Valley Girl" dialect, told Jane at how much the tormented girl still clung to her charade of "coolness."
"What?"
"I'm damned, just like you said. Quinn is a monster, Stacy is a demon, and Tiffany is a monster, and it's all my fault."
"Sandi, what the hell did you do?"
"She promised me. She promised me! Mom would love me again! There is always a price, that's what she said. I thought it would be something like my soul. I didn't mind that, soul's are only good for after you're dead, right? But not my friends! Not their lives! They weren't a part of this! I, just wanted my momma to love me, please? Momma, I've always been a good girl. Haven't I always acted like you? Please?"
Sandi's screaming rant ended quietly, almost in a whisper. Her hands beat feebly at her sides, but she was unable to raise them. Jane stared helplessly upward. She gasped, the tree wavered in her vision, suddenly towering into the sky again. From living and vibrant, it suddenly died, leaves drying up, fluttering away across a cold, starry-covered sky. The living world's grasped in its branches trembled, growing colder, dryer, like rotting fruit. Jane's eyes were drawn to one in particular, and it swelled in her eyes, until she was able to see through the fluffy white clouds veiling the surface.
Of course.
Earth.
The living world pulsed in her mind, the currents of life flowing through the rocks and soil, the air and water. It's molten heart glowed, beating, the current's of magma flowing like blood. The constantly changing patterns of heat interacted with the world. Liquid water, unfrozen air, life forming, the world changed slowly, inexorably, the tapestry of life on a slowly moving loom. Various types of life would develop, live out their slowly moving life spans.
And then die.
The past flowed into the present, and then became the future. Three shadowy figures loomed behind the dead tree. Their glinting eyes pierced into Jane's own, forces the world had personified as three weavers. Urd, that which has become, Verdandi, that which is, and Skuld, what is to come. Jane sank to her knees, overcome, shuddering, but unable to look away. The vision trembled, the popped like a soap bubble, and once again she saw only Sandi's ravaged form, swinging gently in the sky. Jane shook her head, trying to match the present with the past.
A whisper snapped her out of her numbness.
"Daria."
"What? Sandi, what did you say?"
"Daria, of course, you're here for Daria. You know, I never really understood you two, you know?"
Jane stared upward, staring at the pitiful thing which had once been a teenaged girl.
"What do you mean, Sandi, what are you talking about? She's my friend, of course. I want to help her. If I can, I want to help you girls, too."
"Soul mates. I never really understood what that meant. Friends forever. Like I thought my mom was. I know it was never real, now, but I always wanted something like that."
Jane was stunned.
"You were jealous of us? You? Miss Popularity Queen of Lawndale High?"
"What good was any of it? I couldn't trust anybody. They couldn't trust me. Quinn and I liked each other, but we always fought. I made Stacy a nervous wreck, the sweetest, prettiest girl I'd ever met. And sure, Tiffany was wishy-washy, but did I ever really treat her right? Ever?"
"Sandi, why are you talking like this? I'm sorry for you and the others. But what happened? Who were those women? Where are you? Where's Daria?"
"It's the tree, you know, this tree. Don't you read your Bible, Jane? The Garden of Eden? The Trees in it? The fruit of the tree of Knowledge of good and evil? And the other tree?"
"The Tree of Life. But, I sure never imagined you ever being in a church, Sandi."
"Not since I was a little girl. Mom and dad would dress me up so pretty, and we'd go, and mom and dad loved each other, and called me their little princess. But then mom got busy at work, and so did dad. She had my brothers, but I had to spend all my time taking care of them, and mom was busy all the time. I couldn't play with the other kids, and they were such brats! It wasn't liked I thought it would it be at all."
Jane shook her head, and broke into Sandi's story.
"Sandi, I'm sorry about all that, I really am. But I can't do anything about any of that. Please, tell me where Daria is!"
Sandi was silent, sniffling like a little girl, and Jane was afraid she had shut her up permanently. But then Sandi sighed, and continued.
"The Snow Lady took her away, Stacy's Snow Lady. She took her so very far away, so very far away, inside of her. I can't see her anymore, even here."
"What in hell is the Snow Lady?"
"The Yuki-onna, she promised me she'd help me, she's so beautiful, but so sad, so lonely. She's just like me, like us, so alone, forever."
"She's a ghost? Sandi, what made you listen to her? How did you think some ghost would make your mother love you?"
"Shut up! Just shut up! She's magic, that's how! She's real magic, and she know's what things are like, when people let you down!"
"Damn it Sandi, focus! I can't help anybody when you just keep going on and on! I don't want to see anybody get hurt, not you, either! But you've got to help me too!"
"I, I'm sorry. Everything hurts so bad. I'm still alive, I think, but I'm stretched out all over. She lied to me, didn't she? They lied to her, too, but she doesn't know it yet. Everybody lies, everybody always has a plan, you know. Did you know I saw Tricia, Tricia Gupty? I wanted to kill her, I should have, but I didn't. See? I'm not so bad, I'm not a monster, not like the others."
"Sandi, please! How can I help stop all this?"
"Every bodies yelling at me! Everybody! I can see everybody, everything, all at once! But I can't do anything about any of it! Its this tree! It makes you see things, it makes you see everything. She stuck me up here on purpose, but she didn't tell me why! The other ones don't like it, that's why they sent the birds to hurt me!"
"What other ones? Sandi, please focus! Who are you talking about?"
"One of them's got Quinn! It's already made her murder people, eat people! She's screaming, crying, all broken, but she can't stop, it won't let her. It made her murder the Gupty's, Tad and Tricia's folks, she tore them apart with her bare hands! She's letting Tad and Tricia hear her eating them on purpose."
Jane grabbed her head with both hands, feeling like it was going to explode. She still didn't understand half of what was going on. Sandi Griffin, on the Tree of Knowledge? Jane really didn't believe she was in some warped version of the Garden of Eden. She had hardly had a religious upbringing. Daria could have told her a few things about older traditions, though. Pagan ones. About the ash tree, Yggdrasil, which was the center of the Universe in pagan Norse cosmology. She could have told Jane about the history of human sacrifice, of exchanging life for power and knowledge.
But Daria wasn't there. There was only Jane Lane, a mostly self taught artist who wanted to help the one person she had ever thought of as a real friend. Jane Lane, who had lost her home, seen Jake and Helen Morgendorffer's dead, frozen bodies, and held Daria in her arms as the life had left her body. Her best friend, forever gone?
"Sandi, listen to me. I need to know how all this started. I need to know how to fix things. You have to tell me. If this "Yuki-onna" is the center of all this, why here and now? Why Lawndale? Su-sa-o-no said I was his sword, that he had sinned. Quit letting things just sweep you along. You know things, maybe that's why you were put where you were, as horrible as things might be. "
"Hildskjalf."
"What?"
"The throne of heaven. Where you could see everything. The old man, the other one. He hung himself on the tree before me, on purpose. He sacrificed himself, to learn things, to learn magic. But everybody still died. No matter what he did, all of his friends and family still died. He sacrificed everything, and he still lost everything. The whole world died, fire and ice, born out of ice, burned by fire, everybody died."
"What old man , Sandi, who are you talking about?"
"The old man, he, he was like a wizard or something. His eye is so bright! He see's everything, and this is where he learned it. He's dead now, he's been dead for so long. But he want's something from me, from you. You have to finish things, Jane, you have to finish things, break things apart."
There was a long silence. Sandi stared down at Jane, and Jane had to bite her lip, but she met Sandi's stare. The hanging girls face was a mass of tattered skin, raw flesh and muscle showing. Her eyes were startling white against her exposed flesh. Did Sandi know what she looked like, feel the pain? Jane had little doubt that she felt it intensely.
"How can I finish things, Sandi? How can I stop all this?"
"Underneath me is a cave, a really deep cave, you have to go down there, and bring back a couple of things, some really old things."
"What kind of things, Sandi?"
"A drink of water, and one of those things they used to stick on poles, a spearhead."
"And what am I supposed to do with these things?"
"You kill me."