Mickey Tanner wandered the streets of Alderheart. It was early evening, and he was alone. The sun had not set, yet. He was in the eastern part of the city, on the streets at the base of the colossal tree, which stretched out from beneath it like a colourful set of roots. Being here was no accident, not at this time of day. He would stop occasionally, and forget the wild hustle and bustle that throbbed all about him as the humble and the bird folk went about their lives. They were oblivious to the glorious orange and gold blaze from the setting sun, that set the edges of the heaven spanning tree alight.
Mickey would pause to stare up at the divine spectacle, basking in the warmth of a dying day, before returning to his rambles.
He moved between great squares with stone bases and buildings rising up on all sides, filled with wooden stalls and hollering vendors. He bounced along cobbled streets, where the buildings had broken windows, that made the houses look like skulls with their teeth kicked in. The stones beneath his feet became gravel, and then after that they became dirt….wait.
"This isn't the city!" Mickey laughed. "You tricked me!"
Gaspard smiled.
Well done, Michael.
A blink later, and they were sitting side by side, tails and feet swaying over the branch of the tree in the foyer of the mansion Mickey now partly owned. Everything was in darkness, and in the deepest of those tenebrous corners things moved, and throbbed. Stars twinkled in the black high ceiling, and along all of the walls, and even the ground below. The tree house loomed large and proud nearby, looking just like it did in the boy's fervent imagination. There were no lights in any of the rooms, save one.
Mickey could see a single lantern burning from where he sat, in the middle of a table that was surrounded by five furtive figures, sitting around in hunched, conspiratorial conversation. Occasionally one of them – it was usually the Corvum – would glance over his shoulder and out the window, as if to check if Mickey was still seated in the same place. As usual, when Mickey's eyes met the stare of the eerie, burning orbs the boy smiled, and gave a friendly wave.
"Hello!" He called out.
The Corvum gave out a sound that was halfway between a cry of surprise and a squeak. He quickly went back to whispering with his friends.
"Are they afraid?" Mickey asked, sadly. They didn't need to worry about him barging in, or trying to get closer to listen in on what they were saying. That was just rude, and he'd been raised Right.
Yes, but not of you. Don't take it personally, Michael.
"What are they afraid of, then?" Mickey asked then, inevitably.
I'll tell you later. Come along now, son. There's something I want to show you.
They slipped off of the branch, but they did not fall. That is not to say that there was a sense of motion about them. There was, but it was of the sort that the boy was becoming well versed in. It was of a sort that could only be experienced, for it to be understood. There was a single, fleeting moment of disquiet as things changed. Something far away was reaching out to him, something he only had the vaguest idea of. It felt like soundless voices, or music playing in a far off room. What did it want? What did it not want him to...listen to? To follow after...
Midnight and the stars, and you.
The streets of Alderheart were black, impossibly dark. The lamps burned without light. High above, between the vast and barren branches of the now dead Great Tree, the stars watched them with beady eyes. Between the flickers in that tenebrous ether, things that could not be understood slithered, and breathed.
"This is different," Mickey said at once, feeling a shudder run through him. A chill started, creeping from the tip of his tail, making it way up and along to the back of his neck, sending his hairs standing on end. "This is wrong."
Yes, Michael. It is.
Streets slipped past soundlessly in the billowing dark. The windows of the buildings were all open and unlit. Mickey saw nothing inside any of them, and yet he knew with a terrifying certainty that from every shadowy spot that there were things watching him.
Things ceased then, suddenly. He did not recognise this street, but he knew that he would remember it. An address loomed crisply at the back of his mind: 63 Temple Fair.
Do you know what a witch is, Michael?
"They're scary old ladies," was the immediate answer. "They live in candy houses, and they eat kids like me."
Not all of them, Michael. There are ones that do so much worse.
A door at the top of a couple neat stone steps yawned open, ringing a bell as it did so. They were inside.
Mickey had not quite known what to expect. What did he associate with the tales of witches used to frighten him before bed? Sweets? Wool? Spinning wheels?
At any rate, fine art was not among them.
The room was narrow, long, and tall. Paintings flanked them on all sides, rising up to the high ceiling. They were all landscapes, the boy soon realised. They charted every kind of setting he could imagine, and then some. Monochrome deserts at high noon. Forests in autumn, wild with colours. Dead mountains in winter. Lonely cottages and farms among sleepy green hills.
They were beautiful, stunningly so. The detail was so fine, and the workmanship so brilliant that it was hard to remember that one was looking at a picture, and not upon a window with and expensive border to it, looking out, upon another world.
Look closer, Michael. See.
One closer than the others, at shoulder height seemed to call out to him. It was not a voice, but a roaring wind that he heard. He focused on it, and stepped closer. The wind howled a callous invitation, caressing his cheek with icy chill as it did so.
It was a winter scape. A wooded valley was shrouded in mists, surrounded on all visible sides by brooding, snow capped mountains. A gorgeous Hell, captured and laid out in all of its stilled, silent splendour. But as he focused more and more upon the painting, the boy understood that it was not still, and it was not silent either.
He felt the wind reach out and claw at his face. He felt the cold chill his body, so sudden that it drove the air out of his lungs. Amid the panic caused by that moment, Mickey thought he saw something move out there, above the swaying trees and billowing mist. It was little more than a strange dot, clinging to one of the mountains, until he concentrated, and he saw it. Saw him, with alarming clarity.
It was a Gallus that he saw: a shrunken and shaking old man. He was half vanished in the snow, which was reaching nearly up to his terribly thin waist. The clothes he wore were torn, and dark, stained and frayed with age. A sunken trail charted his course, like a finger tracing a line in sugar. He was trying to reach the summit. He was hungry, and cold, and afraid. Lonely...he was so lonely…
He's trying to escape. They all are.
The words drew him back, aided by the burning of the tears as they ran down his face. He staggered back, and as he did so the black walls and all of those paintings upon them seemed to shift about him, surrounding him as he let out a wail, and looked for a place to run. But all he found were the different, breath-taking Hells. A Cervan girl who was a woman now was lost amid a sandstorm. A Luma male was in a river, trying to die and failing, yet again. A Jerbeen girl his age was in front of the door of a cottage in the hills, wondering why no one would answer her knocks, because she had not been trapped long enough yet to understand.
The scope of the horror was almost too much. It would have been, had his friend not been at his side. A loving, gentle hand was at his shoulder, and some of the terror was driven away for a moment, though it came back in force soon.
The scenes ceased to flash before his eyes, and a merciful dark returned. Yet the sense of safety was fleeting, false, driven away by a sensation of something out there, in the unseen edges of his consciousness. The Hells receded further, replaced now by a new certainty: they were not alone in this place. Something else was here, too.
They can't escape, Michael.
The darkness at the far side of the room was breathing, now. It was taking on a shape, pendulous and horrible.
This is no escape, Michael.
It was moving. There were eyes, unlike any he had ever seen. There were thick, hairy nostrils that breathed in, and found his scent.
No escape, but one.
Hands emerged with long, arachnid fingers. He wanted to run away, but his limbs were planks now, unbending, and useless. Fear, unlike any he had ever known, was holding him firmly in place, just like it had all the rest.
I see you, little boy. I smell you.
"How do they escape?" The boy asked, somehow. Those awful dark hands with their long, broken claw were looming all about him. Beyond them was a maw, the tongue thick and covered in boils. The teeth were sharp, writing maggots.
I know you...Michael Tanner. I know where you are.
Use fire, Michael. Burn it all.
With a sudden shake, Mickey woke up.