Chapter 6: Breakfast at Stormhaven

Light pressure against my side grew steadily more firm and persistent.

“Your wounds are all healed,” a voice said. “You can go ahead and wake up now.”

The word disoriented was invented to describe how I felt in that peculiar moment. I blinked, and a twilight world materialized around me. Framed by the tree canopy in silhouette and against a darkling sky, an old man with a staff stood, looking down at me with some concern in his twinkling eyes even as the furrow in his silver beard revealed a broad smile.

He tilted his head this way and that, and long waves of gray-white hair cascaded down like banners of Spanish moss. He wore a black, gray, and silver robe that cinched with a broad belt festooned with pouches and other nicknacks. In the dusky darkness all around this kindly figure, tiny glimmers of bright blue or purple winked in and out of sight like fireflies. He winked and held out a broad gnarled hand.

I took it and, with surprising strength, he helped me to my feet. I was still in the grove of trees, but it was fast darkening to full-on night.

I had thought him old, and his skin was weathered and layered with wrinkles, but there was a youthful vigor about him. The wrinkles and lines served only to make him seem more friendly and cheerful. “You had a bit of a close call,” the man said merrily.

I held up my right arm, saw the bloodstains and tears in the shirt. My legs instantly felt rubbery. The old guy was there to support me in an instant, which was a very good thing. My minds eye went back to a shrieking insane image of tooth and claw, ripped flesh and spattering blood. The worst thing that had ever bitten me before was a neighbor’s German Shepherd. I still remember the pinch when it clamped down on me. The Root Runt’s bite had been like that, a sharp and sudden pinch followed by searing heat and throbbing pain.

“You mean… that thing, the thing that tore up my arm… was real?”

The old man’s smile vanished. “Oh, now I understand,” he said. “So much to tell, but yes, the wee beasties were quite real. So was the deadly injury they inflicted on you. Providence, it was, that I came along when I did.”

I bent over like someone had taken a sledgehammer to my gut. I retched a few body-shaking times and struggled to breathe.

“It’s not safe to do that here,” he said with a quiet laugh to himself.

I coughed and spat. “Not safe to do… what?”

“What you are fixing to do, my son. It is necessary, just not here. Not safe to do much around here, especially at night. Need to get you to Stormhaven. Here, you take this.”

He put his staff in my left hand and wrapped my fingers around it. The queasiness left me. I could have sworn a faint green light radiated from my grip on the staff. My mind cleared, and my legs felt sturdy beneath me. “Thanks,” I said, making timid eye contact with the old guy. “I feel much better now.”

There was a curious glint in his eyes for a moment. He patted my shoulder and said, “We need a little more light than Old One-Eye will provide.”

“Old… One… Eye?” I echoed, recalling my high school girlfriend who had a cat that loved nothing more than to shove its butt right in your face.

“The moon, sir,” he said, gesturing to a break in the tree canopy where a much larger than usual lunar-green full moon gazed down from the heavens. And I do mean gazed down. This moon had topographical features—mountain ranges, canyons, or continental rifts, maybe?—that produced a shadow outline of a human eye.

“Ah, yes,” the old man said, “here’s what I need.” He fished around at his belt and unclasped a narrow lantern, glass ribbed by a net of some tarnished metal.

With deft movements, he opened a small door on the lantern and with his other hand pinched something out of a pouch. I couldn’t see it, but the way he rubbed his fingers together inside the lantern made me think he was sprinkling some sort of dry herb or powder.

With both hands, he held the lantern outward, door still open, and said, “Come on now, my lovelies, don’t be shy. I’ll not be needing you for more than an hour. You will find your reward more than worth the effort.” He turned back to me and winked.

The bright blue and purple lights I’d first seen from my back blinked most in sparse groupings just under the eaves of the trees. I watched in gap-mouthed wonder as they began to funnel toward us.

“There you go, my sweet motes,” the old man said, beckoning with the lantern, “old Sagisterrius means you no harm.”

“Your name is Sagisterrius?”

“It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue,” he said with a light laugh. “Most in this part of the world simply call me Grand Elf.”

Oh, okay. I thought I knew what all this was. I decided to play along. “Grand Elf?” I said, dusting my words with a layer of scoff. “Uh, aren’t you even a little bit worried about copyright infringement?”

He drew himself up to his full height, at least a foot taller than my six foot, two inches. “I am not familiar with that phrase. Cop-ee-right—”

“Seriously?” I interrupted. “Grand Elf sounds just like Gandalf, and you’re definitely swiping the whole old-wizardly-dude-look. Hello?”

“Hello,” Grand Elf replied. The first few blue and purple sparkles drew near, and I saw one light on the open door of the lantern. It was a living creature, a tiny luminous butterfly with glistening translucent wings. Its long segmented body blinked purple, white, and sometimes blue. I couldn’t study it for long because it fluttered into the lantern… followed by a few dozen others.

“Those things—motes—they’re… beautiful, stunning,” I said, resisting the urge to reach out and touch one.

“They are indeed,” Grand Elf said. “And if you are friendly to them, they will be all manner of help to you… ah?”

“My name’s Rick.”

“Well met, Rick. Well met, indeed.”

“That’s all we need,” Grand Elf said, examining the contents of the lantern. You’re going to think I’m mad as a hatter, but when he closed the lantern door, I could have sworn I heard a tiny chorus of lamenting voices.

“Nothing better than motes to light one’s way, especially in a knotted mess of a forest such as the Braidwood.”

He held the lantern aloft, quickening the motes within. Ever-changing blue, white, and purple light radiated out into the night, and I found I could see a faintly luminous path through the now-not-so-ominous twisting trees. Grand Elf strode forward at a brisk pace. I followed, gaping left and right at all manner of compelling sights: patches of gently waving feathery white ferns, thickets of tall bamboo-like segmented stalks, a winding brook that meandered in and out of the menagerie of trees.

Unseen life serenaded us with chirrups, breeks, neek-breeks, whistles, hoots, and peeps. Soon, however, glistening eyes of all sizes and shapes peered out at us from the shadows, their owners concealed by foliage and night.

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“Uh, Grand Elf,” I prompted, pointing, “ah, are there more of those a Root Runt things out there?”

Without breaking stride, he said, “Scores of them and far worse things.”

“R-really? Aren’t you a little concerned about… you know, getting shredded into quivering piles of gore or maybe like getting eaten?”

Grand Elf chuckled. “You certainly have a way with words, but no. The creatures in this part of the world, especially in the Braidwood, know better than to tempt me to wrath. Besides, you are under my care, now. You have sanctuary until… well, until you learn a few things.”

I started to ask about what he meant by a few things, but a memory leapt to mind. It was my first day at Keck Observatory, and Dr. Kinsy was leading me around the facility. “Each of Keck’s primary mirrors is ten meters in diameter, made of 36 hexagonal segments and costing roughly a million dollars each. They are absolutely delicate and precise.”

She gestured to a pair of engineers preparing to move one of those six-foot mirror segments. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I reached out toward the mirror segment.

Dr. Kinsy slapped my hand. I kid you not. She actually you-naughty-boy slapped my hand. “What did you not understand about delicate and precise?” she asked.

I remember being miffed at the slap, but tempered by the fact that she had been right to do so. I came to learn that the oils from my fingertips could have a graphic impact on the accuracy of the mirror segment’s reflective abilities. The cost to clean each mirror segment was several thousand dollars.

I followed Grand Elf the rest of the way in silence. Something about the guy exuded power. I decided that I did not want to tempt him to wrath either.

“Behold: Stormhaven!” Grand Elf cried out, his voice a sudden clarion in the quiet wood.

He opened the lantern’s little door and commanded the motes, “Go forth, my wee lovelies. You have served us well. One last task, if you will: show the lad.”

The motes streamed from the lantern, their light revealing we had come to a glade of massive trees. I’d visited the Redwoods in Washington State a few times, but the trees surrounding this clearing were awe-inspiring not so much for their great towering heights but more their shape and girth. In the flickering waves of mote light, the twisting, leaning, sprawling house-thick trees emerged out of the gloom, one in the middle, greater in every way to all the others.

Without a word, Grand Elf snatched his staff from my hands and marched proudly to a split in the great tree’s roots that formed a kind of ramp. He tapped the butt of the staff lightly on one of the roots, and Stormhaven Refuge came to life. An arched door, ten-feet tall if it was an inch, appeared at the base of the trunk. Large round mullioned windows of stained glass cast coronas of warm light at irregular points up the trunk and in the crooks of the thickest boughs.

The blinking motes streaked blue, white, and purple ribbons around the trunk and branches. Some found spots to rest in the leafy paws of foliage and remained, points of ethereal illumination, phasing on and off like Christmas lights.

Grand Elf led me up the path between the semi exposed, lanky roots. So close to the tree—tree house, building, fortress?—I marveled at how healthy the foliage appeared, the leaves each like a green fleur-de-lis darkening to purple toward the veins and stem.

Grand Elf touched his staff to the vast, arched doors, and they obediently swung inward. We crossed the knobby threshold onto a round landing where there were more than a dozen pegs for coats and hats. Grand Elf placed his staff among several others in oblong stand at the foot of a spiral stair. He turned, crossed his arms, and regarded me.

I felt a bit like a specimen at the moment, scrutinized as I was, under his weighty gaze. His eyes, which had appeared quite dark outside, in the new light seemed a stormy gray, but there were bits of color roiling about his pupils: a little blue, a hint of green, and maybe something dark red or purple.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Uh… a little awestruck.”

He frowned. “Not your demeanor. Your health. Are you feeling stable?”

“I feel pretty great, actually.”

He nodded. “The effects of my staff will wear off gradually. Let me know when any ill feelings begin, will you?”

“Uh… sure.”

Grand Elf led me up the spiral stair and into a sprawling round parlor lined on one side with books and some sort of medical workshop on the other. Tubes, vials, flasks, stoppered bottles, urns, and an entire network of hanging, drying vines positively stuffed the hemispheric space. Here and there, an ensconced lantern burned or one of the round windows I’d seen outside kept watch. I wandered toward the workshop.

“What’s all this?” I asked, gesturing.

“My apothecary,” he replied. “Medicines, potions, and other curiosities.”

Medicines, I thought, shrugging my shoulders. I could have used a tab or three of ibuprofen. The muscle around my neck and upper back had grown uncomfortably tight. Come to think of it, my stomach had developed a strange icy spot. Just a little discomfort. Not enough to divert me from the astonishing room.

In the center of the chamber, a motley collection of chairs and couches circled each other haphazardly. The ceiling was ribbed by exposed beams of polished wood, and I couldn’t quite tell whether they were living wood or architecturally placed.

“How does a living tree tolerate… well, such a large space carved into its gut?”

“He tolerates it quite well, actually,” Grand Elf replied. “I asked his permission, of course, but Gladden was only too happy to have me. I am rather known to be a friend of trees, you see.”

I shook my head and took a step toward one of the couches. My thoughts swam, and a cold sweat broke out on the back of my neck. “Uhm… Grand Elf, I… I don’t feel so well.”

I blinked, and he was at my side, lowering me a couch. “Can I… can I have your staff again?”

“I am sorry,” he replied. “Sooner or later, you really do need to go through this. And… sooner is better.”

I didn’t know what he was talking about, but that stiffness in my neck had worsened, joined by similar tight muscle in my lower back. It felt like electric current running through me. I repeatedly clenched and unclenched my fists. “What the uh—heck’s wrong with me?”

Grand Elf, his eyes wide with concern, lowered himself to the couch next to me. “Rick, what is the last thing you remember… before?”

I shook my head. The cold in the pit of my stomach spread. I didn’t know what he meant. I don’t think I wanted to know. “Before?”

“Before you came here.”

Frowning, scowling, I said, “There was a room or a hall, and people were talking about things. Things I didn’t understand. Something about a Reckoning, and a wager.”

Grand Elf’s snowy brow furrowed. “You were aware of them? Did you see them?”

“No, I couldn’t move, and they were far above my line of sight, but I heard their voices… Justus, Miercal, Seamus, and some freaky Inquisitor dude.”

“Inquisitor,” Grand Elf echoed, his posture unnaturally rigid. “Be glad you did not see. Was there anything else?”

“I… well, there were other people sprawled all around me. I’m not sure how many, but they weren’t moving. In fact, they were kind of ill-defined, like they were made of clay.”

I searched Grand Elf’s face, but got only a thoughtful nod in return. The chill in my gut, the disturbing current surging in my muscles continued to spread.

“Rick, I want you to go back before those strange, otherworldly sights. What do you remember about what was happening… on Earth?”

Earth. My stomach lurched. Ringing in my ears grew deafening. I leaned forward and vomited. The images paraded inside me: Keck, Pōwehi, fire in the sky, and Sara crying out, “Rick, are you there? I can’t hear you.”

I slid off the couch, guided to my knees and out of the filth by Grand Elf’s unseen hand.

Between gut-strangling sobs, I cried out, “The world… the world’s gone? Dead? All those people… gone?”

“Not all, Rick,” Grand Elf said. “You and the other Outcasts remain.”

“Others? Who? Did Sara, did Dr. Kinsy… ?”

“I do not know those names,” Grand Elf said. “I do not know the other Outcasts by name, but I pray they have all made it to refuges as you have.”

A fist trembling at my lips, I muttered, “You used that word again: Outcasts… what does it mean?”

“Ah,” Grand Elf said, and I felt his arms, iron-strong but gentle, lifting me to my feet, “now that is a potent question and the answers, myriad. For this stage, I will tell you that an Outcast is a survivor. You and the others were chosen to survive because you are… different. What you once perceived as utter weakness on Earth will be your greatest strength here.”

“Here?” I asked, my mind spinning again. “Where is here?”

“Refuge,” Grand Elf said. “Stormhaven. The rest of the wide world can wait another day.”

He led me to a wash basin, took a damp cloth, wiped my face and my clothes.

“You have taken a big step,” he said, “perhaps, the hardest one, but be forewarned, the grieving is not over. It is a dire pain, but necessary to heal.”

I nodded. Grief and I were already old friends. My parents, then the cancer. Thanks, Life, for dealing me such a crap hand. No sooner had that thought entered my mind, an empty weariness fell upon me. I shook my head and blurted out a miserable laugh.

“What is it?” Grand Elf asked.

“Is there any point?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said I’m one of the survivors, but I’m really not. I’ve got brain cancer. I’m dying anyway.”

Grand Elf’s eyes brightened. His smile became so wide and goofy that I wanted to punch him, until he said, “When I told you your wounds are all healed, I meant all. I have healed you, Rick. The bleeding, the dire gash to your arm, even the cancer in your brain—physically, you are as healthy as one of your race could be.”

“You’re fu—”

He held up a hand. “Careful.”

I think I invented a new emote in that odd moment. I laugh-cried, and that gave my next statement a weird breathiness: “I meant to say, you’re messing with me, right?”

“I most assuredly am not messing with you, Rick. Your cancer is gone. But you are weary. You need rest. Rest and food. Feel up to some breakfast?”

“Breakfast?” I asked, wiping my eyes with my sodden sleeve. “A little late, isn’t it?”

Grand Elf pulled a large cast iron skillet from a cabinet, winked, and said, “Anytime is a good time for breakfast.”