Chapters (4)
"Old Tree wanted to talk. Had the rocks bring me over. Says he wants to help us. Only while I was listening, that hand got ahold of me. Like to ripped my foot off. The racket was the tree saying, 'Now stop that. That's not polite.'"
"Cut his tongue out after you fix his leg," Elmo told One-Eye. "What did it want, Croaker?"
"Your ears gone? To help with the Dominator. Said he thought it over. Decided it was in his own best interest to keep the Dominator down. Give me a hand up." One-Eye's efforts were paying dividends. He had sponged one of his wild jungle glops onto my ankle-it had swollen three times normal size already-and the pain was fading.
Elmo shook his head.
I said, "I'll break your damned leg if you don't get me up." So he and Silent hoisted me, but supported me.
"Bring them shovels," I said. A half dozen had appeared.
They were entrenching tools, not real ditchdiggers. "You guys insist on helping, get me back over to the tree."
Elmo growled. For a moment I thought Silent might say something. I eyed him expectantly, smiling. I had been waiting twenty-some years.
No luck.
Whatever vow he had taken, whatever it was that had driven him to abstain from speech, it had put a steel lock on Silent's jaw. I have seen him so pissed he could chew nails, so excited he lost sphincter control, but nothing has shaken his resolution against talking.
Blue still sparkled in the tree's branches. Leaves tinkled. Moonlight and torchlight mixed into weird shadows the sparks sent dancing… "Around him," I told my body slaves. I had not seen it myself, so it must be beyond that trunk.
Yep. There it was, out twenty feet from the base of the tree. A sapling. It stood about eight feet tall.
One-Eye, Silent, Goblin, those guys gobbled and gaped like startled apes. But not old Elmo. "Get a few buckets of water and soak the ground good," he said. "And find an old blanket we can wrap around the roots and the dirt that comes up with them."
He caught right on. Damned farmer. "Get me back downstairs," I said. "I want to see this ankle myself, in better light."
Going back, with Elmo and Silent carrying me, we encountered the Lady. She put on a suitably solicitous act, fussing all over me. I had to endure a lot of knowing grins.
Only Darling knew the truth even then. With maybe a little suspicion on Silent's part.