We returned to the house, and along the way we discarded our strange wolf attire. As we entered the house, I looked behind me. “Why do I still get the feeling I have that cloak on?”
“Now that you’ve summoned it, it’s never truly hidden from you,” Eric explained as he led me to the back of the house. “The same is true for the mask and the bodily changes.”
I lifted one hand and wrinkled my nose at the faint pieces of fur that still protruded from the back of my hand. “This won’t make shaving harder, will it?”
He stopped beside a wooden door and turned to me with a grin. “Not normally, but you might want to keep an extra supply of shavers around.” He tapped the side of his face. “And you might want to get your mask on. There’s no electricity down here, and until we get into the chamber there’s no source of light.”
I lifted an eyebrow at his mention of a ‘chamber,’ but my mask slipped over my face more naturally than it had ever done before. “I’m ready.”
Eric opened the door and revealed a set of rickety old wooden steps. The stairs led down into a dirt-floor basement, and a hint of moisture tickled my nostrils. Huge rocks made up the foundation of the house, and they had been tightly stacked on top of one another with discolored mortar tucked into the small gaps. The stone foundation was broken only by a heavy wooden door at the far end of the room. A heavy lock hung from an equally impressive short metal chain and was attached to the wall via a ring of iron hammered into the stones.
Eric led me across the long room and over to the lock. He pressed his hand against the open mouth of the lock, and I noticed a faint yellow light before the lock snapped open. The chain was set aside, and he grabbed the long, curved handle in both hands.
“You might want to stand back,” he warned me as he jerked his head over his shoulder at the wall behind him. “This hasn’t been opened in a while.”
I scooted behind him and he gave a great yank. The door creaked open on rusted hinges and the bottom dragged a few inches of dirt along its short journey. A faint breeze wafted out of the hole and passed us, though not without me catching a whiff of must and. . .flowers?
Eric slipped into the shadows and I quickly followed him, but paused on the threshold. My acute senses barely penetrated the deep darkness of the expansive tunnel system that stretched out in front of me. The walls were carved from the smooth brown dirt and rugged rocks that littered the earth beneath the manor and curved upward in elegant arches like passages carved from sandstone. The whole place was illuminated by strange glowing lamps that hung out of the walls and cast a soft red light all around us. I squinted at the lights and noticed that the lights burned like gas and hung above branch-shaped lantern arms.
As we strode down the central corridor I could see that not a single passage was like the other. The tunnels veered off at all angles from the main branch. Some were short and I could see the dead end, while others seemed to zig and zag their way to eternity. A few even led into small caverns where the path was interrupted by a sudden drop into dark pits.
We had gone along for five minutes when something tingled at the back of my mind, and I paused and looked over my shoulder. “How far have we gone?”
Eric stopped a few steps ahead of me and smiled. “Very far and not far at all.”
I lifted an eyebrow at him. “What does that mean?”
He lifted his gaze to the smooth walls and ceiling that surrounded us. “It means that these tunnels were crafted by a protective magic that confuses the mind and the feet. If we were considered a threat we would never find our way out.”
A chill ran down my spine. “And what decides if we’re a threat?”
He smiled and offered me his hand. “I’ll show you.”
I cast a suspicious look at him, but accepted his hand. We meandered our way down the winding tunnels another few minutes before the path finally parted.
The tunnel opened into a cavern some fifty yards in length and nearly that in width. The floor was littered with dirt and rocks, and the walls were of solid stone with jagged edges. They poked out at odd angles, sometimes sharp enough to remind me of cubes and ornate columns. The stones were all a grim gray, but some were etched with streaks of black. The rock walls were punctuated by dozens of tunnels of all sizes, ranging from hardly a mouse hole to shafts some ten feet tall and nearly as wide.
A broad line of dirt on the floor ran from the door to the far side and ended against the wall. Some thirty yards ahead of us stood what had shocked me into freezing.
It was a tree, but not just any tree. I recognized those graceful leaves and the thick blooms that populated most of the branches. The tree that stood before us was a larger version of the bushes that Eric had cast the protective spell over on the island and in the alley. Its fine brown roots stretched out from the thick base and slithered across the ground along the dirt routes and disappeared into the numerous tunnels.
Eric half-turned to me with a grim expression on his face. “This is Yggdrasil, the World Tree.”
I couldn’t help but feel a bit of awe to be in the presence of a mythical tree. One of the roots ran close to the door, and I stooped and set my hand gently on the stem. A strange energy flowed under my hand, and the root was much warmer than I expected.
I lifted my eyes to the large, bloom-filled branches that defied the darkness with their soft glowing petals. “It looks like those little shrubs that pop out of the roots.”
He followed my gaze and pursed his lips. “Those are merely children of the tree.”
I stood and tilted my head back and gaped at the ceiling that towered over us. A few stalactites hung down from the stone. “Is this cave natural?”
He nodded. “This cavern is, but the routes out of here,” He gestured to a nearby tunnel where a root disappeared into the earth, “were made by the tree. Nothing can stop its travels except ancient magic that only Gandra and a few others possess.”
I studied the size of all the roots and furrowed my brow. “None of these are as big as the one Gandra has.”
“That’s because this tree is a merely a shadow of one of the three before the fall.”
I lifted an eyebrow at him. “You mentioned that earlier. What does that mean?”
He didn’t take his eyes off the tree as he sighed. “It means that a millennia ago Yggdrasil had three main roots, each in a different domain. The ones in the underworld and on earth were destroyed through Gandra and his sister’s efforts.”
I blinked at him. “His sister? Hel is real, too?”
He smiled down at me. “You have a good mind for folklore.”
I shrugged. “It was easy credits in high school, and I don’t really remember much else except that her name is where we get hell from. Anyway, they destroyed two out of the three, so-” I waved a hand at the tree before us, “this one must be from where?”
“The heavens,” Eric told me as he returned his gaze to the plant. “The entire foundation of Yggdrasil collapsed in on itself, and the root in the heavens was mortally wounded. Vanar saved a piece of that stalk and gathered it inside himself until I became his Fang. I carried the living plant until we arrived here, where I buried the tree and cultivated it into the tree you see before you.”
“Wow,” I breathed as I looked up at the tree. “That couldn’t have been easy keeping a plant alive that long.”
A bittersweet smile slipped onto his lips. “No, especially with the two siblings constantly at our heels. Everyone forgets that gods don’t sleep until they’re pursued by one.”
I walked up to the tree and Eric followed me. My shadow stretched behind me as I reached the trunk and set a hand on the soft bark. The strange warmth from the roots was nothing compared to the pulsating heat of the smooth crust, and I felt a thrill of something run through me. I looked up at Eric as he joined me at the trunk. “What’s that feeling coming from it?”
“Life.” He, too, set his hand on the bark and his face softened for a moment. He looked years younger. “The tree is the source of all life on the planet. What you feel is the warm hope that life brings to the world.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “How did the world survive when you carried the tree around with you?”
He looked up at the branches that towered over us, and a smile touched the corners of his lips. “I planted small saplings wherever I could, and the world sustained them long enough for me to plant the main stock here. It’s thrived in the soil enriched by the lives of the people in the city, and by the magic that still haunts some of the shadows.”
I bit my lower lip as I examined the ancient tree. “And this is the last part of the tree? There’s no other?”
His smile disappeared as he dropped his hand to his side. The look of great age returned to his eyes as he shook his head. “Vanar and I searched for other pieces, but we never found any but that which we planted.”
I set a hand on his shoulder. “We still have this root, and we’ll protect it with everything we have.” A smile crept onto my lips. “Even if that means I get tangled in my cloak during practice.”
He grasped my hand and pressed the back against his lips. A blush accented my cheeks as he looked into my eyes. “Thank you.”
“F-for what?”
“For being here.”
He released my hand, and I cradled it in the other as I stared at the floor. “I-it’s nothing. I mean, I haven’t really proven I can do… do anything” A yawn stretched my mouth wide open, and no attempt by my hand could hide it. I looked up to find a bemused smile on his face. “Hey, it takes a lot of energy to do nothing.”
“So it would appear,” he teased as he nodded at the entrance. “We’ll see if we can’t find you a bed.”
“I should go home,” I insisted as we made the trek back through the basement.
“You could stay here tonight,” he offered as he pointed up at the ceiling. “I have plenty of bedrooms.”
We reached the hallway in which the basement door stood, and I swept my eyes over the menagerie of antiques. “I won’t have to share the bed with a stuffed bear, will I?”
He grinned. “Only if you want to.”