I found myself in that shaggy tunnel between Karla’s dome and the sitting room. I wasn’t exactly thrilled to leave my body behind on those slopes in such dire straits, but at least my soul was warm and dry in here.
What a stupid thing to have done, heading off into some strange, Scottish mountains at night with no camping gear. I deserved what ever happened to me, whether it was hypothermia or murder by imp.
I suppose I should have been excited to be so close to Karla’s abode, but I had no reason to believe that she had returned. Her dome looked crushed and vacant. But the merest possibility she might be there was enough to get me moving.
I tore my way through the ever denser shrouds of root to the remnants of Karla’s chamber. It was obvious that no one had been through here recently. The reversion was well underway. The dome had collapsed on itself like a half-deflated soccer ball. One side was ripped open wide and its contents strewn across the matrix. From the scale of the damage, it must have been the work of Reapers.
“Karla?” I said, tentatively, though I knew better than to expect a response. I poked around the wreckage, half-wondering and worrying that I might find her corpse, or some sign—bloodstains, clumps of hair—that she had been taken by Reapers. I was relieved to find nothing of that note.
Karla’s weavings had deteriorated badly since my last visit. The furniture was looking quite furry and surfaces that had been slick now exposed their mesh. For the most, part, however, her creations retained their shape. Was this a good sign, I wondered? Did it mean she was still alive, her soul not yet completely abandoned? Or did it simply take time for all weaving to revert completely back to roots?
I couldn’t find my old kilt anywhere, so I took a pair of Karla-sized gym shorts, widened, lengthened and de-shagged them and then pulled them on. I turned and headed bare-chested and shoeless back down the corridor from which I had come and into the sitting room.
I tried the door. To my surprise, it opened freely on its hinges. I stepped out into the mostly vacant square, hemmed in above by a close and grey sky. The obelisk was gone, along with the gargoyles. Apparently, they had been converted back into that big, old oak tree.
The place looked abandoned. There were no groups of people anywhere, and the dogs were gone. But it wasn’t entirely devoid of life. Across the way I saw I man emerge from a door and make his way to another townhouse.
I strolled cautiously to the center of the plaza, where I heard some sort of plinking and tinkling going on. There was a skinny guy with a monk’s fringe sitting with his back against the tree, trying to play a mandolin, but botching it badly.
I walked up to him. From the way he jumped, I must have taken him entirely by surprise.
“Where’s Arthur?” I said.
“Who?”
“Luther.”
He did not respond. He hopped to his feet and ran off towards the church, leaving the mandolin propped among the roots at the base of the tree. I picked up and strummed a chord. The guy didn’t even have the thing tuned right. I plucked harmonics, tuning it by ear.
I used to own my own mandolin—a cheap, little Eastman A-style—but it hadn’t survived the move to the storage bay. The neck had snapped when one of the movers stepped on it accidentally. It hadn’t bothered me at the time, but now I kind of missed it.
“Well, what do you know … it’s Lord James.”
Bern. But where was his voice coming from? I looked up. He and Lille were dangling from a bough about ten feet above my head. Their torsos were completely encased in wood, like those boulders you see studding the boles of trees that had grown up abutting them for decades.
