Far Beyond, Far Below

Ch. V: Up A Tree Without A Ladder

"Mmmlee..."

It started as a distant, buzzing hum.

"Mhrlee..."

The noise – someone's voice, he reasoned – was getting closer, but Charles could not quite understand what it was saying.

"Mharles!"

Just as the first pierced through the black mire of his unconsciousness, a second voice pounded its way into his ears, causing a dull ache to bloom in his right temple. The first voice was the higher, clearly anxious one of the two, yet there was something soft behind its strain. The second was a low voice, more demanding, and agitated in a different way, but a clear tinge of fear was its primary undertone. They called after someone, that much he could gather.

As his mental faculties slowly returned to him, he realised the two voices were a little familiar. Did they call to him, then? As his mouth refused to open, he waited for them to speak again, but when the sounds reached his still-ringing ears, they were distant once more.

With some reluctance, he managed to drag his eyelids open. As his vision cleared, he realised that he stared up at the bare, matted branches of a silvery tree, reaching high into the bright midday sky.

His body was stiff, every limb numb and aching. Not terribly surprising, for he lay in a most uncomfortable position, with his arms hooked over thick, curving roots, one foot wedged in a fork in the trunk, and the other resting upon a low branch.

...At least I'm dry, he thought, wriggling against the roots that dug painfully into his back. I must be washed up on a bank somewhere.

Groggily twisting his head to his right, his eyes took in the sight of a vast forest of skeleton trees stretching tall above the ground.

Only, he could not find the ground.

Charles furrowed his brow. A funny sensation building in the pit of his stomach, he bent his neck even farther to the right, straining his eyes downward, and what he saw launched his heart straight into his throat.

"I'M UP A TREE!!!"

~ ~ ~

Wild, terrified screams ripped through the stillness of the air, echoing off almost every tree in the vast, lonely forest. A long way off, a weary creature lifted its large, heavy ears to the sound.

~ ~ ~

Those shrieks could have been recognised by anyone. Jessica and Jaclyn ran franticly toward the sound. They had wandered some distance in search of their friend, far from the clearing they had woken up in, and now they darted and dodged between the white, barren giants with renewed hope and wild determination. Even as his cries began to recede, they dashed on, the still-occasional shout assuring their path.

As soon as it seemed silence had reinstated its dominion over the forest, they came across another clearing. In its centre stood a lone tree, shorter than its surrounding elder brothers but no less impressive, and at its base stood a tall, bedraggled, and muddied boy, staring up into branches as matted as his hair. The girls stopped short. Jessica's breath hitched and Jaclyn grit her teeth, one name on both their minds, if not their lips.

Nicolas.

"Right!" Jaclyn growled, marching forward with her fists clenched, her glare intense.

"Jaclyn, get back here..." begged Jessica in a sharp half-whisper, but she had seen the glint in Jaclyn's eye; no amount of protest on her part would hold her friend back. She watched Jaclyn go with a tightness in her chest that urged her to follow, but her legs would not obey and she remained, half-concealed behind the trunk of the nearest tree.

Jaclyn marched right up to Nicolas, the boy's gaze transfixed upon the branches above him. While fairly tall herself, the top of her head came to about half a foot beneath the top of his. Comparatively, Jaclyn had a whole eight inches on her friends, standing at about five foot and four inches, making both Jessica and Charles about four-foot-eight, with Nicolas looming above them all at five-foot-ten.

When she finally stood before him, Nicolas barely registered her presence at all.

"This is all your fault, you brute!" spat Jaclyn, glaring up at him. Nicolas ignored her. "I know you can hear me, Carter, just as I could hear his screams. Tell me where he is! What have you done with him?!"

Again, Nicolas did not respond, yet rolled his eyes and spared her a fleeting glance before returning his attention skyward with a deeper frown.

Jaclyn inhaled sharply, stomped her foot and growled. She flexed her hand at her side, fingers bent in a threatening display of her long, jagged fingernails.

"Carter, if you've hurt him, I swear I'll...! Oh, for the love of— What on Earth are you staring at!?" she snapped with considerable heat, unable to stand his flippant disregard any longer. An exasperated sigh escaped his lips and he stretched out his arm to the branches above. Before she could begrudgingly look up, a series of faint grunts reached her ears and her expression of annoyance became one of shock and disbelief. Her eyelids grew wide at the sight and her breath caught in her throat, unable to tear her gaze away.

Having feared their presently one-sided fight would escalate at any given moment, Jessica had not dared take her eyes off the two on the ground. Witnessing her friend's sudden lapse into silence, however, allayed that particular concern and sprung her wary curiosity into action. She followed the trajectory of their joint gaze into the tall, lone tree. Indeed, there was something up there, squirming with dogged tenacity in the lowermost branches, just shy of twenty feet from the ground, only partially obscured by the branches ensnaring him. Jessica cried out in horror at the sight.

"Charlie!"