The ground rumbled as entire corn plants grew from nothing and other crops pushed up from the island— wheat and barley and rye. A small tree grew in the midst of those farm crops and soon it was clear it was an apple tree. As the cherry-tree demon struggled and mewled pitifully and Oliver watched in astonishment, his injuries throbbing, the apple tree grew quickly to the height of a man.
It was a man.
Oliver saw that it had a face and its branches were arms and it pulled its trunk from the ground and had legs. It did not so much as look at Oliver, but walked past him, apples and leaves rustling on its branches, and stood staring at the corpse of Johnny Appleseed dangling from another tree.
It wept, and its tears smelled of fresh-cut apples.
The crops were so thick in the clearing of the orchard and around the bases of the trees that at first Oliver did not see the other things moving amongst them. Then the stalks and shafts moved with the passage of these new arrivals and he held his breath as the figures emerged. A wolf, a stag, and a creature built like a man, but whose entire body was formed from corn husks. Even his face was shaped like a human’s, right down to the indents where his eyes ought to have been, but there were only pale green corn husks.
And then he spoke in a voice that was the rustle of the wind across the corn rows.
“Behold the gods of the Harvest.”
CHAPTER 10
Oliver could hardly draw breath as he stared at these things that called themselves gods. There had been a moment where he had thought he might be able to defeat Aerico. But now his stolen shotgun was empty and he was alone against the four new arrivals. The massive wolf lowered its head and sniffed the ground. The buck stood and regarded Oliver with clear, intelligent eyes, its huge, intricate antlers casting complex shadows. The apple-tree man paid little attention, his focus on the corpse of Johnny Appleseed. Yet the one that disturbed him the most was the thing— the god— that had spoken. It watched him as though it had a real face, and eyes to see with, but there were only corn husks indented as though they were eyes. The Kirata and the Falconer had terrified him, but this was something else entirely. Some ancient part of him at the base of his brain and the pit of his stomach shuddered at the alienness of it, and he wanted to scream.
On the ground that separated him from the gods of the Harvest— and the new crops that had grown up around the trees in the orchard— the demon from the cherry tree struggled against the corn and wheat stalks that seemed to be pulling it down into the soil. The air was sickly sweet with the smell of overripe cherries. Yet none of them bothered to even glance at Aerico as it was subsumed by the ground. Consumed. Its cries were muffled by the vegetation that grew over its mouth.
Oliver pretended not to notice, awaiting some word or action from the gods of the Harvest. Long seconds ticked by, perhaps more than a minute, as the corn-husk man stared at him and the wolf sniffed the ground.
Then the wolf raised its head. It made no sound, but some kind of signal had been given, for the stag trotted several steps closer and the man— or whatever it was— covered in corn husks emerged further from the crops.
“You are the Intruder all of the whispers are about?” said the corn-husk man in a sandpaper voice, his mouth a dark, toothless hole.
Oliver felt so obviously out of place that he saw no point in lying. “I am.”
“Your name?”
“Oliver Bascombe.”
With a ripple like the wind in the crops, the corn-husk man bowed. “We are well met, Oliver Bascombe. You fought bravely against the demon. But we must be going if you are to avoid the Myth Hunters. Aerico slew Appleseed for them. Undoubtedly they will come for his remains.”
Oliver was keenly aware of his own breathing. He stared at the corn-husk man as though he had no idea what the creature was talking about, yet he thought he had understood quite well. It was just difficult for him to believe.
“You’re . . . going to help me?”
The Harvest god glanced at the buck and then at the wolf, husk rasping against husk. “The demon could never have been trusted, but we understood that. It was his nature. We must all be true to our natures. Yet by murdering Appleseed, he betrayed us.”
He said the words as though they were an answer to Oliver’s question. And perhaps they were. When he had finished he turned and started through the new crops that had thrust up from the freshly turned earth and then into the thicker part of the orchard.
Oliver frowned in confusion. Where were they going? What was to become of him now? What of his friends?
Then the apple-tree man moved to the corpse of Johnny Appleseed and began tearing him loose from the tree where he had been killed. The smell of apple cider— or of fermented apples— filled the clearing, and Oliver decided he did not want to bear witness to this process. He set off after the other gods of the Harvest. Though he gave the apple-tree man and his slaughtered kin a wide berth, the creature did not even glance at him as he passed.
The deep rushing sound of the river filled the air. From above came the cawing of birds, but none of them soared down to roost in the trees on this strange island. There was just the wind in the trees and the gods of the Harvest moving through the wood ahead of him. He followed them by the sound of their passage amongst the branches and leaves, and also by the shoots that sprang up from the soil after their passing. Wheat and corn and rye had begun to grow up like sparse grass.
Oliver picked up his pace, both afraid to lose them and afraid that the apple-tree man would catch up to him with that cider-smelling corpse in its branches.
Only when he saw the buck stopped up ahead, its antlers indistinguishable from the branches of the trees above it, did he realize that the gods of the Harvest had paused . . . and that he could no longer hear the muffled, pained yelping of Kitsune the fox. Then Oliver ducked beneath the low-hanging limbs of a peach tree and realized he had come full circle, back to the trio of towering cherry trees in the shadow of the Atlantic Bridge. The river flowed nearby, the dark stonework of the bridge echoed its rushing voice into the trees, and the smell of cherries was overwhelming.
The buck once more stood silent, as though it were the sentinel on alert for any threat to present itself. On the rough ground in the triangle formed by the three trees, the Harvest wolf stood over Kitsune, who lay sprawled in a tangle of fur and limbs, no longer a fox.
As anxious as he was at the presence of these self-proclaimed deities, Oliver hurried past the buck and went to kneel by her side. The wolf inclined its head as though in invitation— or permission— and took a step back. Kitsune seemed to have been dropped to the ground like an abandoned marionette. Her ebon hair was feathered across her face and he reached out to brush it away, to see her eyes.
Kitsune growled and bared her teeth.
Oliver froze with his fingers only inches from her. That low growl continued for a moment and then abruptly ceased. Her nostrils flared and she sniffed the air. A kind of mewling sound came from her throat and she stirred, pulling herself up into a fetal curl on the ground just beside him. Her hair fell away from her face and as he watched, her jade eyes fluttered open.
“Kitsune?”
“Hello, my friend.”
“Are you badly hurt?”
“It is passing,” she said, the perfect bow of her mouth offering amusement and irony. “We were foolish, ignoring our own warnings. We might have been better off taking our chances with the soldiers.”