Page 23 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy

“Yes. I was brought here by the Druids.”

“Why did they bring you here?”

“To consult me for their divinations. We are at an edge here. The veil is thin and does not cumber passage Between.”

“Between what?”

“Between,” repeated the tree. “Things can be in both places at once here. Separate existences, but only one root. And time here is an infinite circle.”

“Stop speaking like a bloody oracle,” said Osric.

“But Iaman oracle,” said the tree.

“What happened to the Druids?” asked Osric.

“I don’t know,” said the tree. “I want you to find them. That’s why I didn’t let you drown, though I would have liked to feed on you. I can’t exactly go looking for them, you know. I don’t know where they’ve gone. I can’t feel them anymore. Perhaps it was the Odious Ones.”

“The who?” asked Osric.

“I do not know what you rootless creatures call each other,” said the tree.

“Well, what do they look like?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t any eyes, though I can See. I can hardly differentiate between you and a common earthworm.”

Fairhrim twirled a reed between her fingers. “Why would anyone harm the Druids?”

“Because of what’s below,” said the tree.

“What’s below?” asked Osric.

“Answers,” said the tree.

Osric was woozily infuriated by these vague responses. “Why can’t you See where the Druids have got to?”

“What do you think I am,” asked the tree, “a common fortune teller? I can See vast possibility, not the smallness of now.”

“Someone’s coming,” said Fairhrim.

“If it’s the Odious Ones, you had better hide,” said the tree. Round the back of me. Get in. Quickly.”

Why must they hide? Why was Osric taking advice from a tree?

Fairhrim was now deeply engrossed in contemplation of a point in the air three inches from her nose and did not move. Osric prodded her. She and Osric, their pupils blown wide, their limbs uncontrollable, flopped and crawled derangedly to the back of the tree. Osric felt himself on the verge of a laughing fit.

They found a fissure in the tree’s trunk: its heartwood had rotted out long ago. Fairhrim slipped in first. Osric, feeling witless and compliant, followed.

The tree pulled itself shut. The fissure that Osric and Fairhrim had used to climb in round the back disappeared entirely. Its interior was dark and cramped. He and Fairhrim stood chest to chest.

Outside the tree came the sounds of lurching and scraping. A suitably horrible rattle of breath would have been comforting somehow, but the things outside did not breathe.

“Unnatural,” tutted the tree quietly. “The dead should be allowed to sleep their long sleep.”

As Osric processed this clue, a second one came quickly: something swung towards the tree, and there was a crack, and the tip of a curved blade materialised inches from Osric’s nose.

“Oh, Hel,” whispered Osric, recognising the scythe. “They’re Dreor.”

Fairhrim did not respond with the desired reaction. Instead of immediate alarm, she yawned.