Chương 31: Chapter Thirty-One: The Great Bee Gum Tree

The swaths of land south and west of Beckett's Sound were mostly farmland until the remains of large estates pockmarked the land and turned it into a labyrinth of rusty gates and fallen piles of brick. While the fields had some small groves between property lines and along ruts too big to till through, the majority of the trees in that part of the world were found far southwest. Hollis knew where to look for the great tree. The being had said it was in a garden. Not on a farm, not in a forest, but in a garden.

That, plus a rough estimation of how far east he had been when he found the sour gum root, allowed him to hone in on the specific plot with little difficulty. The wooden fence and gate that once secluded the garden from the rest of the estate were still there after three hundred years, something that Hollis called out from a distance as being quite unusual. He could see the pure abundance of plant life over the top of the fence, with many trees and vines of all sorts, but the fence intrigued him.

The house on the property had been worn away to nothing but a large pile of rubble. A rusted chandelier the size of a car was the most recognizable refuse left behind. Even most of the stonework had only survived in pieces. Hollis pictured it as a chateau you might find in the south of France, but it was gone now. Only hard stone remained, including some black-and-white floor tiles that must have been quite expensive. The hard stone… and that garden fence were all that remained. An unlikely pair.

"I smell it," Royle said.

"Like Tawny's gardens but far more potent. Lots of flowers in there. Lots of fungi. Gotta be careful. Aromas can be magical here. If one of us starts acting weird, we need to leave. Maybe we should have brought Tawny." Hollis stared at the dark garden area. The sun was getting high in the sky now, but the shadows of the garden seemed especially stubborn. The blacks were deep and compressed, with little gradient in color. It was almost like an ink drawing of a garden drawn with a wide brush.

"The garden fence is alive," Hollis said.

"Someone gave life back to the wooden planks. They're rooted down. I can see it from here."

"That's interesting, man," Royle said.

"Well, this is your thing so... lead the way." Hollis closed in slowly. The entire garden was large enough to fit a football field in. This neighborhood didn't make anything small, not the chandeliers, not the back gardens. The closer he got, the more he saw. Things entirely hidden in shadow were coming into light as if they had been there the entire time. Roses. Lilies. Yarrow. Vervain. Violets. He had spotted the abundance of exotic breeds of flowers and plants the first time he had come out this direction.

He chalked it up to old flower beds and landscaping that had gone feral over time. This place made that an understatement. There were flowers flowing out of every crack in the garden walls. They flowed over, encompassing every possible occupiable space Hollis could imagine. Flowers spilled out of the garden, growing like an embroidered carpet in every direction. The closer they got, the more he saw.

"Don't suppose the gate works still?" he asked. Willo blinked curiously.

"Might need a little WD-40," Royle answered, creating more and more distance between himself and Hollis as they went along. Hollis got close. He found staring into the garden through the gaps in the fence offered him little insight. What spaces were not filled with plants were still obscured, as if the light itself was being kept from him. This was magic.

"Great Bee Gum?" he called out. No answer, but then he didn't expect to hear anything. He expected that strange feeling on the back of his neck, like the wind was flirting with him. Those sensations would mean something to him even without words. They didn't come, not at first. The bees came first. [Vigilance lvl. 6] You are surrounded by bees of a dozen different types. If they attack, you will die. Be calm. Vigilance would ideally warn him a hundred feet or so ago, but it had failed here.

Something powerful had countered it. How had he not seen them? How had he not heard them? Even Jaq reared back with a start, sending Royle into a curse-filled panic when the bees suddenly and without warning came into their perception from wherever they were hidden in the darkness. There were millions of them. Maybe more. They moved like a fog themselves, swarming over the top of the garden, gathering pollen from every flower in sight. Small honey bees.

Large bumbling bees with knots on their heads that could knock a man out if they flew into him fast enough. Bees that were furry and cuddly and bees with stingers the size of ice picks. They were everywhere. The magic that hid the gardens in shadow had hidden these flying drones too, but now nothing was hidden. A giant bully nipper bee, as it was called by the inspector, flew out to greet Hollis, and a few more came around from behind Royle. They were easily the size of hawks.

One of them, which circled overhead, might have been eagle-sized. Hollis couldn't tell because it flew so high. The man below! The voice that wasn't a voice called out. You came so soon. Is it tomorrow? I never can tell. You humans divide up the years into such small portions. So often humans speak of what they hope for tomorrow, but they forget of their plans when it becomes today… Oh well. My bees approve. You may enter. Try not to step on my flowers. Hollis was frozen with fear.

Not only were the bees not disappearing, but the voice on the back of his neck was louder, more powerful here than it had been when channeled through the little sapling he hoped to turn into a walking stick. Still, he persevered. Step by step, he walked toward the gate, eyeing the roots which he knew would keep it from ever opening. He decided he would need to climb it to enter. Right as he was about to be close enough for it to matter, the boards that made up the fence began to move.

Their roots slowly gave way, and each of the planks fanned out toward the ground and angled away. They opened like the petals of a flower, leaving him just enough room to walk through. As soon as he was through, they closed back up.

"Oh, no, I'll have to stay outside," Royle called out when he sensed through Jaq that his path was closed. His voice was muffled far more than it should have been, like he was speaking into a gust of wind.

"If you make it out, I'll be a mile up the trail." Hollis called back to confirm, but he had no idea if Royle would hear him over the roar of the hives in the garden. This place was alive. Large bullfrogs with sharp horns, and tree frogs with leaves growing out of their backs scattered when Hollis entered. He grabbed his hatchet in one hand and prepared to draw his sidearm if need be. The garden was darker than it should have been still.

Light poked through the canopy of trees overhead, but it didn't behave as light should. It didn't flood the garden and its rows of flowery hedges. It stayed as little pinpricks, spotlights that lit only what they landed on. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. Willo helped snuff out the darkness where need be. There was water on the ground, pooling in craters between the many thick roots on the walking path.

Hollis considered whether he should be here and quickly concluded that he ought not have risked it, but he knew that every place of power and meaning in Periapt would feel every bit as dangerous and mysterious as this garden. Most of them more so. He needed to be brave. He traveled onward past the dozens of different types of flowers and plant life. Bees, of course, were as thick as sand in a sandstorm. He either had to learn to ignore them or leave, and he had already decided not to leave.

He worked his way down the path, surprised at every turn by the variety of wildlife that had taken refuge in the garden. He saw clouded squirrels flying from branch to branch above, raining as they went along. Three-headed woodpeckers peeked at him from the trunk of a tree they had turned to Swiss cheese long ago. Hammerhead grosbeaks and large fencing cranes quarreled for real estate in the canopy to look down at him.

He walked through a cloud of sizzling gnats, which burned as they bumped into him, sounding like bacon in a frying pan, spitting and spatting all over him. Life infested this place, and though dozens of the critters around him had pieces of magic that could kill or maim him, he found the place oddly comforting. This was the Periapt he had grown fascinated by as a child. Every frame of that point-and-click adventure offered a view of these wondrous, dangerous creatures.

He never knew when he would run afoul of a log cat (far more dangerous than they sound) or a poisonous kite snake, which could cling to a gust of wind as easily as they could a tree branch. The fog had taken all of that away east of the canyon. The place was desolate and lifeless by comparison, but here, in the garden of the Great Bee Gum, these creatures thrived. The garden was filled with statuary.

In fact, the whole neighborhood had been, but this garden had statues at every corner and junction as he made his way through. He stopped to look at one. Only then did he realize that Willo, his brave little companion, was hiding in the folds of his shirt collar. The air was so full of bees that the glowbug had difficulty flying.

"I need a light, buddy," he said. Willo crawled out of his sanctuary only enough to shine a spotlight on the statue Hollis was staring at. It was life-size. It captured the form of a woman, tall and beautiful. She had wings made of feathers connected by carved swirls meant to portray spectral matter. She held a sword in one hand, and her signature king scarab clung to the other, its wings spread, its shell ready to defend. She wore robes and a satchel. The bag was open; a large book stuck out.

The detail in the stone was exceptional. The only flaw was the series of minuscule vines that grew over the statue. They weren't so obstructive as to obscure the artwork, but they covered every section, digging into every crack and crevice. [Vigilance lvl. 6] You know what those vines are. They can animate that statue and have you skewered in a flash. It was time to move on. They were called puppeteer ivy.

There was something ironic about this statue being covered in that creature, so much so that Hollis assumed it had been done like that on purpose. The statue was a planter meant for that plant. The statue depicted Olivia Gordon, with her flowing hair and a sword made from the raw ore extracted from a sea serpent's tooth.

Puppeteer Ivy was one of her favorite companions in all the legends, along with her king scarab, which acted as a perfect shield; her twilight wings, in legend, animated by rogue spirits of the birds they fell from, let her fly through the air. He moved on. Willo began guiding him around the garden despite the traffic, though he had to send out several warning beacons just in case any of the animals got too close.

The Great Bee Gum was in the center of the garden, and when Hollis saw it, he could only stare in awe at the tree. It was not an ordinary sour gum. He was left with little mystery about how the tree's roots had reached down so far into the earth. It was massive. They... they were massive. What was this tree? Sour gums were large, old, straight trees with large trunks. This was something else. It took Hollis a while to understand what he was looking at.

He had to piece it together from several knowledge bases his skills could provide. There had once been a single sour gum tree that had grown quite tall and wide, but as it got older, fungi had hollowed out its interior. The plant could survive that. It couldn't survive the lumberjack, though. The tree, it seemed, had been cut into six logs of equal size and placed next to each other in a line.

These hollow logs had been turned into traditional beehives, simple containers where bees could build their hives so that beekeepers could harvest their honey. That was mundane enough, but in Periapt, these logs' lives didn't end there. Someone had given them roots. They had given them Spirit, and the bee gums had taken to life in a way they never had before. Over time, they fused, like a tree swallowing a road sign or an old bicycle.

The severed logs grew back into proper trunks and rose upward, becoming twisted, gnarled trees of great height that joined at the base. Their roots were like giant legs that dug into the earth; their trunks rose up like the heads of the mythical hydra, their leaves forming a canopy that blotted out the sun and covered the entire garden. This was a great tree after all, a massive, impressive creature the likes of which Hollis had never seen or imagined.

Its trunks were filled with hollows flowing with sticky honey and its roots lived in a pool of the stuff, with sugary crystals growing off the honey-soaked base of the trunk. Golden honey glowed in the dark, blue honey entranced Hollis' senses, and orange honey seemed to bubble and flow like the contents of a witch's cauldron. Each honey had the properties of the flowers used to make it. They could have so many magical effects Hollis could only dream. Man below!

The tree bellowed as wind and air pressure enraptured Hollis. You are larger than I imagined. Hollis was frozen in awe. Sunlight bent around it and cast the tree in a golden glow, leaving the rest of the garden in darkness. Hollis couldn't see the sky or the sun. The garden was all-encompassing. Hollis searched for a response that was worthy of such a creature, but he ended up blinded by a sudden influx of information from his Taxonomy skill.

At level four, the skill couldn't tell him everything about the tree's adaptations or abilities, but it told him so much that his mind was completely occupied by it. [Taxonomy lvl. 4] The Great Bee Gum Indeterminate Growth- an adaptation that allows parts of the creature to continuously grow throughout its life. Take Root: Long tendrils burrow into the earth. [Cultivation] Dowse: This creature can sense the location of nearby water. [Prospecting] Sap Ascent: Liquid moves from the base of the plant upward.

[Prospecting] Flood Zone: This creature can raise or lower the ambient moisture of an area. [Prospecting] Scion: A severed part of this creature is grown into a separate body that remains joined to the whole. [Cultivation] Sun Keeper: This creature can increase or decrease the level of ambient light. [Storytelling, Investigation, Sneaking] Air Modulation: This creature can increase or decrease air movement in an area.

[Storytelling] Root Network- an adaptation that allows this creature to join its roots to those of other plants. Life Share: This creature can share its resources with allies. [Medicine] Green Thumb: This creature can passively or actively alter the growth of nearby plant life. [Cultivation] Glean: Organic matter within reach of the roots is taken in. What is taken is not limited to nutrients.

[Investigation, Archaeology] Symbiosis- an adaptation that allows this creature to share vital resources and functions with separate species, to their mutual benefit. Hivemind: The minds of the joined species are pooled and directed as one. [Diplomacy] Vital Transfer: Harm inflicted on creatures within this creature's domain is conveyed onto this creature. [Animal Handling] Produce Foodstuffs- an adaptation that allows this creature to produce a consumable substance.

Sustenance: This substance satiates any creature that consumes it. [Cooking] Clean Wound: This substance prevents rot in a wound it is applied to. [Medicine] Waking Blood: This substance restores Mind to any creature that consumes it. [Medicine] Reeling Step: This toxin causes any creature that consumes it to lose its balance and its bearings. [Alchemy] Dead Sleep: This toxin causes any creature that consumes it to sleep and not wake easily.

[Alchemy] Slow Heart: This toxin causes the heart of any creature that consumes it to slow. [Alchemy] Shared Perception- an adaptation that allows this creature to sense through the bodies of linked creatures. Sight: This creature can perceive visible light. [Investigation, Vigilance] Unseen Light: This creature can detect ultraviolet light. [Investigation] Olfaction: This creature can sense odors and particles in the air. [Tracking] Read Charge: The electrical charge held by a nearby body is perceived.

[Vigilance] Hollow Chambers- an adaptation that allows this creature to hold open chambers within its own body. Shutter: This creature can close off all of its vulnerable points. [Shielding] Bellows: This creature can produce a tremendous blast of air. [Marksmanship] Unconscious Melody: This creature can produce a song that listeners do not consciously perceive, which alters their mood and emotions. [Storytelling] Earth Scent: A rich scent of decay and age calms nearby creatures and promotes healing.

[Medicine, Animal Handling] Shelter: This creature provides passive healing to all who live within it. [Bushcraft]