The Black Tree Atop the Hill by Karla Yvette

Author:Karla Yvette [Yvette, Karla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CLASH Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter

Fifteen

The sun rises as they ride, but for a while, Marisol doesn’t truly believe it will.

The sky lightens to blue. There are low clouds and the occasional V of geese, heading north to summer in the Oregon territory, but their silhouettes are such a deep shade of violet they are nearly indistinguishable from the sky.

Eventually, heat prickles against Marisol’s scalp and the base of her neck. It is finally bright enough to perceive the colorful tufts of sage and buckbrush on either side of the trail. They follow an old cattle path, stamped into the earth by a thousand heavy hooves over time. Whatever spring or pasture this trail once led to is decades gone, but it climbs into the foothills where the tree is waiting.

Molly is swift and fearless, even when gravel slips beneath her hooves.

They reach the place where the trail has been swept away by floods.

The tree is finally in view, but Marisol’s focus is elsewhere. Two badgers, frothing from their mouths and nostrils, wrestling in low grass. A set of molted antlers crawling with ants. A screaming hawk flying impossibly tight circles overhead.

Even the grass here looks black and dehydrated. It curls in upon itself like it wants to carve a way back into the earth.

Marisol is acutely aware of the tree branch she’d hastily shoved into her satchel as she left the ranch. It has not moved, she is certain of that, but that does not mean it hasn’t made its presence known. That other voice in Marisol’s head bristles whenever she thinks of it.

Marisol finally notices fresh horseshoe prints when a breeze ripples the scrub apart. Two riders, at least.

Her throat burns as she swallows. Marisol cannot tell whether she’d hoped that Luis and Jack had come this way or not, but it would have been simpler if they’d snuck out in the night to tend to a sick heifer and decided to let Marisol sleep.

“The tree is affecting everything—like a fouled well,” Marisol tells Molly, who only snorts back, as if to remind Marisol that she is still in the saddle through Molly’s good graces alone.

With Molly’s pace, Marisol thinks they’ll reach the tree in no more than fifteen minutes. The sun has not entirely burned off the morning haze. The tree spears upwards, enormous and dark, but the fog at its base makes it impossible to tell where its trunk meets the ground or if it even does.

Marisol thinks California must be the most fertile land for magic in the world. It is easy to churn rain into a flood, to turn a matchstick into a forest fire. It is land that straddles great faults in the earth; unguarded gateways into strange countries for anyone with enough wherewithal to build the right sort of ladder. Perhaps the tree’s roots barrel straight through Mole Country and into the underworld itself.

“Easy, girl,” Marisol mutters as they approach, but Molly has already slowed. The air is cooler now that they’ve gained altitude, and the steam of their breath spirals slowly before combining with fog.

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