Chapter 3
Solomon arrived at the Fresno Yosemite Airport, in a landing zone bathed in a shaft of sunlight beaming through clouds as if providing a secondary runway. The pilot must have marveled at how the clouds had parted just in time and the fog mystically lifted away, scattering before their approach. They set down two hours before the meeting was to begin, with plenty of time to spare. Still, once they made the turn off onto Route 198, Solomon told the waiting limo driver to take a leisurely drive through so he could enjoy the scenery and take in the sweeping mountain vistas, appreciating how the rugged terrain gave way to the gradual spread of green as the pine shrouded forests invaded and held sway the closer they came to Sequoia National Park.
The others were surely there already, most likely sipping bitter tea and suffering through their leader’s exaggerated sense of piano skills as a precursor to the meeting. Let them wait for his arrival, Solomon thought. Let them murmur among themselves and wonder if he would even come. They would eventually start without him, he had no doubt, and that suited him just fine. He wanted to make an entrance, and it had to happen at just the right time.
The semi-annual meeting took place near the solstices and this one, four days before the winter solstice, promised high drama and the discussion of powerful topics, including several key votes.
After entering the park, driving to Giant Forest, he enjoyed the rise in elevation, and lowered the window to feel the air grow colder and observe the ground cover gradually turn white with a dusting of snow. They parked at the Lodgepole visitor center, and Solomon got out and told the driver to wait. It wouldn’t be too long. He observed the few other cars here off-season and recognized quite a few of the out of state plates as belonging to the other members.
He breathed a great breath of fresh air, enjoying a myriad of natural scents carried along the crisp early morning breeze, and surveyed the vast and varied land rolling out before him in all directions. He started off down a trail, his feet and staff crunching into the brittle snow as he bowed to the might of the giant sequoia trees standing like mighty and wise emissaries of old, silent sentinels that bristled and trembled at his approach.
In time, he cleared the deeper forests and emerged on a cliff side, viewing a sweeping panorama of Moro Rock in the distance, and Crescent Meadow down below. His destination. But first, he would tread straight through an army of giant sequoia warriors, flanked by red and white fir, sugar, ponderosa and other high alpine wonders. Readying his staff, Solomon followed a path that became increasingly overgrown as he neared the meadow. At one point, barely visible footprints veered into a thicket, and he followed without pause, moving aside the blocking foliage with his staff. Branches converged overhead, blocking the sun in all but stray shafts of light illuminating the way. A mist crept across the trail, further obscuring the path, but Solomon wasn’t deterred. And he wasn’t meant to be. He and the other eleven members of the High Council alone had the ability to navigate these woods, to peer through the shade and the fog and the labyrinth of poisonous shrubs and vines, to arrive at another clearing, not on any maps and far from the ability of even the most intrepid hikers to locate. A clearing where a circle of weathered stones awaited.
Centuries old, dating back long before naturalist John Muir made his explorations, these rocks were here. Solomon knew who placed them here and how, where they were quarried and how they were transported. And he chuckled, recalling an anthropologist’s theory on such things. Not that any scholars or explorers had ever found this clearing. No, where he was headed had been shrouded from common eyes long before the first colonists ever made their way across the country. And even the natives spoke of this place only in legend.
Still, for all its allure and mystical secrecy, when Solomon finally arrived in the circle and the mists scattered after confirming his identity, and when the A-frame building that to all purposes seemed like a quaint ski chalet, appeared, Solomon was again struck by the feeling that this modernism was an affront to the old ways.
He touched the nearest rock, partially moss-covered, and caressed its surface, feeling its indentations and cracks. He felt its power and he sucked in a cool breath, smelling the pine sap and the distant oak branches; he heard an acorn fall a hundred yards away and was aware of a multitude of forest denizens eyeing him carefully, reverently.
They all knew their places.
Unlike some.
Steeling his nerve, Solomon patted the standing stone. He hefted his staff in his right hand, glanced around the circle one more time, then advanced into its center, toward the structure—and the meeting, already in progress inside.
O O O
“Am I too late?” The door with the shamrock handle slammed hard behind him and eleven heads turned in his direction. The rectangular table was long and thick, full of knots and weathered in places. The people seated around it in chairs, each one uniquely carven from a different tree trunk, could not have seemed more out of place to Solomon. He longed for the old days, and imagined how it could have been if only a different hand had grasped the arch-staff. Everyone was dressed as if coming from a power business meeting. Silk suits and ties for the seven men, power skirts, high heels and blazers for the women.
Solomon shook the snow and moss from his khakis and the sleeves of his sweater, and wiped his boots on a mat of elderberry leaves. “Again I feel underdressed. I know it’s winter, but my motion to require the old dress code of white robes, belts of living vines and sandals has been ignored, I take it?”
A grizzled face lifted and old, wizened eyes peered at him through a gray nest of bushy eyebrows. At least the Arch-Druid Louis Palavar had a face that looked the part: half Merlin, half Gandalf, but unfortunately with the powerful grace of neither.
Palavar pursed his lips. “Avery Solomon. Not only are you late, an occurrence we’ve grown accustomed to, but your blatant disregard as to the proper order of things, such as making motions, has become more than tiring.”
Solomon shrugged and approached the free chair, his assigned post opposite Palavar at the far head of the table. Carved from a massive sequoia stump, it made up for the distance from the arch-druid and the perceived slight Solomon refused to accept. He sat lithely, crossed his legs and set his staff across the armrests, then leaned forward to view the iPad screen set up in front of him, as the others had in front of them. Another anachronism, and as far as Solomon was concerned, a ludicrous attempt by the old-timer to appear in touch with the modern world. He glanced to his left, into the other room, a study which held the grand piano and an assortment of bookshelves, Solomon was again glad he’d missed any recitals by the old fool.
“Let’s see,” he said after a pause, scrolling down the iPad screen. “What did I miss so far? Ah, the agenda. The usual items. Montgomery gave his redundant spiel on his efforts at the EPA, having infiltrated the agency and placed acolytes in the highest positions. So what have you done? Oh, you’ve got another appeal headed to the Supreme Court mandating further emissions restrictions! Wonderful.” He rolled his eyes and stared at the thin bald man in the drab grey suit sitting beside Palavar. “Great progress we’re making there.”
“Solomon—”
“Hang on.” He scrolled down. “Oh shit, did I miss Angelica’s update on the expansion of social media and her bold attempts to reshape college-age minds regarding the wonders of protecting the planet? Like that’s a difficult task, come on.”
“Solomon—”
“And oh, damn it, this I did want to hear.” Solomon glanced up, tightening his grip, two-handed, on the staff. “Louis Palavar gave his annual presentation detailing Hollywood’s master plan to saturate popular culture with earth-saving messages and ideas, subliminal and otherwise.” He chuckled. “How’s that going for you?”
Palavar glared at him, and the two held each other’s stares as both sides of the table hushed and glanced from one to the other. Solomon had played his opening hand, and now it was the old man’s turn. But really, there was no doubt about what the next moves were going to be. Solomon had played them out in his head countless times in the past few days. Timed these chess moves down to the second, in fact. He knew Palavar only too well, and counted on him being exactly the rigid old fool that was.
“Actually,” Palavar said, breaking the silence as Solomon knew he would. “We haven’t followed the agenda at all.”
Solomon smiled, never taking his eyes off him. “Really? That’s not like you, deviating from procedure. Must have been something quite serious to force that decision.”
“It was.” Palavar’s eyes hardened, a look like a hawk’s surveying everything. I’m sure he doesn’t miss anything. Or at least, he thinks he doesn’t. Solomon counted on Palavar’s overconfidence. He’d only get one shot at this, and if he failed, everything he had worked for would be in ruins. And the world would slip away forever from its true destiny.
“Well,” Solomon spoke calmly. “Hope it wasn’t something I did.”
“You tell us,” Palavar replied at once. “In fact, let’s jump right ahead to agenda Item Seven. Your report on what was supposed to be your effort to enhance awareness of Global Warming in the business community, and specifically, aiming to pass a resolution through the United Nations that would—”
Solomon groaned. “Yes, yes, in time. I’d be happy to talk about all that. But as you said, that’s not what you really want to ask me, is it?” He glanced at a few of the others. At Angelica Briars with her lustrous scarlet hair pulled back and sparkling with what looked like pixie dust, but nothing could eradicate the crow’s nests around her eyes or the sallow hue to her cheeks. He glanced at the diminutive and gnome-like Morris Tildershines, who held rank over the ancient clan of druids in Britain and Scotland, at Heidi Noriesse who fancied herself one among the Valkyries and lorded over the dwindling clan in Eastern Europe, but had long since lost her muscle and her nerve, turning in her sword for a stylus and managing change with all the speed of a harvest snail.
“San Diego,” Palavar said.
“Jamaica,” said Belgar Tinman, adept of the Southern climes and self-styled Lord of the Sea—who for all Solomon cared, could drown himself in it for his lack of vision or action of late. In fact, nearly all of them were useless. They were cast from the same mold as Palavar, who unfortunately had too much power in selecting the council. It was only through extreme patience, foresight, cunning and occasional trickery, that Solomon had made it not only on the Council, but had advanced so far that they now considered him such a threat.
But of course, they had underestimated his power, while overestimating their own.
“Minneapolis,” said Harrison Nye, “Lord Master of the Mountains.” Whatever that title meant, Solomon had no use for him either and couldn’t remember anything from his semi-annual updates other than the usual whining about the ice cap levels and an obsessive fear of fracking.
“Wonderful places,” Solomon said. “What of them? Can’t say that I’ve ever been, except once as a kid, driving through Minnesota to see the world’s largest ball of twine.”
“So this wasn’t your doing?” Palavar asked.
“Sounds like you’re suspecting me of powers far in excess of what I should possess.”
“We both know what you’re capable of, Avery.” Palavar leveled a glance at him, and by calling him his familiar name in an attempt to humble and belittle, Solomon almost flinched, for a moment feeling a crack in his resolve. But he had to remember, had to stay on course. Palavar once held sway over Solomon’s destiny, but no longer.
Palavar slammed his fist down. “The larger question is, why you’ve done this?”
Solomon let the question go unanswered, then said, “Well, why don’t you enlighten me? Or have one of your lackeys do it?”
Heidi grumbled, taking the bait. “For the self-same aim you have been espousing in these gatherings for five years!”
“The Green Kingdom,” Morris whispered.
“Dominion,” Belgar spoke, “over all.”
“The Green Kingdom,” Palavar echoed. “Is a fable, a tale best kept in the realm of the faire-folk and lost in the parables of old. It is—”
“—and always has been, within our grasp!” Solomon slammed his own fist onto the table, and formed a crack that shot halfway across, rattling water glasses and knocking over iPads.
Palavar folded his arms and narrowed his eyes, which sparkled with a canine yellowish tint. And was that a feral hint of a wolf straining to break free of a very old, rusted cage? “We have been through this before.”
“Yes, but perhaps your counter-logic hasn’t sunk into my thick skull,” Solomon said, leaning forward and making a show of clenching his fingers around the staff and spinning it slowly. “The part about the earth being largely indifferent and immune to the misadventures of the pests crawling all over it? That never sat well with me.”
Morris cleared his throat, a bit sheepishly, but chimed in, perhaps hoping to diffuse the situation. “It’s well documented, and nearly irrefutable. Man’s been around what? Ten thousand years? Less than a blink of an eye in the earth’s life cycle. She’s hardly noticed us.”
Solomon leaned back heavily, still spinning the staff. “Here we go.”
Belgar chimed in. “We do what we can, but let’s not fool ourselves. If our goal is to safeguard the earth, our job is laughably easy. Why? Because She can protect herself. Maybe not for the ultimate comfort of her temporary ‘pests,’ as you called them, but for herself, surely.”
“All this talk of global warming,” Heidi said, twirling her blonde curls. “Laughable. The earth warms, the earth cools. She has her own temperature.”
“But we’re a virus attacking her system. Man is a disease,” Solomon insisted. “And our planet’s flaring up in a fever, determined to fight us off.”
“If that’s the case,” Palavar said, “let her. If the minute degree here or there is sufficient to shake off enough of us ‘pests’ to make any difference, then why are you fighting it? Why are you fighting us? We are trying to change the mind-set of an entire race, get them to see themselves as caretakers instead of mindless consumers with bottomless appetites. It takes time, and it will have the desired effect. Eventually.”
“Eventually is too long!” Solomon countered. “And it won’t work. Because ultimately it’s false. The earth doesn’t care, as Morris here so eloquently said, and I agree. Man has been around for such a short time as to be almost unnoticed in the two billion years of this planet’s tumultuous history.”
“See?” Morris blushed and grinned. “As I keep saying, and you all keep shushing me.”
“All your efforts,” Solomon said, stealing his thunder, “what are they for? Maybe people will become self-conscious enough someday to stop driving SUVs, and maybe someone will find a way to make a cost-efficient electric car or make ethanol or wind power actually a viable alternative. But what of it? One more volcano erupts in the Philippines and spews more CO2 into the atmosphere than China produces in a decade, and we’re back to square one. Or the sun flares up in a sunburst that blankets the planet in radiation and blasts through widening holes in our ozone layer, and all those efforts are for nothing.”
“So what are you suggesting, Solomon?” Palavar tapped his gnarled fingers on the table, tracing a groove in the ancient wood. “That we give up? That we turn our back on our role as stewards?”
“No, I merely suggest expanding the role. Or perhaps … earning that title instead of playing at it.”
“Watch yourself, Solomon. You overstep your limits.”
“As we all should. Otherwise …” He glanced around at the others in the room, at the chairs and the arrangements, the vines and trunks, the leafy canopy overhead and the buzzing of insects and fluttering of butterfly wings. “We don’t deserve the power that goes with this responsibility.”
Heidi stiffened and frowned. “But if the earth defends itself, if it shakes off the pollution, the ravaging of its resources …”
“It does,” Solomon said. “Over thousands, millions of years … In those terms—the only terms the earth deals in—we will be nothing but a memory. Pollution? Hell, unleash every nuclear warhead, and destroy ourselves ten times over, and the earth will recover and it will be as if it never happened in a few thousand years. She hosts species after species and then they either die out or she kills them, and moves on.”
“So again I ask: what is it you are fighting?” Palavar shook his head, exasperated. “You espouse the glory of nature and how ineffective we are in the face of its power, as is only right, and yet you sit there meeting after meeting asking to do more to punish humanity. Towards what end?” He narrowed his eyes, and his hand went from the table to his own staff—gnarled and twisted and ancient—leaning against his chair. “Do you seek then to upset the balance? To gain power and glory for the now, to force Nature to focus and take notice of this tiny moment in time when she is accustomed to seeing only vast epochs?”
In the ensuing silence, Solomon rolled up his sleeve and checked his timepiece—a gold Rolex with a black face and a digital readout behind the spinning gears.
It was almost time.
“That, Palavar and dear Council, is exactly what I intend.” He sighed and looked at them all in turn before staring back at the arch-druid. “We may be newly upon the scene, but we were given a role—and the power to back it up. Power that is wasted on the likes of this …” He made a gesture toward the agenda on the iPad screen. “We can do so much more. The Green Kingdom can be restored. And just perhaps, we are meant to do exactly that.”
Belgar frowned at him and Morris again cleared his throat. “I apologize, but as much as the idea intrigues, you said it—it can’t happen. Stop the pests, the rampant consumption and the runaway polluters and the destruction of resources, and nature will just step in and take up the battle, a hundred times stronger.” He shook his head. “There will soon be no green, the way things are going. No matter what anyone does about it. And what, do you propose damming the volcanoes and controlling the sun?”
Solomon smiled. “Now you are thinking like a true steward.” He never took his eyes off Palavar. “Like a true druid.”
“Enough!” Palavar spoke through grit teeth, yellowed and cracked. “We are tired of this endless debate. We know your objections, and you know ours. The mission is unchanged. We will work as always, behind the scenes.”
“As always?” Solomon chuckled. “I know our history is a little vague and purposely shrouded in mystery, but I prefer to honor the one historical anecdote we do have passed down to us. When the Romans came marching into Britain, it wasn’t the local peasants and ragtag armies that eventually sent them packing. It wasn’t dumb luck that severed the head of the greatest empire at the time and decimated their lands with drought and froze their troops and starved their children and swept away their homes in avalanches of mud and ravaged their farms with wildfire. Ruined their economy and stretched their forces thin and hungry.”
“We don’t know the facts of that, and can’t ascribe—”
“We can, and we do,” Solomon insisted. “Those were men and women of action. Of defiance. Of power. They actually controlled the forces of nature, instead of just giving themselves titles over it.” He glared at Belgar and Morris. “Instead of sitting around in hollowed-out tree stumps debating the merits of passivity, they acted. As I have acted.”
He stood up, raising the staff slowly. “Jamaica, yes. Minneapolis, yes! San Diego and many more. And you have no idea what I have planned next, but I promise you this … the Green Kingdom is at hand.”
The room sank into stunned silence as Palavar reached for his staff, determination in his eyes. “Then I am sad,” he said, “that it has come to this. You have forsaken your oaths to protect the earth and its people. You have tarnished the name of this Council, betrayed its history and its purpose, betrayed your upbringing and your training, and—”
“And I call for a vote!” Solomon shouted over him. “As is the right of any member of this ‘Council.’” Solomon turned his staff sideways, perpendicular to his body, as he glared at Palavar. “I call for a vote of no confidence in Louis Palavar, that he be stripped of title and staff, and thrust out into the black forest to wander in grief and loss, forever.”
Palavar chuckled. “You may call for such a vote, as is your right. You know the rules, but you also know the consequences if such a challenge fails.” He glanced at the others around the table. “A motion has been raised. All in favor? And remember, you need a majority.”
Palavar tapped his fingers on the staff as he stood up slowly. And he turned his staff sideways as well, squaring off symmetrically against Solomon.
Overhead, the vines creaked and leaves rustled in a non-existent breeze. Solomon felt the earth under his shoes rumble. The soft dirt rippled as if roots moved beneath the table, assembling into position.
He turned his wrist slightly to see the time.
On schedule, he thought, keeping his arm steady, the staff barely giving a tremble. Palavar was attempting the same but his arm had to be getting tired.
“All those in favor of Solomon’s vote?”
Silence. A lot of eyes turned downward. Morris alone was fidgeting. He licked his lips, opened his mouth, but then met Palavar’s cold eyes, and lowered his own. No one looked toward Solomon, but he didn’t expect them to.
A few more seconds ticked away.
And then he sighed. “I guess that’s it then,” Solomon said. “The Green Kingdom dies.…”
“No,” said Palavar. “Only you.”
He pulled his arm back, straightened his grip and turned the staff lengthwise, then slammed it down hard upon the floor.
Morris clenched his eyes and flinched as the others looked away. And at Palavar’s command, a mass of writhing vines shot out from the ceiling just as the dirt floor erupted with a battalion of roots. His legs encircled, and another thick root lassoed Solomon’s waist and dragged him back into the chair as a huge vine whipped around his staff and yanked it hard from his grasp.
As he sat with a thump and offered no struggle against the roots and vines wrapping around his body, pinning him to the chair, Solomon followed the vines that stripped him of his weapon and deposited it cleanly into the arch-druid’s free hand.
One vine snared his throat, snake-like, and squeezed.
“I’m sorry,” Palavar said quietly in the aftermath, as the ceiling swayed with dozens of vines at the ready, as the floor rippled and the walls churned with thorn-riddled branches preparing to defend or attack, whichever the case should be. “But you knew the consequences. You were unprepared, and now …”
“Now,” said Solomon, barely managing enough air in his windpipe. “We get back on track.”
O O O
Palavar frowned, mouth open. He cocked his head, trying to fathom why his adversary—seconds away from death—still seemed so confident. Then he frowned and glanced at the new staff in his left hand.
The staff he assumed was Solomon’s—and his right to destroy as befits the winner in this challenge. Solomon would have known he’d take it. Solomon would have known … known that he couldn’t win such a vote. Not with this council …
Palavar looked up sharply. Saw the smile, the glint in Solomon’s eyes, and he dropped the staff, just as he raised his own and focused his energies on the roots and the vines and the branches. Attack—he started to command, but there wasn’t time.
Solomon had it all planned too well.
The staff—the hollow cylinder packed with C4 and a timer—detonated at that exact moment, with such force that Palavar and half the council table exploded in a mass of smoking splinters, blood, bone and gore.
O O O
Solomon was ready, and the instant Palavar’s control vanished and his brain was blasted into nothingness, he assumed control. His chair blew backwards in the force of the explosion, but was held in place enough by the roots and vines to protect him from the blast.
The others—most would not be so fortunate. But Solomon couldn’t take that chance. He wriggled free of the smoking restraints, at the same time feeling out with his mind, caressing and controlling the vegetation’s, seeking into the very cellular structures of the roots and the branches and overgrowth; he felt the vegetation screaming in agony and shock, and he soothed where he could.
But first, he stood up and raised his hand, and through the smoke and the flames, he felt it: the arch-druid’s staff. It was smoking and burnt, but such a thing was tough, thrown across the room. He sought with his mind, found it and called it to him, and it came, hurled across the flames and over mangled bodies. It came on the winds and landed in his right hand.
Solomon breathed deep, then exhaled, harnessing the connection he now forged with this staff, this ancient thing carved from a tree more ancient than any still standing on the planet, a weapon and tool passed down through the millennia, from a time when wizards had shepherded the ignorant and brought them out of caves and taught them fire and astrology and ways to harness the elements, and were thought of as gods in their own right.
He gripped the staff tightly, then waved it twice across the wreckage of the council room. Snowflakes appeared in a gusty, icy wind that suffocated the fires and dissipated the smoke, and all became clear.
More than half the table was a splintered, smoldering wreck. Harrison Nye and Montgomery appeared to be decapitated; at least their bodies were not in sight, only the heads with bits of hair and skull and teeth with frost now on the hollow eye sockets.
Angelica and Belgar Tinman crawled and whimpered, covered in blood. Heidi had a sharp white bone sticking out through her shoulder, and seemed to be trying to sing some ancient healing ballad, but the verse never finished. She shuddered, coughed up a pint of blood and lay still.
Morris Tildershines, somehow among them all, seemed unfazed, with just a spray of someone’s blood on his forehead and snowflakes collecting on his spectacles. He opened his eyes and with dismay, turned toward Solomon.
“I …”
“I know,” Solomon said. “You’d like to change your vote.”
O O O
He regarded the three surviving members of the Council with indifference. “I could show contempt,” he addressed them. “Or seek vengeance, but that is for the petty. For those who lack vision, for those who can’t see the true path.”
“Please,” Morris said. He struggled in the block of ice that rooted him to the floor. The winds whipped and chilled, and icicles hung from his nose and the panes of his frosted glasses.
Beside him, Angelica seemed unfazed by the cold, but at least had given up her struggles. One eye had been blackened, hit with some burning shrapnel, and she struggled to see. “Solomon, don’t do this.”
“At least kill us,” Belgar said dourly. “I don’t like the cold.”
“I know,” Solomon said, “and I guess I’m sorry, but roots and vines? Well, they’re too unpredictable, and cold … cold can last forever under the right conditions, and ice can be as strong as steel. I’ve enchanted the circle … and what’s left of this cottage with a powerful charm. Combined with the existing cloaking spell, no one will ever find you. You will all sleep and hopefully, dream sweet cold dreams of how you could have shared in my glory, in the glory of a world restored. Of a Green Kingdom.”
“You’re insane,” Belgar spat, his wild curly hair frozen in place over his eyes. “We have followers, they will know. They will seek us, and—”
“Already on that,” Solomon said. “The word’s gone out. Change in leadership. Out with the old, in with the … bold.”
He raised his new staff, admiring the scorch marks that had given it added character. He’d have to decide what to do with his old one, which was waiting for him back in the limo, and not a meek instrument by any means. Maybe Gabriel might one day rise in worth to earn it.
But for now, it was time to move on. Free of the restraints of the past, free of those who had failed to see the truth, those blind to their true destiny.
“I’ll come back for you,” he said. “When my Kingdom has come and you can no longer affect its outcome. On that day, you will thank me and see that I am its deliverer, I am its savior—and yours.”
“But, Arch-Druid …” Morris spoke up, giving one last attempt at reverence and misplaced flattery. “We should—”
Solomon waved the staff in a nonchalant upward movement. The ice expanded, ascending fast and covering his face, devouring his head, just as it did to the others, locking their horrified expressions in place.
“Meeting adjourned, my fellow druids. Sleep well.”