Page 371 - TheRedSon_PrintInterior_430pp_5.5x8.5_9-22-2019_v1

sky, howling and climbing, gaining volume. The injured—
or perhaps merely offended, it was impossible to tell—wind
was fast becoming a swirling storm as lightning flashing
through the fiery canopy.
I withdrew the seeds I’d hidden in the lining of my coat—
seeds cut from the apple I’d stolen from the Black Orchard—
and threw them into the night. The effect was immediate,
just as I’d hoped. The lightless Garden of Unduur came
into the shadows, spreading searching tendrils, flinching at
the lightning, leaping across the darkness. All around me,
a great war raged between the incipient alien darkness of
Unduur and the Orange god of the September Woods. Glory
everywhere, and I was damned to leave it behind.
I wandered for some time, drawing closer to the pervious
globes of lost twilight, listening to the din of war. Within
moments, the hanging blots of amber materialized—an
incredible portion of the forest was strung with human Jack-
o’-lanterns, cloaking the night beneath the waft of stolen
twilight, glowing mouths grinning night back into dusk. And
then came music, from where I do not know. But it was my
music, from my dream, from my memory, melodies made
from my soul. Somewhere, a magic lantern show spun into
life, no doubt cast from hollowed-out eyes. The shapes
equally pilfered from my dreams, all of them moving to the
music, outlining my life in undying autumn . . .
I was a fool. I’d failed to reckon my opponent, for Jack
proved more prepared than I could have ever imagined. He
would overwhelm me utilizing every one of my dreams he
could conjure. He threw wonder at me as a squid throws
black clouds of ink. I could barely see for all the reverie
stuffed beneath the ceiling of the forest—even my own trick
with the seeds had served to bolster his attack. Gods of fall
and darkness warring beneath eternal trees of smoldering
twilight, the forest of endless Halloween strung with the
sights and sounds of my own spirit, the finale to a cosmic

374 | Mark Anzalone