Free The Other Tree by D. K. Mok Page B

sprawling online profile and engagement photos. She’d had to cut it short after Luke yelled for the third time “Don’t scrapbook and drive!”
    Lyon’s Crossing was a lightly wooded area, smelling of fresh sap and crushed leaves. The dirt here was light and dusty, but when Chris dug a little deeper, it became a rich, crumbly loam.
    “What are you doing?” asked Luke.
    “Nothing,” said Chris, patting the dirt back into place. “Just looking at an interesting plant.”
    They walked quickly through the pale trees, racing against the dying light. The rough pathway steadily narrowed, becoming a faint trail of trampled grass. Insects began to chirp as the orange light sank lower.
    “You say a homeless guy told you about this?” said Chris.
    “You say an eccentric curator told you about this?” returned Luke.
    Perhaps there’s an advantage to throwing money around and having people proffer things on shiny platters , thought Chris as she stumbled over a protruding root.
    She slapped at a hovering mosquito.
    “Do they have dengue fever in Italy?” asked Chris.
    “Did you even read the travel guide aside from the food sectio—”
    Chris drew a sharp breath, and Luke followed her gaze. The grassy hill sloped upwards, and a crumbling structure stood upon the peak, silhouetted against the red sky. As they approached, they could see the remains of a small chapel, built from smooth blocks of pale granite.
    Through the door, they could see that huge sections of the elegantly domed roof had caved in, littering the dirt floor with broken slate. The walls had also crumbled away in places. Inside, four short rows of wooden pews lined a wide aisle, the timber long since rotted into mulch, still bearing the faint odour of frankincense. It looked as though the marble altar had been broken up and carted away, leaving only the jagged stumps of its legs.
    The ruined chapel lay silent aside from the shuffling of crows perched atop the crumbled walls. Chris’s gaze was drawn to the large mosaic above the tabernacle, still vivid beneath the grime. Colourful tiles depicted a large tree standing in a bountiful garden, its branches spread wide across the chancel wall. Glassy red fruit hung from its branches, catching the light of the setting sun.
    “Towards the end, he had Eden motifs everywhere,” said Chris. “Sigils, banners, inscriptions. He started to believe they were protecting him, holding death at bay.”
    There had been a note of detached fascination in Rnynw’s voice as she recounted Abbaci’s final years, but Chris felt a twinge of empathy with the man. Even now, she tried not to think of what Liada must have gone through, feeling the cold, hollow desperation growing as she sank closer to the end, knowing there was no escape, no save, no reset button. Just a final, irreversible end.
    Chris shivered, sweeping her gaze around the chapel.
    “Apparently, he was buried with a custom-made talisman around his neck—” said Chris.
    Luke looked briefly alarmed.
    “But we’re not that desperate,” said Chris quickly.
    Luke trod towards the partially collapsed walls of the chapel, inspecting mosaic Stations of the Cross that bore no resemblance to the events of the crucifixion. Instead, they depicted disturbingly unfamiliar scenes of fire, floods, and bloodied swords. Each station portrayed a different calamity, like glimpses into the mind of a man obsessed with death. Luke pulled out his digital camera and photographed the various mosaics.
    Chris searched the empty alcoves of the chapel, every hollow space now filled with decomposing leaves. She looked up into the small cupola, long broken into a jagged skylight. Sunset tinged the sky a soft purple, and the evening stars were starting to glimmer.
    “There’s nothing Sumerian or map-like in these mosaics,” said Luke.
    There were two kinds of people in the world. Those who looked up, and those who looked down.
    Chris scraped her foot into the damp mulch on the floor.
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