Which was my brother’s backhanded way of telling me what he thought of me.

“I think we all know I’m not smart enough for that,” I said. “Eyes open, everyone. Thomas, pull her up to the dock. Let’s see who’s waiting for us.”

* * *

The island had once been host to a small town, back in the late nineteenth century. It had been home to docks, warehouses, and what might have been a fishery or cannery or something. Probably no more than a couple of hundred people had lived there, at most.

But the people weren’t there anymore. And what was left of the town was like some kind of skeleton lying among the trees that had grown up through the floorboards. I don’t know what happened to the town. Stories from the time mention only mysterious events in the lake, and an influx of new customers to what passed for a psychiatric care facility of the day. The town itself had been expunged from any records, and not even its name remained to be found. The island, likewise, had vanished from the official record—though if I had to guess, I would say that the reigning authorities at the time decided that covering up the island’s existence was the best way to protect people from exposure to it.

Actually, knowing what I know now, I’d guess that the island made them come to that conclusion. The island I’d named Demonreach was very much alive.

Most of the world is, actually. People think that civilization and organized religion have somehow erased the spirits that exist in nature, in all the world. They haven’t. People aren’t the omnipotent force for destruction that we arrogantly believe we are. We can change things, true, but we never really destroyed those old spirits and presences of the wild. We aren’t that powerful. We are very loud and very self-involved, though, so most people never really understand when they’re in the presence of a spirit of the land, what the old Romans called a genius loci.

So, naturally, they also didn’t understand when they were in the presence of a truly powerful spirit of the land—a potent spirit like that of, say, Vesuvius.

Or Demonreach.

I’d been to the island on most weekends up until I got shot, and Thomas had often come with me. We’d used some fresh lumber, some material salvaged from the ruined town, and some pontoons made from plastic sheathing and old tractor-tire inner tubes to construct a floating walkway to serve as a dock, anchored to the old pilings that had once supported a much larger structure. Upon completion, I had dubbed it the Whatsup Dock, and Thomas had chucked me twenty feet out into the lake, thus proving his utter lack of appreciation for reference-oriented humor.

(And I’d thrown him forty feet out with magic, once I got dry. Because come on, he’s my brother. It was the only thing to do.)

The Water Beetle came drifting slowly into the dock, and bumped it gently. You had to be a little bit nimble to get over the side of the boat and onto the floating dock, but fortunately for me you didn’t need to be a gymnast. We’d limned the outer boards of the floating dock in phosphorescent paint, and in the darkness it was a gently glowing, clearly visible outline. I hit the dock and secured the first line on the ring we’d installed, then walked down the dock and caught the second when Thomas threw it to me. Once the boat had been made fast, Thomas lowered the gangplank (a pirate’s life for me!), and Molly padded down it. Thomas came last, buckling on his gun belt, which was currently hung with his ridiculously huge Desert Eagle, just in case we were attacked by a rabid Cape buffalo, and a big old bolo-style machete.

Watching him put the weapons on, I started to feel a little bit naked. I didn’t have any of my usual gear, and I’d survived a bunch of nasty situations because I’d had it. I rubbed my hands against the thighs of my jeans, scowling, and tried not to think of how the only gear I had now consisted of a messenger bag and a talking skull.

Thomas noticed. “Oh. Hey, you need a piece, man?”

“They’re just so fashionable,” I said.

He slipped back aboard and came out with a freaking relic. He tossed it to me.

I caught it, frowning. It was a repeating rifle, a Winchester, complete with the large rounded hoop handle on the lever action. It was seriously heavy, with an octagonal barrel, walnut wood fixtures, and shining brass housing. Elkhorn sights. The gun had a certain comforting mass to it, and I felt like even if it ran out of ammunition, I would still be holding a seriously formidable club. Plus, whatever it was chambered in, a gun that heavy would hardly kick at all. It’d be more like handling a shotgun that pushed against your shoulder, rather than trying to jar it off.

“What am I?” I complained. “John Wayne?”

“You aren’t that cool,” Thomas said. “It’s quick, easy to instinct-shoot, and good to way out past the effective range of a handgun. Lever action, it’ll be reliable, keep working right through the apocalypse.”

Which was a point in its favor, the way my life had been lately. “Rounds?”

“Traditional, forty-five Colt,” he said. “Knock a big man down in one hit and keep him there. Catch.”

He tossed me an ammo belt heavy with metallic shells that were nearly as big around as my thumb. I slung the belt across my chest, made sure the chamber was empty, but with a shell ready to be levered into it, and balanced the heavy gun up on one shoulder, keeping one hand on the stock.

Molly sighed. “Boys.”

Thomas hooked a thumb back at the boat. “I got a machine gun you can have, Molly.”

“Barbarian,” she said.

“I don’t rate a machine gun?” I asked.

“No, you don’t,” Thomas said, “because you can’t shoot. I just gave you that to make you feel better.”

“You ready?” I asked them.

Molly had her little wands out, one in each hand. Thomas swaggered down the gangplank and looked bored. I nodded at them, turned, and took several quick steps off the dock and onto the stony soil of the island.

My link with the island was an extremely solid and powerful bond—but it existed only when I was actually standing on it. Now that I was, knowledge flooded into me, through me, a wave of absolute information that should have inundated my senses and disoriented me entirely.

But it didn’t.

That was the beauty of intellectus, pure universal knowledge. While I stood on the island, I understood it in a way that was breathtakingly simple to experience and understand, but practically impossible to explain properly. Knowledge of the island just flowed into me. I could tell you how many trees stood upon it (17,429), how many had been taken down by the summer’s storms (seventy-nine), and how many of the apple trees currently bore fruit (twenty-two). I didn’t have to focus on an idea, or wrest the knowledge from the island. I just thought about it and knew, the way I knew what my fingers were touching, the way I knew what scents belonged to what foods.

We were alone on the island. That much I knew. But I could also sense a profound unease in the place. Molly’s description had been perfectly accurate. Something was wrong; some kind of horrible strain was upon the island, a pressure so pervasive that the trees themselves had begun to lean away from the island’s heart, stretching their branches toward the waters of the lake. Without my heightened awareness of the island, I never would have been able to sense the shift of inches across thousands and thousands of branches, but it was real and it was there.