Drosera nodded, taking in the sight of me standing among the forest, naked, and in the power of my ancestors. “You must remember not to fall back on your huldra abilities when you retrieve the succubi. With the hemlock in your system, those will not work and the Hunters will cut you down. As the hemlock is a plant, your huldra abilities that you share with a plant will be within your grasp. Those not in common with a plant, seeing in the dark and elevated scent, will be suppressed by the hemlock. But pressing poison into flesh, this will be deadly. Over time the poison will fade from your system. You are made of the stuff of plants, but not fully plant. The hemlock knows this and will seek to get out.”
She turned and began walking away.
I pulled my roots up from the earth and chased after her. “Aren’t you going to take me home?” I asked. The power of my ancestors I’d just felt covering me now dissipated with the thought of wandering the Portland streets in broad daylight, naked.
She didn’t turn to answer. “I have not the energy for another transport, not with you—”
I cut her off, sure of where she was going with that. “How will I get back to the house then? You said the snake Wilds are on their way.” Funny how one can go from I shall smite my enemies to please take me home in the blink of an eye.
“I will send your partner sister to retrieve you,” she said, gaining distance on me somehow.
“Shawna?” I asked. “She may not be up for it, she’s—”
But before I finished my sentence, the rusalka disappeared like mist on a sudden breeze, and I stood in a public park amidst birds singing their morning hellos, greeting the sun rising in the sky. Rather than waste my time standing around, waiting, I went to work connecting to different roots, asking for their guidance, and receiving whatever they were kind enough to offer.
Twenty-Seven
Shawna bounded up the hill, past evergreens, ferns, and wild ginger. “Are you okay?” she said on bated breath as she ran, her dreads smacking against her cheeks. The reusable shopping bag she carried, with what I assumed were my clothes, bopped the side of her leg with each stride she took. “I came as soon as Drosera told me where to find you.” A fresh dirt mark covered the right knee on her jeans, causing me to assume she’d fallen at least once in her search for me.
She reached me and checked me over before resting her hands on her knees to catch her breath. “I’m so out of shape,” she panted. “I need to do more physical activities.”
I almost corrected her, reminded her that we’d just fought a complex full of Hunters a week and a half ago. But then I remembered and shifted my point mid-sentence. “No, you fought the Hunters…at the winery.”
“Yeah, no,” she said, standing up straight and throwing the bag of clothes to me. “That wasn’t endurance. That was pure revenge keeping me swinging.”
I caught the grocery bag and pulled out a pair of jeans and a dark grey sweatshirt. I shook the clothing before putting it on, in search of underwear, but she hadn’t brought any, it seemed. Commando it’d be.
“Hey,” I said to change the subject as I dressed and also to share my newest major revelation with my partner sister. “Drosera told me about this cool thing our ancestors used to do. Want to try it?” I played it down, but not on purpose.
Shawna smiled. “I don’t know; does it involve sacrificing children?”
I laughed with my partner sister for the first time in what felt like forever. When the joking stopped, I showed her how to grow her roots into the earth and connect to other roots. I thought to hold her hand after she’d taken off her shoes and socks and allow roots to grow into the ground. I wanted to know if the roots reacted differently, more intensely, to two bonded huldras. But I didn’t want to risk pushing the poison into her, not that it’d hurt her. I just knew I had to hold onto the stuff until I met a Hunter who got in my way of rescuing succubi.
Another idea appeared in my mind. “Are you connected?” I asked as she stood beside an evergreen. I hadn’t suggested she absorb poison hemlock because I didn’t intend on bringing her to the Oregon complex, which, I fully realized was my plan—to accompany the snake Wilds to the complex and release the succubi.
“I am,” Shawna said in a whimsical voice.
Yeah, she was feeling it.
“Okay, stay connected and I’ll try to connect to the same tree, see if it’ll link in to us both at the same time,” I said, already closing my eyes and concentrating on growing roots from the soles of my feet.
We each stood on opposite sides of the mid-sized evergreen. For living in a park, it was big. But compared to those I’d tree-jumped deep in forests full of old growth, this one was young. Its russet bark matched my own and a tiny smile pulled at my lips.
It being her first time, I assumed Shawna’s roots would connect with the evergreen’s slightly below the surface, so I pushed mine a bit deeper. Moist earth moved out of the way as my roots bore deeper; a sense of energy filled me as though the soil’s nutrients absorbed into my body and fed me. My roots found their target and wound around the much thicker tree roots. A shot of energy coursed through my veins. I shuddered.
With us both connected, the intense exchange between the three of us transcended words. Shawna’s emotions spoke to me as though they were my own. I suddenly longed for my “old self” back, for the days I had been ignorant to the darker things in life. A cloud of heavy worry caused my shoulders to slump forward and yet the fire to overcome raged in my heart. It felt like a necessary anger, the kind that creates steps to help you ascend the pit of despair and show you what you’re made of.
“I am like a great evergreen,” Shawna whispered as though she answered my concern for her after learning what stirred in the depths of her heart. “Winds may try to beat me down, Faline, but my roots will keep me from falling.”
“Our ancestors are older than the Hunters,” I whispered in return, my confidence bolstered by her own. “The trees and the huldra. If we trust, in ourselves and our heritage, the Hunters trying to control us will look as silly as a human running full force into an evergreen and expecting the evergreen to be the injured party.”
Shawna responded, “Ask her a question, this tree.”
“How?” I asked.
Through your roots, was the answer, though not with words. A knowing simply popped into my head.
I couldn’t tell if the response came from Shawna or the tree, but I was in awe.
Why is Marcus such a comfort to you? I found my mind asking through the roots—a question I’d been secretly wrestling with since we’d rescued her. Why at the Hunter complex and after, did you reach for him and not me?
My embarrassing inner struggles with my sister, my hidden hurt feelings, had betrayed me. My eyes fluttered open to see if she was giving me the death stare, because of course she couldn’t help who she reached for in her moment of need. Of course it had nothing to do with our bond. She had every right to be insulted by my question.
Shawna only stood in front of me, eyes closed, a relaxed smile pulling her lips slightly upward.
I closed my eyes, too.
I saw only monsters in the room that day, Shawna answered through the roots, her words finding their way to my mind, leaving her voice behind. I had never seen a huldra in full force, and yours was shocking, how you tore into my captor. I’d assumed Marcus was just another Hunter, until the rusalka Azalea showed herself and calmed me. She assured me he was safe. I grabbed onto him, and I don’t know, I feel safe now whenever he’s near.
Her explanation crushed me. Guilt for my sudden jealousy that she saw Marcus as her safe person quickly followed, and mixed with shame for scaring my sister, for the monster she saw me to be.
“We should be heading back now,” Shawna said, abruptly, stiffly.
She disconnected from the roots, leaving my soul with a sudden emptiness I hadn’t noticed before. I flung my eyes open to see her watching me.
“Is something the matter?” I asked.
“I know you
could you feel me,” she said. “Through the roots.”
I nodded.
“I could feel you too.” She waited a breath. “You love him.”
I searched her eyes for a hint of opinion on the matter, but she gave none.
“I won’t leave you, Shawna,” I heard myself proclaiming. And I meant every word with all of my being. “I still want to grow old with you, raise our daughters together.”
I thought of what came after bringing a new generation of huldra into the world. “Mourn our mothers together,” I finally said, hoping my mother still lived. My heart broke a little more when I realized that even if my mother lived, even if I rescued her, I’d only have a few years left with her before she went the way of her mother.
“How, though, if you stay with him?” Shawna asked. She bit her bottom lip and I wondered if she was holding tears back. I wondered if she’d felt abandoned at the Hunter’s cabin, if she feared I’d never come for her. Questions I should have asked her when we were connected through the roots.
“I’ll never let you go, Shawna,” I declared, my voice serious. “You’re my partner sister until the day we die. No male will change that, whether I love him or not.”
Her sullen face cheered. “Do I need to make you pinky-swear?” she asked with a hesitant laugh.
“Better than that,” I said. “I’ll root swear.”
Shawna and I hadn’t made it to the first cement step on the yellow house’s front porch before Marcus swung the door open and rushed out to greet us.
“Faline Frey!” he said, standing with legs spread apart, blocking our path into the home. “You scared the shit out of me. I woke up, and no one could find you. We’ve been out looking.”
Shawna disregarded his intensity by swatting at the air in front of her. “Please, I told the others when Drosera summoned me. They knew Faline was safe.”
Olivia peeked her head around the corner of the hall on the main level and directly in front of us. She snickered and Marcus turned to see who laughed at him.
“You knew?” he asked her, throwing his hands in the air. “But you were looking for her too.”
She burst out laughing and nodded, revealing herself. “I told them when we got to the convenience store, while you were on the next street over,” she said after she took a breath.
“Damn,” he said under his breath. “That’s fucked up.” He shook his head.
Marcus moved to stand at my side and put his arm over my shoulders. I kept hold of Shawna’s hand as the three of us walked toward the door together.
“It is,” I answered, not even trying to whisper because if Marcus could hear it, my coterie could too. I patted his butt with my free hand. “But think of it this way. Olivia wouldn’t joke with you if she disliked you.”
Right before I parted ways with him so we could single-file through the door, he whispered, “So they’re on joking terms with me now?”
I thought to ask him why he was whispering around a bunch of huldra, but my sister beat me to it, in a roundabout way.
“Only when the joke is on you,” Olivia yelled, hopping over the back of the couch to sit on its cushions.
Observing the two supernaturals, the ex-Hunter and the huldra, trying to navigate the foreign terrain of a peaceful relationship made me wonder how well we’d get along with the new Wilds headed our way. Did they have a sense of humor? Or would trusting these women leave us worse off and feeling like someone had played a cruel joke at our expense?
Twenty-Eight
If asked a month ago to tell everything I knew about the snake Wild Women and their Goddesses, I probably would have talked for all of three seconds, maybe five. As far as I knew, the snake Wilds were succubi and the Goddess who created them was Lilith. Yeah, I would have listed the few details I’d learned about the succubi from our teachers, the Hunters. But all-in-all, I had been clueless.
Lately, though, my mother’s stories were rising up within me. As though, like sediment, they rested at the bottom of my subconscious until life came and stirred it all up. Now her words made their way into my dreams and random thoughts. The snake Wilds had the most to prove, she’d remind me, as they were the most demonized of us all.
Snakes were once regarded as sacred beings, able to shed their skin and live, able to access underground, under rocks, explore the unseen, the darker parts of life. “It is this reason,” my mother would whisper while pushing strands of my red hair from my face, “that the snake itself was identified as evil incarnate, because men could not understand its movements or its ways, but most importantly, because throughout ancient belief systems, the snake and the Goddess, the snake and women, were one in the same.”
That memory blossomed to another. “You know,” she’d once said, her own mind in a far off place, “some ancients believed the soul lived in the gut, and I wonder if references to the snake’s belly upon the ground meant the soul was nearer the earth, or if it meant the soul was tainted with earth.”
I paced the living room pondering that exact question. I had only just realized it, but my mother had left me with more questions than answers. Had she unraveled them all, only to place the knots before me to unravel as I grew? Or had she just begun the mission of finding our truth and hoped I would complete it?
I jumped in place when a car door slammed shut. They were here, the snake Wild Women. My stomach twisted and I caught myself wringing my hands. My sisters jumped up to flank me. My aunts went out front to greet the foreign Wilds as almost a planned welcome of dignitaries, being that they were of similar ages. Most of the Wild Women currently exchanging pleasantries would fight the Hunters alongside one another, as post-menopausal women.
Marcus kept quietly occupied in the great room downstairs. We figured he should stay out of this all. And of course, Aleksander, visiting again, stayed with him. Part of me waited for a blow-up from downstairs, the likes of which would blow the door off the place and expose two supernatural males at each other’s throats. But, if all went as planned, the two would stay out of the way until we felt the snake Wilds were ready to make their acquaintance. Past experiences made me assume they’d welcome the incubus much more than the ex-Hunter.
“It’ll be okay,” Shawna offered quietly along with a side-glance. “They’re here to help.”
Shawna’s voice, not her words, reminded me of our morning in the woods, of grounding deep enough to access the wisdom of the tree. I’m not sure when I’d gotten it in my head that I was always inferior, but in that moment, I realized I was an equal to the Wilds now tromping up the porch steps, chatting.
I’d never learned “my place” from my mother or my aunts. But my first check-in at the Hunter complex, complete with receiving an unwanted thigh tattoo of my five-digit identification number and hours of introductory indoctrination, slapped me with a high dose of reality. I’d turned fifteen (I was a late bloomer) and started my period, absolutely thrilled to be a woman. Maybe it was my mother’s stories, or maybe it was the way Freyja moved me during my quiet reflection times, but even as a young girl I looked forward to menstruation as though I were about to take part in the most sacred of rites. And that’s how I saw it too, as utterly sacred.
Until, of course, the month following my first period, when I attended my first check-in at the Hunter’s complex. I remember wishing my aunts and older sisters had prepared me for what I’d walked into, for the way the Hunters would, layer by layer, peel back my dignity and shine a light on my vulnerability. My back had been investigated under a surgical light as though they were inspecting my biggest fault of all, my huldra, my Wild nature. Next was their use of needles to force ink under my skin without my consent, to mar my body, and eventually control it. And last, I was made to sit, sore and broken, as John stood before me, explaining the rules and conduct of a Wild Woman in Washington State.
It had been traumatic, I now realized, and the root of my constant inferiority complex.
The front door swung open and my aunt Renee walked through.
She stepped just inside as a tall, striking woman with long black and silver hair and darkly tanned skin stood in the doorframe behind her.
“Faline, this is Anwen,” Renee said in a strong voice. “And Anwen, this is my niece, Faline Frey.”
Anwen eyed me before closing the gap between us and wrapping her arms around my shoulders in an embrace. It took me a second to catch up before I hugged her back. She smelled of tea tree oil and sand. She wore a bright Indian-inspired top and dark blue jeans with sandals. An Egyptian-looking tattoo of an eye covered the back of her right hand.
“Thank you for coming,” I said into her ear with absolute gratitude.
“It is my pleasure,” she said, pulling away to look me over.
“You huldra aren’t very tall, are you?” she laughed. I shot a look to my aunts who were laughing too. Clearly this had already been discussed outside, probably in relation to trees being our strongest connection to nature.
I had no response for that one, other than waving the others to come in.
When the others entered the kitchen, leading to the living room, and my aunt Patricia shut the door behind them, I counted seven new Wild Women. Seven. That was all the rusalki sent?
“I sense fear rising up in you, an emotion that was not present when I arrived,” Anwen said, tilting her head in confusion. “What is it about us that unnerves you so?”
I inhaled deeply and then exhaled, to calm myself. My statement sounded more dignified than I felt. “There are only seven of you and so many more Hunters. We have only two members of our coterie who are post-menopausal, who can join you. That’s not enough.” I shook my head and sat on the couch to keep from pacing.
“Allow me to introduce those who will be aiding you on this mission before you dismiss their contributions,” Anwen said matter-of-factly.
Yup, I’d known this Wild not even ten minutes and I’d already offended her. An ambassador, I was not.
Wild Women Collection Page 45