by S. K. Sayari
Silence.
Seconds stretched into minutes and still Dimitri said nothing. His lips and nostrils pinched closed, his brow furrowed, and he gripped his arms tightly across his chest. Then a sly look flickered across his face. “Does this bargain involve the exchange of coin?”
Mitera laughed—a dry, brittle sound. “Hardly.”
“Well, let’s think about this for a moment.” He spoke slowly, as if the thoughts weighed him down. “My child, as a newborn, will be equally useless to both of us. I presume that if Annanoe accepts this bargain she’ll have to wait until the child grows to claim them as her helper. And if I’m not to be paid in coin, I’ll need them to assist me on the farm. What use is the goddess’s favour if I have no labour to harvest my fecund olive trees? Allow the child to grow to adulthood before you claim them, and in the meantime, they can assist me on the farm, thus lessening the effort needed for you to make it profitable again.”
Having been a farmer’s daughter herself, this logic appealed to Mitera. “You make a good point. I need to speak to my goddess about it. Meet me here again at the same time tomorrow and I’ll let you know what she decides.”
“Well?” demanded Dimitri the next morning, seated on his now-defunct altar and twirling a broken olive branch between knobby fingers. “What’s the goddess’s verdict?”
Blessed Lady, the man had developed brashness overnight. Mitera descended from her tree and leaned against its trunk. “She’s inclined to view your proposal with favour, as am I.”
Dimitri pursed his lips and rubbed his clean-shaven chin. Perhaps he’d splurged on a barber visit after leaving her the previous day, or found the time and the motivation to use a razor. The rest of his appearance, however, remained shabby.
“Unfortunately, I’ve come up against a bit of a snag. My wife, Khloe. She said she’d curse you, me, and the goddess herself to the other side of Hades if we considered such a thing. She’d no more agree to give up her firstborn than cut off her own hand. In fact, she said she’d willingly give you a limb, or even two. But not her child. Never her child.”
She’d been so certain he’d agree, would offer his child to the goddess as her father had offered her, so long ago. Every dryad was tasked with finding her own replacement, and Mitera had begun to think she’d finally found hers. That, after a thousand years and more of unremitting labour, she could at last go to her rest.
Disappointment rose in a black tide, threatening to thrust her out of the mortal world and transform her from substance to shadow. “Then we have nothing more to discuss. Good day to you, Dimitri of the Olive Grove.”
“Hold on!” He crooked a beckoning finger. “Not so fast. Come here.”
The creature’s audacity knew no bounds. Mitera remained where she was. “You cannot order me around, mortal. If you wish to speak further, you will do so from there.”
Dimitri gave a soft puff of sardonic laughter. “Offended you, have I? My apologies. But taking Khloe’s objections into account and thinking over yesterday’s conversation, I’ve come up with a counter-proposal.” He waited.
Did he think he could force her to speak? Mitera folded her arms and dug her toes into the ground as if about to take root.
Dimitri continued to wait, but when it became increasingly evident that Mitera was prepared to remain there all day and all night, he sighed and gave in. “How about this, then. You take the youngest child instead of the eldest. That will benefit both of us, because as I said yesterday, you’ll expend less energy the more helpers I have. Agreed?”
Mitera considered him. “Is your wife young and nubile?”
“Young and beautiful, inside and out.” He smiled, a distant look in his eyes. “She’ll be a wonderful mother. A loving mother. And I a loving, devoted husband and father.”
“Many times over, I hope. So, how many child-bearing years do you suppose your Khloe has ahead of her? Fifteen, twenty?” He nodded, and Mitera smiled with a feral edge. “Good. After bearing a dozen children or more she’s bound to become less attached to them, don’t you think?”
The prospective father looked startled. “I…I suppose so. Maybe.”
“My goddess and I have discussed this, and she said she is willing to wait. I therefore accept your proposal on her behalf. A year after your wife’s courses cease to flow, you will bring your last child here and give them into the goddess’s keeping. He or she will be my replacement, and for the next twenty years I’ll pour all my remaining energy into reviving your grove.” She moved closer, looming over him. “Now, mortal man, give me your hand.”
Visibly steeling himself, he held it out. Mitera wrapped strong finger-roots around his wrist, and with her other hand pierced his palm through with a sharp and woody nail. He yelped as the blood flowed, soaking into her bark.
“Do you agree to my terms?” Her voice was stern, rasping.
“I agree.” He forced the words through clenched teeth, but other than that initial cry of pain, endured without protest as she withdrew her nail and released his hand, merely cradling it against his chest and rocking slightly. Good. If his progeny inherited that stoicism, it would stand them in good stead when they entered the goddess’s service. Annanoe could be a harsh mistress.
Mitera nodded. “Then it’s done. She will raise them to be her helper. When they are old enough, they will serve Annanoe in my stead and I can pass to the Elysian Fields.”
With a satisfied sigh she lifted her arms, floated into the air, and merged with the nearest grandmother tree.
Panthea, trudging disconsolately through the market in her older sister’s wake, didn’t want to choose a bride gift for her father’s soon-to-be second wife. So many vases, urns, platters, amphora, and drinking vessels to choose from. She would’ve dearly loved to have taken an axe or a scythe to the lot of them. She didn’t want her father to take a second wife. More importantly, she didn’t understand why he claimed that he had to marry again and bring Lymaris into their family.
Syrilda paused before a brown-and-ochre vase decorated with a key pattern and other geometric designs. Inoffensive, but busy. Panthea would have preferred the group of naked warriors, or the bearded man copulating with a goat.
“Oh, this is nice, don’t you think, Thea?” Syrilda bypassed the vase and picked up a particularly hideous black-and-red dish depicting a surprised-looking octopus surrounded by clumps of limp seaweed. Scenting a sale, the merchant began to wax lyrical about the quality of his wares.
Panthea glared at him and propelled her sister onward, past the stalls selling perfumes, jewellery, or sweetmeats. “Not unless you want to use it as a vomit receptacle. Looking at that when I’m eating would make me want to throw up. How about that one over there? Oh! Oh, Great Goddess!” She stopped, one hand to her mouth, the other clutching Syrilda’s shawl.
The older girl peered at her anxiously. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“There’s a woman over there in the olive tree!”
“Where? I can’t see anyone. And why would somebody be climbing a tree in the middle of the market ground? You have an overactive imagination, Thea. Can you please concentrate on the bride gift? The wedding’s only a week away.”
“A week’s not long enough,” muttered Panthea.
Syrilda sighed, repositioned the brightly woven shawl around her slender brown shoulders, and quit the open market for the undercover section. “I know you disapprove, but it’s not your decision. Our father is now a rich man; he can afford to support another wife and many more children. What about this? Every woman needs a mirror.”
“Lymaris is vain enough already. Buy a fan or a hair comb if we absolutely have to offer a gift from the ten of us. Look! There she is again!” Panthea clutched her sister’s arm in agitation. “She’s got green hair, Rilda, the exact colour of the leaves.”
“Nobody has green hair.” Her sister paid for the mirror, adjusted her shawl again, and set out for home.
With a last, worried glance backward, Panthea followed.
She knew she hadn’t imagined the green-haired woman, even if she was commonly acknowledged to be the one among her siblings most given to fancy. The others—four boys and five more girls—were as solid and earthbound as their parents. The only other potential exception was baby Berenice, but she was barely a year old, and it was too soon to tell if she’d inherited her grandmother’s troublesome gift of ‘the sight.’ Grandmother maintained that Dimitri, Panthea’s father, had once possessed it; but he steadfastly denied it, and Panthea had certainly never seen any indication of such a thing.
Ten minutes’ walk along a dusty but well-paved road brought them to an imposing villa, its brightly painted columns and red-tiled roof cheerful in the sunlight. Stands of tamarisk, oak, and chestnut shaded the grounds, and stately pines lined the driveway. Beyond the carefully tended gardens, covering the surrounding foothills and reaching almost as far as the mountain pass, grew row upon row of olive trees—Dimitri’s famous orchards, which were said to produce the best oil on the island, and elsewhere. His markets had expanded beyond his home state and even further afield than the mainland to include the foreign, exotic countries at the far edges of the world.
Warned by Syrilda’s reaction, Panthea didn’t mention the green-haired woman to the rest of her family, but the next morning when she’d completed her chores, she slipped away to the orchards to see if she could see any other similar creatures hiding in their branches.
No sooner had she stepped on the path than the woman appeared. The same woman, and not in a tree. Standing, tall and twisted, directly in front of her.
Panthea’s eyes flew wide and she took an uncertain step back. “You’re real. I didn’t imagine you.” Her voice sounded strained.
The green-haired, woman-shaped, half-tree sighed and closed her eyes. “You should have had no room for doubt if your father had been honest with you. You share his gift, child, and he and I are old acquaintances. Why didn’t he tell you about me? Does he not love you? He promised once that he would. You and all of your siblings.”
Panthea gaped at her. “Of course he loves me. Papa puts family above everything.”
“Yet it seems he’s tired of your mother and seeks to replace her.” The woman turned and headed into the orchard. “Come, walk with me. We have things to discuss.”
Panthea hesitated for a moment. A creature out of legend, a tree-spirit, was asking her to go for a walk, issuing the invitation as casually as one of her sisters might. Calmly, composedly taking a stroll through the olive orchard on a warm summer’s day.
A few paces ahead, the woman paused and turned back. A bite entered her voice. “Well, come on.”
Panthea drew a deep breath, puffed it out between pursed lips, and offered a quick prayer to her family’s patron goddess, Annanoe. Then, feeling simultaneously foolish and excited, she stepped off the path. An insignificant action on the face of things. Yet she felt as if she were abandoning the sane, orderly world inhabited by her family as she entered an unfamiliar place of shifting, unreliable shadows.
Shadows which lengthened and deepened the further she and her guide ventured into the olive grove.
“Tell me,” said the stranger, pausing beneath a heavily laden tree, plucking off a plump black olive and popping it into her mouth, “why do you think your father seeks a new wife?”
She reached for another fruit and Panthea screwed up her face, imagining that intense, bitter taste on her tongue. Nobody ate olives straight from the tree; they needed to be cured and brined to make them palatable. For humans, anyway. Dryads—or whatever this creature was—obviously employed different criteria.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure he does, either.” Panthea twisted her hands together, squinting against a rare shaft of dappled sunlight in search of enlightenment. “He still loves Mother, I’m sure of it. But he says he needs more children and…and Mother agrees with him. You’d think ten would be enough for any couple, especially when none succumbed to childhood illnesses as so many others do.”
The tree-woman growled. “Oathbreaker! Vile betrayer!”
Panthea jumped.
“Your father desires more children to delay the fulfilment of his oath to me. Your sister Berenice belongs to me, girl. As the final fruit of your mother’s womb, she belongs to me. And to my goddess.” She hissed, displaying a row of pointed, brown teeth—like olive pits. Her fingers hooked into claws. “Dimitri’s goddess, too, supposedly.”
She then outlined all that had happened on that very spot twenty years earlier, when it had been a dry and dusty patch of earth dotted with a few thirsty, struggling trees.
“Here’s a message for your father,” concluded Annanoe’s helper. “Call off this wedding and bring me his youngest child as agreed—or face the consequences. And I promise you, he will not like them!”
Panthea blanched and backed away, her heart thundering in her chest. “Wh-what sort of consequ—” she began, forcing the words from a throat suddenly gone dry.
She spoke to empty air. Nothing stirred in the silent orchard. The dryad had vanished.
Stumbling, weeping, she fled back through the trees, through ever-shifting shadows which reached for her with claw-like limbs. Whispers wove through grasping branches and somewhere a crow cawed, its grating call harsh and bleak. None of the warblers, linnets, or thrushes who normally filled the grove with song made any sound, as if they, too, felt that pervasive sense of menace.
To her dismay, on reaching the path once more she discovered that although she’d seemed to spend less than an hour among the trees, the time was close to sunset. She entered the house with a faltering step and tears staining her cheeks.
“Thea, my little bird! Whatever’s wrong? You’ve been gone all day; we were about to send out a search party for you.” Her mother rushed to her and clasped her tightly, then shook her, relieved and furious by turns.
Panthea dropped onto one of the many colourful cushions spread around the living room, nestled between the tiled or marbled tables, potted plants, and vividly painted statues. “I…I need to speak to Papa.” Her voice broke on a sob. “This is serious, Mama.”
“What’s serious? Where have you been?” Her father stumped through the door, his face thunderous. “Your mother was starting to worry.”
“I’m sorry, Papa.” How was she to deliver Mitera’s ultimatum without upsetting him further? Panthea bit her lip, choked back her tears, and blurted out her tale in a jumble of words.
A shadow passed across Dimitri’s face—a look of consternation. Or fear? Panthea had never seen her father display fear before. He quickly controlled his expression, scowling and folding his arms, feet planted firmly apart.
“No.”
“But…but she said she’ll make you pay dearly if you refuse her request, Papa.”
“My wedding to Lymaris will go ahead as planned,” shouted Dimitri, red-faced. “How can you expect me or your mother to agree to give up Berenice? Have you so little love for your sister that you would see her become a dryad, a creature concerned only with the upkeep of the orchards, with no human feelings at all?”
“N-no,” replied Thea, conflicted. “But she said you’d agreed to this bargain. That by taking Lymaris as your second wife, you’ve broken your oath to her. I’m scared, Papa, Mama. I’m really scared.”
“We all are, Thea-love,” explained her mother earnestly, joining Panthea on the cushions. “We knew, all those years ago, that we could never, ever give any of you up. But we needed the goddess’s favour. So, between us, we devised this plan. A woman’s child-bearing years are finite, but a man can procreate well into old age. And the richer a man becomes, the more wives he’s allowed. So, as each of us reaches the age where she ceases to bleed, your father will simply take another wife. The goddess’s helper is old. We hoped that by the time your father joins his ancestors, she would have already gone to her gods.”
A prickle of uneasiness crept across Panthea’s shoulders. “Oh, Mama,” she whispered, one hand to her mouth, “I don
’t think that will work. She seemed quite certain that she had a claim on Berenice.”
A shadow passed across the open window. The shutters banged violently against the wall, and a ululating howl sounded from the direction of the orchard.
All three turned toward it, aghast, and in an upstairs room the baby started to cry. They heard Syrilda hush her, then begin crooning a lullaby. Against the wall the shadow grew, crept through the window frame, and crawled across the floor.
“How foolish do you suppose me to be?” asked the dryad Mitera, Annanoe’s handmaid, transforming from shadow to substance before their horrified gazes. “My wording was perfectly clear. A year after your wife’s courses cease to flow, I said. In other words, now!”
“But you didn’t name her,” faltered Dimitri. “You didn’t specify Khloe; you just said my wife. Once I wed Lymaris it will be her youngest child you’re entitled to, and Lymaris is young. You could have another two decades or more yet to wait.”
Mitera sneered. “Foolish, foolish mortal. I said, and I quote, ‘I’ll put my energy toward reviving your grove for the next twenty years.’ That time is now up, and I’ve come to collect my apprentice.”
Khloe screamed. “No! No, I won’t allow it, you can’t take my baby!”
The dryad snarled. “Very well, Oathbreaker. If you can’t bear to be parted from her, you and she and the rest of your accursed family can remain together indefinitely. I’ll still need a helper, though, and as you’ve broken the terms of our contract, so can I. I won’t wait until Berenice is old enough to be trained. I’ll take Panthea instead, and she can begin her lessons immediately. Come, child, come and meet your goddess.”
Darkness enveloped the villa. Eager, pulsating darkness, with a pale, gleaming figure at its core. More than twice life-size, with long, wheaten hair shrouding her nakedness and garlands of wildflowers looped around her long neck. Unlike Mitera, her expression conveyed regret rather than judgement. She shook her head sadly and brought her hands sharply together.