The Dangers of Touch: A Short Story

by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Think like a tree?" she said, confused.

  "Put your arms around this one," he said, tapping the trunk of one of the trees in the middle of the thicket. When she obeyed, he sat behind her and hugged her, his chest against her back, his arms going around her to hug the tree with her, his cheek pressed to hers. He was large and warm and smelled like sweat and woodsy aftershave and somewhat soured coffee. "Okay," he whispered, "you with me? Open up to this tree."

  Her mind nested in his, they thought their way past the bark and into the tree. It was not thought as she understood it. The tree was aware and alive, its leaves spread to the sun, fizzing with activity, its roots under the soil, drawing in water, spreading fingertips in search of more; its bark, like skin, growing and shedding and growing, and its circulatory systems carrying food and water everywhere. There was no real center of thought. The tree was alive in all its length, excited by all the positive living it was doing now that the sun was up, aware of the breeze and the insects and the birds. Skye thought her way into its patterns, riding Kit's mind, damping her surprise, her realization that thinking like a plant was what he did with his life. Quiet, now. I am a maple. No. Tree. Life. Sun. Water. Earth. Growth. Ahhh.

  She opened her eyes because something touched her, something foreign to her existence: not one of the little fast-livers that flicked in and out, not one of the gnawers, not water from the sky, not a tunneler under the earth, not an eater, not the wind.

  She opened her eyes and saw a pale gray-green face staring at her out of darkness, phosphorescent light glimmering along its brows, shining from its eyes. Its silvery hair glowed. Its features looked human, but she knew, in her waking mind, that it was not human, that it was Castanya, and she was old enough now to be in danger from its touch.

  She looked away from it. Everywhere else was dark. She became aware that her whole body ached, that she was exhausted and sticky, and something hot was leaning against her. Kit. She jerked her shoulder, trying to wake him up. His breath against her cheek was silent and tree-slow and smelled now of green instead of coffee.

  "Kit?" she said. Her voice was rusty. It was night. How long had they been tree-thinking? What if they had missed the shuttle back to their ship? Captain Zamaroff would be looking for them, Maggie would be looking for them; something must be happening back at the spaceport.

  "Unless they've manufactured some story to explain our disappearance," Kit murmured, answering her thought. "They would have to, wouldn't they? If you're supposed to lure psis to the planet and leave them here…what?" His tone was full of startled awe.

  In the circle of Kit's arms, Skye glanced around, and saw that the Castanya's hand lay on Kit's arm. "Light lord," she said, her voice quavering. "Do not touch us, please!"

  "New think," said the Castanya, its voice light and liquid. "New-for-human think." It stroked Kit's arm, edged closer, touched his face. His arms dropped from around Skye; suddenly he was no longer leaning against her. She turned, every muscle in her body protesting. For a moment the pain blinded her. When she could see again, she looked up and saw Kit standing, his eyes wide, as the Castanya touched him, its long slender fingers drifting across his face, down his arms. It knelt and touched his ankles. It rose and reached for the sticktites on his shirt. He stood still, his eyes fixed on the spot where the Castanya had been, as it tugged his shirt off.

  "Kit," wailed Skye, and she crept to him and hugged his leg.

  The Castanya laid a hand flat on Kit's chest. His eyes fell shut.

  Skye wrapped her arms and legs around both his legs and pressed her forehead against his thigh, hoping that even through cloth he would feel her thoughts, etiquette be damned. Don't go, she thought, don't leave me here.

  He put his hand on her head. "I'd love to stay and talk with you," he said to the Castanya, "but we have to get back to our ship."

  "New think," said the Castanya. "Tree think. We think. Come."

  Kit leaned over and gently unwound Skye from his legs. "Come on," he said, helping her to her feet, "I guess we have to go with her."

  "We don't, we can't, Kit," she said. All her life she had heard stories, stories that went back to the colony's earliest years. No one had ever fought the Castanya; negotiations, carried on through Syrillian interpreters, had been fruitful, peaceful. The Castanya granted specific pieces of land, with provisions for colony expansion and the establishment of linking trade routes between settlements. In exchange, they asked that their own lands be inviolate, and that they be allowed to invite some of the newcomers to live with them in the forest. The newcomers were free to say no. No one ever said no to the Castanya, though. They came, they approached someone, the someone always went away with them.

  Occasionally, babies came back.

  "If we go with her, we'll never get back to the Plier," she said. "You want to give up your job? You want to never see your hydroponics section again?"

  "Don't be silly. This'll only take a little while. She says she'll introduce me to her trees."

  "Kit — ”

  "You can go on back to the spaceport now, if you want."

  "I'm not invisible anymore. I don't think I could get to the spaceport before my family finds me."

  "Come with me," he said, and smiled at her. The Castanya had closed slender fingers around his wrist. It stared at her too, it features human, its expression unreadable.

  "She doesn't want me," she said.

  "Tree think," said the Castanya, coming back. It laid its hand on her forehead, and she knew what it was to be wanted absolutely, for the first time in her life. The Castanya's touch whispered, "Come, loved one, into our embrace, breathe the air of our love, be forever desired and fulfilled and contented, come where your welcome lasts your lifetime and beyond. Never be alone again. Come live in our light, which we will give you gladly."

  "Oh," said Skye. The Castanya took her hand, and Kit's, and walked off across the Hub Park leading them both. Gembugs flew out of the evening air and landed on the three of them, starring them with bioluminescence. As Skye walked, she felt as if she were swimming in a warm ocean, buoyed up by love and appreciation. She walked past two uncles and her brother Ashlin, smiling at them without even thinking about it, noticing their stricken expressions, feeling a gentle concern, but no real distress.

  They walked quiet streets. Most of the houses were dark, and the sky was dark except for the stars. The only traffic they saw was a police flitter that slowed as it passed them and then moved on. She sensed her relatives following them, and glanced back once or twice to see that her brother and her uncles had been joined by her older sister and her grandmother; the five walked along behind, their expressions hopeless. You will never know, Skye thought. If you ever knew, you would have given this to me so I could give it back. She closed her eyes and walked without fear, swimming in the vast ocean of love and regard that would never let her stumble.

  Eventually, they walked out of the city and into the forest, where the casta trees whispered with their new leaves, and the other trees, some indigenous, some escapees from city gardens, joined branches. The Castanya led them deep into the forest and up into the green circle room of the biggest casta tree Skye had ever seen. The Castanya placed Kit's hand against the glowing silver bark and released him. He put his arms around the tree's braided trunk, and it twisted in his embrace, until space opened between its twined trunks. He pressed his face and his arms in among them and the tree writhed again, trapping him. For an instant Skye felt alarm. The Castanya lifted her in its arms and carried her away to another place, a nesting place with a floor softened by tree cotton, where someone waited for her, opening his arms, accepting her, embracing her, promising a love that would never end. She fell asleep in his arms, relaxing as completely as she could ever remember doing.

  When she woke up, spots of daylight dazzled her. They fell through a canopy of leaves, and as the leaves shifted in a breeze, the spots danced. She sat up. Her stomach was clamoring for food.

  A Castanya drifte
d into the nesting place, carrying a ceramic bowl from which steam rose. By daylight it looked impossibly tall and thin and ghostly, no longer glowing, but nearly translucent anyway. It settled silently in front of her, plucked a wooden spoon from a pocket in its robe, dipped the spoon into the bowl, and held it out to her. She opened her mouth, and accepted warm, nut-flavored gruel. It fed her as though she were a baby bird, spooning food into her every time she opened her mouth. She reached for her feeling of contentment and belonging, and found it wrapping round her like a second skin. I lived here most of my life, she thought, and never came home until now.

  The Castanya put down the bowl and stroked her cheek with the backs of its fingers.

  "Is this an illusion?" Skye said out loud. "Do you just make me feel this way because you're going to do something horrible to me?"

  It touched her lips with a warm finger. It neither smiled nor frowned, but she felt its amusement.

  Another person entered the nesting place, a slim person, not so tall as most Castanya. Skye stared at her for a long moment before she recognized —"Megan. Megan? Are you all right?"

  Megan came and sat with them, her face serene, expressionless. "I'm — fine. I have forgotten. Talking so clumsy."

  "They didn't hurt you, then?"

  "Oh, no," said Megan. The edges of her lips tugged up, a forgotten smile. "No, no, Skye. It's just as Leyelly told you last night. Love and cherish like we never knew. Nobody leaves. What could be better than this?"

  Skye thought about standing on ship's steel, watching a new planet rise in the wallscreen, wondering what would be down there, who she would meet. She thought about the intricate and beautiful mathematics of skipping, and how she had a feel for the balancing of the forces that ran the ship's randomizer, how it locked into the threads of the universe, twisted them just so, and pulled itself from one side of a wrinkle to another. She used to wonder if psi felt like that, a satisfying power, trustworthy, right inside one's own head. Later, she had decided she never needed to know; she had her job, and she loved it, and that was all she needed.

  "Well," she said, and the Castanya touched her face, running its fingertips down her cheek, along her jawbone. "Maybe it's not better, but it's good," she said. How bitter she had been when her family sent her offplanet to tech school on Hitherto. It had taken her two years to swallow her rage and realize how much she loved mathematics. It had taken her until this moment to discover how much she loved her job. She turned to face the Castanya. "I want to go home," she said, in a small voice.

  "Yes," it said.

  "What if my ship's left orbit? How long have I been here?"

  "Overnight," it said.

  "Just one?"

  "Just one."

  There were four leaves scheduled, sixteen hours each: two Starsedge days, and she and Kit had been on first leave. The Plier should still be in orbit. Captain Zamaroff would be screeping mad by now.

  "I think I can still make it back, if my family doesn't stop me. Will you let me go?"

  "We will walk with you. We will keep you safe."

  She paused, stared at the bowl, still half-full of gruel. "What about Kit? Did that tree eat him?"

  "No, oh, no," said the Castanya. "They thought together."

  It figured. Sometimes Kit spent whole days in hydroponics without coming out.

  "Is he going to stay here?"

  "No," said the Castanya. "You are both too old, too worldway."

  "They find us when we're young," said Megan, "before our hearts have other homes."

  "Megan, would you have tested positive for psi?"

  "Oh, sure."

  "So you would have been all right if you stayed in the city."

  "No," said Megan. "Most people who live there aren't. Not the way I want to feel all right. If I lived in the city and watched them — helped them — discard people like you because they thought there was something wrong with you, I would be sick in my soul. Here, there aren't any tests to pass."

  "Oh," said Skye, and then Kit was at the entrance to the nesting place, looking frazzled and happy, still shirtless, one hand closed around something small. Skye jumped up. "Are you ready to go home yet?" she asked.

  "Yes," he said, giving her his broadest, stupidest smile.

  They found a taxi stand almost as soon as they entered the city, and the Castanya climbed in with them. Skye couldn't remember ever seeing a Castanya inside anything human-built. When the cab stopped at the spaceport, she used her credit wand to pay; Kit had lost his with his shirt in Hub Park. They walked down the corridor toward the shuttle launch, the Castanya keeping pace, and everybody native to Starsedge backed away from them, terrified, and the visitors from offworld stared. No matter how many studies the archaeologists published about the ruins in Sinhalie, that was a culture the Castanya had abandoned; they were one of the most secret races in the known planets.

  Skye's sister was standing watch in front of bodyscan, and she started forward when she saw Skye, and backed away when she saw the Castanya. "Don't ever touch me again," Skye said to her, "don't ever snarl up my thoughts again! And tell everybody else to leave me alone, too."

  "But — ” said her sister.

  The Castanya stroked Skye's cheek, then reached toward her sister's face. Her sister backed away, then turned and ran.

  "What is going on?" asked Captain Zamaroff, rising from a comfichair in the waiting area near bodyscan. She looked midway between angry and puzzled.

  "It's a long story," said Skye.

  "With your good will, it has a happy ending," said Kit.

  "Well, let's assume that," said the captain. "I'm so mad at the local authorities right now I can scarcely spare any anger for you two, especially if you'll tell me the truth instead of the pack of lies I've been hearing about you being recruited by local industry. You haven't been seduced off my ship by the lure of gold mining ocean water, have you?"

  "Nope," said Kit. "I need to get something illegal through the bodyscan, Captain. Can you fix it for me?"

  She glanced around, saw that no one was watching, held out a hand. He dropped five silver seeds into it, and she tucked them into her diplomatic pouch. "How much trouble is this going to be?" she asked.

  "A strengthened relationship with the indigenous population here," said Kit, glancing at the Castanya, who nodded, once up, once down.

  "I was wondering," said the captain. "I've made planetfall here fourteen times, and I've never seen a member of your race before. Greetings and salutations." She held out her hand.

  Skye looked at the casual invitation to touch, remembering everything she had heard since childhood about the touch of the Castanya leading one out of one's life and into mystery. She had seen the other side of mystery. She had felt the touch, and she had found her way back to the life she wanted.

  The Castanya raised its hand, laid its palm on the back of the captain's hand. The captain staggered, swayed for a moment; Kit caught her, steadied her. "Oh," she moaned. Her eyes fell shut, then flicked open, and after a moment of daze, her eyebrows lowered and she stared at the Castanya.

  "Greetings," it said. It gripped her hand, then let go.

  "What?" said the captain.

  "I must go now," it said. It patted Skye's cheek, touched Kit's lips, and slipped off down the corridor.

  "Tell me," said the captain.

  "Wait till we get on the shuttle," Kit said.

  "Wait till we're on our way home," said Skye.

  =End=

  About the Author

  Over the past thirty years, Nina Kiriki Hoffman has sold adult and YA novels and more than 250 short stories. Her works have been finalists for the World Fantasy, Mythopoeic, Sturgeon, Philip K. Dick, and Endeavour awards. Her fiction has won a Stoker and a Nebula Award.

  A collection of her short stories, Permeable Borders, was published in 2012 by Fairwood Press.

  Nina does production work for the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. She teaches through Lane Community College. She lives in
Eugene, Oregon.

  For a list of Nina's publications, go to: http://ofearna.us/books/hoffman.html.

  Connect with the Author

  You can connect directly with the Nina Kiriki Hoffman through Facebook.

  Other Nina Kiriki Hoffman Titles

  You can find the following titles online. The links below will allow you to purchase directly from Amazon or read free fiction online.

  Short Fiction:

  "Trophy Wives," by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Family Tree" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Escapes" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "The Ghosts of Strangers" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Ghost Hedgehog" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "How I Came to Marry a Herpetologist" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "The Weight of Wishes" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Key Signatures" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Haunted Humans" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Zombies for Jesus" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Fast Wedded to the Ground" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "A Wolf in Holy Places" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman