The Dryad's Kiss

by Scott VanKirk

  As I attacked, my energy waned, and my punches weakened. All the while, Mark threw taunts at me. I kept thinking of Jen being hurt by Erik and dug deep for extra stamina.

  There, I found the mother lode. I felt like Popeye right after a can of spinach, and used my new-found strength to renew my attacks. Mark started retreating from my blows. I pressed my advantage and threw everything I had into my strikes. An opening presented itself, and I took it. I hit my uncle square in the nose.

  To my surprise, he staggered back and shook his head. Blood started flowing down his nose and again, my anger evaporated, leaving my limbs deadened and my head swirling. While my anger fled, Mark’s didn’t. He came in and took me down with another blow to the stomach.

  I folded up, fell over, and spent the next few minutes trying to catch my breath.

  Mark leaned over me, breathing hard as well. “You okay, kiddo?”

  I couldn’t find the breath to speak, but I nodded anyway. Eventually, my diaphragm unlocked, and I started breathing again. Pain still pounded at me, but with Mark’s help, I finally managed to sit up.

  He laughed and patted my shoulder, dragged an arm across the blood running down his nose, and said, “That is exactly what I mean! You did well. To be perfectly honest, Finn, I didn’t think you had it in you, but when you put your mind to it, you have some strength behind your punches. Well done!”

  Mark took off his bloody shirt, bundled it up, and pressed the cloth against his nose. “You must be pretty sweet on Jennifer.”

  I blushed a bit, and then remembered the taunts he used to get me angry. In a flat voice, I said, “Don’t call her that again. Ever.”

  He had the good grace to back off and apologize, but he didn’t look embarrassed, and that disappointed me.

  “Sorry kiddo, I didn’t know how much it would take to get your blood pumping. I won’t do it again.”

  I took what I could get. “Thanks. Oh, and ‘pussy’? That’s lame. No one says that anymore.”

  He laughed out loud at that one. “Finn, my boy, pussy never goes out of style.”

  I’m sure he could have started a fire from the heat that hit my face. He saw my reaction and laughed again.

  “I think we’re done for the night. Excellent workout! Go home, get a shower, and get some sleep.”

  My legs and arms were lead weights, and I couldn’t bring myself to stand. “I think I’ll just sit her for a few minutes, if you don’t mind.”

  “Ha! I don’t mind, you earned a few minutes’ rest.

  Hey Finn, I’ve got some time next Monday afternoon. Want to stop by then? I’m not sure if I can make it later in the week.”

  I gave him a long considered look until he laughed. I smiled back. “Sure, just as long as it’s not tomorrow.”

  When I managed to scrape up the strength, I headed home. Once there, I said goodnight to my parents, trudged up the stairs, and tried to ignore my shaking muscles and the tender spots on my chest and thighs where Mark had landed particularly effective blows. I fell onto my bed. I never even thought about studying for my dreaded English final.

  That night’s dream started with Spring rubbing herself on my body and nibbling on my ear. She crooned, “This One, I’m here for you.”

  I smiled at the sensual pleasure of her touch, but I didn’t have anything to give her. I met her green eyes and said, “Spring, can we just cuddle tonight? I’m too tired to move.”

  She smirked at me and continued her petting, nibbling, and crooning. She turned around on top of me and left me looking into the New Year. The view and her attentions perked up my interest down below. The sight and sensations were so raw and animal that all thoughts of weariness fled.

  Who would have guessed?

  Finals Week—Thursday And Done

  I moved around in a fog Thursday. I managed to drag myself into class and get started. The first couple of questions dealt with sentence structure and I struggled to get through them. Then, I got to the essay portion of the test. It took a few readings to make any sense out of the essay questions.

  I started in on the first essay, and after writing a few paragraphs, lost track of what I needed to say. I went back over my paragraph to check where I had gotten sidetracked. Apparently, I’d jumped the rail on the first sentence. There was nothing but gibberish on the page.

  I stared at my paper and blinked a few times to try and bring the swimming words into focus, but failed. Unable to think through the fog in my brain, I just picked up my final, threw it in the trash next to the teacher’s desk, and stumbled out of the room. This is the way that school ended—not with a bang, but a whimper.

  That was it; I was officially done with high school, and I had probably flunked English and lost my chance for the scholarship. I couldn’t bring myself to care.

  High school had been four of the best and the worst years of my life, but I couldn’t feel anything after walking out of that English test. A blanket of apathy smothered any excitement or joy; the only thing I felt was a dull sensation of relief. My friends headed to Frankies again, but I blew them off and biked straight home. The only thing I could care about was getting home. Once there, I ate something, and then lay down on the couch in the family room to watch TV. I slid out of the waking world after only a few minutes.

  The next morning, I woke late in the same position on the couch in which I had fallen asleep. For the first time in what seemed like forever, I felt somewhat rested. I rolled off the couch and headed to the kitchen. My mom had left me a note saying that she left pancakes in the oven for me.

  I pulled them out, and, ignoring the heat, I took a bite out of one. It would have made a better building material than breakfast. I tossed the rest in the garbage and got some cereal. That was when I noticed it was one o'clock in the afternoon. Sheesh, I really had been exhausted.

  I tried not to focus on the mess I had made of my last semester of high school and the possible ramifications. Sitting there, I had only limited success, so I headed out to sacrifice the lawn yet again. The exercise would get me thinking about something else and insured my weekend gaming plans would not be ruined.

  Phred was kind again that day; it was cool and overcast and hadn’t rained all week—a record for Ohio. I zoomed back and forth, repeating my little prayer/mantra, and before I knew it, I had finished the lawn. I finished the last of the trimming and felt good, when my mom peddled up the driveway.

  I met her in the garage as I put the weed whacker away.

  “Hi, Mom!”

  “Hello, sweetheart. You look better today. That’s nice to see. Your dad and I were getting worried.”

  “Yeah, finals were tough this year.” I refused even to contemplate everything I left out of that sentence as we both went inside.

  Weekend Pass

  Because it was the end of the semester, I got a rare full-weekend pass. We planned the weekend as a celebration of the end of school and a chance to finish the current story in our game before Jim left on Monday for Outward Bound, sort of an advanced Boy Scout survival thing. He would be gone for two weeks playing mountain man, so we wanted to make the most of it. The plan for Friday evening included pizza and gaming all night at Gregg’s place and then crashing there. Next, we switched to Dave’s for a repeat. I ruthlessly slammed the door on my inner watcher, locked it, and threw away the key. I refused to worry about anything this weekend—no school, no insanity, no nothing but fun.

  When I lugged all my stuff into the finished basement room we used for gaming at Greg’s, everyone was already there, talking about finals and speculating how they had fared. I had to double up the locks and add a large chain to the door holding my conscience back. I blew off any questions sent my way about school, and we got down to the serious business of fun.

  It went well. We made a lot of progress in the story and enjoyed ourselves. We crashed at dawn, started up around noon the next day, and played into the evening.

  On the second night, Jen approached me during a break in the game.
It was something of a victory for her to be at Dave’s at all. Her parents were a bit leery of allowing her to spend the night with a bunch of older boys playing a game her parents didn’t understand. I think Gregg had to swear an oath to protect her and had to leave one of his balls behind as hostage.

  She came up to me, looking uncomfortably cute in her new hairdo and seriously messing with my equilibrium. “Hey, Finn, I really like Il Saia’s councilor Kaawen. I’d like to play one of the Gentle People as a companion. Do you have any stats or more background for them?”

  The Gentle People were one of the four races of Seru and allies of Infala in the war. I thought of them as a sort of a cross between humans and gorillas.

  I replied, “I don't have a lot, but I’ve been meaning to get to that. They tend to live in the northern regions of Seru and don't perform magic. In fact, they’re immune to magical effects, but they’re strong and frequently are scholars, poets, and naturalists. They’d make great companions.”

  “Could I help you flesh them out?”

  “Sure.” I gave a shrug full of feigned indifference, because showing my excitement over the idea would have made me seem needy or pathetic. Secretly, I kicked up my heels with the idea that I might get some help with defining my world and get to spend more time with Jen to boot. Woo hoo!

  “Can I come by Tuesday morning?”

  “If it's not too early,” I grinned. “Sounds great.”

  She flashed me a two-hundred-watt smile, and we continued our game.

  Again, we slept until noon and then headed home. That afternoon, I spent some time musing about the Gentle People. They wouldn’t make great heroes, because, in Ars Magica, the game system we used, heroes were always Magi, and the stories always revolved around them. The Gentle People would make fantastic companions, however.

  A companion played a support role for the various Magi. Everyone had several characters they could play. They all had at least one Magi, and each took turns being the central character of the story. When they weren’t playing the Magi, they’d play a companion or one or more Grogs—minor characters who were the equivalent of Red Shirts from the original Star Trek series. They often provided plot motivation, and they died a lot. They killed Fritz! Those stinkin’ yella fairy bastards!

  That afternoon, I didn’t spend as much time thinking about the Gentle People in my game as I’d planned. Instead, thoughts of Spring kept slipping in. Concerns about grades and Erik Parmely couldn’t knock her from the throne of my obsession. It hadn’t escaped my notice that my dreams with her just weren’t normal. They left me exhausted and trashed my room. I don’t want to be gross, but on top of that, there was never any evidence of the… let’s call it “night emissions.”

  I felt more refreshed than I had in a week, nevertheless, staying away from her for two nights had been tough, and I couldn’t wait to see her again that evening.

  The only thing that interrupted my anticipation was my Krav Maga lesson with my uncle that afternoon. It actually felt good to be moving, practicing, and gaining some confidence when I wasn’t utterly wiped out. When we finished that night, my uncle praised me again. That felt good. I wasn’t used to being good any anything involving physical activity. I could get to like it.

  As I was driving home, my thoughts wandered back to Spring. As I thought about her, a new thought flitted across my mind: she’d become my drug of choice. That thought stuck in my head, vibrating like an arrow after hitting a bull’s eye. In fact, she was almost like crack. When I wasn’t with her, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. When we were together, it was transcendent bliss. When she left, she left me drained to the core. She was sucking me dry.

  I realized that for some time now, I had believed that she truly existed. A real dryad lived in my oak tree and made love to me all night. I had no idea when that belief took hold, but the realization of it freaked me out more than the comparison of her to a drug. My conscience burst out of the room where I had it locked away and suddenly worry about my sanity added to my load.

  I went out back to look at her, my oak tree. The branches had continued blossoming, and I swear it had visibly grown. Its vitality frightened me. Thicker and taller, with big healthy leaves covering all the branches, it had become a different tree. I remembered Jeff’s warning, in the vision, about the heart of Wendigota drawing the attention of many dark spirits.

  “I would never have believed you could turn that tree around so completely in a month,” my dad said from behind me.

  I about jumped out of my skin, let out a small shout, and spun around.

  My dad peered at me over the rim of his glasses, eyebrows raised. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “Dad! Sorry, I was just lost in thought, and you scared me.”

  My dad nodded to my tree. “Yup, a change like that in a tree is certainly worth a thought or two. And a little spooky, as well.” Then he added almost under his breath, “I’m wondering if I shouldn’t have cut it down.”

  “What?”

  That brought my dad out of his reverie. “Oh, nothing. I just saw… I mean… just look at all these blossoms on the ground we are going to have to clean up.”

  I eyed him, askance, wondering what he originally planned to say, but didn’t pursue it further. As long as he wasn’t going to cut my tree down, I remained happy.

  That night, I debated whether or not I should sleep downstairs again to stay away from Spring, but decided that would be silly.

  My brain wasn’t working too well, because I rationalized that tonight I would get some answers from her while at the same time deriding myself about thinking she was real enough to question.

  Thinking about her soft full lips, smooth skin, and… other things, kind of trumped everything else. I went to bed eager for sleep, but my new found anxiety about her kept me tossing and turning. I tried to meditate and clear my thoughts for what seemed like hours, and at last, I managed to start letting things go. I had just gotten into a nice rhythm when I heard my window swing open.

  My eyes flew wide in a panic that passed as soon as I recognized her. She stood in my room, unselfconsciously naked. Her beauty hit me as hard as one of my uncle’s punches, and I had to catch my breath. Her smile promised heaven as she swayed the short distance to my bed with a smooth, hypnotizing grace, like a cat stalking her prey. My room filled with her spring thundershower scent.

  By this time in my dream, I was usually all over her, but with a supernatural effort, I leaned back against the headboard of my bed. My body craved her. I wanted to be inside her, to merge with her and never let her go.

  I tried desperately not to look down past her chin to where her breasts hung free, ripe, full, and, as I knew, oh, so soft.

  “W-w-wait…stop,” I protested feebly, her face mere inches from mine.

  She sat back on her knees with wide-eyed surprise. The weight of her buttocks pressed my legs into the bed. I gulped and said the only thing I could think of.

  “Are…are…are you real?”

  Her joyful smile lit her face like a sunrise. “Yes.”

  Then she leaned forward again to kiss me. Again, I dredged up words from some deep area of strength and said, “Why? Why me?”

  “Because you are my Sun,” she replied, then her lips touched mine, and her hands lay warmly on my shoulders and chest. Her heat caressed me. Then I entered her, and all thought spiraled away into bliss.

  Troubled Teens

  The next day I awoke, groggy. My mom was yelling up the stairs. When I finally swam to consciousness, I noted that my clock read ten. This is way too early when you only had three or four hours of sleep, if that.

  “What?” I snapped back.

  “Jennifer is here to see you!”

  I processed this for a moment with my fuzzy, uncooperative brain. Crap! “Okay! Just a minute!”

  I launched out of bed. Naked except for my necklace, I searched through my piles of clothes for something that wasn't too rumpled or disgusting. I pulled on som
e pants and took the time to scrape up the sheets and blankets spread around the room and toss them back onto the bed. I shut my window and was just leaving my room when I almost ran into Jen.

  She laughed at me when she saw my state of dishabille. “Wow, and I thought my hair looked funny first thing in the morning!”

  “Thanks a lot!” I grumbled, ineffectually patting at my hair, my cheeks burning. “You really know how to charm a guy you just woke up.”

  “Sorry,” she replied, contrition notably absent from her face. “I have volleyball this afternoon, and I wanted to get here a little early. I didn't realize that you’d go all Rip Van Winkle on me.”

  Her dimpled smirk won me over, but my pride wouldn’t give in quite so easily. I scowled at her and grumbled a little more before gesturing her back to my room. She took the lead and went inside. I stopped in the doorway when I saw the state of my room. Oh, no. Clothes everywhere, boxers on the bed, a half-empty bowl of cereal on the desk… I didn’t want Jen seeing this.

  “Maybe we should go downstairs,” I began, but she ignored me and continued looking around my bedroom with a bemused expression.

  “Wow, and here I thought my room should be declared a disaster area…”

  Resigned to further ridicule and too tired to stand, I scooped my many pillows against my headboard and threw myself on the make-do lounge.

  Jen stopped in the middle of the room with her head cocked to the side a little as though listening to something. She briefly went over to the cage where Squiffy, my pet hamster, lay sleeping. Squiffy lost her attention, and she ignored my small library of books, the bunched up sheets, the mix of dirty and clean laundry on the floor, and went over to my display wall. There she examined the maps and the pictures of various cities and characters in Seru that I had drawn. I hadn't shown most of the drawings to anyone in my group, because I didn't think they merited much attention.