The Dryad's Kiss

by Scott VanKirk

  “These are all just like I envisioned them.” She pointed to a city sporting tall, elegant towers and arches. “There is Infala, the city of amethyst.” Another picture caught her eye. “And that portrait must be Il Saia.” She smiled back at me over her shoulder and said, “Your descriptions were perfect.”

  As she looked at me, her long black hair and bright smile caught me. I was at a loss for what to say and uneasy about letting her see how much those words meant to me, so, I gave her an exaggerated fluttering of my eyes.

  “Aw, flattery will get you everywhere! Just name your price before my head puffs up and I float away.”

  Her grin widened, and she turned to my collections. I had a lot of cool rocks as well as an assortment of amethyst and quartz crystals, ranging from one to four inches in size and other varying qualities. Amongst them, I also had a decent collection of arrowheads, a few freshwater pearls, and a couple of axe heads. She ignored these and reached for my dreamstone.

  “Wait! Don’t!” After what had happened to me with the stone, I didn’t want anyone to touch it.

  She didn’t seem to hear me. She picked up the crystal and her expression changed from one of puzzlement to wonder. Her eyes went wide with her mouth forming an unconsciously sexy, “Oh.”

  I panicked and rushed to take the crystal away from her. My hand closed around hers and the crystal. The contact closed some sort of circuit, and an electrical jolt went through me. Jen felt it, too, because her eyes grew even bigger. A dam burst open within me, and I fell through the crystal. In that moment, a connection with Jen that I couldn't name snapped into existence. That connection came as a small part of an intense rush of feelings I couldn't categorize. The world around me narrowed into a tunnel, a swirling whirlpool of sensation. A cataract of fire burst through me from a direction I hadn’t even known existed, passed through my center—my being—into the dreamstone. The violence of that fire tore bits and pieces of me out and carried them away.

  I started to feel faint, and tried to stop whatever flowed from me, but I didn’t know how. The window in my room shattered behind me. Suddenly, something stood behind me, something angry and menacing. The fear that hit me somehow enabled me to pull my hand away from Jen’s and the amethyst. The world closed in around me, the fire ceased, and I fell to the floor, lightheaded.

  Jen screamed something half-coherent, dropped the amethyst, and fled the room without looking back. I shook my head to clear it, and when I searched around in a panic, nothing could be seen behind me but the shattered window. I tried to shake off the strange dizziness and heavy fatigue. I pushed myself up and stumbled after Jen out to the hall, down the stairs, and through the front door. By the time I got there, she was nowhere to be seen.

  My mom raced inside from the back yard. “What happened, Finn? I heard Jen scream. Where is she? Is she okay?”

  Flummoxed and disoriented, I gaped at her for a second before I could respond, “Uh, I don't know. Something happened. Something broke the window.” I couldn't bring my thoughts together. “Then, when I turned around, nothing was there. She ran.”

  My mother headed up to my room, and I followed her. Broken glass lay strewn underneath the window. The branch, which sometimes brushed the pane, stuck through the hole. The branch had obviously broken the glass, but on such a calm day, it simply didn’t make sense.

  I couldn't think. Exhaustion took over, and I half fell, half sat on the floor. I wondered if I was having a stroke or a heart attack or something. My hand went to my chest, and I grasped the stick. The heat from the wood startled me. This had happened before, but at that point, I couldn’t remember when.

  Mom bent over me, put her hand on my cheek, and said, “Are you all right, Finn?”

  “I don’t know. That was really scary. I don’t feel so good.” There wasn’t much more I could think to say to my mom, so I remained seated and silent.

  “Are you in pain? Nauseous?”

  I shook my head a little. “No. I don't know. I can’t think. I'm really tired.”

  “Finn, you have been burning the candle at both ends these last few weeks. Then you spend all night gaming with your friends and probably getting no sleep. I’m worried that you’re pushing yourself too hard.”

  “No, Mom, that's not it. Something really weird happened.” I started to panic about Jen. “I've got to call Jen and see if she’s okay.”

  She only lived a few houses away, but the phone was faster. I pulled my cell out of my pocket and called her house. When the phone rang, Gregg answered.

  Before I could say anything, he snarled, “What the hell did you do to my sister, you asshole!”

  “I didn't do anything! It was… it was… Is she okay?”

  “No. She came in here crying and scared. She kept babbling something about you and something evil, then she ran up to her room and slammed the door. Now she won't come out!”

  “I'll come over.”

  “No, you won't. I don't want you near her.”

  “But I didn't do anything to her! I didn’t hurt her, I swear.”

  “Then who did?”

  “I don’t know, Gregg!” I cried.

  “Well. I’ve got to see what happened. God help me, Finn, you’d better be telling me the truth. If you’ve hurt her, I’ll make you wish you had never been born.”

  He hung up, and I told myself that I hadn’t done anything, but I couldn't convince myself of it. I would have to give Gregg the whole story if I wanted him to believe anything I said. I just had to figure out how. Round and round in my head I went until my mom made me lie down on my bed while she cleaned up the glass. I don't even remember falling asleep.

  My dad woke me, and as usual, he started talking to me like I was already wide-awake. I came in at the middle of a sentence.

  “…with Allen, Jen's dad. He wants to know what happened here today, and so do I.”

  I tried to clear the cobwebs from my misfiring brain and gave him an exhausted stare, trying to project innocence and sincerity through my face. “I…I don't know, Dad, and that’s the truth.”

  I may have mentioned that I don't do innocence and sincerity well; never have, especially when I feel guilty, which I tend to do even when there is nothing to feel guilty about.

  “Were you here?”

  I hated it when he did this. I nodded, my lips quivering miserably.

  “Was she here?”

  I nodded again.

  “Was she in your room?”

  Another nod.

  “Did you do something to upset her?”

  I had been cringing against the inevitability of this question. Just imagining what must be running through everyone’s minds turned my tongue to butter, and I just knew I would get blamed for doing something I hadn’t. Still I had to say something.

  “Dad, no! I would never! We were just up in my room talking, and then the window broke! I swear! Jen freaked out and ran out of the room. I tried to run after her, but she’d already gone.”

  He eyed me with a long, considered stare. “That doesn’t make a lot of sense, Finn.”

  I stared at my feet and mumbled, “I know.”

  His gaze rested on me for a while longer while I studied my dirty socks. Then, without a word, he got up and went back downstairs. I heard snatches of him talking on the phone.

  “Hey, Allen… yeah… shaken up, too… tree…? I don't know either… later… goodbye.”

  He came back to me, and I turned to him, hopeful.

  “Jen is apparently pretty shaken up. Jack says she keeps telling him the tree tried to attack her by going through the window. She said it wanted to kill her. Were you two playing that game?”

  “That game” was how my dad thought of my role-playing games.

  I shook my head. “No, we were just talking about my pictures and looking at my crystals.”

  He didn’t buy it. “Well,” he said in that same steady tone, “I think you've been overdoing it. I'd like you to give it a rest for a while.”

&n
bsp; My heart fell. I knew instinctively what “it” he was referring to. “Um, for how long?”

  “A while.”

  My heart sank even further. My social life in the summer largely orbited around my games. Planning campaigns and world-design took up my free time during the summer days, and playing the game took up my nights. It was what bound my friends and me together. There wasn't anything I could say to change his mind.

  I finally forced out an, “Okay,” with a heavy sigh. My submission surprised me. Losing my gaming privileges came as a major blow. I should have been angry, should have argued and thrown a fit or something, but my world had turned upside-down and I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t stand not knowing what had happened to Jen and me. I guess part of me believed that I had done something that I needed to be punished for.

  That night Dave called and asked if I wanted to go bowling. He played in a league and always loved to embarrass me and my sub-one hundred scores, but my desire to be anywhere but home cut through my ambivalence. Unfortunately, my parents disagreed. They “strongly suggested” I stay home and get to sleep early. After roaming the house for an hour, I wanted to call Gregg and find out what had happened to Jen.

  I was sitting at the kitchen bar when I picked up my phone.

  My dad noticed the movement from his seat at the table. “Who are you calling Finn?”

  “Jen.”

  “Finn, I strongly suggest that you leave the Washingtons in peace tonight.

  Frack. Now I was under house arrest.

  During dinner, my parents kept asking me questions, trying to make sense out of what happened. I couldn't understand it myself at the time, but I didn't tell them about the dreamstone and the whole flaming vortex thing. I just told them, Jen was looking at my collection, I went over to her to show her some stuff, and then the window broke behind me and she ran away screaming.

  The more I repeated what had happened, the more ridiculous and inadequate my explanation sounded to me, but the thought of telling them the whole truth felt like death. My dad again “strongly suggested” that I get to sleep early so I could help him pick up lumber for the deck bright and early. I took that as my cue to head back upstairs.

  I lay in bed in the dark with the events of the day running through my head. No matter how often I ticked through everything, I just couldn't make sense of it. My dreamstone hung in its normal place, and I ached to go and grab it, but just thinking about it scared me. What did it do to Jen? What did I do to Jen?

  Reality had turned into an eel and slipped away from me. This sort of thing just did not happen. People didn’t get visions from crystals or dreams from old whistles. People aren’t visited by dryads in their sleep. But, there it was. All that had happened. I thought about what Jim had said to me; denying reality is crazy. It’s not as if it only happened in my head, either. I had physical evidence to back me up. My tree grew with unnatural vitality, and I knew it wasn’t from any special fertilizer I had used. I woke in the exhausted in the mornings to a trashed room and an open window.

  Another thought occurred to me, and I put my face into my pillow and sniffed. Her fresh, outdoorsy scent lingered there.

  So, if all this is real, what do I need to do about it? The first thing would be to tell Gregg and Jen when she got over her fright. After that… well, maybe they would have some ideas. I wished Jim was still around to talk to. He knew more than anyone and had the best chance of coming up with a plan. The last person I could tell would be my dad. He would freak out and have me in an institution faster than a boy’s first attempt at sex.

  I got up and fed Squiffy. I picked him up and petted him as he sat placidly in my hand. Though he was pretty much a lump of a hamster, I loved him. The only activity he engaged in was running on his wheel at three in the morning. He endured my attentions, and then went back to sleep when I returned him to his cage. One doesn’t get a lot of bonding from a hamster, but they’re undemanding, easy to take care of, and nice and soft.

  I pulled out my phone and texted Jen to see if she would respond. She didn't reply, so I did the same with Gregg. I waited, counting out the minutes. Terrible thoughts and fears for Jennifer filled the silence as I paced my room. I knew that she wasn’t just scared.

  I couldn't hold down the anxiety growing within me or think of anything else to do, so finally, I fell back on my old standby: meditation. I lay back on my bed and relaxed. I began counting my deep regular breaths, I breathed in through my nose, out through my mouth, letting everything else go. I did as my dad had taught me when fighting my night terrors, and visualized a golden sphere around me—my fortress, my protection. Impervious to all evil, nothing bad could come through the walls. Incoming bad thoughts and malevolent spirits bounced off it.

  With every incoming breath, I inhaled golden light. With every outgoing breath, I exhaled the black tensions within me. Peace and light filled me as the tension, and the stress flowed out through the golden sphere. Thus protected and cleansed, I fell asleep.

  That night, Spring came to me again, and this time, the sight of her made me burst into tears. All my anxiety and stress, when combined with the sheer power of her presence, became more than I could bear. Her exotic pixy face softened into lines of sadness and concern as she glided over to my bed and climbed in next to me. She pulled my head into her breasts and stroked my hair, singing a wordless song of rain and growth. Surrounded by her softness and her smell, I stopped crying.

  A short while later, I realized she wasn’t just stroking my head, but other parts of my body as well. My body responded quickly, and when I pulled back to look into her eyes, she swung her leg over me. She moved gently and steadily against me but never broke my gaze. After a few tense minutes, I surrendered to her eyes and to bliss.

  The next morning, I woke up slowly, filled with the memory of the dream. I replayed it in my mind for some time, feeling heavy and empty before I turned and looked at the clock. It read ten twenty-three. With a horrible jolt, I remembered that my dad had wanted me to help him buy lumber for the deck.

  I sprang out of bed, cursing myself and my sleeping habits. My dad had to be pissed, especially following what had happened yesterday. Still pulling my shirt over my head, I ran down the stairs to the kitchen.

  At the counter, Mom flipped through one of her many gardening magazines. She looked up with a fond smile and said, “Good morning, sleepyhead.”

  “Where’s Dad?” I asked in a panic. “Why didn't you wake me up?”

  “Relax, honey. He's off at the hardware store. He decided to let you sleep in. We tried to wake you, but you were dead to the world. From the looks of your bed, you had a very restless night.”

  That brought me to a screeching halt. My dad never let me sleep in on days he had declared workdays unless I lay on my deathbed. I’d always dreamt about being let off the hook, but now that he’d let me sleep, I was torn. If he let me sleep in, he must think there was something wrong with me.

  “There’s French toast and bacon in the oven for you, dear.”

  “Uh, thanks.” I went to serve myself breakfast.

  As I ate, my mind churned. By the time I finished breakfast and had two more bowls of cereal, I had gotten nowhere, and my adrenaline shock had dissipated, leaving me tired and groggy. I fought off sleep and volunteered to help my mom in the garden.

  “Who are you, and what have you done with my son?” Mom asked with mock horror.

  “I just need to get out into the open air and sunshine.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Okay. I can always use the help.”

  I tried to call over to check on Jen and talk with Gregg, but I got no answer. Everything with Jen seemed to have happened a long time ago and to someone else, but my anxiety remained undiminished. For the next hour, I worked in the garden until my dad returned, and then I spent the remainder of the day helping him get ready to build the deck. Good to his word, my dad designed it to go around the oak. Despite the hard work, I often wondered what kept Jen and Gregg
from returning my calls. Other than that uncertainty, the normalcy of the day proved to be what I needed, and by the end of it, I felt better. I had mostly convinced myself that everything was fine, that I had just been overtired the day before.

  The only ripple in my pond of normality that day came from my oak. I swear it had grown even bigger over the last couple of days. As if to prove its health, the tree continued dropping blooms all over the yard. I picked up one of the blooms and ran the long stringy stem through my fingers, popping off the little green seedpods, leaving just the droopy stem behind.

  I contemplated what it meant, and a shiver ran along my spine. I forced myself to go over to the tree and put my hands on it. The solid, rough, and familiar bark still soothed me. It was still my tree and still carried the familiar comfort it always brought to me. But, now, the fear that my tree might consume me colored my perceptions.

  Could she really be killing me? I tried to shake off the feeling that I had just run off a cliff, except like Wile E. Coyote, I just didn't know it yet.

  The Eyes That Bind

  The next day confirmed that suspicion. I woke up with my mom shaking me and calling my name. Exhaustion clung to my eyelids, and I could barely focus on her for a couple of minutes. The entire night had been spent making love to my nymph, and the real world seemed dull, jarring, and uncomfortable.

  “Are you okay, honey?” Mom asked as she ran her fingers through my hair.

  I tried to wake up. “Uh, no. I think I’m coming down with something,” I replied, seeing an easy out.

  “Well, do you think you’d be up for going out for a little while this morning?”

  “I don't know. Where are we going?”

  “Jennifer has been taken to the hospital.”