The Winter Oak

by James A. Hetley

  Maureen had dropped the reins that controlled this forest, but she'd made some changes first. Fiona touched her brow in ironic salute. The redhead was not as dumb and trusting as she seemed at first glance.

  But she was still drunk and leaving her defense to others. Fiona shook her head. You never trusted others in this land. Alliances, yes, those could be safe -- with proper safeguards, such as with that dragon. And you could buy services. But never trust. Cash in advance, and count your change, and even with bed-mates count your teeth after each kiss.

  She turned, setting the stars and sun right in her head and aiming straight for the keep. She drew on her Power, forcing roots and stems and branches to one side or the other, moving the trail back to follow the path it should. She walked uphill, slow against the climb and the resistance of the forest that tugged at her ankles like an icy current in a river, smooth on the surface but deceptive in its strength.

  The forest offered ease, offering aside and downhill without struggle. She forced her way, and still found her footsteps curving, curving, curving, until the keep sat off her right shoulder once more and the sound of falling water came brighter and closer up ahead.

  She gritted her teeth and turned once more, face to the slope and the keep. She felt the resistance stiffen, and traced the flow of Power back in her mind. There was an oak in the forest's heart, she remembered, as old and massive and deep-rooted as Wotan's world-ash Yggdrasil. Apparently it liked Maureen.

  That tree would pay. Tomorrow or the next day or the next, she'd seek it out. She knew poisons that would touch even his roots. But she'd learned long ago to fight only one battle at a time.

  Brian had taught her that. Brian, still missing in action. Her blood-tie still lay silent. What was that darling little boy up to now?

  She settled her mind into her belly, drawing on the Power of her child. This time her touch fell less gently, and the unborn witch shuddered. Too much, and the child would weaken, even die.

  But it was expendable. Fiona had Brian's sperm in storage, and her own eggs. And Maureen had succored wombs in plentitude, with those human refugees. How kind of her to provide so many surrogate mothers.

  Again Fiona turned uphill, against the flow, and this time her Power killed. Leaves shriveled, limbs crumbled, vines cracked and fell apart as dust. She forced her way through tangles, leaving a trail behind her defined in brown and black. Her footprints burned the soil to sterility.

  The path curved downhill, and she held the sun and stars and her cottage in their places and fought against that curving. Stone barred her way, and she drew still more Power from the unborn baby. It struggled and then stilled. Fiona wasted a second's glance, finding the heartbeat and a trace of dreaming. The girl still lived.

  And she dismissed that care. Impossible snow touched her face and the flow of Power weakened further and she gained ten more paces. The forest stream crossed her path, rimmed with ice, and the trees showed black frost-nipped edges to their leaves. Her lips pulled back from her teeth into a feral smile. So summer ended? The forest's magic began to fail.

  The child squirmed again, her protest a sharp rolling pain in Fiona's belly. The dark witch turned her eyes inward for an instant and smacked the brat with a stunning spell. No more distractions.

  She crossed the stream and climbed the slope beyond it. She remembered the old trail and forced it into being once again. Another hundred yards and she'd reach the forest's edge, see the keep in front of her across mindless, powerless grass. Sweat tickled her brow, and she swiped her sleeve across it. Walking the forest had cost her more than she'd expected.

  She drew Power from the child and climbed.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The road blurred in front of Maureen, and an antique horse-drawn hearse formed out of wind-driven rain, long black-lacquered glass-sided four-wheeled coffin box draped in black and with black plumes bobbing on the team, square in front of her hood. She slammed on the brakes, slewing sideways on wet pavement, sat for a moment, and then a chorus of blaring horns snapped her back to reality.

  Hallucination. She hadn't hit anything. Nothing had hit her. Her hands shook, and the road stayed blurry. Windshield wipers didn't help. Blurs were on the inside, on her own goddamn eyeballs. She restarted the stalled engine and pulled over to the side of the road. Flipped on the emergency blinkers. They even worked. Hadn't tried them in years.

  Damn, damn, damn, damn! Mom. Dad. Brian. Jo.

  She buried her face in her hands, giving in to tears. The voices returned, whispering, accusing, sneering. You're crazy, you know that? Still schizo, after all these years. Find a loving man, what do you do? Try to claw his eyes out. Your father murders your mother and then commits suicide, you just stand there dry-eyed staring at the shattered corpses like they were a pair of discarded mannequins lying on the dump and say "Good riddance." Your sister comes to you drowning in grief and remorse, and you walk off and leave her with a fucking bottle of wine for a life-preserver.

  Rain spattered on the metal roof overhead, rattling into sleet, echoing her mood. She remembered the thunderstorm she'd drawn to the forest and the keep, and wondered if she was responsible for this sudden squall or if it was just normal shitty Maine spring weather.

  Brian had left her. Out of all the shit that had happened, she kept coming back to that. Wrong, wrong, wrongo. He didn't leave. You drove him away. You would have killed him if he stayed. The man did his best. How could he live with a psycho witch?

  Something tapped at the window beside her, and she swiped tears from her eyes. A blue raincoat and plastic-shrouded cop hat loomed through the rain-streaked glass. She rolled down the window, heaving at the rusty groans and stiffness of the old crank.

  "Are you okay, ma'am?"

  She saw a skull between the turned-up collar and the hat, polished ivory bone and black pits for the eyes and nose and mouth. Blue fire lit in the depths of the eye-sockets, and she blinked. The apparition flowed and changed into a human face, one of the cops she'd met at the station, giving her statements. Small town, small police force. Get through this, she'd know every one of them by name, know their wives and their kids' batting averages and the names of their pet dogs.

  "'M fine. Cat ran across the road, nearly hit it."

  Liar.

  The policeman shook his head and sniffed, then sniffed again and shook his head again. "Ma'am, I should ask you to step out of the car, do a sobriety check. You've got an opened bottle of whiskey there on the seat. But you don't smell of booze, and I've heard all that you've been through. I've got fender-bender calls out the wazoo with this storm. Please just give me the bottle and drive more carefully. Go home. If you need a drink, have it there."

  Whatthehell . . . She glanced sideways. That damned bottle of Bushmills had followed her. Her hand shook as she picked it up, splashing the contents into foam. She nearly dropped it when she handed it to the officer.

  He walked over to the side of the road and emptied the bottle. She could smell that good whiskey over the rain and burned oil and acrid hot brake pads. She wanted it. God, she wanted it.

  He tossed the empty into the trunk of his cruiser, good man, didn't add to the roadside litter. Then he climbed back into the car, flipped on the blue-blinky lights, and pulled out. The rain and sleet turned back into a snow squall, veiling the road. Ghosts drove past, walked past, crowded around her windows with accusation and threat on their faces. Dad, Mom, Dougal, Sean, Buddy Johnson. Maureen's teeth chattered. She cranked the Toyota's heater to full blast.

  That won't warm your soul a bit. Like trying to thaw a glacier with a handheld blow-drier.

  She'd been looking for David, a set of loving arms and a familiar body to hug warmth into Jo. Couples did that, provided each other strength to lean on and a refuge against the world. But she'd driven Brian away . . . .

  That left Father Oak. She knew where she stood with him. Strength and stability and refuge, firm-rooted and broad-limbed and he didn't fucking care if his worshipers were
crazy drunken murderers. He knew how to handle magic.

  Her hands still shook. Alcohol withdrawal, she guessed. That would explain the horse-drawn hearse, as well. Her own Freudian permutation on purple elephants or snakes and centipedes.

  She wiped sweat from her palms, crunched the car back into gear, and chose a big gap in traffic before pulling back out into the spitting sleet. Maine weather, just as psychotic as she was.

  Carlysle Woods, the parking lot, she jolted against a wheel-stop and sat for a moment, shaking, sweating, heart racing, still chilled. Who the hell was she staying sober for? Brian had left her. The forest didn't need her. Jo and David had fucking kicked her out. Mom and Dad were dead. That Bushmills would slide down real smooth right now. No, she didn't have a drinking problem. No trouble at all getting booze inside her belly.

  The hazard blinkers still clicked on and off like a metronome. She'd left them running. Well, not a problem for driving slow in a storm. Besides, she was a hazard. Warn the world.

  She shut the blinkers off, shut the engine off, listened to the rattle of sleet and the ticking of hot metal cooling. Father Oak waited, calm and strong. She could feel him already. He loaned her the strength to unlatch the sticky door and climb out, the caution to lock the car behind her, the serenity to stand and breathe deep and slow her racing heart. So Father Oak was God?

  Well, it wouldn't be a new religion. If He fulfills the basic functional requirements, 'tis enough, 'twill serve. She was a heretic, finding God in everything. Been years since she felt the need to go to church to worship. Not to worship some remote white-bearded patriarch hiding behind Father Donovan and the Pope, accessible only through an intermediary. Her God lived in the soil beneath her feet and the air she breathed and in the heart of every rock and tree. "The Kingdom of God is within you."

  The storm had switched to snow again, fat wet flakes like cotton balls. Wait ten minutes, and the sun would come out -- New England weather. She let it settle in her hair and splotch her cheeks with cold, mingling with the streaky tears, remembering that she could make it miss her. For an instant she was a child again, trying to catch snowflakes on her tongue.

  The snow fell around her, flakes as big as chickadees, and the chickadees dodged around the flakes and chattered and didn't care. The forest didn't care. Snow was part of life. Death was part of life. Father Oak waited, strong and serene. He'd told her a hundred times, a thousand times, that evils like Daddy or Buddy Johnson held Power over her only because she'd granted it.

  She turned her back on the shattered wreck of her nightmares and climbed over a snowbank to the trail. Turned her back on Naskeag Falls. Jo could have the house and whatever dust and cobwebs remained in Daddy's bank account. Maureen wasn't coming back again. That pile of sticks and mud had never been a home. Just like Dougal's castle wasn't home. Dougal and Daddy, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Lex talionis.

  "Do onto others as you would have them do onto you."

  {Your nightmares taught you how they wished to be treated.}

  That was the problem with God, both the Old Testament and New Testament versions. Implacable old bastard, judge and jury and executioner.

  Father Oak never used to speak so clearly. He'd been an enigma and an oracle, a sense of strength and guide to her own thoughts. Now he was growing into another of the schizophrenic voices.

  She was going mad. Madder.

  She walked a trail marked by champagne buckets filled with the winter's snow, chilling France's finest vintages. She blinked and they were gone, vanished back into the labyrinth of her mind. Bottles of Bushmills and Glenmorangie cradled in the crotches of the trees around her, calling out their seductive wiles. Retsina wafted its resinous tang to mix with the perfume of spruce and fir. Just wish and they'd be real.

  Her hands shook as she wiped sweat off her brow and out of her eyes. The forest spun around her, trees tilting like the masts of a harbor full of sailboats bobbing in a heavy swell.

  One thing stayed firm and vertical -- the power resting at the heart of her forest. Father Oak waited for her. Crazy or not, drunk or not, whether or not blood dripped from her hands and painted her face, Father Oak waited for her. He wouldn't run away from her like Brian. He wasn't afraid of her.

  Warmth and strength enfolded her. Rough bark caressed the palms of her hands. The lightning scar reminded her that she could survive.

  {The fox needs you to return.}

  She felt courage flow into her.

  {The forest needs you to return.}

  She turned and squatted at the foot of Father Oak, closing her eyes and letting his strength wash over her. Her trembling died. Her breathing slowed bit by bit from the panic she'd been feeling. The fox needed her. The forest needed her. If she didn't have to go back to that damned castle . . .

  {The fox knows a cave in the heart of your forest.}

  Yeah. Live in a cave, dark and dirty and cold and wet, full of an oozy smell and the ends of worms.

  She pulled her old Romanian flute out of her jacket pocket, the only thing she'd really cared to fetch from their apartment. If possessions made you a slave, God knew she was one of the freest people on earth.

  She remembered that the fox had asked for the flute, as well. She fingered the carvings that decorated the wood, touched the stop-holes on the twin tubes, and wondered again why it always felt alive. It purred to her fingers, like one of the cats melting under a scritch between the shoulder-blades.

  Paired notes and single notes, melodies and trills, the strange scale that had always defied her fingers now danced through the forest. Debussy, she thought, that Prelude, invoking fauns and nymphs and dryads. It's that kind of feel. Step into myth and magic if you want to make the flute work its own magic.

  The forest changed around her. Father Oak remained firm at her back. Snow melted into mist and green leaves cloaked the limbs. She felt the magic of her flute wafting out and sinking into the soil, spreading, binding, weaving the fabric of balance. Balance fed back to her, welcoming. The forest needed her. It told her of the dragon, and David, and a song that broke old chains and forged new bonds freely accepted. It told her of Fiona, walking, killing, carrying rage and doubled power.

  {Follow.}

  The fox vixen waited, sitting on her haunches. Maureen studied her fur mask, her eyes and expressive radar ears, her tail and jaw and play of the muscles under her skin. This was a serious fox, not angry or afraid or jesting. She remembered that the fox showed her the forest's face, Father Oak's face. This was something new.

  Maureen staggered to her feet, as weary as if she'd just run a marathon. Tension. Killing Demon Rum took as much out of her as killing Dougal. She followed the fox, away from Father Oak's Summer Country form and through a forest glade, past ancient lichen-crusted rocks and dense stands of dark green holly that rustled behind her as they closed the way, to a sudden ledge outcrop gnawed by rain and weather. A rowan grew there, ancient but strong, the first she'd seen within the forest. A house-rowan?

  The fox looked up at Maureen and then stepped delicately sideways around an edge of stone. Maureen followed and found a hidden cave-mouth, dark and drifted with leaves. Air flowed from it, cold and damp and musty, just as she'd suspected, but it still felt more welcoming than the castle. She ought to get her flashlight from the car and come back.

  {Come.}

  The fox barked from the darkness, impatient. If Maureen could trust anything in this world, it was the fox.

  Maureen shrugged her shoulders and followed, careful of her feet and head. The way seemed smooth. A minute passed, and then another, and then strangeness grew on her and she realized what was missing. The walls weren't closing in around her. She knew tons of rock hung over her head, but they didn't feel threatening. Her heart beat slowly, normally, and the palms of her hands stayed dry.

  Whatever terrified her in the castle cellars, it hadn't followed her down this tunnel.

  Down she went, and down, and down, in total darkness. Much of the fore
st stood on limestone, not the sandstone underneath the keep. Still, this seemed more like a tunnel than a natural cave. She didn't have any trouble walking, even without light, her fingers trailing along the rough walls and telling her of each twist or turn as it came up, the floor safe and smooth beneath her feet.

  And then the air changed, the damp clammy graveyard flow coming in low from her right hand and the way ahead dry and . . . warm? It smelled clean, except for a strange musky forest tinge almost like bracken in the morning dew.

  She stepped out into pale light and gasped. Green, gold, red, sheets and streams of light that showed her a cavern. Stalactites, stalagmites, curtains, rivers of smooth gleaming flowing stone -- Carlsbad or Luray Caverns but scaled down into human space. She touched one wall, a curtain of stone lace or crochet work, translucent sepia jewelry, and her fingers came away glowing pale yellow. Phosphorescent algae. Her eyes had adapted in the blackness of the tunnel, and even this faint light seemed strong enough for reading.

  "God. It's beautiful."

  {It is yours. If you really want a round green door, we can make adjustments.}

  Now that wise-ass dog was laughing at her, tongue hanging out. She knew what Maureen had been thinking.

  A hearth sat in one corner, faint traces of soot marking the floor and wall and with a hole overhead that drew air past her reaching hand. Chimney flue. Wood waited next to the hearth, and large stoneware crocks that looked like they held food. Jugs, water or wine or oil, she didn't check.

  She touched the wall again. It felt warm. Walking in a daze, she trailed her fingers along the slick smoothness until she turned a corner. A pool waited, steaming gently, hot water welling up and then overflowing into a stream that joined a cold spring and then drained away down a plate-sized hole in the floor. Indoor plumbing, just add towels and toilet paper.