The Winter Oak

by James A. Hetley

  He saw her face in his mind, felt her hand, smelled her heady fragrance, and stepped through darkness to the image. She crouched on grass in a forest clearing, part of a tableau of statuary that included Dougal's black leopard and a fox. And Fiona, naked from the waist down and with her face buried in the throat of a newborn baby.

  With one hand, Maureen tugged at Fiona's grip on the child. Maureen's other hand clamped the baby's cord. None of it made sense, but instinct told him old Alexander had the right idea. Sometimes you just cut the bloody rope instead of trying to untie it.

  Especially if Fiona was involved. He stumbled across the grass and yanked his sister's head back by her sweat-soaked hair, knocking the baby to the grass. Then he had his knife at her throat, shaking, his muscles replaced by Power and will.

  She glared up at him, rage and cunning on her face. "If you kill me, the baby dragons die."

  That froze his hand. She squirmed away from the sagging blade, eyes frantic and hunting for the baby, screaming as she saw the fox take it gently by one leg and drag it away across the grass.

  Maureen shook her head and slumped, squatting back on her haunches. She looked drained. "You . . . dumb . . . shit!"

  {One trusts that the dog is showing care.} That seemed to be the leopard.

  {Call me a dog again and I'll nip your tomcat balls off while you're sleeping.}

  "Cut the crap, you guys." Maureen shook her head again, as if flies devilled her. Her face looked pale and hollow, much like he felt, exhausted by fierce magic. She glanced from the cat to the fox. The baby now squirmed feebly on the grass, between the vixen's legs, nosing around for milk.

  Then a twist of her head and eyes motioned Brian's knife away from his sister's throat. Maureen's hand flashed out and slapped Fiona hard like a cracking whip.

  Brian stared from his sister's flaming cheek to Maureen rubbing her hand. The redhead blew on her palm, cooling the smart of it. "You really are a stupid bitch. I ought to let Shadow eat you."

  {Is it fit to eat? It smells like carrion. One prefers one's meat fresh and clean. Feed it to the dog.}

  {Dog . . .}

  "Can it, okay?" Maureen wiggled her fingers and spoke to them. "I could get used to this sadist bit. Sometimes giving pain is fun." Her eyes focused back on Fiona. "Other people just don't matter to you, do they? Even your own baby? A true antisocial personality, clinical case. What they used to call a psychopath. Brian tried to warn me, but I didn't take him seriously."

  Fiona sneered. "Don't bother with the diagnosis, love. You're no holy gems yourselves, a drunken killer matched to a dumb thug with the smell of death blood on him. How'd you sober up so fast? Must be a useful spell, living the way you do."

  Maureen just shook her head again, apparently amused. "That's where the fucking stupid part comes in, love. Your spies weren't watching me. That was Jo. You were so focused on your hate, you forgot that there are two of us. All your plots and plans, and your big boogeyman isn't even fucking home when you attack. And you weren't fighting either of us. You were fighting the forest. It doesn't like you."

  {The forest is not alone in that.}

  The mental speech boomed, deep and resonant like a cave given voice. Brian turned and reflex moved him back two steps as a bloody huge dragon limped into the clearing, favoring one forepaw. But it glared at Fiona, not him, and David walked unscathed by its side. Brian willed his shoulders to relax.

  {But the dark one did not lie. Not this time. It has bound the hatchlings to its own life, and I would ask you to spare it long enough to break the binding.}

  "Kill me, kill the hatchlings." Fiona's eyes turned sly and dangerous. "Safe passage to go home, and I'll release them."

  Fiona and Dierdre, sisters under the skin. Always another plot beneath the one you're seeing, and another still beneath the second. Brian stared at a column of smoke rising beyond the trees, beyond David and the dragon. He measured the angle of the sun and turned it into a compass. "I don't think you'll be going home again, dear sister. Not this time."

  She twisted to see what he was seeing, paled, and slumped back on the grass. "Gone. My home, my work . . ." She shook her head, biting back other words. Brian wondered just what they'd destroyed.

  But she rallied. Fiona always rallied. "Safe passage, or I kill the little dragons."

  Maureen had picked up the baby and cradled it against her chest. The child stirred weakly and seemed tiny, arms and legs thin even for a newborn. Understanding flashed through Brian's head -- that was his child, Fiona's child, rushed to birth as a weapon. He wondered if it could live.

  Black rage swallowed those thoughts. For an instant, he could understand Merlin and the Pendragons. Something like Fiona almost justified Dierdre.

  Almost.

  His rage cleared, and Maureen was speaking. Blood stained her fingers and her lips, Fiona's blood from the birthing, source of a Power that sent shivers down his back.

  ". . . and you'll never bear another child. May your womb and ovaries shrivel into wood and your womanhood pass from you with the afterbirth. May food and drink taste of ashes in your mouth. May the sun refuse to warm you and the dark deny you rest and the waters never cleanse you of your guilt." Maureen paused and an evil smile crossed her face. "And may all your clothing fit you like a camel draped in a shit-stained ragged tent woven from goat hair."

  Ouch. That last one was nasty! Brian grinned in spite of himself. Then he dropped to his knees as the world turned fuzzy.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  {Walk to the sun.}

  Jo went where the voices told her. First the cats, then the deep green fragrant grass and rough ledge outcrops under her feet, then the ancient trees gray-bearded with moss -- they whispered in her ears and told her where she was needed. This land lived and thought. It understood her, understood what she could do that needed doing.

  She just hoped she had enough strength left for it. Right now, she was having a hard time walking straight.

  She'd never been needed before, not in any sense of life-or-death. It felt . . . strange, deeper and more powerful and sustained than sex.

  That was the thing about sex, she saw with a sudden wince. It felt good, yes, but there was this ugly secret hiding deeper down: She needed to feel needed. Sex made her feel valuable, at least for a little while. It was an easy way to make men need her, Power with the capital "P." Her own form of insanity.

  But this wasn't schizophrenia or any other kind of madness. This was magic, and like most of life it gave back what you brought to it. Daddy had brought hatred and domination and cruelty to the magic, and it gave back death.

  The land had shown her that, and once she understood, Jo felt the guilt start to loosen in her chest. Maybe she'd killed him, but blaming her would be like blaming the ground for a plane crash.

  Maureen brought a love of trees and wild things and solitude to the magic, and those things loved her and protected her and gave her balance in return. The magic gave back what she brought to it.

  And Jo brought a wish to heal and soothe and nurture and protect. She'd seen enough fucking pain in her life -- now she could do something about it. Damned if she knew or cared where the power came from, but those people in the castle . . . their need for healing and safety bordered on ferocity. And she could help them.

  She had to stay.

  David must have some kind of place in this land. But would he want her back? Would he want to come here? She'd hurt him. On purpose. And scared the shit out of him, too; she'd seen it in his face. Jo felt tears running hot down her cheeks, and she wiped the blur out of her eyes.

  A body lay in front of her, sprawled face-down near the edge of the forest. The slim build and dark hair reminded her of Sean, but surface and detail and edge seemed vague as if seen through a shimmer of mirage. The land showed her more than her eyes could see. Illusions.

  She knelt by the figure and touched her fingers to the back of its neck, wondering if this was a refugee who'd died before reaching the castle.
Jo let her senses sink into the skin, finding a woman, alive, skin warm and pulse beating strong, felled by a blow to the back of the head. No permanent damage. Nothing here of the images of terror and fire and blood she'd found in the refugees. Instead, she found the same twisting coils of magic that had bound the man she'd healed in the tower.

  Jo growled deep in her throat, feral rage at what she found and felt. Fucking bastards . . .

  The Old Ones kept slaves. People, trees and grass, the dragons and the cats, even the stones of the castle on the hill -- slaves bound to the wills of the Old Ones. Like Daddy had bound his family.

  She had the Power to stop that shit.

  Jo gathered the strands of binding in her hands, tearing them loose from the woman and ripping them into shreds with her anger. She tugged on the magic cord that had connected them and found the way it led, downhill and into the forest. A quick jerk brought fear and deep exhaustion pulsing back, and she followed them. Strength flowed into Jo, welling up from the soil beneath her feet.

  The forest had changed since she walked it last. Now it welcomed her and supported her, offering a soft smooth trail underfoot and a clean smell of leaves and soil and water. The hate and fear and sense of danger had vanished. This was the other face of the Enchanted Forest, enchantment as love and joy.

  Now this felt like Maureen's forest -- Maureen climbing high in a limber sapling birch and swinging it down like the boy in Frost's poem. Maureen turning over rocks in the stream and squealing with delight as she captured a tail-snapping crawfish for inspection. Maureen flat on her belly peering into a chipmunk's hollow log and reaching in and pulling out a handful of beechnuts and cracking one to eat but putting the rest back because the furball needed a good stash to survive the winter.

  {You are indeed our sister.}

  A red fox stretched sphinx-like on the trail, pink tongue lolling out of open jaws as if the animal was laughing. So the Land of Faery had a lighter face?

  {Faery, like magic, can resemble what you bring to it.}

  The fox stood by halves, rear and front, and stretched like a cat and then turned, trotting daintily along the trail ahead of her with the bushy tail and white fur tip as a beacon whispering for Jo to come that way. Maureen loved foxes. If her forest offered one as a guide, it was safe to follow.

  The vixen froze in mid-stride, cocking her ears. She bounced sideways, stiff-legged, and then snapped at something between her paws. Jo heard bones crunching. The fox swallowed, shook herself, and then trotted along the trail as if nothing had happened.

  Jo shivered. No, the forest was not safe. This land was not safe. Death lurked behind that rock over there, a grin on his skull and scythe at the ready, waiting for her to make a mistake. But somehow, knowing that made her feel more alive than ever. Her skin tingled.

  Golden light outlined the leaves, and she heard voices in the breeze rustling overhead. Maureen's trees guarded Jo, guarded this trail. And a truck could have splattered her any time she crossed a street in Naskeag Falls. Life was dangerous. Invariably fatal.

  Jo glanced back over her shoulder. The trail vanished behind her as she walked, turning back into tangled wilderness. She knew that was the face the forest would show to a stranger or an enemy. Which face would David see?

  {The Singer opens his own path.}

  Yeah. But does that path come anywhere close to me?

  And that thought brought her into a clearing, grass leading down to a brook that laughed of trout and otters. Maureen and Brian stood over a woman crouching on the near bank, and a dragon bulked huge on the far edge of the woods. Next to the dragon . . .

  "David!"

  They met halfway, the sun glowing exactly warm enough and the air sweet, details like him setting down a heavy cage and her leaping from stone to stone across the brook tossed off by bodies running on autopilot while the brains focused on more important things. She drank in the smell of him and the lean hardness of his body enfolding hers, the fire of his lips. Had she been downplaying sex? Damnfool thought.

  But this place was a little too public for her taste. Wouldn't want to shock the dragon. She pulled back and stared into his eyes.

  "I'm sorry." There, she'd said it, blanket statement covering a multitude of sins. Next step was acting on it.

  Then she saw his pain. He winced and slackened his hold, favoring his left arm. The Healer inside her saw the ripped sleeve, the dark blood clotting there, the aura of infection, and grabbed hold of her.

  Slashed wounds and punctures, livid skin spreading from them and blackness starting to fringe the cut lips. Her fingers traced the edges, listening to his body. Infection, yes, and a nasty one. She remembered the buzz and reek of it, killing that small strange man in the tower. The same germs, the same kind of wounds, bite or claw slash or cut. But this had barely started. She almost smiled.

  Her hands ran up his arm, inside the torn sleeve and ripped it like tissue paper all the way to his armpit and then circled his shoulder, tracing the skin, feeling the heat of the germs warring with the antibodies in his blood, finding the end of them. Fingertip to fingertip, thumb to thumb, her hands ringed his arm and squeezed gently. Toothpaste in a tube, she thought, run the fingers down the tube and bring all the paste to the end and squeeze it out.

  His arm trembled under her touch, and she felt his muscles bunching from the pain, but he didn't pull back. He trusted her.

  He needed her. Her, not just her body.

  Her hands reached his fingers, followed each out to the tip and nail, and then retraced the path to the slashed wounds on his forearm. Foul yellow-green slime dripped from the raw meat there, and she tore the wrecked sleeve into pads to mop it up. Her touch left shiny scar tissue behind, purple with new-grown skin but clean and cool and pure.

  The healing dragged strength out of her and left a strange calm ecstasy behind, Zen satori or Sufi trance or some other kind of mystical exhaustion. God flowed through her hands.

  She laid her palms on either side of his forearm, feeling her way deep into the muscles and tendons, asking them about lurking death or hidden damage. All seemed well.

  White ringed his eyes and his lips, but he smiled. He shook his hand, gently at first, and then flexed his fingers into a fist to remind him of what his forearm should feel like. He captured her hands and kissed them, and Jo felt the thrill up her arms and down into her belly.

  And then her knees gave up on her and she thumped down on her butt in the soft grass. The forest pulsed around her, in and out as if she saw the clearing through a zoom lens hunting for the proper framing of a picture. David knelt beside her, tender hands cradling her cheeks, fear replacing the wonder that had replaced the pain on his face.

  She waved the fear away. "Long day. 'M okay. Just tired. Done a lot."

  "Jo . . . your father . . ."

  "Had to happen. Should have happened years ago. Rabid dog."

  She closed her eyes and sank against his chest, letting the warmth and strength of him enfold her. Support her. That's what this pairing thing was all about. Not just sex. David made her stronger. If they worked right, pairs grew rather than shrank. Not like Daddy's vampire act, sucking life from Mom to fill his own emptiness.

  {I smell you.}

  That voice in her head . . . Jo cringed and broke loose from David's warmth and the soft kitten-purr of her own comfort, staring up at razor-edged obsidian scales and a huge yellow slit-pupil eye staring back. They plunged her back into the terror of the other dragon. This had to be the mate, freed from its master's power and seeking blood . . . .

  David's arms tightened around her, calming and protecting. "That's a formal greeting, not a threat. Jo, this is the poet Khe'sha. He's decided to add our song to the dragon-sagas, rather than feed us to his brood."

  {I hear your name, Cynthia Josephine Pierce. No dragon would eat a Healer. Most certainly, no dragon would eat a Singer or his mate.}

  "Pleased to meet you." Jo tried hard not to stare at the long serrated teeth within arm's-reach.
She tried hard not to gag, as well. This dragon had halitosis thick enough to wilt the grass for ten yards around. But she was sure that puking would be seen as bad manners, even in draconic society.

  Poet? Dinosaurs were poets?

  {Our songs are our lives. The Singer gave me your songs and showed why blood came between us. Where there is no choice, there is no guilt.}

  The huge head swung away from her, to stare at Brian and Maureen and the woman crouched between them. {Guilt comes from choosing evil. I would eat that one, instead. But it still holds my young in danger.}

  Maureen cocked her head. "Does it now?" she drawled, with a hard edge to her voice. "And I thought we had a bargain." She stared down at the woman at her feet, drew back her foot, and kicked. Her toes stopped a scant inch from the woman's belly.

  Jo shuddered. Maureen had always had that edge of suppressed rage, but this seemed a little too calm and calculated. Sadistic. Then Jo listened to the forest around them, and it approved. It knew more about the scene than she did. It hated that woman. It would have done far worse.

  The woman squirmed on the ground, curled around her stomach as if protecting a wound. Maureen tilted her head to the other side and drew her foot back again, aiming. "Release those hatchlings, or die! Now!"

  The woman fought for breath. "Your word. Your word . . . that I can . . . leave . . . the forest."

  "If the dragons live, you live. If they die, you die. Release them!"

  "Your . . . word."

  Maureen barked a harsh laugh. "You lie as easily as you breathe, and just as often. You want my word of honor? Okay, love, you've got it. If you release those dragons and they are alive, you have my word that the forest will let you live. It doesn't want to, but it will."

  The woman slumped limp on the grass, mumbled a few words, and shook her head as if that movement took all the strength she had left. "They're free. Still asleep, but alive and free. If they die before I leave the forest, it isn't any fault of mine."