by Faith Hunter
Occam nodded, covered me with a shiny metallic sheet he had found somewhere, his voice directing people to do . . . things. I didn’t pay attention. I was too tired to care. I closed my eyes and let the last of the breath flow from me, not needing it now. I needed my woods, and though I was not on them, there was enough of me here in this tree for my woods to reach across, enough of me here and enough of me there to bleed over from my woods. To connect here. To direct here.
I claimed this tree for my own, for Soulwood.
My heartbeat steadied and grew negligibly stronger. My breath, when I took one, much later, didn’t hurt quite so bad. The sound of rushing water echoed in my ears, a distorted vibration, the sound of water below ground, the drumming of blood in my veins. I was healing. With roots inside of me.
Shadows shifted under the ground. I felt them through the earth, the dark things that hadn’t been on my property until I gave Brother Ephraim to my wood. Once again, I trailed the dark shadows within the ground, the fractured and broken things, watching me, curious, intent, but also agitated and distressed—afraid. And that’s when I realized, and knew I should have seen it instantly, but I’d been so busy with new people, new things, that I hadn’t bothered to look at the earth, to see, to understand.
Unlike the man who had attacked me in the woods when I was fifteen, the man who had fed the woods and become one with them, Ephraim was still whole, still sentient, still self-aware. And he was trapped in my wood, not able to get free, even with the wood healing me from afar. I should have known it sooner, ever since I smelled his blood, metallic and pungent. Brother Ephraim hadn’t been human. And he was not helping my wood. He was resisting it. He was trying to change Soulwood.
I didn’t know what to do about him, buried there, beneath the soil, but his presence didn’t mean my death in this moment, didn’t affect my healing in this moment, and that was the only thing that mattered right now. Except . . . I remembered Daddy. Wondered if he was dead. If I could have saved him the same way I saved myself. And wondered if he would have shunned me as a witch if I had. I let sleep take me.
* * *
When I woke it was to feel Occam holding my forearm. I knew it was him by the sound of his purring breath. Without opening my eyes, I could tell that he was curled around me protectively. His body was heated as if with a fever, and shivers ran through his flesh, ripples of muscle spasms. He might have been about to shift into his leopard when I last remembered him. The spasms suggested that he was in a great deal of pain.
On my other side, curled firmly against me, but not quite so warm, was Tandy. His worry leached into me; I could feel his disquiet as if I were an empath myself. I had claimed Tandy just as I had claimed Paka. Both were probably huge mistakes.
My lips parted and I exhaled. Occam noticed the change in me and raised his head, the movement rustling the metallic sheet over me. “Nell?”
Tandy sat up as well, and I could feel him staring at my face.
“Yes,” I breathed, the sibilant barely there. “I’ll live.” I managed another breath and felt just a hint stronger. “I think. How’s Daddy?”
“Alive,” Tandy said. “A woman named Carmel went with him to the hospital with a GSW—gunshot wound—to the middle of his torso and another to his thigh. There’s some fear the round nicked what they called his descending aorta, which I understand is a big artery.”
“Oh. That isn’t good. Daddy hates hospitals. Why are you curled around me, Tandy?”
“You are the only stable place here. There is too much fear and anger and emotion except for right here, next to you.”
“Ah,” I said. “This tree is comforting. Always has been.”
“It isn’t the tree,” Tandy said, his fingers wrapping over my bound ones. “It’s you.”
“Nell, sugar,” Occam said gently. “You have . . . roots growing into your body.”
He paused as if waiting for me to say something, but what could I say? I did have roots growing into me. I opened my eyes and looked down. Tandy lifted the sheet so I could see my exposed belly, roots climbing inside, just the way they climbed into cracks of rock when seeking water. They were over my arms and twined around my hands and fingers. And up my legs, sealing me to the ground. Claiming me.
“You told me to leave them alone,” Occam said, his voice a Texan cat growl, “so I did, but them things are getting bigger and stronger. Soon it might be impossible to cut you free without carving out something important, like your liver or lungs or kidneys.” I still didn’t reply and he went on, his voice deepening as if this was the difficult part. “Rick wanted to cut you free. I made him go away.”
“Thank you.”
“He was kinda ornery about it all.”
I smiled for real and said, “He’s a mite prickly about being told how to run things, isn’t he?”
“He’s the senior agent. It’s possible that I shouldn’t have bitten him when he came at you with a knife.”
I had a feeling that laughter would hurt rather badly, and so I just let my smile widen. “Probably not.”
“Hindsight and all that,” Occam said. When I didn’t respond, he asked, “When do you want to be cut free, Nell, sugar?”
I’d been evaluating my body while we talked and I said, “I think I’m as healed as I can get.” Occam slid his hand from me and I heard him draw a knife from somewhere. I opened my eyes to see him take a root in his free hand and bend over me. “Be careful,” I said. “The tree won’t like it when you cut its roots. It’s got opinions now and I think it wants to keep me here, so watch out. It might try to hurt you.”
He paused. “A tree. With opinions.” He sounded disconcerted.
“Trees are very opinionated,” I said, “mostly about rain and sunlight and fire, as you might expect, but also about other things, like sharp blades cutting into them.”
“A tree,” he repeated, the Texan twang coming out strong. “With opinions.”
Letting the smile into my voice, I said, “You turn into a jungle cat on the full moon, and other times too. Who are you to judge?”
After a moment he said, “True.”
From one side, I heard Rick walk up, his feet so silent that only the vibrations through the rootlets told me he was close. From above us he asked, “You got a quote for this one?”
I settled on, “‘All things must come to the soul through its roots, from where it’s planted.’ Teresa of Avila said that, or something like it. And right now I’m planted by this tree.”
“What are you?” Rick asked in his cop voice.
I looked up to see him holding his psy-meter, measuring my psychometric energy. “I have no idea. But after today, I’m fairly certain I’m not human. I’m also not a tree. Beyond that I don’t know. What do I read?” I asked, oddly curious.
“In the FBI office you read high in the human range, but still human. Right now, you aren’t reading at all. I can’t pick you up over Occam.”
“Well. Right now I’m stuck inside a tree and it inside of me. Check it again when we get back to my woods.” I thought I sounded very reasonable, but Occam frowned. “What?” I asked.
“Nothing. Cutting now. And watching out for roots that fight back.”
Tandy said, “I’ll grab them if the tree tries to trap you.”
“Did SWAT or the FBI see the roots in me?” I asked.
“No,” Rick said shortly. “Neither did your church people, though they can be demanding, especially your mother. We take care of our own.”
My smile softened and I felt Occam cutting into the roots, a distant awareness that wasn’t pain, but wasn’t pleasure either. I said, “Thank you. But they aren’t my church people. My family is still my family, yes, and maybe more so than I thought, but I don’t have church people. They don’t let the inhuman worship in their church.”
“Nonhuman,” Occam said, slicing through a roo
tlet that roiled and snaked in his hand, fighting his blade. “Not inhuman. Different things entirely. I’m not human either, but I’m not inhuman in any way.”
“Whatever,” I said, borrowing a phrase from JoJo.
“Nell?” I made a mmm sound and Occam said, “This root? It’s bleeding.”
My eyes had closed and I forced them open again. Occam had cut open my shirts, revealing my midriff and abdomen, which was mostly healed over, with roots growing inside me, three of them, each nearly an inch in diameter. Occam’s blade was poised over the cut root, which was moving, snakelike, severed about six inches from the ground and right at my skin. The woody root was bleeding. Interesting. Had my blood mutated the tree? I kept that thought to myself. “Better hurry,” I said. “It’s a mite antsy.”
“Ouch,” Occam said. “It bit me!”
Self-protecting trees? Carnivorous trees? Now, wouldn’t that be something to see. I felt a tugging on my flesh as Occam cut, but no pain, which I figured meant good things, like the tree hadn’t taken over my central nervous system or my brain. But I had a feeling that the tree had probably changed me as much as I had changed it. Mutations were likely mutual. I felt him sawing through the wood of a second root. “Ow!” I said, my eyes popping back open.
“Sorry,” Occam said. The root had twisted my skin when it popped free, leaving a red abrasion. Dull red blood, thick as sap, gathered into a droplet on the root’s cut end. Tandy reached out, grabbing the severed roots.
The empath hissed. “The tree is angry. It is thinking about growing thorns.”
“Self-protective tree,” I said speaking my earlier thought. “Thorns exist in the plant world, and the tree knows this.” I wondered aloud if the tree would send out rootlets and roots and stems, reaching through soil and air, searching for something with thorns, to study or copy. And I wondered if the oak could steal the DNA pattern from thorns and incorporate them into its own DNA. Some plants could do that. But I kept all that silent until I had a chance to study DNA and RNA so I could sound, and be, intelligent and well-read on the subject. That is, if I talked about it at all.
Occam’s blade severed the last root in my belly; this time the sting was much sharper, as if he had cut me, and I hissed with pain. I looked again and the blood from the tree root was thicker and darker. Inside me, deep in my belly, I felt something stirring, drawing tight. “I think . . .” I paused, paying attention to the movement inside me. “I think you better cut my body free fast.”
“Yes,” Tandy said, urgency in his tone. “Fast!”
Occam didn’t question, but repositioned Tandy’s hands on a root and applied his were-strength to the wood. Three rootlets severed fast but the blade nicked my skin. I hissed as my blood landed in a wide microsplatter. The ground beneath me sucked the blood down and a tiny vibration, a faint tremor, began in the soil. Occam’s blade slicked through the smaller roots trapping my fingers and encircling my legs. I raised them, bending my knees, keeping my flesh off the ground. The blade sawed through the larger roots at my hips and shoulders, tree blood welling at each cut.
Occam attacked the final, midsized rootlets, which were wrapped around my wrists. They popped and the pain shocked through me, the root’s red blood splattering my face, throat, and belly. “Move me,” I said. “Move me now!”
Occam slid his arms around my back and under my knees and lifted me. Rootlets reached up from the earth, stretching and tearing, fresh rootlets ripping from my ankles and wrists and shredding my clothes as Occam jerked me two steps away from the oak.
“Move, move, move!” I said. “Out from the drip line.” I pointed and Occam started to take a step. Roots tore from the earth as he lifted his foot, where the oak had already wrapped around his feet. He whirled from the tree with cat grace, a slinking, supple, willowy step, almost dancing, or like a cat leaping for prey. Carrying me. I remembered being carried as a child, once or twice, until little’uns smaller than I was took my place.
His arms tightened around me as he landed. I was gasping, breath too fast, but I felt warm. Safe. Occam’s body was warm, his arms muscled, keeping me . . . safe. Such an odd, rare feeling, safety. And not one I could let myself get used to. I twisted my head to see that Tandy was with us, safe as well. His skin was white, the Lichtenberg figures bright red on his skin, his face full of tension and fear. But he tucked the metallic sheet around me, hiding me, hiding my blood.
Occam carried me across the compound, which was full of police and ambulances and crime scene vehicles, to Unit Eighteen’s van. He set me on the long middle bench seat, closed the door, and went around to the other side. He and Tandy climbed in. “We got two choices, sugar. I can take you home,” he said, “Tandy and me. Or you can put on Paka’s after-shift clothes and we can go back to work. Up to you. But you need to know there could be repercussions for you going into the compound against orders.”
“I’ll stay. I left my basket in the church, with my laptop inside.”
“I’ll notify Rick,” Occam said as he tossed a gobag over the seat. “Get changed. I got me a ton of texts and e-mails while you were healing to go through.” He climbed out of the van and shut the doors, giving me privacy, pulling his cell. While he talked, I zipped open the gobag. The catty scent of Paka met my nose. Occam didn’t look my way, guarding the van. Like a cat, I thought, who sits in the window, knowing you are looking at him, and ignoring you, aware of your scrutiny, but not reacting to it. Which eased my embarrassment as I stripped off my shredded clothing.
Sunlight turned Occam’s lightly tanned skin a pale gold, and made his amber-hazel eyes glow. He was wearing loose cotton pants and a stretchy T-shirt, the clothing dark blue with the words PsyLED stenciled on the shirt in white. And he was barefooted again, toes pawing the ground, the way a cat might milk the earth.
I realized he was wearing his gobag clothing. He had been in leopard form at some point this morning and had probably changed from his leopard form to his human one when he came to save me. That was why he eyes had glowed. I wondered, briefly, where he had been when the shooting started, how much ground he had covered, and how fast he had shifted and then dressed, to get to me so quickly. He was tall, all muscle and bone, long-limbed and lean, with long fingers and slender hands, like a guitar player or a pianist. His blondish hair was unevenly cut and ragged, hanging to his collarbones in places, longer now, perhaps a result of shifting several times in the last few days.
Tandy stood on the other side of the van, facing outward and he waved off a woman in an FBI jacket when she came too near. I felt terribly exposed to be changing in the van, so I slid to the floor, where I stripped off my skirt and pulled the elastic-waist sweatpants on over my blood-crusted undies. I couldn’t make myself go without and there were no panties in the gobag, not that I felt I could wear another woman’s undies anyway.
When I was dressed, the unfamiliar feeling of sweatpants on my legs, and my shoes back on my feet, I tapped on the door. Occam and Tandy opened them at the same moment and slid in. “Good timing,” Occam said. “We’re heading to the Stubbins farm through the old farm road. Rick says the FBI is there already, and he thinks one of churchmen ran off that way. Buckle up, Nell, sugar.”
Occam drove across the compound, allowing for the ruts and the invisible bumps and holes hidden by weeds and grasses. He hit a particularly deep rut and we all bounced. When we settled, he looked back over his shoulder. “Sugar, you mighta walked into a firestorm of trouble back at the compound, but according to the texts that bombed my cell while you were healing, you just went from problem child to asset of the hour, the week, and the month. The FBI is drooling over what they’ve found since they responded to Rick’s ‘code ninety-nine and shots fired’ alert. They got a gold mine at Jackson Jr.’s house and now a ton more at the Stubbins farm. And they didn’t even have to get that subpoena.”
I didn’t know what a code ninety-nine was, but I understood the rest. “A
re they happy enough that I won’t get fired as a consultant for PsyLED?”
“I doubt anyone will even mention that possibility,” Tandy said, a smile in his words.
Unexpected relief flooded through me. I nodded and pressed a hand to my middle, staring out at the little-used, narrow roadway, never paved, and with saplings grown in close. Beneath my hand, the rooty feeling of my belly seemed softer, as if things were settling.
Occam’s cell rang, a quiet vibration with tinkling bells. He answered with, “Occam. What do you have, LaFleur?” Occam listened a long time before he said, “Understood. I’ll tell her.” He ended the call and looked my way. “Your daddy is out of surgery, Nell. He’s expected to make it.”
I closed my burning eyes. “That’s good. Him and me—he and I—have a lot of things to catch up on. But Rick had a lot more to say, didn’t he?”
“Yes. But that can wait until we get a gander at the Stubbins farm. Rick wants us on-site.”
The van rolled out of the trees. The Stubbins house was set in a flat area about halfway down a slope, between two hills, with the gully where the hills met about a hundred fifty feet from the front door. A trickle of water ran through it, but the topography of the land suggested that the gully would carry a lot of runoff in big rains. The area around the house was hill mud, brown and grayish, with a goodly rock content. Not as good for farming as Soulwood, but okay for cattle. The extralong cattle trailer behind the house and the fences that cordoned off pastures to the south and west said it had been used for that purpose. The absent smell of cow manure said it had been a while. The place was a proverbial anthill of activity.
There were FBI vehicles, an ambulance, sheriff cars, two crime scene vans, and, in the distance, news vans behind a barricade. There were also ruts in the grass of the house’s yard where eighteen-wheeler-sized trucks had been parked, and then had recently churned up the lawn, driving away.