The Wolf Tree

by John Claude Bemis

  With a forked stick, she lifted hot rocks from the fire and dropped them into the water-filled bladder at her feet. The heat lifted the aroma of the cooking fish, and she inhaled hungrily.

  At the quick snapping of bracken several yards away, Jolie turned. A blurred form burst from the underbrush and leaped upon her. Ferocious instinct took over and Jolie fought, kicking up with her bare feet, tearing and slashing with her fingernails. The attacker growled at the blows, and the two thrashed until Jolie was pinned at the elbows, her face turned into the earth as the attacker held Jolie by her tangled hair. The hard edge of a blade pressed against Jolie’s throat.

  As a final defense, Jolie began the high, warbling song sirens used to control others. The blade was released from her throat as the attacker gasped, “Sirmoeur!”

  Jolie turned her head and looked up.

  She was tall, taller than Jolie, and a few years older. Her hair was golden red, almost to the point of being pink where the sun shone through the wisps. Her skin was pale, silvery. But unlike Jolie’s skin, hers shimmered iridescent, like the belly of a trout, swirling and shifting with faint hues of red and green and blue when she moved.

  The siren scrambled off Jolie, throwing the blade to the side as she passionately took Jolie in her arms and pulled her into an embrace. “Sirmoeur! Jolie, meu sirmoeur!” she cried over and over.

  “Sister?” Jolie was startled to hear her siren tongue. “It is you, Cleoma?”

  “Yes, yes, Jolie. You are alive!” Cleoma said. “I thought we had lost you. Forgive me for hurting you. Are you injured?” She ran her fingers over Jolie’s forehead, where a pink welt was rising and blood speckled where she had been scratched.

  Jolie was too surprised to feel where she had been struck. She stared at her siren sister, thinking she must be some delusion that would vanish if she blinked. But Cleoma was real. She was here, in front of Jolie against all reason.

  “No, I’m fine,” Jolie choked, half laughing, half sobbing.

  Cleoma took Jolie’s hands in hers as she said, “I had no idea it was you. I was coming to Nascuits ai Élodie, when I saw someone hunched over a cook fire. I thought the well’s blessed waters were violated. But it is you, meu sirmoeur! Jolie, my sister.”

  “Are the others with you?” Jolie said, looking eagerly to the bracken where Cleoma had emerged.

  “No, I am alone,” she said. “I have come for the waters, to bring them back to our sisters in the Terrebonne.”

  “They have returned from the open sea?”

  “Yes, we learned of the Gog’s death and have come home. But listen—something terrible has happened.”

  “What is it?” Jolie asked.

  Cleoma sat back on her heels. She spread her hands across her gown, the woven grasses not nearly so frayed as Jolie’s. “A sickness is spreading among the sisters. It began with the elders, but now even the young and strong are falling to it. Isabeau was the first to take the fever. She would not eat or swim. We gave her boneset and honey in hot water, but the fever did not break. Then she lost her sight. Soon others were sick, too.”

  “Dear Isabeau!” Jolie gasped. “Is she …”

  “She has returned, Jolie,” Cleoma said. “Inez and Breaux, too. But before they died, when the fever drove their minds where they could no longer recognize us, each mumbled over and over about ‘an eternal night’—the world covered in an endless dark. Whether it was the blindness or a vision of something more, we could not tell.”

  “No.” Jolie brushed her hand against the tears. “What is causing this fever?”

  Cleoma took a deep breath, putting her hand over Jolie’s. “Before it began, our sisters who eventually got sick traveled up the Mississippi to the Missouri River and then the Platte. They were drawn by a strange call. We were not sure what was summoning the sirens, but a group followed it. I did not go. None of the younger sisters did.

  “They returned with a strange tale. They encountered a place with an odd half-darkness. They never knew what was causing it, maybe an eclipse, maybe smoke. Or maybe it was something else. We have not discovered if the darkness carried a curse, but the well’s waters must be able to stop the sickness. That is why I must hurry back. I must bring the waters to those who can still be saved.”

  Cleoma ran her hand gently across the tears on Jolie’s cheeks. Then her pale-silver eyes widened as a curious expression came upon her face. “But why are you here at our spring, Jolie?”

  Jolie rose and took Cleoma’s hand, leading her to the mouth of the well. “Come, sirmoeur. I have something to show you.”

  As night fell and the ocean of stars drifted above, Jolie and Cleoma shared the fish and cattail tubers before the fire. Jolie finished telling her sister the long tale of her time with Nel’s medicine show and their encounter with the Gog. Cleoma often turned her troubled gaze back to the well.

  “But how do you know he will awaken?” Cleoma finally asked when Jolie had finished. “It has been nearly a year.”

  “He has started moving lately,” Jolie said. “When I first brought him here, his body was broken. Now he is mended, blessed are the waters. I think it will not be long until he wakes.”

  Cleoma’s brow twisted and her lowered eyes narrowed. “Then he may no longer need you guarding over him, Jolie. Come back with me to the Terrebonne.”

  Jolie’s stomach felt as if she had swallowed the hot stones that had cooked their dinner. “I cannot.”

  “Why not?”

  “Conker is my friend. He will need my help when he awakens.”

  Cleoma’s eyes saddened. “I know your sisters would want badly to see you again, Jolie. They need you. I need you.” Cleoma leaned closer to Jolie. “Return with me so we can tend to them in this dark time. Do not abandon them, sirmoeur.”

  An old anger rose in Jolie. When she lifted her eyes to her sister, Cleoma flinched.

  “Sirmoeur, you call me!” Jolie hissed. “You, dear sister, accuse me of abandonment? Who abandoned me almost two years ago, Cleoma? Who left me alone in the Terrebonne when the Gog’s Hound was hunting us?”

  “The Rambler men … they were protecting you.”

  “The Hound killed them all. Only Buck saved me.”

  Fear crackled in Cleoma’s face. “You know we could not have taken you with us, Jolie. You are not like us. Your father was not song-bound. Your mother violated tradition when she took him. You could not survive in the open sea. We … we had no choice.”

  “No choice?” Jolie whispered. “You had a choice and you made it. Conker had a choice on the Gog’s train. He could have made it to safety, but he chose to save me. I had a choice when I found Conker in the river. I took him here. I have tended and watched over him for this past year. I will not leave him now.”

  Cleoma’s lips trembled as a long silence passed between them. “You are right,” she said at last. “If what you say is true, only Conker can destroy the Gog’s terrible engine. I should not ask you to leave him.”

  Cleoma got to her feet. She pulled the skins, filled with the spring’s waters, over her shoulder. “The journey home is long, and who knows how many of our sisters will perish before I return. I hope you will forgive us, Jolie. We never should have left you.”

  Jolie stood. The long-festering resentment that had so swiftly erupted was dissolving. Jolie’s heart grew sick at the thought of Cleoma leaving, sick with desire to be once again among her sisters.

  “I do forgive you,” Jolie said softly. “If you had stayed with me, the Hound might have captured you, and who knows what the Gog would have done with you. I have been angry with you and our sisters for too long, Cleoma, and I want no longer to hold it.”

  Cleoma pulled her knife from her belt of braided grass. She handed it to Jolie. The blade was gray and pink, a long conch shell filed to a sharp edge.

  “Take it,” Cleoma said. “I am swimming quiet waterways back home. Where you are going, you will need it more than I.”

  The whorl was covered in a tight wra
p, and Jolie’s fingers closed tentatively around the handle. A siren’s knife was one of her few worldly possessions. When she was with her sisters, Jolie had not been old enough to need one. She knew Cleoma must have spent a long time seeking the right shell with the proper weight and patiently crafting the weapon. Jolie had never known a siren to give away her knife. Even the dead returned to the sea with the knives tied to their hands.

  “Thank you,” Jolie said. “I will return it to you one day.”

  Cleoma nodded and embraced Jolie, kissing her several times before turning to go toward the stream.

  “Be swift,” Jolie called to her sister. She wanted to send some message with Cleoma, but she was already gone. The dark waters left no ripple to show her passage.

  For several days, Cleoma traveled. The stream from the well became a creek, and after a time, it met a river. When she could swim no farther, she found a bed of soft grasses down at the river’s bottom. She did not allow herself to rest long, and when she woke, night had fallen.

  She emerged from the water to hunt a quick meal before continuing. In the reeds growing along the river’s edge, she left the waterskins, wanting to keep her hands free as she hunted. As she came up into a forest thick with the sound of frogs and insects, she smelled the men—two of them—before she saw their campfire.

  Through the dense shadows of the trees, the glow of their fire formed a balloon of flickering orange. She could not see the men from her distance, and considered returning to the river to swim past them and look for food elsewhere. But she wondered: if the men were already asleep, it might be easier to steal a meal from their cook pots. This would be the quickest option, so she crept closer, her bare feet making no sound as she drew near their camp.

  She could not see the men until she was nearly to the edge of the fire’s light. The two men were awake. An animal, reduced to little more than blackened bones, was mounted on a spit over the flames. The men ate greedily, tearing the meat off in their teeth and licking at the grease dripping from their hands. Their rough appearance—each man wore a pistol or two at his belt, and the handle of a knife protruded from one’s boot—told Cleoma these were not simple farmers out on a hunting trip. These were dangerous men. She began to back away toward the creek.

  When she had gone a few steps, she turned to run, but slammed abruptly into the chest of a third man. He had her by the arm before she could escape.

  “Don’t you make a noise,” the man whispered. “It’s best my boys don’t know you’re here.”

  Cleoma’s breath drew in quick gasps and she tried to back away. But as she did, the man’s grip tightened. She struggled, digging her fingertips into his arm, but when the edge of a long razor touched her stomach just below her rib cage, she stopped her fight.

  Where had the man come from? How had she not heard him moving in the forest behind her?

  She stared up into the man’s penetrating face. He had a square, chiseled jaw and cheekbones: a black man who wore a neatly trimmed mustache just above his upper lip. His clothes were fine, unlike those of the other two, and he wore a crisply creased gray Stetson hat, as handsome as any constable’s.

  “There’s no need for any singing neither,” he said. “See, I know you’re a siren, and even though I ain’t never met one of you, I know about your songs.”

  Something was wrong with the man, Cleoma knew this. She could sense the presence of the two men behind her by the fire. She could sense other animals—night birds, bullbats, creeping opossums, even the men’s horses—nearby. But this man might as well have been a tombstone for all the life she could sense in him.

  “What’s your name, siren?” he asked in his slow, soft voice.

  Cleoma hesitated. She was confused by the almost casual cordiality of his inflection. Maybe he would not hurt her. Maybe he just wanted to scare her and then he would let her go.

  “Cleoma,” she answered.

  “I’m Stacker, Stacker Lee,” he said. “See, Cleoma, when I was birthed, I had me a caul over my face. You know what that means?”

  Cleoma shook her head, her lips clenched tight.

  “It means I know things. I was born with a certain sight. Always been blessed with perceiving things, if you follow me. Take your intentions, for instance. You’re hoping to save someone.”

  Cleoma tensed, and Stacker smiled.

  “See? I was right. Let me tell you something else I know. I know that if I keep following this river up to a creek, I’ll find a man. I’ve never met this man. Don’t even know what he looks like. But I’ll know him when I find him, ’cause he’s the son of John Henry. There ain’t no mistaking that, is there? Did you, Cleoma, come from upstream?”

  Cleoma looked from Stacker’s passive face to the razor at her gut. She nodded.

  “And did you, Cleoma, encounter a man that could be John Henry’s son?”

  Cleoma shook her head. For a moment, Cleoma was uncertain whether Stacker had understood her or whether he knew she was lying. He held his blank stare for several terrible moments before his gaze relaxed.

  “You know why I’m looking for this man, Cleoma?”

  Cleoma tightened her lips as she shook her head again.

  “This man, who is John Henry’s son, has his father’s Nine Pound Hammer, or so I’ve been told. If I can bring this hammer back to my employer, he will generously return something he never should have taken from me. I bet you’d never guess what he took. Want to guess?”

  Cleoma’s breathing got quicker and she pulled experimentally at his grip. A dry smile curled at the corner of Stacker’s lips. “Not until I’ve finished my story, Cleoma. So you don’t want to guess? I’ll tell you. My employer took my heart. That’s right, my heart. I know what you’re thinking. That I don’t mean this in the literal sense, but, dear Cleoma, it will surprise you to know that when I say this man took my heart, I am not speaking poetically.”

  At this, Stacker tapped the blunt end of the razor to his sternum. “Clockwork. That’s what I’ve got now—a chest full of clockwork.” An expression of sadness flickered in his eyes for a moment, but Cleoma did not know if it was for her or for himself.

  “I want to be a man again. I want to be alive again. To feel things as a man should. I can have my heart back if I bring the Nine Pound Hammer to my employer.

  “I’m telling you this, Cleoma, because I have heard about the waters of the siren springs. They can heal anything, can’t they? Well, if you know of such a place”—he brought the razor up and flicked his thumb gently across the edge—“or you were in possession of such waters, I would be most grateful. If it can rid me of this clockwork curse filling my chest … well, Cleoma, you would save me a further trip up this river. I wouldn’t have to find this son of John Henry, or his damned hammer. You could save me, Cleoma.”

  Stacker waited, the cold expectant stare boring into her. Did the man know she had the waters, hidden in the reeds just at the river’s edge? No, he would not need to torment her if he did.

  She could give him the waters—for he was right, the waters could cure him, as they cured any affliction except death—but then she would have to go back. The time spent swimming back to Élodie’s Spring might cost the lives of some of her sisters, and it might also bring harm to Jolie and the giant sleeping in the well. She knew she could not trust this Stacker Lee.

  “Well, Cleoma?” Stacker said, sticking out his tongue to the edge of his narrow mustache.

  Cleoma tried to take a deep breath, but she could only gasp with fear and confusion. How could a man have a clockwork heart? But she knew his words to be true. She knew it because she could not sense Stacker as alive, like she could the other men or the animals of the forest.

  That Stacker was not lying frightened her most.

  She had to get away. She had no other choice. She said quickly, “I cannot help you. I do not have any of the waters.” Then she released her song, piercing and shrill. A song that had held a herd of deer motionless when she hunted. A song that had
charmed a dozen fishermen as she passed by their boat.

  As Cleoma began to pull from his grasp, Stacker clinched her arm tighter. “That is really regrettable,” he said. “I want to be … I just want to remember what it’s like …”

  He waved the razor swiftly across her throat. Cleoma had no time to cry out, no time to feel pain. She sank to the ground.

  “… to be a man again.” Stacker looked down at Cleoma’s still face and folded the blade of the razor into its pearl handle and dropped it into his pocket.

  5

  ÉLODIE

  TO HIDE THE HARSH GLARE OF THE FIRELIGHT, JOLIE buried the coals of the cook fire. They would remain hot under the earth until morning. The stars overhead were bright enough to cast a shadow, and she gazed up at them for a long time.

  Her sister Cleoma had been traveling for many hours now. Jolie imagined following Cleoma, swimming free in the creek and following the waters back to her Terrebonne home, where she wanted desperately to return. Had the fever spread? Would Cleoma need help tending the sisters? How many lives could extra hands save? Maybe Cleoma had been right. What would she be able to do for Conker—if and when he finally awoke?

  This gnawing sense of regret brought a sudden weariness, and Jolie retired to the well. She pushed back the plants and dropped into the deep, black waters. As her body drifted down, she closed her eyes and felt the spring soothe away her troubled thoughts. After a short time, sleep came over her. She sank to the bottom of the well.

  A cold hand clamped around her ankle.

  Jolie’s eyes sprang open. She screamed a fountain of bubbles and kicked, but another hand clutched her leg and pulled her down. Great balloons of air ascended from the dark below.

  Conker!

  Shaking off sleep and fear, Jolie ran her fingers down to Conker’s hands, following them over his arms until she had a grip around his shoulder. She kicked and clawed the rocks lining the well to bring him up. As they broke the surface, Conker gave a great cry.