by Paul Finch
"Maybe this ain't the best time," Mert said, turning to go. Dirra hushed him with a smirk. From all 'round camp came a chorus of belly-laughing and grunting and hurried, first-time friction. Half-strangled moans, storm-lashed leaves. Proud whoops. Applause.
"No one likes a tease, boy. Samara here's been waiting all morning for ye to come-haven't ye, girl? Go on now, Almert. Fetch that pail, and give the lady a drink."
Mert reckoned the goats'd churned the dirt to rat shit; that's why he wobbled so, crossing the pen. In the far corner, he crouched to collect the full bucket, gulping air to slow his jackalope heart. No use. Chest heaving, he stood too quick, slopped milk on his best flannel, felt it soak through to his inflamed skin. Spots jigged in his vision as he about-faced. When he spoke, his voice sounded distant, like it were someone else altogether scuffling there in the muck, working up the grit to graft with a goddess.
"Ye thirsty, Sammie?"
He didn't look to see the dryad's expression. Head down, he held out the offering, and heard the keys rattling in her crown. Whether she were shaking her noggin, whether she were saying Yes, sir, or whether it were the breeze stroking her noisy, Mert couldn't say.
Focused on Sammie's trunk, the scabrous bark of it, the soft patches of moss, he inched close, closer, 'til there were nothing between 'em but the springtime music of her trembling, the sugared heat of her breath.
"She's ready, kid," Dirra said, stepping as far back as the space allowed. "Feed her good."
Mert blinked. Now the pail were empty, now it were rolling on the ground. The milk must've hit the dryad's veins instantly; one second she fidgeted and twitched like she were flea-bitten, the next she laid stiff as driftwood, tense and silent as Mert climbed on.
At first, he felt modest-shy, even. What with his ma right there, clucking happily. The herd bleating, snuffling his boots, chewing his cuffs. Mert unbuckled his overalls and shoved 'em down only far enough to free his cock. Ashamed of the vivid red blotches on his backside, the weeping sores on his hips. He groped the dryad's main cleft, fingered blindly for the right slot. Found a likely hollow and pushed hisself hard into it.
No sooner than the humping started, Mert's awkwardness fled. Between thrusts, he stript shirt and pants, jocks and even socks. Gusts of late-spring air played across his rash, soothing cool, but it were the gal's touch that got him going, the harsh of her timber, the bucking scratch of bark against bad skin.
Screwing Lellie Horton never felt like this.
A minute, tops, and Mert were moaning and groaning louder than any other tree-climber in camp. The burn in his blisters, in his flaking cracks, in his chapped creases, felt good, oh so good, hot spreading along his every part, oh mamma, he never wanted to stop, but oh the hot, the hot, the hot spurting, hot fit to set the maple alight…
Dripping, Mert exhaled and slunk up Sammie's length. Belly to belly, he scraped and sighed 'til his head were aligned with hers. Sparrows tittered in her branches. Striped chipmunks clung to her twigs, staring. Nanny goats cackled below while billies rammed their horns into Sammie's side. Hinges squealed, then the gate slammed behind a whistling Dirra.
Finally alone with his girl, Mert wanted to say something, something powerful and pure as that moment, but he never was no poet. Instead he stretched to his fullest. Kissed the white smudge blurring the dryad's closed lips.
****
"Ma ain't stupid, Sammie. See how she's grilling Pastor? Snapping Bren's head off? Needling Gerta 'til she bawls? Won't be long 'til she adds up one and one, figures us two ain't coming. And the cousins ain't got no reason to protect us, now do they? No sirree. They seen us leaving, sure enough. Greasy-Clint were overly keen on our doings-he always did have a hard-on for you, darlin. The second Ma turns on 'em, them fuckers is gonna give us up. No doubt."
Despite the day's warmth, Mert's palms is sweaty. Muscles spasm, making claws of his fingers; he doubles the chain 'round his hand, grips tight as he can. The fetters is cold and slippery, the iron rough-hewn. With hanks of wool, he's padded the links circling Sammie's neck, hoping they won't shave her smooth. Her wood splinters regardless. Fragments chip away as she presses forward, the leash buffing even as it gouges. The maple pulls Mert toward the field, the staked ladies, the ravenous fire. She breaks cover, poised to run.
"Wrong way," Mert hisses. "You trying to get us caught?"
Sammie shoots him a brief, indecipherable glance. Keeps pulling.
****
Same as always, pigging season hitched into Kaintuck on summer's tailgate. The forest were crawling with the beasts, promising sausage-filled winter larders; but with ready flesh snared in their lassos, the boys ain't had much mind for extra hunting. What hoglets wandered into camp would suffice, they reckoned, the troupe of 'em smug as emperors, spearing boars and babes in their very own backyards.
For a spell, weren't no one happier than Mert and his ma. Sure, Dirra and them she-cousins had one hell of a time keeping the dryads in milk. The gals was damn thirsty creatures-what's worse, seemed the goats was addicted to the trees' wild stink. Gone right feral, prized cashmeres hardly stood still; they played mule when the milking stool come out, refusing the pail. Even so, Dirra sheared the beasts' matted hair and spun it into decent skeins while Mert was off courting his Sammie-girl. Needles clicking to the rhythm of the boy's exertions, she knitted tiny blankets and bonnets and booties for the half-and-half child that would, she believed, join the family any day.
Once she'd knitted the goats bare, Dirra whacked a cradle together, using straw and sheets of old gyprock. Truth be told, it was a lopsided thing, but seeing how Mert goggled at his gal, she thought better of building a bed for his sprout from bits and pieces of Sammie's dead relatives.
From forest to highway, other folk hammered and glued basinets, crocheted and stitched dainties, tilled special gardens for the timber-mammas' rest. Dairy was scarce, and bacon rashers were flimsy, but any day now, any day, they believed- they knew-they'd all be richer than ever.
Any day now.
Any day.
Any week.
****
"Reckon these sticks ain't got the guts to bear us no bubs, my boy," Dirra said over a dinner of jerky and biscuits. She pushed away from the card table they shared for meals, climbed a footstool to peer out the shack window. Outside, autumn had nearly bled summer's corpse dry. Lost in thought, she stood there awhile, arms crossed, fingers drumming, while Mert finished his grub. After licking the plate clean, he carried it to the washtub. Itching fit to burst, he were eager to see Sammie, but something in his ma's stance gave him pause. The tilt of her black brow, maybe. The dark angle of her squint.
He sidled up next to her, followed her gaze. Evening's curtain were falling on the smallhold; in the gloaming, weren't nothing out of the ordinary. Oil lamps glowed on tent-poles, flashlights bobbed back and forth from the shitter. A cigarette cherry flared, floating at knee height, as Wil rolled from yard to yard, checking locks and rattling cages. Embers winked in the central hearth, the cook-fire banked until morning. Beyond, the forest were a jagged silhouette, blacking out the rest of the world.
Dirra reached over and scratched Mert's shoulders, drawing circles down his lean back. This, too, weren't nothing new. For seventeen years his ma'd eased the itch with hook and claw-but that night, he went rigid at her touch.
Immediately, she snatched back her hand. The glaze in her eyes sharpened, turned scowl.
Mert cleared his throat. "Best I pay our gal a visit, I suppose."
"She's playing us for fools," Dirra said, glaring. As if it were his idea to lure the dryads out their groves. As if it were him what wanted a whole new brand of young'uns. "And not just Sammie, God help us. That first one flat tricked us with her pine-kid, the sneaky bitch. And the rest followed suit, pretending to y'all they was something they ain't. Fuck 'em. Better yet, don't. Let the whole frigid lot of 'em burn in Hell."
"Never pegged you for a quitter, Ma," Mert said, though he knew snarking were useless. From
the stubborn clench of her jaw, Dirra's mind were already set. "Think what you like, but I won't abide no talk of burning, ye hear? Keep that sick shit to yerself."
Out in the goat run, Mert peeled off layer upon layer of tension, and stood naked before his gal. Sammie needed a good hosing; curled in her own filth, the shine were all but gone from her leaves, the dirt littered with molted maple keys. At his approach, she scootched herself into a corner.
"It's okay, darlin," he said, lying down, pressing his backside into her coarse front. "I'm here."
Flexing and relaxing, Mert shuddered against Sammie's body. He jerked up and down, almost the same as when they was humping, but without it being over so damn fast. Spooning like this, he could be with her for hours, the pleasure of her skin raking his a thousand times better than blowing his load. Quietly, so's Dirra wouldn't come out with torch blazing, he scrubbed hisself to groaning-point, thinking, Baby, oh baby.
****
The fire's roaring white, hotter and more devastating than love.
Upping-stakes, Bren and Gerta and all them cousins haul the gals one by one to the blaze. The boys is walking funny; there's a hitch in their giddy-up from so much humping, from the day's struggles, from fey gashes torn into their gams.
"You can't stop nothing," Mert says, grasping tangled twigs, failing to get a solid hold. The chain is cutting off his circulation; blue fingers throbbing, he yanks. Sammie tows him beyond the wood's thinnest edge, their passage so far gone unnoticed only on account of the commotion pit-side.
Mert's stomach turns as the flames catch. The aspen goes up first, whoosh!, just like that, then the lovely hazel, the spitting young pine. What a racket the dryads make, with hair and sap sizzling, when once upon a time they scarcely uttered a sound!
Mert falters, wanting-but afraid-to close his eyes. He can't bear the thought of his Sammie on that there pyre. Amber and ruby licking all the places he's claimed for hisself. Greed scorching her black.
In his gut, buried deep, he knows that's the end she wants. The fire. The agony. The nothingness.
Sammie wants to be a fucking martyr.
Oh, what an almighty ruckus.
Half-shadowed, Mert looks at his gal's profile, the beloved bumps and crags outlined with flickering gold.
"You can't stop nothing," he says, sobbing. "Not unless there's a egg in that nest of yers what's ready to hatch. A bub to call our own."
No answer.
She's playing us for fools , Dirra had said, and might be she's right. Ain't no mixed kids come from none of Kaintuck's dryads. Last Vinesday, Clint's pet laid one shrivelled nut, tough as a peach pit, human hair whiskering its only bone.
Only one.
That's it, sum and total.
It weren't enough.
"Git 'em," Dirra had hollered-No, Mert realises, she's hollering. His ma's perched atop her step-stool, one eye on the burning, the other fixed on him.
"She seen us, darlin."
Huffing, she clambers down the rungs. Sprawled on the ground, Pastor's bawling nonsense, catching flurries of ash. Taking up a flaming brand, Dirra yells and kicks the holyman out the way so's he don't catch fire when she runs past.
"Won't be but a few minutes 'til she's here," Mert whines. "Hoof it, love. Now."
No chance. All sudden-like, Sammie's got herself a bronco-rider's expression, his cocksure posture, and more than his fair share of balls. Bracing herself against Dirra's attack, the dryad plants her feet wide, raises her boughs. Smiles.
For a second, Mert admires his lady's tenacity. Despite the slightness of her frame, the tonnes of weight she's lost since they first met, Sammie still reckons she's a heavyweight. That she's bigger than she truly is. That she's midsummer fireworks, set to go off.
What a mamma she'll make .
In Mert's grip, the chain is gone slack, the tug-o-war with his gal nearly over. With no other option, he fossicks through the ferns and thistles until he finds a stone with just the right heft, just the right jag, then clobbers his gal good and hard. A swift, sure blow to the burled skull.
Crackling farewells follow as Mert drags his withered gal into the deep, safe dark of the woods. Huffing, cursing. Minding he don't trample Sammie's twigs.
Shouting louder than the dryad's sisters, brandishing death, Dirra trails after the retreating pair-but she's too late to catch us, Mert tells hisself. Too slow.
Fallen, Sammie's limp body whispers through the scrub, roots sighing along the ground behind 'em, nibbled by pigs.
A GIRL AND HER DOLLS
Adrian Cole
This place is supposed to be very nice and relaxing. It's not a school and it's not a hospital, but maybe it's kind of half way between the two. It's called Fairholme. I didn't know if I was going to like it here at first. Then I did start to like it. Now I'm not so sure.
I'm here because of my gifts, only the staff didn't call them that. They sort of acknowledged them, but I could feel the staff getting embarrassed if they accidentally said something about them. They didn't want to talk to me about them. Well, not directly anyway. They didn't think I was special, but they didn't think I was quite right either. They were jealous, of course. And a bit scared, too. I always sort of like that. It's a bit naughty. It helps me, though. You know, to get through things. I don't have a mum and dad anymore, so it's nice to have something to fall back on.
I think I must have been born with the gifts, but I wasn't aware of them until I lived in Jamaica, where Dad worked in something called an Embassy. He was pretty important and always busy, which meant Mum was as well, so I spent a lot of time with my Nanny. She was brilliant. Her name was Primrose and she was a Jamaican lady. And she was the first one to tell me about the gifts. I sort of knew what she meant, but it wasn't until she took me to meet her grandma that I understood.
Primrose's grandma was a zillion years old. I mean really old. I didn't think anyone could live that long. I never asked her how old she was and I never tried to read it in her. She was the only person I ever knew who could block me. That was scary. But she was okay, really. Just interested, I suppose, in my gifts. She taught me how to use them. And how to disguise them.
You see, I can do weird things. I can feel what other people feel-and Primrose's grandma showed me how to listen to people inside. That's one thing. And I can move things. And then there's the thing that no one knows about. I keep that a secret.
After Mum and Dad died in the accident when their plane crashed, I had to come back to England, to be with my uncle's family. I wanted to die too, I was so upset. I carried on, though, and shut myself into myself. My uncle-Dad's brother-never liked me very much. He pretended to, but I could hear him thinking bad things about me. My name is Madeline, but he used to call me Maddie, and I absolutely hated that. I'm not mad, and he shouldn't even have joked with my name, even if he knew I wasn't mad. I was just inconvenient. He had his own kids, and they didn't like me either. They were spiteful and mean.
So I was sent to a boarding school. It was okay. The teachers and the nurse and everyone were nice, really, or no different from most people. They wanted to help us kids. I was disruptive, though, because I was so unhappy. After all, I'd lost my mum and dad and I'd lost my nice home in Jamaica and my Nanny. I missed it all a lot. So I got angry and depressed and all that sort of horrible stuff. The teachers tried to help me, but they couldn't.
I began to argue with everyone in class too, which was bad. I was cheeky and rude and said nasty things to the other kids. I could feel their hatred growing and it made me worse. I'm not pleased with myself. It wasn't fair. I didn't stop to think that I was making a mess of things or that I was going to get more and more into trouble.
When I started at the boarding school, they put me in a dormitory with twenty other girls, but when things got bad, and I started to move things, like jerking the beds at night and pulling the sheets off people while they were asleep-and all of it while I was in my own bed 'asleep'-the teachers got suspicious. It was the first time I he
ard someone say poltergeist and I had to get a dictionary to find out what it meant. I had to laugh.
It was like I had a new friend. I got my 'friend' to do a few things for me. Simple stuff, like breaking cups and saucers or throwing books around. It was really funny to feel the reactions in the teachers and the other kids. They were frightened. I got the blame, though. I know that because I could read what Mrs Alburton was thinking. She was the Head Teacher. I liked her, because she was kind and did want all the children to be happy and to learn things so they could get on in life. I felt sorry for her as well, because she had lost her husband in a war somewhere and I could read sadness in her all the time. I didn't tell her, though.
"You know, Madeline," she said to me, "I do understand why you aren't happy here. Your sadness is like-well, you know all about radio waves, you've studied them in physics. You can't see them, but they're in the air, all around us. I think, sometimes, when people are very, very sad, they create a sort of radio wave. It can be extremely strong. Strong enough to move things."
"Yes, Mrs Alburton," I said, quite calmly. "It's not always deliberate, though. When I get angry, it just happens."
She kept her face very calm, like me, but I could read her inside and what I said had shocked her. She had realised straight away that what I meant was, sometimes I do it on purpose. I control what I do. I move things.
"Does it worry you, Madeline? Is it a little bit frightening?"
I didn't want to admit that I enjoyed it, so I said something like, no, it was okay, just a slight nuisance, a bit like one of the other girls, called Susan Plumb, who got fits now and then. Mrs Alburton said that was a very good comparison. She also told me I was to have my own room, just for the time being. She wanted me to think it was for my protection, but I knew she was thinking more about protecting the other girls. I liked that.
I knew after that interview things would change. When people don't understand something, especially in a kid like me, they don't like not being able to have control. I read it in all of them at the school, and most of the kids had as little to do with me as they could. Some of them called me a witch-oh, not to my face-but that's what they were thinking. I loved that!