Seven Wild Sisters

by Charles de Lint

  I gave the thornbush a dubious look when we reached the Apple Tree Man’s tree.

  “Just walk through with me,” he said.

  All Aunt Lillian and I could do was stare at him, the way you do when someone says something that doesn’t particularly make sense.

  “Don’t worry,” he added. “What you see as barriers are only there if you think they are. It might help to shut your eyes.”

  I couldn’t decide which would be worse, seeing where I was going or not, but in the end I did close my eyes. I counted the steps and right about where I’d reckoned the bush would be I felt something feathery tickle every inch of my skin. I guess I could have been concerned about any number of things right then, from the danger we were in to what Mama was going to say when and if I ever got myself home, but the last thing I thought about as we passed out of this world and into some other was that we’d left Root in the barn. Who was going to look after him and Henny? Who was going to feed Aunt Lillian’s chickens?

  And then that got swallowed up by an even bigger question, one I hadn’t even considered until now, when it was too late. I started thinking in on too many of Aunt Lillian’s stories and the fear rose sharp and jittery inside me. How much time was going to pass in the world outside while we were hidden away in fairyland? I didn’t want to spend a day or two here and come back to find Mama and my sisters twenty years older, or worse, all long dead and gone, like that artist Aunt Lillian had met once who’d spent a couple of days in fairyland only to find twenty years had passed back here in the world he’d left behind.

  But it was too late for that now.

  We’d already stepped outside the world, Aunt Lillian and me both, following a smooth-talking Apple Tree Man into his tree.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  opened my eyes to a buttery yellow light that seemed too bright after the dark night we’d left behind. I’d figured we’d end up right inside the tree and hadn’t quite worked my mind around what it would be like, but instead of anything I might have imagined, we looked to be in somebody’s house—a house that was a whole lot bigger than anything that could fit inside the trunk of any apple tree I’d ever seen. Back in the world we’d left behind, I could easily wrap my arms around its trunk, if I could get past the thorn tree protecting it. But here… here…

  I was still holding hands with Aunt Lillian and we had us a look at each other, neither of us quite ready to believe what we were seeing, though there it was all the same, right in front of our noses.

  “Welcome to my home,” the Apple Tree Man said as he set the ’sangman’s basket down by a stone hearth.

  There wasn’t any fire burning in it, but the big room we were in was cozy warm all the same. I looked around, trying to see where the light was coming from, but couldn’t tell. It smelled like the Apple Tree Man in here, of apples and wood, with that faint underlying shiver of musk.

  I guess we were in the living area of his house. The floor was polished wood with a thick hooked rug in the center. There was a pair of battered armchairs in front of the hearth with a table between them. One wall was floor-to-ceiling books, like in a library, big, fat books, all bound in leather. Later I found out they were the annals of these here hills, written by the Apple Tree Man himself, some of them.

  There were a couple of paintings and a handful of framed drawings on the other walls—familiar landscapes, I realized, as I recognized some of the subjects. Aunt Lillian got a funny look on her face when she spied them. She let go of my hand and walked over to give the nearest one a closer study.

  Across from the hearth was a kitchen area that had a long wooden table running most of the length of the wall and all sorts of herbs and such hanging down from the rafters above it. Shelves held jars with dried mushrooms and tomatoes and I didn’t know what all. There was a smaller wooden kitchen table set out a little from the longer one with a couple of ringback chairs around it. Over against another wall was a chest with clothes hooks above it. A coat as raggedy as the clothes the Apple Tree Man wore was tossed on top of the chest.

  I saw two doors, but they were both closed, so I couldn’t tell where they led.

  “Where does the light come from?” I asked.

  “Making light is one of the first things we learn,” the Apple Tree Man said.

  “And these paintings and drawings?” Aunt Lillian asked.

  “They were gifts from a friend.”

  “Did you ever thank her for them?”

  “I thought I did.”

  Aunt Lillian just made a kind of harrumphing sound. I looked back and forth between them, sensing that undercurrent of old history again. I decided it was none of my business.

  “When we get back,” I asked, “how much time’s going to have passed?”

  For a long moment, nobody answered. Those two old folks, Aunt Lillian and the Apple Tree Man, just kept on looking at each other, a conversation happening in their eyes that only they could hear. The Apple Tree Man finally shifted his gaze to me.

  “The same as passes here,” he said. “Time runs at different speeds throughout the Otherworld, but in this place you’ll notice no difference.”

  That was a relief.

  “What about Root?” I went on. “We left him in the barn. And Henny’s going to need her milking.”

  “We’ll worry about that in the morning. For now, have a seat by the hearth. I’ll make us some tea.”

  “Aunt Lillian?” I said.

  Maybe he was calm as all get-out, but I had a hundred worries and questions running through my head, and sitting around drinking tea and not talking about any of them wasn’t going to help at all, so far as I could see.

  “Not much else we can do right now,” she said, moving away from the picture she’d been studying to take a seat in one of the two armchairs. “Might as well make ourselves comfortable.”

  I sighed and started to walk over to where she was sitting when a weird buzzing sound filled the air. I thought it was something of the Apple Tree Man’s doing, but when I looked at him, he appeared as confused as Aunt Lillian and me. The buzzing grew louder, turning into a deep rumbling drone. We all looked around, searching for its source.

  “It’s the ’sangman,” Aunt Lillian said.

  I glanced in his direction. The little man was still lying in his basket, his mouth open. I remember thinking, Is this what a ’sangman’s snores sound like? And then they came streaming out of his mouth, a yellow-and-black cloud of bees, thick as smoke, pouring out from between his lips like steam from a kettle.

  “Down!” the Apple Tree Man cried. “Get down and lie still.”

  I knew what he meant. Elsie had told me about this before, how if you lay still on the ground, didn’t so much as blink, bees that had been disturbed might just ignore you. So I did as the Apple Tree Man said and dropped to the floor. Aunt Lillian was already lying down—I never even saw her move, she must have done it so fast. The Apple Tree Man opened one of the two doors I’d seen earlier, then stretched out on the floor himself.

  I tried not to even breathe as the buzzing cloud of bees circled the room at about the height of my head, had I still been standing. They made a circuit of the room, once, twice, a third time, then finally they went streaming out the door.

  Long after they were gone and the Apple Tree Man had already stood up, I lay there on the floor shivering, my heart beating way too fast.

  “What in tarnation was that?” Aunt Lillian said.

  I sat up then and gave the ’sangman a wary glance, waiting for more of the bees to come buzzing out of his mouth, but it looked like the stream of bugs was done coming out of him. The Apple Tree Man stood up and closed the door he’d opened earlier, but not before I caught a glimpse of what lay beyond.

  There was a hillside meadow out there, not much different from the one that lay outside the apple tree in Aunt Lillian’s orchard, ’cept everything about it was… I don’t know how to put it. More, I guess. It was like the difference between a black-and-white movie and one y
ou see in color. That hillside pulled at me like an ache in my heart. I didn’t have me but the one peek at it, but I felt myself drawn to it like no piece of land had drawn me before. I was actually on my feet and making for the door when the Apple Tree Man closed it shut.

  “You don’t want to go out there,” the Apple Tree Man said, though we both knew that’s all I wanted to do.

  “I’d almost forgotten the ache that place can wake in a body,” Aunt Lillian said.

  She was looking at that closed door like her best friend had just walked out, never to return.

  The Apple Tree Man shook his head. I thought it was because of what Aunt Lillian said, because of what he knew I wanted to do, but it turned out I was wrong.

  “This is never going to work,” he said.

  “What’s not?”

  He looked at me. “I was going to take the two of you with me to the ’sangmen’s hold. To bring the little rootman back to his kin and see if maybe they’ve got an idea or two that might get you out from the middle of this feud of theirs. But I can’t bring you into that world. You’ll never want to return. And when I do bring you back, you’ll spend the rest of your lives heartsick for the wanting of it.”

  I didn’t argue. That one glimpse I got made me think what he was saying might well be true. But Aunt Lillian was buying none of it.

  “You need to give us a little more credit than that,” she said. “Sure, we’ve got the wanting to be in that place. And maybe, when we come back, we’ll even be pining for it. But we’re stronger than you think. Everybody lives without things they figure they’re desperate to have. That’s just part of living. The sick person wants to be well. The rejected suitor can’t stop thinking of the girl who turned him down. One person needs a fat bank account, another what that money might buy.

  “We don’t get what we want, life still goes on. We make do. We don’t shut down and lie in a corner and cry for the rest of our lives.”

  “Some do,” the Apple Tree Man said. “Some people come back and they’re never happy again.”

  “Maybe,” Aunt Lillian replied. “But I’m not one of them. And I find it insulting how you keep on insisting I am—like somehow you know me better than I know my own self.”

  “I just think—”

  “Too much sometimes,” Aunt Lillian said. “No reason to be ashamed of it. It’s a failing common to my people as well.”

  They stood there looking at each other, no give in either of them, until finally the Apple Tree Man gave a slow nod.

  “My apologies,” he said. “I should learn to take folks at their word.”

  “Would surely simplify a lot of things,” Aunt Lillian agreed.

  “And you?” the Apple Tree Man asked, turning to me.

  I looked at Aunt Lillian, but she shook her head.

  “I can’t help you here, girl,” she said. “This is one of those things that each of us needs to work out on our own. You understand what I mean?”

  I nodded. I didn’t like it, but I knew what she meant. I turned my attention to the Apple Tree Man.

  “I guess the bees will be out there,” I said.

  “But they won’t be concerned with us,” he said. “Not unless we run into the bee fairies before we reach the ’sangmen’s hold.”

  “How did they get to be inside the ’sangman in the first place?” I asked.

  “It’s part of the bee-sting magic. Their fairy shots are poison, through and through—there’s no denying that. But they also give rise to new tribes of bees. What we saw coming out of the ’sangman was like a new hive—born in fairy blood and bee venom and now out swarming to make themselves a new home. They’re going to be too busy to bother with the likes of us unless someone sets them on us.”

  “That’s not where bees come from,” I said.

  I was always a good listener and I could remember any number of Elsie’s stories about bees, from the old bee gum hives that people once made with the hollowed sections of black gum tree trunks, to how the best honey came from the nectar of sourwood tree blossoms.

  “It’s where those came from,” the Apple Tree Man said. “If you hadn’t pulled out all those arrows, they would have consumed the ’sangman before they swarmed. As it is, there was just enough venom in him to make a small swarm, but not enough to harm him.”

  “But—”

  “You’re stalling,” Aunt Lillian said.

  I was. The truth was, I didn’t know if I could do it. I didn’t know if I was as strong as Aunt Lillian. I found myself remembering one of those stories of hers, the one about folks crossing over, how they came back either poets or crazy, and I sure couldn’t rhyme more than the odd verse or two of doggerel.

  “You can wait for us here,” the Apple Tree Man said.

  I thought Aunt Lillian would take offense to that, considering how she’d been going on earlier about us being stronger than the Apple Tree Man gave us credit for. But she just gave me a kind look.

  “There’s no shame in staying behind,” she said. “Considering all the stories about the trouble one can get into on the other side, maybe it makes more sense to stay clear of that land.”

  I could tell she meant it. That she wasn’t going to think less of me if I stayed behind. But that stubborn Dillard streak wouldn’t let me off the hook as easily as Aunt Lillian would.

  “No,” I said, wondering if I’d live to regret it. “I’ve got to see this through now.”

  Nobody asked if I was sure or tried to argue me out of it. Aunt Lillian just gave me an encouraging smile. The Apple Tree Man picked up the ’sangman’s basket and off we went, through the door and away.

  Awful Sharp Thing, a Bee Is

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Adie and Elsie

  ’m starting to get worried,” Mama said.

  Adie shrugged, a gesture that was lost on her mother since Adie was lying on the couch, idly flipping through a magazine while watching some boy band on the music-video channel with Laurel and Bess.

  “Oh, you know Janey,” she said. “She’ll jump at any chance she can get to be up at that old woman’s place.”

  “She didn’t say she was staying overnight. I’m going to have words with that girl when you bring her back.”

  Adie sat up straight. “When I bring her back? Why do I have to go? Elsie’s our nature girl. She loves chances to go into the woods.”

  “I’m sure she does. And you can certainly take Elsie or any of the other girls with you. But you’re the oldest and if something happened to Sarah Jane on the way back from Lily’s place, I’d feel better knowing you were there to deal with the problem.”

  Adie had to smile. That was Mama for you. Always making you feel like something you didn’t much care to do was actually something special that only you could do for her. Even knowing this trick of Mama’s, Adie couldn’t quell the flicker of pride that rose up in her.

  Closing her magazine, she got up to find her running shoes.

  “And take this with you,” Mama said when Adie had her shoes and coat on and was making for the door. “You can put it in a knapsack.”

  Adie sighed when she saw the jar of preserves and bag of muffins Mama was holding out to her. It seemed like you couldn’t say hello to someone on the road around here without exchanging some kind of food or other. But she dutifully fetched a knapsack and loaded it up.

  “And no dawdling,” Mama said. “You tell Sarah Jane she’s to come straight home.”

  Adie rolled her eyes. “There’s nothing to dawdle over between here and Aunt Lillian’s.”

  “Be that as it may…”

  “See, this is why we need a cell phone. If we had one right now, we could just call Janey and tell her to get her butt back home.”

  Mama smiled. “And you’d be happy with her taking it with her whenever she goes to see Lily?”

  Adie thought about how often her sister went to the old woman’s place and shook her head.

  “I’ll just go get her,” she said.

  S
he found Elsie in the pasture, carefully drawing a study of some little animal’s skull she’d discovered in the grass. Mouse, vole—Adie couldn’t tell. Elsie was still like a kid about this. She’d just get all excited about finding a nest or a feather or some animal’s skeleton. But she knew more about what went on in the fields and woods around the farm than any of them. Adie supposed there was something to say about paying the kind of attention Elsie did to every little thing she came across in her wanderings.

  “Come on, skinny knees,” she said. “Mama says we’ve got to go look for Janey.”

  “Just a sec.”

  She waited while Elsie finished her drawing, made a notation under it, and dated it, then carefully stowed away her pencil and journal in her own knapsack.

  “How come we have to get her?” Elsie asked.

  She stood up, brushing grass and dirt from the knees of her jeans.

  “She never came home last night and Mama’s worried.”

  “I just thought she was staying over.”

  “Well, she forgot to tell Mama that, so we’re stuck fetching her back.”

  “You don’t think anything’s happened to her, do you?”

  Adie thought of teasing her, but then realized that she felt a little nag of worry herself.

  “What could happen to her between here and there?” she asked.

  She held up her hand as Elsie was about to answer. Elsie, being the family expert on everything that grew or lived in these hills, could probably come up with a hundred things that might have gone wrong.

  “No,” she said quickly. “I don’t need to know. Everything’s going to be fine. We’ll find her and Aunt Lillian hoeing the garden or shucking peas or whatever it is that they do up at that place to keep themselves busy.”