Into the Woods: Tales from the Hollows and Beyond(123)
Author: Kim Harrison

"I will teach you of trees, young man," she said in a low voice. "If you let the axes into your woods before you see, the loggers will rob you blind. They will say it’s hedge maple and pay you accordingly when what they take is oak and larch and beech as big around as a bathtub. I can’t allow a Temson to get cheated," she said dryly. "It makes me look like a fool by association."

He flushed, feeling hot in his new, uncomfortable suit. "Really, Ms. Temson," he said. "I was going to do a survey myself before I leave. I went to school to be a forester."

"They have a school to learn about trees?" she said, her eyes bright and a knowing smile quirking her lips. "Hear that, Diana? He went to school to learn about trees. Tomorrow then. Diana will bring the tea, I will bring the tree, and you"-she gave him a wicked smile, cornflower blue eyes smiling-"will bring the wine. Two bottles. Domestic. Make sure it’s domestic."

Confused, Will shifted his gaze between the two women. Ms. Temson seemed pleased, but Diana still looked scared. Maybe they were going to take him out back and hit him on the head with a shovel. "Wine, Ms. Temson?" he questioned.

"I’ll show you the oldest groves, the thickest stands," the woman said, her bird-light voice an odd singsong.

Will’s curiosity was piqued as Diana became white. "I’d like that," he heard himself say, and the old woman took his hand and gave it a motherly squeeze.

"Fine," she said. "Two o’clock. Good day, Mr. Temson." She gave him a sharp nod, then sailed regally down the bright walk to the lane where an ancient Rolls waited in the shade, her heels clicking smartly on the cobbled walk, Diana hunched and worried at her elbow.

"That will never do, love. You won’t even get through the meadow in those."

Standing at the stone wall separating the manicured smoothness from the wilds, Will looked sheepishly at his dress shoes poking out from under his jeans. His boots were two thousand miles away, drying on his back porch. He hated to fly, hated the damp weather this country was afflicted with, and hated his forgotten history for making someone else’s problem his. But the chance to go stomping about the old-growth forest he had heard about as a boy from his father was stronger than his belief that the two women were going to hit him over the head and bury him-even if there was a shovel propped against the wall beside a slim beech, its roots carefully wrapped in burlap.

He shifted uneasily as Ms. Temson ran her eyes over his faded flannel shirt and worn backpack, nodding as if their disrepair pleased her. Blinking in surprise, he found himself pulled down, and she adjusted the new red cap he had picked up in the gift shop. "Oh-h-h-h," she murmured, the weak sun dappled by her wide-brimmed hat. "They’ll like that."

"They? They who?"

"The dryads, love. The dryads."

Will froze. The sound of boots on the gravel path interrupted his confusion, and he slowly straightened as Diana approached from the nearby manor house. Jeans tucked into heavy boots and a worn green sweater had replaced the stiff lace of the lawyer’s office. Her hair was back in a ponytail, and he thought she looked better this way, even if worry pinched the edges of her eyes.

"Diana?" Ms. Temson’s thin voice, sounding like bees, carried well in the hazy sunshine. "Be a dear and show William the stables. I believe Arthur left a pair of boots there. We won’t see any dryads if he turns his ankle."

"Yes, Grandmum."

Dryads? he thought. The lawyer was right. The old woman was off her rocker.

The slant of her eyes dared him to say anything as Diana set her pack down by the fence and gestured belligerently for him to follow. The abandoned stables were a good step away, and she appeared determined to ignore him the entire distance.

"You don’t look anything like your grandmother," he said, trying to break the silence in as inoffensive a manner as possible.

"She isn’t. I just call her that."

Okay, he thought. It was cold and stiff, but it was a start. "This wasn’t my idea."

Pace fast and arms swinging, she eyed him. "Logging out the woods is."

Angry, she was angry again-not afraid. "I’m not going to clear-cut it," he said. "My God, you must think I’m a total barbarian."

"Yes, I do."

He admired her loyalty to Ms. Temson, but this was getting him nowhere. "She was joking. Wasn’t she?"

Diana turned sharply to the barn, and Will’s eyebrows rose at her sudden, almost hidden alarm. "About what?"

Feeling he was close to it, he picked up his pace to stay even with her, the dark silence of the barn looming over them. "The dryads."

Her jaw clenched and a flush rose. Reaching for a frayed rope, she gave it a tug and the barn door swung open in a majestic silence. The smell of old hay and dry rot eddied about his feet. Without hesitation, she vanished into the darkness. Will stepped to follow, jerking back when Diana almost ran into him coming back out. There was a worn pair of leather boots in her hand, old but serviceable, and she shoved them at him as if wanting to bean him over the head instead.

He grabbed them by instinct, silent as he took in her pressed lips and evasive eyes. "You think there’re dryads in those woods too, don’t you."

Chin lifted, she finally met his eyes. Her eyes are blue, he thought, liking the way she could go from pressed and perfect to capable and athletic.

"I don’t believe in anything I can’t see except for God," she said as she pointed to an overturned bucket by the door. "Let’s get one thing crystal. You here was not my idea, and the sooner you leave, the happier I will be. Understand?"

Feeling as if he’d won a point, he sat down. "Ms. Temson wants me out here," he said, and she turned away, arms over her middle, fuming. I’ll be damned if I’m not starting to like her, he thought as he tugged on the boots, the leather cool on his toes in the thick haze of the day. It wasn’t until he was rocking experimentally back and forth in them that he realized she hadn’t answered him.

Leaving his dress shoes on the bucket, he followed a belligerent Diana back to the gate, accepting Ms. Temson’s delighted hug in that his feet were the same size as his grandfather’s. The wide field beyond ending in trees had probably once been a manicured green by machine or sheep, but it was now yellow and brown, tall grasses rising up to his knees. Diana stewed as Ms. Temson clucked and fussed, her sour mood not unnoticed by either of them. It was obvious that Ms. Temson was honey to Diana’s vinegar, but curiosity kept him there. Dryads?

Will wedged the sapling and a surprisingly modern folding shovel into his pack, earning a peck on the cheek. He was spared the task of making conversation as they crossed the damp meadow. Ms. Temson kept up a nonstop chatter, covering everything from world politics to the life cycle of a sheep tick. She was the sharpest insane woman he had ever met.