Into the Woods: Tales from the Hollows and Beyond(124)
Author: Kim Harrison

Once under the trees, though, she went silent. Together she and Diana stood listening. As one, they turned to the east. He shivered and couldn’t say why. Ms. Temson gripped his arm for a moment, her fingers like cords of steel. "That way."

It was a very quiet stomp through the woods. For the first time in his life, Will felt awkward under the trees. Ms. Temson’s hunched stature, which made her look old in the sun, now served her well, letting her glide around snags and deadfalls with the sureness of a dance. There was no path among last year’s leaves, but he was confident the two of them knew exactly where they were.

The trees became taller, their shade grew deeper, and the silence more profound until it seemed as if they were the only people who had ever walked the earth. Not a gum wrapper or cigarette butt broke the illusion. Will looked up and frowned.

The forest had changed while he had been focusing on the little things at his feet. Circles of bare dirt were scattered among the leaf litter. Within the sharply defined borders there was no scrub, no twigs, no leaves, nothing. It was mystifying, but he was determined not to ask. Diana’s eyes as she looked back at him were mocking, daring him to speak. Her worry was gone, replaced by . . . anticipation?

The circles of cleared ground became more frequent, turning into patches of moss ringing a tree here, one there. He knew some trees could extrude a toxin, stunting or killing anything growing under them. But these were beech, and elm, and oak. And what about the leaves? No. The ground had been purposely cleared-right to the root line.

They topped a small rise, and by an unspoken agreement they stopped to marvel at the past glory of a long-dead tree. It was a tremendous beech, still standing straight and gray, its thicker branches yet holding up the sky. Beneath it, its own castoff twigs and leaves littered the ground, looking disorderly after the pristine green about the other trees.

"Here," Ms. Temson said, seeming pleased with herself. "We’ll rest here.

"No, love." She caught Will’s arm as he stepped to a nearby cleared circle. "Here."

Will’s eyebrows rose. Diana was kneeling beneath the dead tree, unpacking amid the scrub and sticks when a perfectly good mat of moss was a stone’s throw away.

"Sit," Ms. Temson called, patting the checkered cloth. "It’s your grandmother’s tree."

Will sighed as his backside hit the dirt, and he eyed the sapling they had brought out. If they thought he was going to go soft and sloppy and not log the woods because he had planted a tree with them, they were sorely mistaken. "She planted it?"

"Not exactly."

Tea came with light conversation and terrible, dry crackers. Diana slowly lost her tension as Will told her about his life and classes-though he didn’t appreciate Ms. Temson’s nods and insinuating nudges. Even so, it meant more than it should to him when the young woman laughed at the face he made after trying the marmalade. He reached for the wine to wash it down, and Ms. Temson halted him with a brown, wrinkled hand.

"Don’t drink it," she said. "I’ll put it on the new tree."

Will stared at her, then at the label. "I bought what the man said," he protested. "It can’t be that bad."

Diana made a rude sound, and Ms. Temson frowned at her. "It’s fine," she reassured him, "but it’s for the tree. We’ll plant it far enough away from the others, but you never can tell. Wicked little things, they are."

He glanced from Diana to the old lady. "Um-Ms. Temson?"

"Grandmum always plants a tree when she comes out." Diana glared at him, daring him to say a word. "The wine keeps the dryads from pulling it up."

Oh yeah, he thought sarcastically as it began to make a deranged sense. The dryads. Not wanting to break the truce they seemed to have found, he simply nodded.

"Come, Diana." Struggling slightly, Ms. Temson rose and reached for the sapling in the pack. "I want your help putting this one to bed. No, you stay," she admonished Will as he grabbed the shovel and levered himself up. "This isn’t your work."

Diana’s eyes were worried as she took the shovel from him, but it was a new worry, one of the heart. Not knowing what to make of it, Will sank back down, resting his head upon his empty pack and listening to the small sounds of the ladies drifting away: Ms. Temson’s high-pitched warble, Diana’s concerned response, the clank of his wine bottles. He liked both of them, but one afternoon was not going to change his mind. The forest was going to be thinned out at the very least. If his grandfather hadn’t wanted him to have it, he wouldn’t have given it to him.

Still, guilt pricked at him as he leaned back and closed his eyes. He loved the woods. He’d grown up surrounded by trees in the mountains out west, studied them at the university, and found a poor-paying job working with them. He didn’t care. It was what he was good at, and if he allowed an acre or two of these stately trees to go to the ax, he could manage better. Much better.

The wind in the trees and the long walk shifted him close to sleep, only to jerk awake at the giggle and a tug on his hat.

"Hey!" he shouted, snatching a thin arm and sitting up. Shrieks and squeals erupted, and the brown-skinned women scattered. Only the one who had tried to take his hat was left, crouched as far from him as she could as he still had her wrist.

Gasping, Will dropped her arm. She was like no one-like nothing-he’d ever seen. Looking at her was like trying to track the moon through a mist. His eyes kept drifting, unable to fix upon her. She was a black, frog-rimmed pool smelling of loam and wind, the hushed still point of winter and the quiet growth of summer. Brown as the earth, just as fragile, just as enduring. Eyes like the bottoms of clouds before a summer storm. Innocence. Feral innocence. But wise beyond knowing what wisdom was.

"Who are you?" he breathed.

She turned and pointed. From behind the nearby trunks came urgent whispers and frightened, envious eyes. The girl licked her lips and glanced eagerly at his hat among the leaves.

Will shifted closer. "You want that?"

She nodded, making no move to it.

A twig snapped, and her head came up like a startled deer’s.

"No!" he cried. "Wait!" But she was gone, and he was left staring at the earth where she had been.

"Diana," he heard Ms. Temson admonish from behind him. "You did that on purpose."

"Dryads?" he mouthed, unable to say it aloud. There was a rustling, and Diana sat down in his line of sight. She smirked at his bewildered expression, seeming relieved to see it.

Ms. Temson carefully lowered her frailty beside her and poured a cup of tea from the insulated bottle. His fingers gripped the plastic cup numbly as she placed it into his hand. "Tree spirits, love. Your grandmother was one, as was mine. I’m a quarter dryad, but all human." She sighed.