Into the Woods: Tales from the Hollows and Beyond(125)
Author: Kim Harrison

Diana spooned a glop of marmalade onto a cracker and popped it into her mouth. "She gets moody on cloudy days, though."

"Diana," she rebuffed gently, then turned to him. "You, William, are nearly a third dryad. That’s why they came, to see if your grandmother had returned to her tree. That, and to steal your hat." Ms. Temson smiled. "They adore clothes. Risk almost anything to get them. I dare say they used to be the cause for many an embarrassed skinny-dipper." The sound of her laughter rose like butterflies up into the canopy.

It took Will three tries before he found his voice. "My grandmother? But from-how?" Then his resolve grew. "No. I don’t know who those women were, but they weren’t-tree spirits!"

"I told Arthur it was a bad idea," Ms. Temson was saying. "But he was young and of the belief that love could change the nature of things. And he did love her, I’ll grant you that. He knew it was possible. It was family knowledge that our grandfather had. . . ." She colored, hiding her embarrassment behind her cup of tea. "My grandfather wasn’t a polished man."

Diana snatched his hat from the ground and picked the twigs from it in agitation. "They’re wickedly gullible, believing anything you tell them. If they become with child they can’t return to their tree, seeing as they carry something completely foreign to their nature. By the time the baby is born they can’t return to their tree at all, having grown too far apart from it to accomplish it." She threw his hat at him in disgust. "They don’t live very long after that."

He’d heard enough. Will stood, and Diana looked up at him in anger. "You saw them!" she shouted, pointing. "What color was her hair? What was she wearing? You don’t remember, do you! And you won’t, except for the fleeting breath between wake and sleep! Why can’t you believe!" Her voice softened. "It’s not hard-to believe."

Slowly, he sank down. She was right. He couldn’t remember. All he was left with was the way the woman had felt. She was the will to survive given substance, ruthlessly uncaring, an essence, nothing more. She had been too unreal to not be real.

Will’s eyes flicked among the silent, gray trunks. What the devil was he thinking? He was a biologist, for God’s sake! He wouldn’t believe in fairy tales!

"Where’s the myth that doesn’t have a grain of truth at its center?" Ms. Temson said, seeming to read his mind as she sipped her tea. "Dryads just happen. Saplings sprouted from the seeds of a dryad tree seem to show them sooner, but not always. They’re jealous little mites, pulling up anything within reach of their roots once they’re strong enough to leave their tree."

"The circles of cleared earth." He gave himself a little shake. It wasn’t rational. But her eyes. He remembered her eyes. "They’re beautiful," he breathed.

"They’re vicious." Diana glanced up from her crackers and jam. "If the roots of two dryads mesh, they’ll try to kill each other’s tree." Making a face, she closed the jar and packed it away. "They usually both die."

Ms. Temson drew herself up. "Now you understand why I let everyone think I’m daft for never allowing an ax into my woods."

Will looked up. It was a joke. It had to be an elaborate plot. The cleared circles, the women themselves.

"Oh, you can tell by looking which trees have come into dryad and avoid cutting them," she said. "But the reverberations of a tree being cut resounds from root to root until the entire wood feels it." She frowned. "My grandfather tried selective logging. It sent them into hiding for nearly ten years. Trees have a dreadfully long memory, you know. We have since learned to keep the meadow as a buffer, making my-ah . . . the woods into an island of sorts. But you need acres and acres of trees." Her eyes went distant in memory. "Arthur and I have been planting trees for ages. We added twenty acres on the fringes and they began talking in sentences. Twenty more and they began to sing, dance, invent nursery rhymes."

Diana had a pinky in her tea, trying to rescue a bug. "How clever they are doesn’t depend upon how old the tree is but how close to the center of the woods it sits. When one dies, the rest regard the ground as hallowed and won’t disturb anything under it." Frowning, she gave up and threw her tea away. "Rather superstitious, but it does give the chance for a new tree to take root."

Will gave a start, shaking the tea from his hand as it spilled. "It’s a secondary survival mechanism," he breathed, his schooling taking hold. "I see it now! When the density of trees in a closed population passes a critical threshold, space becomes such a limiting factor that the tree needs to find a new way to preserve its territory. It’s forced to evolve a way to step out of itself, to directly influence, to physically defend its domain. Hence the dryads!" Will leaned forward, his fingers tingling. "The more trees in the system, the smarter they have to be. And when there’s the threat of logging, they disappear, able to compete using their more mundane defenses. It’s fantastic!" he gushed. His eyes focused upon Diana. She was smiling, relief making her beautiful.

"So you’ll stay? You won’t log the woods?"

Will’s smile faded as reality rushed back. His gaze went distant into the gray, fog-laced trees. It would be easy to stay, to take the place that others had made, but he couldn’t. The thought that he had done nothing to earn it would rob him of any pleasure he might find here. "I came to sell the woods," he said slowly, hating his father for instilling in him so strongly the belief he must make his own way in the world. "I don’t see any reason to change my plans."

Ms. Temson’s cup hit the ground.

"But the dryads!" Diana cried. "You can’t!"

Will’s gaze dropped. "Ms. Temson can’t inherit it," he said slowly. "So I’ll sell it to her."

Diana’s eyes grew wide in understanding. "But you’re a Temson! You belong here! Especially now that you know."

"No, I don’t." He gestured weakly to the woods. "Like Ms. Temson said, this isn’t my work. This woods isn’t mine. I was raised surrounded by trees, always knowing there was more, something just out of reach. You can’t imagine what it’s like to suddenly find out . . ." Will looked beseechingly up at the dead branches, searching for words.

"Listen!" he said abruptly, desperate for them to understand. "Now that I can see, I can’t help but wonder, what would the spirit of an ash or a wild hickory of the forests I grew up in look like. The spirit of a stately hemlock, an entire hillside of birch, the scattering of wild cherries, lighting the understory with flashes of white in the spring . . . do their spirits even exist anymore? Is it too late? I want to know. Now that I can see, I want to know! Can you understand?"