The Family Tree

by Sheri S. Tepper

  It was not to be. No one cared for my feelings, as was probably quite proper. After all, we were on a quest to save the world—who cared for one adolescent being’s feelings? Why then, did I feel so slighted? I did feel so. Peevish and a little angry and left out of things. It has been my experience that when one feels this way, one usually does the most illogical thing possible, which is to go off and be even lonelier. I went out into the woods to the place the veebles were grazing, and I sat there under a tree.

  It was late in the afternoon. The sunlight came low among the boughs, making a splendor of gold and green. The woods had been there, so Dora said, only a little time, and yet the moss beneath me was as deep and soft as the moss beneath the trees on the way to Isher. The resilient green grew over and around many tiny twigs that littered the forest floor, and all this made a cushioned brittleness, with the twigs snapping like little bones when I walked on them. The roots of the trees snaked out and down in coils of brown and gray and lichened green; the low turf was scattered with pink stars; and when I bent down, I smelled thyme and saw the dark leaves twining among the feathered grasses. So beautiful, the feel, the smell.

  Across the clearing tall spikes of open flowers bloomed white and red against a golden willow. I had seen them in my own time, along the fences at the farm. We called them Towering Tess, and we made dolls of the blooms and buds, putting them together with bits of wood. They were not a forest flower, but then, this was a new forest.

  The trees, so Dora had said, didn’t fit. The books the Weelians had showed us did not speak of this uprising of trees. In this time it seemed no one had planted them, no one claimed responsibility for them, they had come as if by their own volition, all at once, out of nothing. One could not ask the trees, for trees told no history. They did not speak of pasts. Even in our time, my time, trees told no tales of glory or triumph. They existed, mighty and lasting things, outliving us by hundreds of times our short lives, seeing springs and falls as we saw dawns and dusks, knowing the great wheel of the seasons as we knew the wheel of stars in a single night. Trees had no spoken language. What Izzy had given them, there on the road to Fan-Kyu Cyndly, had been no tree tongue. That had been people voices, sorcerously grafted as orchard men may graft dubious scions upon durable roots. So our unworthy words issued from that bark tongue, telling us of a distress older than time.

  We die, the trees cried. We die!

  But it was not then they died. The dying that distressed them was the dying talked of by the wizards at St. Weel, and it happened not then, but now. I had taken books from Dora’s shelves. I had read what was happening in this time! Though this new forest grew mightily, elsewhere the mighty jungles fell. Elsewhere the coastal rain forests that furred the body of the world were torn and riven. Elsewhere the last of the old growth, the last of the world’s own garments were ripped away. It was in this time, now, that the mother of us all was stripped naked and left to die in shame of her children, she who had been robed in glory like this, adorned like this. I bent my head upon the roots and wept, sorrowing for the trees.

  “Nassifeh,” said a voice. I thought for a moment it was my mother’s voice. “Nassifeh, do not weep.”

  “Who is it?” I asked. “Who speaks?”

  “Korè,” said the voice. “Korè speaks for the trees. From the place she was entombed, she speaks. From the place she was hidden, under stone. Even there in dry darkness, roots can grow and stone will split. So Korè is grown out of her tomb into the open air. From the place she is now, she speaks, raising up the trees to heal her wounds and to take vengeance. Rejoice, Nassifeh.”

  “Korè, eaua Korè,” I cried, the words wrenched up from deep in me. I got to my feet, looking around me, seeing no one. No face. No lips to speak. Where did the words come from?

  They came from everywhere, all around me, whispering. “The one you seek is still here, in this time. He sought to kill me and failed. He may not fail to kill you. Tell Dora that even now he dwells in the shade of the tree. I will lead you to him. Tell the sorcerer.”

  Came a little wind, then, fluttering the leaves, and the presence was gone. I ran screaming for the house.

  33

  The Roots of the Tree

  Dora could not at first make out what Nassif was saying. Then she thought it mere hysteria, though only for a moment, for the others in the room took it more than seriously.

  “Korè?” cried Soaz. “Korè spoke to you?”

  “Cory?” Dora asked. “Cory who?”

  “She is speaking of the goddess,” said Izzy. “The incarnation of life. Maid, mother and sage, the tripartite goddess: birth and growth, maturity and reproduction, age and death. Korè is the eidolon of fecundation. Most of the people in our time worship her, if only secretly. I am a Korèsan. Faros VII is a Korèsan….”

  “Most of us are, at least philosophically,” snapped the countess. “Nassif, please, child, settle down and tell us more simply….”

  Nassif repeated herself several times, while the assembled group evinced various degrees of astonishment.

  “I was to tell Dora,” she concluded. “And the sorcerer.”

  “Well what does ‘the shade of the tree’ mean to you, Dora?” asked the countess.

  Dora shook her head, trying to think. “It reminds me of what I was saying earlier. The Dionnes have a tree. They call it a family tree, one they plant everywhere they go. I don’t know what kind it is. Harry Dionne doesn’t know, either, but he told me his father probably knows. That tree casts a very great shade, so I suppose anyone who lives in that neighborhood is in the shade of that tree.”

  “But,” said Abby in a contentious tone, “since they planted the same tree everywhere they went, it could be one of the others, somewhere else.”

  Dora moved about fretfully. “Vorn Dionne is coming here. Can’t this wait until he arrives? I’m more worried about the, ah…people still left at the lab, to tell the truth. That’s what we have to do first, get the animals out of those pens. They’re sitting ducks if we leave them there.”

  “But Korè said tell the sorcerer,” complained Nassif. “There must be reason for that….”

  “To find out about the trees, of course,” said Izzy. “Since no one knows where they came from or why, that fact is evidently important.”

  “Possibly important, yes,” Dora agreed reluctantly. “But not first priority right now!”

  “Since you already know where one of these trees is,” persisted the countess, “and since Korè sent her message to you, Dora, isn’t it reasonable to suppose the shade she mentions is of the tree you already know? Any other interpretation would be unnecessarily complicated!” She glared at Abby as she said this, tossing her head.

  Abby grinned and said admiringly, “Well reasoned. I’ll stop arguing. Do you want to see the tree? It’s quite something.”

  They were all eager to do so, except for Dora, who was inexplicably reluctant.

  “You don’t want to go near Jared’s place,” said Abby.

  “That’s true,” she cried, with a little laugh that threatened to turn into hysteria. “I’m afraid he’s got the vulture there. If that’s what it is.”

  “Vulture?” he asked, taking her shoulders in his hands to stop her shaking. “Dora, what vulture?”

  Tears welled in the corner of her eyes, and she put her hand to her face, almost shamedly. “When he came here, he jerked out some of my hair. And that night, a thing came. It stank. It landed on the roof….”

  Izzy put down the book he was looking at and came over to her, pulling on her hand until she sat down beside him. He asked her what the thing had felt like, smelled like, sounded like.

  “Has it come here more than once?” he asked.

  “Yes. But when it hears Abby, it goes away….”

  Abby cried, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It was crazy,” she said. “It was…crazy.”

  “No,” said Izzy. “Not crazy. It is sorcery. In our time, there is sorcery. A so
rcerer from our time came here. Now here there is sorcery. So, we must ask, what person do you believe is troubling you?”

  Dora found words tumbling as she told him all about Jared and herself, about not knowing why she’d married him, about cleaning the house when she left him, concluding, “…and aside from having a cook and housekeeper, I never knew why he’d married me, either.”

  “It is clear why he married you,” said Izzy, patting her hand and speaking very solemnly. “If he is a maker of evil magic, you were a necessary ingredient. Some powerful magic requires a vir—” He stopped, frowned, cast a sideways glance at Abby. “A female person, the presence of, the blood of, sometimes, with evil magic, the life of. He is not a person you would ordinarily be attracted to, so I have no doubt he put an enchantment on you to get you to marry him.”

  Abby said, “Come on! Could he do that?”

  Izzy nodded. “It was only a superficial relationship, and it is easy to bring about small changes. From what Dora says, her life changed but little, her routine scarcely at all. I could have done such an enchantment, even though we are of different tribes.” He laughed at the expression on Dora’s face. “I would not do it, but I could. Your false mate wanted you for something, Dora. It would be interesting to know what. Perhaps we will find out, even though you have escaped him.”

  “But why this…thing?” Abby demanded.

  “He’s angry,” replied Izzy. “So he persecutes her.”

  “You can’t be talking about Jared?” Dora said. “He’s such an…ordinary man! He’s an engineer. He designs machines. He…how did he learn to do sorcery?”

  Izzy gave her a slanted look. “I thought you understood what I was saying. He is the Woput! He must be!”

  “Jared!” She shook her head, disbelieving. “Jared?”

  He reached out to pat her. “Listen to yourself talk. You say he is an angry man. The Weelians said the Woput was an angry person. Jared took your hair. What would he use it for but sorcery? The Weelians told us the Woput did sorcery. And most of all, we find contiguity: Jared is here, in this place, where the Woput also came.”

  “If he put a spell on her, how did she escape him?” asked Abby, with a troubled look at Dora.

  Izzy shrugged. “It was a habit spell, and such are easily broken. Any real break in Dora’s routine would weaken it. Any cluster of small, noncustomary happenings.”

  “Like his being poisoned,” Abby offered.

  “Yes. His being poisoned, or removed from the house, or anything like that. Dora, you should—Dora!”

  She wasn’t listening, was lost, mouth open, totally unable to believe what she was hearing. It was bad enough to have married a Jared, but to have been married to a Woput? It was either horribly awful or terribly funny. One or the other. She couldn’t decide which. Izzy shook her by the shoulder and she gave him a dazed look.

  Izzy spoke firmly. “You should have told me about this stink sending. I can put protections on this place, and you do not need to be afraid to go to Woput’s place. The stink sending has no reality between manifestations. It is made to come here, only, not to dwell in any other place.”

  Reluctantly, though still rather dazed and disbelieving, she agreed to go with them to Jared’s place. Abby’s little car would not hold them all, and Dora’s was still tightly wedged in by trees, so in the end they decided that Izzy, Elianne, Soaz and Nassif would go along. It was getting dark, too dark for anyone to see and wonder overmuch at a large feline, two monkeys and a pig in the car. Blanche was left in charge of the onchiki and the establishment. Dzilobommo grummeled he would prepare an evening meal for their return.

  While the visitors walked toward the avenue through the woods, Dora and Abby stopped momentarily at Dora’s car to pick up the key to Jared’s place along with the flashlight she had always kept in the trunk.

  “I left my sleeping bag in his garage,” she said. “With all the…guests, there’s barely room for us all to sleep, and if we have more visitors, I’m going to need extra. Since we’re going over there, we can pick it up.” She was angry at herself for being frightened. She was even angrier for giving in and going where she felt danger waited. Dumb. Cops learned not to be dumb like that, not when they could help it.

  Abby put his arm around her, pulling her close. “I’ll bring mine over, too,” he said in a troubled voice. “Things seemed pretty crowded, but I think I’ll stay from now on, no matter how crowded they get!”

  Abby put the top up on his car. The drive was uneventful, virtually silent, and it was almost dark when they arrived. Jared’s place was unlighted, though some of the houses on the block showed an amber glow at the windows. They parked as near one side of the curving lane as possible, leaving the lights on. Woods had taken over all the open space on the street and around the houses, and the six of them stumbled their way among smaller trees toward the great one that loomed in its own deep shadow.

  Izzy and the countess leaned against it, Izzy muttering repetitive phrases the countess recognized as enchantments. Ignoring these attempts at sorcery, Soaz climbed into the tree, out onto its largest branch, high above the earth, smelling it, rubbing his face against it. Nassif merely stared at the tree, the hairs on the back of her neck erect, as though she felt a chill.

  “Somebody,” she said. “Somebody here.”

  “Who, Nassif?” asked Izzy, who was having no luck eliciting information by magic.

  She whispered, “It’s like the voice in the forest, only bigger, stronger.”

  When they had looked at the tree long enough to realize it was not going to explain things, they wandered down what had been the alley to Jared’s garage. Dora’s key let her in, and she flashed her light upward into the rafters. Her sleeping bag still hung there, a dusty bundle, but as she moved toward it she tripped and fell forward onto a row of storage cartons. The lowered light disclosed thick concrete slabs that had been tilted and thrust up from below, the floor of the garage riven and overgrown with roots that coiled up from the soil like great serpents, seeming almost to move in that wavering light.

  Nassif shivered, now feeling the presence all around her, touching her. The words came back to her, unbidden, and she spoke them again: “‘Korè speaks for the trees. From the place she was entombed, she speaks. From the place she was hidden, under stone…’”

  “Cory!” exclaimed Dora. “Cory was the girl Jared married. The girl who ran off somewhere….” She fell silent, remembering what Harry Dionne had said. “Jared was digging the foundations for this garage when he met Cory….”

  “Tell us,” said the countess. “Tell us this story.”

  Dora waved her away. “Not here. Please. In the car. I don’t want to stick around here.”

  Izzy murmured, “She’s right. There is something going on here that we should be careful of.”

  Abby retrieved the sleeping bag, and they went back to the car where, during the drive home, Dora told the story, first the way Jared’s mother had told it, then the way Harry Dionne had told it. “Harry said Jared had no idea what he’d connected to….”

  “But perhaps the Woput did!” the countess whispered. “What if he came here, knowing Korè would be here, on this street? There are Korèsans in our time. There are records, a priesthood, temples, one great one, the Reedbed Temple, beside the locks at Giber in Isfoin….”

  “Why would Woput care about the Korèsans?” asked Abby. “Did he believe the Korèsans had something to do with human extinction?”

  Izzy said, “The Korèsans have to do with the preservation of nature, and that’s what our tribes once lived on. We weren’t always city dwellers. We couldn’t have lived without woods and rivers and plains. Woput knew that.”

  “So,” said the countess, “what if the Woput found an ancient record concerning the Korèsans, and he picked a person from the same neighborhood to put himself into—”

  “How would he know?” Soaz objected. “From three thousand years, how would he know what neighborhood? Did you find
some record he might have read, back at St. Weel?”

  “No,” said Izzy. “There are no ancient records of the Korèsans. Not in the library of St. Weel, not in my library, either. They were…are a secretive people. But, as Dora has reminded us, the Weelians are wizards. Woput could have used magic to locate his quarry.”

  “Would magic work at St. Weel?” asked Soaz. “With that huge time spiral so close?”

  “If it was created through technology, possibly not. If it is a natural thing, probably so. Either way, the Woput could have wandered out into wildlands, and there he could have used sorcery to look into time, to find a person in this time whose life would intersect that of Korè….”

  “What kind of sorcery?” Abby asked.

  “Any one of various kinds,” said Izzy. “I was taught several enchantments to uncover connections: linkage chants for persons, simultaneity chants for events, crossover chants for places….”

  “But I thought you’d told us the Woput came where you all came, in the woods west of Dora’s house!” said Abby.

  “He did,” cried the countess. “But it is not logical to assume he went into that lonely place by pure chance! We must assume he chose it for a reason. Izzy, wouldn’t it be easier to get into a specific target the fewer other people there were around?”