The Winter Oak

by James A. Hetley

  "Shit."

  "And I've been fired. No job."

  "Shit."

  "And Dé hAoine has a new guitar man. They've played four gigs without you."

  David staggered to his feet, took the pitcher of ice-water from her, and finger-danced along a wall to find the bathroom. He stood in the tub, clothes and all, and dumped the water on his head. An ice-cube slithered down the back of his shirt and hung up against his spine. It almost helped.

  Of course, if he really wanted to sober up, all he had to do was think about that dragon. It haunted him.

  Chapter Two

  Khe'sha brooded over the skull of his mate. He coiled his body around the nest mound, a living wall of obsidian scales looming taller than a man above the murky water and deep marsh grass.

  Sha'khe was dead, her song cut short between one word and the next. He flicked out his tongue and caressed the sharp ridges of her crest, stroking up the long slope of her muzzle from her nose. She'd always enjoyed that, stretching flat in the sun with a rumbling sigh while he groomed her scales. He remembered how she'd relax, the membrane rising slowly across her great yellow eye as she drowsed.

  Now she was gone, murdered, her bones scattered in a long cold drift through the forest where she had fallen. Her kin should have carried ribs and thigh-bones and the great links of her spine to the hidden bone-cave and sung her deeds each step of the way in a strong deep-noted poem that distilled her life into its essence, but her nest-mates lived in another land, her clan lived in another land. Her bones should lie with her ancestors in another land.

  Her kind, his kind, did not belong in this land. He hated it. He hated the humans and Old Ones who had brought them here and forced them to guard a grim, gray castle instead of the bright crimson Temples of the Moon.

  {I will kill them,} he mind-spoke to her empty skull. {I will rend their flesh and feed it to our young. I will tear at their keep until the stones lie scattered like autumn leaves and their bones gleam cold and white under the moon. They all will die. No one will sing their deeds and deaths. They will have never been.}

  He tested the mound's warmth with his tongue, thrusting gently at both the sun side and the shade, and then rested his sensitive throat across the surface to judge the heat that flowed from deep around the eggs. He pawed dry marsh-grass over the shaded side to hold in the heat of the leaves that rotted there, warming the clutch. He studied the sky, afraid of rain -- the long, soaking rains that could flood the marsh until dark water swallowed the nest and killed the tiny dragonets inside their eggs.

  Dragons grew slowly, and the seasons turned slowly. The season for nesting had finally come. Now Khe'sha guarded the end of Sha'khe's song. Twelve of the mottled brown eggs lay buried, near the time of hatching. Twelve dragons alone, far from their ancestors, far from the Celestial Temple and the Sages. Perhaps six or eight or ten would live to taste air and see the sky. Then what?

  The strongest might survive to breed. With luck. And who would they join their souls to, in this land of puny apes? Who would teach them the songs, the long sonorous history of clan and bloodline, the deep thoughts and resplendent deeds that echoed through the hills and valleys and grew with each generation? They would live alone, and die alone, as he would die alone.

  Only the nest remained, his life and heart. He would never take another mate. The dragon bond tied a pair for centuries, their bodies and thoughts mirrored like their hatchling half-names were mirrored around the deep booming sound in the gut that clothed monkeys couldn't make. A dragon pair grew together through the ages until one could not live without the other. Only the nest kept Khe'sha alive, now that Sha'khe was dead.

  I will see the hatchlings leave the nest and hunt. I will teach them the songs I know. I will have revenge.

  His belly rumbled. A huge body needed huge quantities of food. Khe'sha uncoiled himself from the nest mound. He slithered through the black water of the marsh, over muck deeper than a man, through thorn tangles that scratched harmlessly back across his scales but that would claw bare flesh to ribbons, twisting and back-tracking on his own trail to create a maze of traps and blind but deadly alleys. A beast of his bulk left a mark anyone could see. He made sure that trying to follow it would be foolish and dangerous.

  If Sha'khe still lived, they would have taken turns to hunt and guard. Without his mate, he had to trust the marsh to guard their precious eggs.

  He came to open water, cool after the sun on his black scales, cooler still in the depths. He sank lower, swimming slow and sinuous like a snake, controlling his breath to hold his eyes and nostrils just awash. The surface barely rippled with his passage.

  Something moved in the water at the marsh's edge, head dipping and rising, a plant-eater pulling up roots and leaves, chewing, wading on, dipping, rising, shaking loose a spray of water, chewing. It was large enough to make a meal, large enough to be worth the hunt, slow and stupid and unafraid. Khe'sha lined up his body on his prey, exhaled, and sank beneath the water. He floated through the darkness, a shadow within the shadows, touched bottom, crouched low and slithered on across the muck until he felt air touch his crest, and threw his bulk forward.

  His teeth slashed into meat, hot and salty and sweet, and he clamped the weight of it in his jaws and rolled. Bones cracked. His prey struggled for an instant, shuddered, and fell limp. Khe'sha whipped his neck once more to be sure, snapping more bones, tearing at the bottom of the marsh and flinging muck and blood-tinged water in wide sheets.

  He rose out of the water and examined his kill. It was new to him, a body the size of the "cattle" the Master used to bring but with longer legs, suited for wading. It would fill his belly for days. He hoped more of them would come.

  His teeth sheared through meat and bone, and he swallowed. Meat, bone, hide, hooves -- his belly didn't care. He swallowed again, and again, and again. The beast vanished. Khe'sha licked the blood-soaked marsh grass, savoring the bitterness of leaves under the salt of the blood. His belly swelled and quieted. He rumbled contentment.

  "You have enjoyed my gift?"

  Khe'sha spun in his tracks, water boiling around his tail. A dark woman stood above him on a low rise of land, just slightly out of reach -- olive skin, black hair, her clothing dark smoke gray as if she were Sha'khe in human form. He tested the air again with his tongue. No, not human. She was an Old One, one of those who came before the humans. No matter. He eased himself onto land.

  {Gift?}

  He slid further up the slope. Humans or Old Ones -- the only difference was that Old Ones could draw on the Power of this land. Both were his enemies; both were his prey.

  She smiled at him, faintly mocking. "Don't waste your effort, love. I can move even faster than you. And we aren't enemies. Do enemies bring food? Was that moose the gift of an enemy?"

  So that prey was called "moose." No wonder he'd never tasted its blood before. Someone had brought it here, to the edge of his marsh. He studied the dark witch. She claimed to have brought the "moose" as a gift, but his kind knew how to read truth. This Old One tasted slippery and evasive. She kept many secrets.

  She smiled again, as if she read his thoughts. "There is a saying in many lands: 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend.' I hear vengeance in your thoughts."

  {Then you hear well. There is another saying in the Celestial Temple: "The friend of my enemy is my enemy." I smell your kinship with those I hate. Why should I not eat you, along with them?}

  She laughed. "Because you can't, love." And then her face turned grim, and he sensed truth in her thoughts. "I also seek revenge. I had a brother, a twin, as close to me as a dragon's mate. His bones lie near to your mate's in the forest. His killers also live in that stone house that crowns the hill. Kinship or not, they owe me blood and pain. For that and other things."

  He eased back, letting his full belly float in the shallows. He felt the inner warmth that made him lazy for days after feeding, that called him to bask in the sun and drowse until hunger woke him again to hunt.


  {You, too, seek revenge?}

  "We think much alike, love, your kind and mine. Not surprising, since our dreams built these lands of legend and filled them with our thoughts. Your kind and mine have walked together since long before the humans drove us from the earth. The Sages of the Celestial Temple are my cousins."

  Once again, her words walked the edge between truth and lie. Khe'sha remembered the Sages. They spoke with less malice and more calm. Their words danced in the sunlight while hers wore darkness like a cloak.

  But his belly called out for sleep. Sha'khe might still guard the nest-mound, but her eyes were empty sockets and her claws lay scattered in the forest. Her teeth would never bite again. He had to return before his belly ruled his brain.

  {What help can you offer? I have smelled the new rulers. They smell of trees and the ways of dangerous men, they smell of old songs and the ecstasies of breeding. I taste nothing of the Master's Power that bound us to his bidding. They are weak. I do not need your help for my revenge.}

  "Ah, but they killed your mate, love, for all that taste of weakness. They killed the Master, and my brother. Don't think them weak. They have strength in ways you can't imagine, ways I can fight if we make alliance. We'll need subtlety as well as strength, if we're to taste their blood."

  Khe'sha heard more than she said. He tasted the memory of traps that turned on the ones who set them, of plots twisted to ruin and power hidden and weakness destroying strength. This dark witch breathed out the smell of treachery. Such allies were dangerous.

  But Sha'khe was dead. The new rulers of the keep had murdered her. And he did not care if he lived past his revenge. Khe'sha dipped his head and narrowed his eyes in the mode of watchful distrust.

  {The enemy of my enemy is my friend.}

  He could eat this one afterwards.

  Her smile also tasted of wariness. "I'll need time to cast my nets around them. We'll need other allies, you and I. We'll need to divide them, bard and warrior and red-headed witch-sisters, set them each by themselves with their backs bared to knife and fang. You have great strength, but you'd attack a castle the same way you took that moose. Trust me for guile, love. Trust me for guile."

  That carried the flavor of truth. Khe'sha slithered backward until he floated free of the marsh muck. The nest called to him, and the slow drowse of a full belly in the sun. She called for patience? Dragons were the most patient race in all the lands. Their plots spanned centuries. The songs told of revenge passed down through generations and finally brought to hatching when even the names of the first enemies were no more than echoes.

  Chapter Three

  Fiona closed her eyes and breathed deep through her nose, savoring the blended aromas of dew on the meadow grass, of clover and hedgerow flowers and the hidden traps she'd set. Her fields pleased her, neat and smoothly rolling and laid out like an artist’s dream of farm country. No ragged stubble after harvest or bare soil newly planted, no manure piles or stinking farting cattle and bleating sheep. Neat and sweet-smelling and totally controlled.

  So much cleaner than the carrion reek of that dragon, a meat-eater who'd never heard of flossing. So much cleaner than the swamp where the beast laired, foul and tangled and sulfurous with rotting muck.

  The other dragon hadn't stunk like that, the one Brian and the human killed. She remembered a damp whiff of vinegar the one time she'd talked to it, no more. But Dougal had liked to keep his guards hungry, keep them sharp. He'd fed short rations to his falcons and hunting cats and hounds, and none of his slaves were fat.

  The female dragon probably hadn't eaten in weeks, maybe months if they had metabolisms like a snake's. Fiona's mind poked at this intellectual puzzle, planning some research as a diversion while she waited for her revenge to mature and bear fruit.

  Perhaps the dragons secreted some enzymes in their saliva? Or maybe they harbored a strain of that "flesh-eating bacteria" that humans splashed across their tabloid covers -- something that digested the scraps of meat between those serrated dagger fangs? She could work with that, do some genetic engineering on the hawthorns and roses of her hedge. They already held venom, but this gave the possibility of an exquisite refinement.

  She smiled at the thought of a trespasser brushing up against a thorn and then suffering as the scratch festered into stinking necrosis that spread and rotted his living flesh until he died after weeks of agony. Other Old Ones feared her cottage, feared her lands and her defenses. They had reason.

  Or they had feared her. She'd lost a battle, lost to Maureen. News spread with the wind in the Summer Country. Fiona shook her head. Appearance meant more than reality in this land. Now she appeared weak. She had to prove her Power again, crush Maureen and the rest, spread fear close on the heels of the news of that defeat. In the Summer Country, the second-place trophy was a grave.

  Then she smiled. She'd thought of the dragon as a tool -- planned to destroy that nest in a way that fanned his hatred of the old keep on the hill. Now she needed to twist her plan into collecting a specimen or two from the hatchlings. But she'd still have to lay the blame at Maureen's gate. That would be a challenge, almost entertaining. A successful plot could be a work of art.

  The witch considered the grass under her boots. Hatred seethed back at her. A stem searched up towards her ankle, touched the smooth gray leather, and crumbled into dust. She walked on, leaving a blackened footprint where her field had attempted to rebel.

  Really, she ought to thank little Maureen. The Summer Country had grown boring in the past few decades -- no challenges, no enemies worth noticing. Dougal had been beneath contempt. Now that redheaded bitch had made life interesting again. Fiona had almost forgotten the joys of plotting, planning, slyly seeking allies and pawns for a Byzantine revenge.

  The grass turned away from pain and sought its own targets elsewhere. She'd woven enough intelligence into all her plants so that they served as guardians. Now their vibrations told her of other footfalls sneaking across the fields and into the hedge maze surrounding her cottage. Fiona smiled again, her eyes slitting like a cat drowsing with dreams of mice. Someone was making a big mistake.

  Maureen had set the hedge free and turned it against its owner. Now Fiona held a tighter leash and the hawthorns and roses whimpered while they did exactly what she told them. That intruder would never reach her garden.

  She walked on, feeling the pulse of her fields through the soles of her boots, beating the boundaries of her land. Dougal had been so predictable, sending his wildwood to push against the ancient dry-stone wall that separated his forest from her domain, sending his marsh to spread dark water across the lowland grasses.

  He'd dealt in blunt force, wielding a mace in their battles. Maureen used a rapier, thrusting skillfully. She seduced plants like she'd seduced Brian from Fiona's binding spell. Expect the unexpected, Fiona had learned. Look for the trap. Fiona had studied her enemy's past and present, after first misjudging her. Maureen's damaged sexuality had been her weakest point. Who would have thought she'd turn to it for a weapon?

  Fiona ran her fingers over the rough bark of a pasture oak, thick-trunked and tall and glossy green over grass studded with shamrocks, a landmark within a stone's throw of the no-man's-land and Maureen's forest. Fiona had never truly owned the tree, never bent it to her will. It had dominated this corner field for centuries before she claimed the cottage as her own, and its taproot bored deep beyond her reach into the water and power of the land. But she'd controlled it, limited its influence.

  Now acorns sprouted in the turf, far beyond the spread of its branches as if it had flung them wide to free them from a struggle with long established roots, doubled leaves and doubled again as the wildwood leaped the stone wall to extend its power. They'd crammed years of growth into the space of the few days since she'd last walked this line.

  Fiona rubbed her belly, over the baby growing there. She used the same twists of time, making days do the work of weeks while her power swelled as the child swelled within her. Even if
Maureen learned what pregnancy meant to the Old Blood, she would never dream that danger rushed on her so fast.

  But those tiny oaks had to go. Fiona squatted down in the grass and ran her fingers through the cool dampness of its weave. She summoned her Power and gathered the plants to her will. The turf heaved as if snakes wrestled underneath, and the seedling trees toppled. Leaves withered and crumbled before her eyes, their slow death compressed into seconds by the same sort of magic that had sped them from the seed. Again Fiona smiled, breathing in the bitter oak tannin of their rotting, letting the wildwood see her teeth.

  She searched her deadly spider-web for the touch of her hedge, found the fierce glee of hounds that had brought the fox to bay. The trap had closed, walling her enemy into a tightening noose of green. No, enemies. The brambles told of two pockets, two knots of sweat and fear and hatred. The thorns had drawn blood. She asked the grasses under her hand, and they told her the guests tasted of Old Blood instead of human. Her enemies grew bold and foolish.

  Mostly foolish. Of all the Old Ones walking the green grass of the Summer Country, only Maureen and her sex-mad sister had the strength to break through that hedge and live. And the hedge would have remembered their distinctive taste. Maureen had used her own blood in the unbinding spell.

  Fiona stood and stretched, a calculated pose smooth and supple like a cat rising, loosening and testing every single bone and muscle and tendon from whiskers to tail-tip, making sure her claws were sharp for the hunt. Her guests could wait. The hedge wouldn't kill them yet. And she might have a use for living bodies bound to her will. It depended on just who had underestimated her.

  But they'd suffer, suffer in a way that would spread fear and rumor through the land. She had to dream up some form of exquisite, public humiliation that went beyond mere death. Otherwise there'd be twenty or thirty more following in their steps, today, tomorrow, next week. Just like the ravens feeding at the carcass of the fallen dragon.