Fraina longed to ask what exactly Gamella expected her to do about it. But of course, she knew the answer. Go and talk to her. But why was she always the one expected to go and talk to Mora? She knew the answer to that as well. Because hers was the closest oak tree to Mora’s own, out here on the edge of the grove.
“Where is she?” Fraina stroked her own tree’s rough bark and felt the deep thrum of his irritation. He didn’t much like Gamella at the best of times and definitely didn’t welcome her agitation when he was settling down for winter’s sleep.
As usual, the other dryad seemed oblivious to the oak tree’s mood. “Up aloft. Where else?”
Where else indeed? Fraina need not have asked that question either. After so many uncounted seasons living together in this grove, there was little that the dryads didn’t know about one another. There were no quirks or foibles among their little group that didn’t rub someone up the wrong way. Mostly annoying Gamella, if truth were told.
“I’ll go and talk to her.” Fraina stepped inside her tree and rode the surge of life-giving water to his topmost twigs. She walked out onto the coppery leaves gently swaying in the wind to see Mora sitting in her own tree’s crown staring up at the sky.
“May I join you?” Fraina called out.
“What?” Mora looked around, startled. “Oh, yes, of course.”
Fraina stepped across the emptiness separating the two trees. Mora’s tree welcomed her with a shiver of affection. There was no sign of him sinking into an autumnal doze, as was evident from his bright green leaves.
Mora grinned at her. “I take it Gamella’s been nagging you to come and nag me?”
Fraina reflected, not for the first time, that Mora had a fine instinct for tension and who was causing it, notable in a dryad who spent so little of her time associating with the others.
“He is the only tree still in summer foliage.” Fraina patted the nearest sprig and smiled as Mora’s tree creaked amiably at her touch.
“We’ll get round to changing that soon.” Mora was unconcerned.
As ever, Fraina was baffled that any dryad could have so little apparent interest in managing her tree in accord with the seasons and the weather. Fraina loved taking care of her oak and of every living thing that enjoyed his shelter, from the tiniest insects to the biggest birds.
“What do you suppose that is?” Mora was staring upwards at something flying so high that it was barely more than a bright speck. It was steadily drawing a white line of wholly unnatural straightness across the crisp blue sky.
“I’ve no idea.” Fraina wasn’t much interested either. Now that the dragons were long gone, with all the perils that trailed after them, she only came aloft to tend to her tree and its denizens.
“I think it’s a human thing.” Mora was still gazing upwards, fascinated.
“Then it has nothing to do with us,” Fraina said flatly. “It will be wrought of iron.”
The other dryad stopped staring at the sky and looked at her instead. “What’s the matter?”
Fraina hesitated before answering. “There was a dog.”
She had always liked dogs and horses too. They reminded her of her tree: loyal, trusting, uncomplicated in their enthusiasms and affections. But nowadays horses and dogs alike saw the fae so seldom that their reactions were hard to predict.
Fraina held up a blistered hand. “I was trying to soothe her but I didn’t see the iron studs on her collar. It was my own silly fault.”
Dryads had long since learned there was no point in lamenting humankind’s obsession with the iron that all the fae abominated.
But Mora wasn’t listening, looking out across the grass instead. “Who is that?”
A man was striding along the footpath that the dog walkers and horse riders used, cutting across the pastures surrounding the grove, which was now hemmed in with hedgerows planted by humans quite some time ago.
“What is he carrying?” Fraina was mystified. The man had an armful of yellow poles and a heavy black bag slung on his back.
“Let’s find out.” Mora stood up and vanished to slide down through her tree’s sapwood to the ground.
“But he’s not alone!” Fraina called out, alarmed. Two more humans were coming over the crest of the hill, similarly burdened.
She leaped back to her own tree and slid downward, apologizing as she went for such unseemly haste. Her tree bathed her in his reassuring love before opening his bark to allow her to step out onto the grass.
“What is she doing?”
To Fraina’s relief Gamella had gone off in search of someone else to harass. Adleria was watching Mora walking along the footpath.
Ordinarily humans couldn’t see a dryad. Now that Mora chose to reveal herself, she had fashioned herself an outfit like the dog walkers of this season: sturdy shoes, blue trousers, a rustling coat over a fleecy shirt.
Fraina was surprised to see how adept she was at doing that. Of all the dryads in the grove, Mora spent more time than anyone in her ethereal form, a shifting image of naked femininity, roundly ripe of hip and breast, soft and welcoming.
“What are they doing?” Adleria persisted. She favored a more constant form; long hair rippling to her shoulders and a high-waisted, round-necked gown. That was the dress she had worn when the young curate had fallen in love with her, pausing in the grove as he walked from the village church over the hill to the hamlet beyond the river, always wearing his long black coat, white linen bands and wide-brimmed shallow-crowned hat.
He had a passion for natural philosophy, so he had told her, noting down all the details of the trees and the flowers, the beetles and birds in his leather-bound notebooks. Adleria had even gone to see him preaching in the church. The humans asked so few questions in those days that mere mention of a mother visiting cousins in the next town was readily accepted.
But the young curate had grown old and died in the way of human men and the humans who came after him had put iron railings around the church. The last time that Fraina had walked that way, she’d seen the church roof had long since fallen in, only the stone walls still defying the winters.
“I don’t know,” she belatedly answered Adleria.
They stood together and watched as Mora walked up to the first man. Fraina noted she was staying a prudent distance from the poles he carried, so those must be metal.
The man held the bundle upright and then pulled the poles apart, to set up a bright yellow tripod. Crouching to open his bag, he took out something with a single shining eye and fixed it firmly on the top. His companions were opening their own bags and taking out shallow black boxes that unfolded rather like the long-dead curate’s book.
They couldn’t hear what Mora was saying or what the man was telling her. His companions didn’t pause in their activities and it wasn’t long before Mora was heading back to the grove.
Fraina shifted from foot to foot, impatient. Now that the humans had seen her, Mora must stay in that form until she was out of their sight. She had to walk every step of the path rather than ride the gentle breezes which a dryad could summon with a flick of a finger.
“What is it? Who are they?” Vaseya stepped out of her own tree just as Mora reached the edge of the grove.
“They are surveyors,” Mora scowled. “He says there’s to be a road built through here.”
“A road?” Adleria asked cautiously. “Is that so very bad?”
“It is,” Mora told her, forthright. “This isn’t a stone and gravel road like the ones your curate walked. They will scour away the grass and earth and lay stones and layers of tar before fencing the whole thing in with metal.”
“Why would they do that?” Adleria was alarmed.
“Because they won’t be riding horses or having horses draw their carriages.” Vaseya looked grim. “They will be riding in their automobiles, those things that I told you about, all wrought from metal. That’s what they need such roads for.”
She had fallen in love most recently of all the dryads
, with a young man who came to the grove seeking healing and peace. He’d told Vaseya of a great war in a distant land, where men had drowned in mud if they hadn’t been killed by devices which he called guns, hurling deadly showers of metal bullets. If the men escaped the guns, other evil contrivances had thrown still bigger missiles. Those burst into myriad lethal steel splinters to slice innocents into quivering shreds.
Gamella and a good many of the other dryads had decided there was no hope for humanity after that. They’d avoided the dog walkers and everyone else ever since.
“That won’t be very nice.” Adleria’s lip quivered. “To have such a thing so close to our grove.”
“It’s worse than that,” Mora said bluntly. “The road won’t run alongside our grove but straight through it. He says our trees will be felled.”
Fraina was still watching the vile humans as the dryads listened aghast to Mora’s news. As the entire grove shook with their trees’ anger, she saw the box with the glass eye tumble off the top of the yellow tripod. One of the men with the folding black book or box things looked up at the sky, apprehensive.
“What are we to do?” Adleria cried.
“Where are we to go?” Vaseya wasn’t inclined to panic but Fraina could see the terror in her eyes.
That frightened Fraina. Vaseya knew better than most what the humans had made of the world, from talking to her wounded soldier. There was metal everywhere now, in the most unexpected places. Getting her soldier out of his clothes to make love to her on the summer grass had been quite a trial, with all the buttons and zips that would so readily raise welts on her skin.
Adleria looked around, hunted. “Where do you suppose the nearest forest is? Do you suppose—” She gazed at the dead stump of the fallen oak by the river.
“Lusita was old and her tree older still.” Vaseya’s voice shook. “Besides, she was a hamadryad. Truly, she was,” she insisted.
“She never said.” Adleria scrubbed a tear from her cheek.
“Would you?” Fraina didn’t expect an answer. Who among them would admit to such frailty? Dryads outlived their trees, tending a new sapling when their first beloved companion finally succumbed to the cycle of nature. Hamadryads were bound to the acorns of their mother’s tree. When the tree they were given to died, so did they.
“Gamella says that Lusita had already left before her tree began to fail,” Adleria persisted. “She says that one of us should have borne a daughter to take care of it.”
That had always been the custom, whenever a dryad had left in search of a new home. A tree used to such loving care could not be abandoned.
“Let me guess?” Mora said sarcastically. “Gamella would have done her duty for the grove? What if she was wrong? Then we’d be stuck with her daughter fretting and whining because she didn’t have a tree of her own.”
While the humans were content to leave the grove’s mature trees well alone, they persisted in uprooting any saplings long before they were tall enough to benefit from a dryad’s care. So they had all given up bearing children a long age ago. No one was prepared to send a daughter wandering when they had no idea if she could find a tree before she withered and died.
Nor could they rid themselves of the likes of Gamella, for the sake of the grove’s harmony. In days gone by, if a community of dryads agreed that one of their number was too discontented, too disruptive, the offender would be asked to leave. She could wander through the trees that had cloaked the land until whatever tormented her was left far behind, or until she had learned some humility. Once the wanderer found peace with herself, there would always be a community of dryads to welcome a new sister.
“I miss sex,” Adleria said wistfully.
“Me too,” Fraina nodded, glad of the change of subject.
It had been such a pleasant pastime, whether or not she had any intention of bearing a daughter for the grove or a son to send out into the human world.
Her own beloved—bringing his pigs here so long ago to eat the fallen acorns each autumn—he had been lucky to have a few copper pence in the purse tied inside his jerkin and the only iron he ever carried was the little knife on his belt, readily discarded. Fraina had no problem undoing the horn buttons on his shirt and the linen ties securing his hose as he pushed her homespun skirt up her silken thighs.
Sleeping out under the stars, such youths could easily be persuaded to share their blankets with a beautiful stranger. When they woke up all alone, they would either believe it had all been a wondrous dream, or just cherish their delightful secret in silence, lest they be mocked as a simpleton.
“Never mind that,” Vaseya snapped, exasperated. “Where are we to go?”
“I have no intention of going anywhere,” Mora said tartly. “There must be some way to stop them.”
“A troll?” Adleria said hopefully. “Boggarts?”
“Don’t be a fool,” Gamella stepped out of her tree on the far side of the grove. She looked at Adleria, scathing. “When did you last see a troll? And what would anyone want with boggarts? Filthy little beasts. What are you talking about anyway?” she demanded.
“The humans want to cut down our trees,” Adleria wailed.
“What?”
If this hadn’t all been so serious, Fraina would have been meanly delighted to see the panic shattering Gamella’s arrogance.
“Not all of them will agree to this,” Mora asserted.
“What difference will that make?” Gamella recovered in an instant and now sought a target for her fear and anger. “What do you know about it anyway?”
“More than you.” Mora waved a hand and the grove was suddenly filled with voices.
Adleria screamed while Vaseya ran for her tree, pressing close to his bark. Other dryads appeared, standing half inside their trees, half out.
“What is that?” Gamella shrieked.
Mora waved her hand and the din ceased. The dryads stood in stunned silence while the grove rang with the harsh calls of alarmed blackbirds.
“That,” she said calmly, “is radio. It’s a human thing. They talk about all sorts of things using devices to send their words through the air to each other. If you listen, you can learn all manner of things about their lives.”
That must be what she did up aloft, Fraina realized, sitting in her tree’s crown for days at a time.
“Their lives?” Gamella was even angrier after being taken so unawares. “We care nothing for them!”
“We should,” Mora said bluntly. “They are of this world and so are we and they have mastered it in ways which the fae never could. If we wish to live on according to our own needs and customs, we must understand theirs.”
Gamella shook her head in absolute denial. “We do not—”
“What has this to do with the road?” Fraina couldn’t recall ever interrupting Gamella before but all at once, she was wholeheartedly sick of the other dryad’s bossiness.
“There are still humans who love the wild places and the trees,” Mora assured her. “They won’t want to see our grove cut down. We must find out who they are.”
“How?” Adleria quavered.
Mora smiled at her. “We talk to the dog walkers and the horse riders. They’ll be able to tell us.”
“Talk to them?” Prina stepped out of her tree. “Reveal ourselves?”
As Fraina recalled, Prina hadn’t shown herself to any human since she’d fallen in love with a young man with flowing black curls who’d hidden in the grove for fear of the enemies who he’d called Roundheads. While he’d been camping among the trees, he’d written Prina lengthy poems and sung her intricate songs, which the dryads had all enjoyed.
“What do we say to them?” Adleria’s voice strengthened, though her tree was still shaking as though a high wind pummeled his branches.
Mora considered this. “The first thing we must ask is whether there’s an alternate route for the road.”
Gamella pounced. “And if there isn’t?”
Mora was more than ready
for her. “Then at very worst, we persuade the humans to insist a new grove of saplings is planted a short distance away so we won’t be without a home.”
“But our trees—” Fraina laid her hand on her beloved oak’s bark and felt him stir with agitation. Disquiet rustled through all the trees and she saw her own grief reflected on her sisters’ faces.
All except Mora’s. She looked ready for a fight, willing to take on a troll if such a beast might stray across her path.
“Come on.” Her eyes were bright with challenge. “Or do you want to start coaxing your trees into a deep enough sleep that they won’t feel the humans’ axes?”
Fraina saw her sisters found that prospect as unthinkable as she did.
Though Gamella wasn’t going to let Mora have the last word. “We cannot—”
“Shut up, Gamella.” Nalfina stepped fully out of her tree. “Show us how these humans dress nowadays, Mora, and how we can listen to these voices on the breeze.”
“They will ask us who we are,” Adleria said hesitantly, “and where we are from. Humans always do that.”
She was right, Fraina knew. The days were long gone when a dryad’s son could walk for a turn of the moon and then present himself in a village, looking for work and offering a tale of seeking his fortune with the blessing of his family in some distant county which these locals had barely heard tell of.
Once he had proved himself honest and hard-working, a village would soon welcome such a son as one of their own, to live a long and healthy life by the standards of his father’s blood, if all too fleeting by a dryad’s measure.
Mora grinned. “Tell them you’re from Hawbury and then ask where they’re from. If they say they’re from Hawbury too, ask whereabouts. Whatever their answer, say that you live on the other side of the town. It’s not like it used to be when humans lived in the village by the church. There are so many of them now that they can’t possibly all know each other.”
So that very afternoon, all the dryads dressed themselves in the same garb as Mora: the sturdy shoes, the blue trousers and a fleecy shirt with a rustling coat to ward off the rain. All except Vaseya, but once she had shortened her hair and frosted it with gray, her tweeds proved perfectly acceptable, especially to the older men walking their dogs.
The Modern Fae's Guide to Surviving Humanity Page 7
