by Faith Hunter
They were oak varieties, maple varieties, poplars, longleaf pine, and sweet gum. This time of year the leaves had started to form a carpet on the ground, but there were enough still on the limbs and twigs to hide a good climber. I walked deeper into the trees, studying, letting the woods recognize me. Trees in general—despite the scared dogwood—are deep thinkers, slow to become aware, slow to recognize new beings in their midst. But if someone spent any time in a wood, they might have been noticed, especially if he, or she, hurt one of them.
According to the maps, there were residences nearby, a mobile home park, a few businesses. Nearer the school, there were running paths through the woods for the school athletes, the tracks and the grounds near the campus all neat and weed-free. Farther off, the grounds crew had been less interested in landscaping, just keeping the paths clear. Beside the sculpted paths, there were lower trails used by rabbit and opossum and raccoon, where the shorter vegetation had been reshaped by their passage, higher paths used by deer, the ground cover thinner where the deer hooves had damaged the low plants and higher where their bodies had pushed aside and broken the branches and stems on the way to the water of Kilby Lake, not far from the school. And there were the littered paths employed by nonstudent humans. Random beer cans, plastic water bottles, and used condoms on the trails leading to the mobile home park. I walked toward it along one especially trashed path, and wondered if an upscale teenager had a thing for a trailer park teenager. Or maybe, unbeknownst to her family, this missing girl was on drugs and walked here to buy them, or alcohol. Or any kind of secret a teenager might keep. I studied the metal homes for a while before I turned and went back through the woods. The trees were awake now, and recognizing me, recognizing Paka and the other big-cats, the life force of the woods a low, deep, vibrant pulsation I could feel along my skin. Overhead the leaves rustled as a breeze stirred through them, the trees stretching limbs against the pressure of movement.
The air was brisk, leaves falling steadily now as I walked back toward the school. When I could see glimpses of the limousine again, I stopped and sat on the ground, took off my shoes and socks, bent my knees up under my chin, and, my skirt demurely tucked around me, put my bare feet on the ground, flat, soles evenly distributed, toes pressing in. I put my hands flat beside me. I closed my eyes and sought out the spirit of the trees as I could do so easily at home. Back at the single dogwood, all I had needed to do was touch the ground, because the space was so small and the tree so alone. Here it was harder, the trees not accustomed to communing with anything not plant-based. But they were aware of me now, and they were curious. At which point I realized I had no way to find out what I needed to know.
Even in my own woods, the trees can’t see. They experience the world around them through touch, temperature, pressure, and vibrations of sound. My woods don’t see anything, only the vibrations and awareness telling me what was going on. Here, all I could tell was that people passed through these woods with regularity, from the school and from the residences nearby, some at speed, pounding along, some meandering, some with stealth. Athletes ran. Bored people meandered. The stealth part was disturbing, however, and I was able to narrow it down to two humans who had moved like foxes, one from the trailer park, and one who came back and forth across Dutchtown and into the trees there.
According to the maps, that part of the area was heavily residential, with the woods broken up by roads and tract house neighborhoods. Little by little the trees of the woods had been slaughtered and hauled away. There wasn’t a significant woods until Hardin Valley Road, and that was earmarked for destruction. There wasn’t enough connection for the woods where I sat to speak to the woods across the way, so I had no idea if the stalker routinely came through there too. The woods weren’t strong enough to show me much more.
If the missing girl had spilled her blood here, I might be able track her. I had followed an injured deer once, across Soulwood, its blood dripping onto the earth. Blood was easy to follow. Tracking a human had to be similar. But I was not going to get her blood.
I blew out my breath, opening my eyes, stretching out my legs, flat on the ground. And saw the bulbous moon hanging in the trees. Night had fallen.
“Whadju find, sugar?”
My head jerked toward the sound. It was Occam, high in a tree to my left. I frowned up at him. He shouldn’t have been watching me. “What do you mean?”
Slower, he said, “What did you discover when you”—he made a rolling motion with one hand—“communed?”
Tandy leaned out from behind a tree and softly said, “That was incredible. I never felt anything like it before.”
A spike of fear shocked up through me, like being stabbed and electrocuted all at once. The fear multiplied in intensity. They had been watching. Watching me. Around me, the breeze picked up, colder than only an hour earlier. Chill bumps rose on my skin, prickling, and my fingers started to shake. Hiding my reaction, I pulled on my shoes and stood up, brushing down my skirt and smoothing strands of my hair toward the tight bun. The wind had pulled some loose while I was unaware. The two men still watched.
Watching me. Watching me use my power. I shivered hard.
Occam said, “I never saw anyone commune with a forest before.” There was something like awe on his face. “That was amazing.”
They had watched. They all knew.
“Nell?” Tandy asked. I didn’t look at him. “Oh,” he said. “Oh! I’m so sorry. I didn’t understand. Occam, please give us a moment. We’ll meet you back at the van.”
“I said something wrong, didn’t I?” Occam said, leaping from the tree limb with cat grace. The jump was marred when his index finger caught on the sharp bark and drew blood. He landed between Tandy and me on the balls of his feet and his fingertips, microdroplets of his blood hitting the earth. Droplets that I felt through the ground, sharp and heated and . . . Something tugged at me through the ground, needing, wanting, hungering.
Occam rose fluidly to his full height. “Whatever I said, sugar, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Blood. Hunger wrapped itself through me and wrenched, demanding. I turned and ran.
My breath came fast, my heart speeding. I raced through the trees, a zigzag course as if to unsettle a hunter who had me in his sights. Birds startled and called out, the alarm tones shrill. The trees caught my fear, throwing out warnings that felt like, Fire! Fire! Their greatest fear except for man. I could feel them through my thudding feet, their deep rootlets spreading like fingers, siphoning up water from far below ground as my fear spread and they prepared for danger. They shared the warning root-to-root, tree-to-tree, species-to-species—the old fear, Fire! Fire! I ran faster, my breath burning. Leaves fell like rain, hiding my passage.
I realized I was on a path and I spun away from it, into the underbrush. I must be far from the school, because here, there was heavier growth. Blackberries that scratched my skin and pulled at my clothes and hair. I dropped to hands and feet and crawled into a patch of bracken, pushing aside the large fern-leaves and ducking beneath low limbs of trees. Hiding. Heart pounding. Around me, field mice, lizards, and snakes dashed and undulated away in fear.
Lungs burning, I crawled deeper into the bracken until I was surrounded by ferns and my bare hands were buried beneath last year’s leaves, into the mosses and the damp soil. Things crawled over my wrists and arms, many-legged and fast, as my hands disrupted their lives.
People were watching me. Always watching me.
And . . . Occam had bled. Were-blood, hot and potent, all across the earth beneath him. The wood had wanted that blood. I had wanted that blood. Had thought, just for an instant, about what it would feel like to feed him to the earth. I was . . . I was evil.
I was evil, just like the churchmen had said.
And . . . the moon. Were-creatures and the full moon. That meant something, explained something, but I didn’t remember what. I only remembered th
at I had been terrified, and when I was terrified I wanted blood. Always, even if just for a moment, I wanted blood for the earth, to give the trees strength and power and to claim it for my own as I had Soulwood. Oh God. What am I? What kind of devil am I? My leg muscles twitched, my heart and lungs pumped, my skin burned. With each breath, my lungs made a retching, tearing sound.
My unbunned hair was tangled in a snarl and draped around me like a lank veil, sweaty and full of twigs. I realized I was crying when tears dripped forward and off the tip of my nose and from my chin, falling to the ground like a salty offering. I didn’t know why I was crying. No one had hurt me. No one had even chased me. They had let me go. But . . . but I had seen something inside me. Something I didn’t know was there. Something I couldn’t quite identify, didn’t recognize. Something that I feared.
Occam had bled. Beautiful, strong blood.
I heaved breaths until my trembling eased. Until the tears stopped and dried on my cheeks. Until I heard-felt through ears and palms the sound vibration of someone slowly approaching. I rolled to my butt, sitting up, hidden in the ferns, and wrapped my skirt and my arms tight around my legs, holding myself like a child, my back to a pin oak, the bark rough and soothing against my spine. Night had fallen, the darkness harsh and deep and encompassing. Shadows were long and lean across open ground and hovered, like raven wings spread into darkness, over the bracken.
And then I remembered why the moon was important. I had read once, long ago, about were-creatures. They were moon-called, their blood infected with something called prions that initiated changes in their genetic structure. They changed shape into another creature most easily on the full moon, when the lunar cycle made their blood potent, the prions multiplying during the full moon and forcing the change upon them. Which . . . which might be why his blood had affected me so strongly. His blood was powerful and vital, and, right now, the earth knew that. Liked that.
Twigs snapped, in what had to be a deliberate sound, since the creature tracking me was probably werecat.
“Nell?”
It was Occam. If he had cat eyes in his human form, then my trail was likely lit up, bright in every misplaced leaf, every broken stem, every disarranged fern, my fear sweat in droplets everywhere. My scent was probably hot on the air from running, from anger and fear pheromones, smelling like prey when I was a bigger predator than anyone, even I, had guessed. I hugged myself tighter.
“I see you in the dark,” he said softly. “May I come in?”
I laughed silently, and wondered if I was a mite insane. An invitation into a wood that wasn’t even mine? Fine. “Yes. You may. But the moon’s gonna be full in few days, and I don’t know how much control you have at this point. So please refrain from eating me.”
I could hear the smile in his words when he said, solemnly, “I promise.” A long-fingered hand, the skin tanned in the daylight, was nothing more than a pale glow in the night as he pushed aside the tall ferns and crawled beneath the trees on his hands and knees. He settled himself near me, leaning his back against a tree across from me. I stared at my arms, hugging my legs.
“Can you tell me why you ran?”
I shrugged in uncertainty. How did I tell him, anyone, about . . . everything? The breeze grew more chilled and the shadows abruptly darker as clouds covered the waxing moon. Occam waited patiently, and the silence pushed against me, demanding an answer even if Occam himself wasn’t pushing. I frowned. “I was running away from myself more than anything,” I admitted unwillingly. “But I don’t like being watched. Wasn’t right.”
I said nothing about the blood on his fingers, but as I sat in the bracken, I realized that the wood no longer hungered, or if it did, then I had somehow cut my awareness of it. Run away from it. I didn’t say, And this wood wanted you.
Occam nodded, his face serious. “You’re a very private person. I get that. Rick said you might be a yinehi. Or a couple of other Cherokee names. I know I’m not pronouncing it right in the Cherokee tongue. But he was talking about fairies, maybe wood nymphs, though in your case, mostly human. He said you were intensely private. And I forgot that. I promise that it will never happen again. I’ll never watch you, not without your permission.”
I thought about that, from the perspective of the church and the menfolk and the way they did things. Nothing was ever free.
“If you’re thinking about quitting,” he said, “I’d like you to stay. All of us would. We’d like you to try again. Find a way to merge with this team. Learn how to get along with all of us.”
I looked into the dark orbits where his eyes hid in the shadows. In the daylight, they were amber-brown eyes, but in the dark they were just holes in his skull. “Don’t watch me unless I ask you to. I been watched and spied on my whole life, hiding who I am, what I am, whatever that is. Been watched by the men in the church as I approached womanhood. Been watched from the deer stand for years. Nothing I can do about none of it. But you. I can stop you.”
“Understood. No one watches you without your permission. Anything else?”
“Never lie to me.”
Occam thought about that one for a moment. “I will never lie to you unless I have to.”
“Why would you have to?”
“Secrets that aren’t mine to share,” he said instantly. “Need-to-know info on cases unrelated to you. PsyLED has certain levels of security clearances. Yours is much lower than mine.”
Occam stuck out a hand and I studied it a moment. Menfolk sealed deals with handshakes, man-to-man. Deals with a woman were usually different. Sealed with other words or in other ways. I had signed a contract, but I had a feeling that this handshake would be much more final, much more permanent. This handshake was about trust, and expectation, and protection, and commitment. Hesitantly I placed my hand into his. His palm and fingers were heated, like a furnace, and in an instant, something wild and fiery flowed through his flesh, skin-to-skin, something that made his eyes glow golden in the night. My hand felt small and cold inside his grip, but just as strong. I gripped his hand back. We shook on it. His eyes faded to human amber. When he let go, he rolled to his knees, all feline grace, and crawled out of the bracken. Silent, wondering if I had made the right decision, I followed him through the deepening dark, toward the lights of the school.
NINE
When I emerged from the woods, walking silently behind Occam, Tandy raced toward me, some unfamiliar emotion on his face—part fear, part sorrow, part something else—his strange hands reaching as if to grab me, pale in the night. I jerked back several steps and Occam stepped in front of Tandy’s hands. “Not without her permission,” Occam said. “Not to watch or to touch. Never again without her permission.” He looked at the rest of the group. “She’s not a cat in a pride or a den. She’s private. We abused her sense of privacy, Tandy and me. No one watches her unless she is in danger or she asks. Understood?”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Tandy said, the words running into each other, his hands gripping Occam’s arm, his face nearly frenzied, his words running together. “I’m so sorry, so sorry, so sorry. I didn’t understand.” I recognized the expression on his face then. Pain. He was feeling some inexplicable kind of ache, like a throbbing in his red-lined flesh. “I beg your forgiveness for overstepping my bounds. But I find you . . .” He shook his head as if searching for a word he couldn’t find. He settled on, “. . . fascinating.”
I took another step back at that, surprise slipping through me like a cold rain down my collar, knowing my posture was still defensive.
“We all do,” Occam said, “the ones of us who aren’t human. You smell like . . . like home, sugar. Like safety, perched in the trees with fresh kill before us.”
“You smell of jungle and tall trees,” Paka said. “Of deep water and rich earth. And death. Much death, the earth wet with the blood of prey, an offering, a gift, that I might eat and live.”
T. Laine had bee
n leaning against the van; she pushed off with her hands and came to stand near Rick, many feet of space between us when she stopped. “I don’t have Tandy’s sense of empathy or the cats’ sense of smell, but my magic likes you. I think I could bounce a spell through you, like a routing, like the way a comet picks up speed when it circles a planet and boomerangs off into space. But I’d ask first. I’d always ask. Men? And worse, cats?” Her tone was incredulous. “You have no idea. They have no sense of privacy when they turn catty.”
I nodded, the agreement jerky. I’d seen house cats do things that would sear my eyeballs if a werecat did them. I turned my attention to JoJo, the token human of the group, wondering what she would say. “I don’t get the whole privacy thing,” she said, pulling on all the earrings in her right earlobe, sliding them through her fingers, which pulled her lobe out of shape, to rebound, earrings swinging. “I’m a party girl. Gimme a beer and bucket of wings or some of Mama’s cooking and a bunch of half-drunk pals all piled on the couch watching a game, and I’m down with that. But I also don’t get hunting down prey and eating it raw or shifting on the full moon—or not shifting and going nutso over it.”
That part made no sense, but I let it go.
“But I don’t have to get it. I just have to live and let live,” JoJo said. “And if that means not following you on a hike into the woods, I’m down with that too. And, hey, you don’t smell like anything to me. Sorry.”
I let a half smile curl my mouth. “Down with that,” I repeated, shaking my head. “I guess I’m down with that too.”
