Into the Woods

by Kim Harrison

  That two of the characters have the same names as my to-be editor and her assistant was just plain weird, especially since it would be another year or two until I actually knew of their existence. I thought about changing them, but sometimes you just have to let the weird things stay.

  Will shifted uncomfortably in the hard-backed chair, hot in the wool suit that he’d bought yesterday in a doomed attempt to try to make a good impression. It was itchy, but he wasn’t going to run a finger between it and his neck a second time. He had a feeling the man who had sold it to him had taken advantage of him, but that only proved yet again that he was totally out of place here among the rich carpets, tooled mahogany, and good manners. The young woman across from him already thought he was a crass Yank. Maybe she was right. It wasn’t his fault he was here—not that she’d ever see it that way—summoned across how many time zones to sit in a foreign law office and face down these two women over something he had no control over.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Temson,” the lawyer said, his voice sympathetic but firm. “Your father’s wish is quite clear. In the presence of a male heir, Temson Estate cannot fall to you. You retain the house, grounds, and your brother’s considerable offshore investments, but the woods themselves belong to Mr. William Temson.”

  Ms. Temson, his grandfather’s sister apparently, pressed her lips together in quiet thought. Though clearly shaken, she was thinking hard, and that worried Will more than the fire and sparks coming from the young woman at her elbow. She’d been introduced as Diana and was Ms. Temson’s caregiver. Though to be honest, Will didn’t think the old woman needed any help. She looked too crafty to die from anything but a curse, as his father would have said.

  Diana was about his age, dressed so smartly in her shape-fitting, pale cream linen suit that he felt like a used-car salesman. Seeing Will eyeing her, she squinted at him, her short nails clicking as she drummed her fingers once. “You drew that will up yourself!” she finally said, her accent charming even while furious. “How could you lose the Temson Estate to some—some—Yank!” she exclaimed.

  “Diana,” the old woman murmured, and the young woman gave her a look both contrite and defiant. Will winced. It wasn’t his fault. All he wanted to do was sign the papers and go home. The money from the sale of the forest would be a godsend, enabling him to finish his master’s with enough left over he could really make a difference.

  “There is nothing I can do,” the lawyer said as he stood in the thin light seeping past the wooden blinds. “The title and everything with it goes to him.”

  Diana stood, angry and abrupt. “Let’s go, Grandmum.” She turned to him, fuming. “We are contesting this. If Arthur had known that entitlement had been in there, he would have changed it!”

  Concerned, Will met the lawyer’s eyes, and the stiff man subtly shook his head, a sublime confidence in the way he opened the folder and began leafing through the legal papers.

  The old woman ignored Diana’s anger, her hands in their stark-white gloves sitting on the table. “You know I can’t let the axes in there, Ryan. It would be murder.”

  Uneasy, the lawyer glanced from the papers to Will, an apologetic crinkle in his eyes.

  “Murder?” Will said, interested as papers were slid before him.

  “Grandmum, please,” Diana murmured, her entire demeanor shifting to one of embarrassment as she touched the older woman’s shoulder as if to prod her into motion. The old woman pursed her lips, then finally giving in to Diana’s gentle tugging, she got to her feet. Will hastily rose, his chair scraping.

  “She’s a bit creaky in the attic,” the lawyer said a shade too loudly as he handed Will a pen and pointed where to sign. “She and her brother, God rest his soul, never let anyone in that woods, but it’s yours now. You’ll be selling it . . . I presume? We don’t handle property transfers, but here is my brother’s card. He can get you a good price on it.”

  Diana’s urgent, hushed, and utterly one-sided conversation with Ms. Temson was an uneasy backdrop as Will signed the last place and handed the pen back. “Thank you,” he said, tucking the card in his pocket. “I’d like to take care of this as soon as possible.” He wanted to go home. It was too cold and rainy here—too many people.

  “You cannot log those woods,” Diana said bitterly as the lawyer closed the file and gestured for them all to leave. “We have worked too long. You don’t understand.”

  At her words, the woman dug her heels in at the threshold, Diana’s arm slipping from her. Alarmed, the young woman turned as Ms. Temson faced Will, her gloved hands holding her tiny purse before her and her stance upright and ramrod straight. “Diana,” the older woman said firmly. “You are absolutely right. I would speak with Mr. Temson before we leave.”

  Diana’s face went white. “Grandmum. No,” she said, and inclining his head, the lawyer snapped his folder on the table and left. Will was tempted to mutter some excuse and bolt after him, but Diana’s sudden shift of mood from angry frustration to one of . . . hidden secrets caught his interest. She didn’t want him logging out the woods, but she didn’t want him talking to Ms. Temson, either.

  Diana’s eyes flicked between them. “Grandmum . . . He’s not going to sell it back to you. He wants the money.”

  Will cringed at the emphasis she’d put on the last word, as if it was dirty. Yes, he wanted the money. He had a lot of things he wanted to do, and being a realist, he knew it took money to make a difference—lots of money. But Ms. Temson’s deep look of concentration worried him. He’d found old ladies were the most devious creatures on earth.

  “Call me Will, please,” he said as he took the woman’s fragile-looking hand, startled at her firm grip in her white gloves. “I’d like to extend my deepest sympathy—”

  She waved a hand, interrupting him. “Arthur’s passing was a blessing,” she said, shocking him when she smiled and touched his arm familiarly. “Your grandfather died from a heart attack five years ago. It just took his body until now to realize it.” Commandeering his arm, she led him out. To the casual observer, it might seem he was helping her, but she was in complete control of the situation and both of them knew it. Diana lurked behind, walking far too close and making him feel awkward as he held the door for her. She was still scared, too, concerned at what might come out of Ms. Temson’s mouth. Which was exactly why he hadn’t left yet.

  Both women went out before him to stand on the wide stoop, hesitating as if for a few last words. The thin sun struck him, and he relaxed, glad to be out of the gloom and circumstance of another country’s law. “Thank you, love,” his grandmother said with a sigh, seeming to be glad to have the sun about her again as well. “You will picnic with us.”

  “Grandmum!” Diana gasped, her pale cheeks blushing.

  “Tomorrow. It will be a lovely stomp through the woods,” the older woman said, holding up a hand in gentle, silent rebuke.

  “I—uh—wouldn’t dream of imposing.” Will’s eyes flicked to Diana. She was all but baring her teeth at him, thinly disguising it as a smile.

  “Nonsense.” Ms. Temson shifted into his line of sight, smiling as if they were lifelong friends. “You will be logging out the woods. Don’t deny it. The offers undoubtedly began before you arrived, and you will find three more at the hotel when you return there. They’ve been hounding me for decades. Promise me you won’t allow one marker, not one clawed boot into my . . . your woods until after tomorrow.”

  He nodded hesitantly—mistrusting this but curious—and the old woman straightened as if a load had fallen from her, the deep lines about her eyes easing.

  “I will teach you of trees, young man,” she said in a low voice. “If you let the axes into your woods before you see, the loggers will rob you blind. They will say it’s hedge maple and pay you accordingly when what they take is oak and larch and beech as big around as a bathtub. I can’t allow a Temson to get cheated,” she said dryly. “It makes me look like a fool by association.”

  He flushed, feeling hot
in his new, uncomfortable suit. “Really, Ms. Temson,” he said. “I was going to do a survey myself before I leave. I went to school to be a forester.”

  “They have a school to learn about trees?” she said, her eyes bright and a knowing smile quirking her lips. “Hear that, Diana? He went to school to learn about trees. Tomorrow then. Diana will bring the tea, I will bring the tree, and you”—she gave him a wicked smile, cornflower blue eyes smiling—“will bring the wine. Two bottles. Domestic. Make sure it’s domestic.”

  Confused, Will shifted his gaze between the two women. Ms. Temson seemed pleased, but Diana still looked scared. Maybe they were going to take him out back and hit him on the head with a shovel. “Wine, Ms. Temson?” he questioned.

  “I’ll show you the oldest groves, the thickest stands,” the woman said, her bird-light voice an odd singsong.

  Will’s curiosity was piqued as Diana became white. “I’d like that,” he heard himself say, and the old woman took his hand and gave it a motherly squeeze.

  “Fine,” she said. “Two o’clock. Good day, Mr. Temson.” She gave him a sharp nod, then sailed regally down the bright walk to the lane where an ancient Rolls waited in the shade, her heels clicking smartly on the cobbled walk, Diana hunched and worried at her elbow.

  “That will never do, love. You won’t even get through the meadow in those.”

  Standing at the stone wall separating the manicured smoothness from the wilds, Will looked sheepishly at his dress shoes poking out from under his jeans. His boots were two thousand miles away, drying on his back porch. He hated to fly, hated the damp weather this country was afflicted with, and hated his forgotten history for making someone else’s problem his. But the chance to go stomping about the old-growth forest he had heard about as a boy from his father was stronger than his belief that the two women were going to hit him over the head and bury him—even if there was a shovel propped against the wall beside a slim beech, its roots carefully wrapped in burlap.

  He shifted uneasily as Ms. Temson ran her eyes over his faded flannel shirt and worn backpack, nodding as if their disrepair pleased her. Blinking in surprise, he found himself pulled down, and she adjusted the new red cap he had picked up in the gift shop. “Oh-h-h-h,” she murmured, the weak sun dappled by her wide-brimmed hat. “They’ll like that.”

  “They? They who?”

  “The dryads, love. The dryads.”

  Will froze. The sound of boots on the gravel path interrupted his confusion, and he slowly straightened as Diana approached from the nearby manor house. Jeans tucked into heavy boots and a worn green sweater had replaced the stiff lace of the lawyer’s office. Her hair was back in a ponytail, and he thought she looked better this way, even if worry pinched the edges of her eyes.

  “Diana?” Ms. Temson’s thin voice, sounding like bees, carried well in the hazy sunshine. “Be a dear and show William the stables. I believe Arthur left a pair of boots there. We won’t see any dryads if he turns his ankle.”

  “Yes, Grandmum.”

  Dryads? he thought. The lawyer was right. The old woman was off her rocker.

  The slant of her eyes dared him to say anything as Diana set her pack down by the fence and gestured belligerently for him to follow. The abandoned stables were a good step away, and she appeared determined to ignore him the entire distance.

  “You don’t look anything like your grandmother,” he said, trying to break the silence in as inoffensive a manner as possible.

  “She isn’t. I just call her that.”

  Okay, he thought. It was cold and stiff, but it was a start. “This wasn’t my idea.”

  Pace fast and arms swinging, she eyed him. “Logging out the woods is.”

  Angry, she was angry again—not afraid. “I’m not going to clear-cut it,” he said. “My God, you must think I’m a total barbarian.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  He admired her loyalty to Ms. Temson, but this was getting him nowhere. “She was joking. Wasn’t she?”

  Diana turned sharply to the barn, and Will’s eyebrows rose at her sudden, almost hidden alarm. “About what?”

  Feeling he was close to it, he picked up his pace to stay even with her, the dark silence of the barn looming over them. “The dryads.”

  Her jaw clenched and a flush rose. Reaching for a frayed rope, she gave it a tug and the barn door swung open in a majestic silence. The smell of old hay and dry rot eddied about his feet. Without hesitation, she vanished into the darkness. Will stepped to follow, jerking back when Diana almost ran into him coming back out. There was a worn pair of leather boots in her hand, old but serviceable, and she shoved them at him as if wanting to bean him over the head instead.

  He grabbed them by instinct, silent as he took in her pressed lips and evasive eyes. “You think there’re dryads in those woods too, don’t you.”

  Chin lifted, she finally met his eyes. Her eyes are blue, he thought, liking the way she could go from pressed and perfect to capable and athletic.

  “I don’t believe in anything I can’t see except for God,” she said as she pointed to an overturned bucket by the door. “Let’s get one thing crystal. You here was not my idea, and the sooner you leave, the happier I will be. Understand?”

  Feeling as if he’d won a point, he sat down. “Ms. Temson wants me out here,” he said, and she turned away, arms over her middle, fuming. I’ll be damned if I’m not starting to like her, he thought as he tugged on the boots, the leather cool on his toes in the thick haze of the day. It wasn’t until he was rocking experimentally back and forth in them that he realized she hadn’t answered him.

  Leaving his dress shoes on the bucket, he followed a belligerent Diana back to the gate, accepting Ms. Temson’s delighted hug in that his feet were the same size as his grandfather’s. The wide field beyond ending in trees had probably once been a manicured green by machine or sheep, but it was now yellow and brown, tall grasses rising up to his knees. Diana stewed as Ms. Temson clucked and fussed, her sour mood not unnoticed by either of them. It was obvious that Ms. Temson was honey to Diana’s vinegar, but curiosity kept him there. Dryads?

  Will wedged the sapling and a surprisingly modern folding shovel into his pack, earning a peck on the cheek. He was spared the task of making conversation as they crossed the damp meadow. Ms. Temson kept up a nonstop chatter, covering everything from world politics to the life cycle of a sheep tick. She was the sharpest insane woman he had ever met.

  Once under the trees, though, she went silent. Together she and Diana stood listening. As one, they turned to the east. He shivered and couldn’t say why. Ms. Temson gripped his arm for a moment, her fingers like cords of steel. “That way.”

  It was a very quiet stomp through the woods. For the first time in his life, Will felt awkward under the trees. Ms. Temson’s hunched stature, which made her look old in the sun, now served her well, letting her glide around snags and deadfalls with the sureness of a dance. There was no path among last year’s leaves, but he was confident the two of them knew exactly where they were.

  The trees became taller, their shade grew deeper, and the silence more profound until it seemed as if they were the only people who had ever walked the earth. Not a gum wrapper or cigarette butt broke the illusion. Will looked up and frowned.

  The forest had changed while he had been focusing on the little things at his feet. Circles of bare dirt were scattered among the leaf litter. Within the sharply defined borders there was no scrub, no twigs, no leaves, nothing. It was mystifying, but he was determined not to ask. Diana’s eyes as she looked back at him were mocking, daring him to speak. Her worry was gone, replaced by . . . anticipation?

  The circles of cleared ground became more frequent, turning into patches of moss ringing a tree here, one there. He knew some trees could extrude a toxin, stunting or killing anything growing under them. But these were beech, and elm, and oak. And what about the leaves? No. The ground had been purposely cleared—right to the root line.

  The
y topped a small rise, and by an unspoken agreement they stopped to marvel at the past glory of a long-dead tree. It was a tremendous beech, still standing straight and gray, its thicker branches yet holding up the sky. Beneath it, its own castoff twigs and leaves littered the ground, looking disorderly after the pristine green about the other trees.

  “Here,” Ms. Temson said, seeming pleased with herself. “We’ll rest here.

  “No, love.” She caught Will’s arm as he stepped to a nearby cleared circle. “Here.”

  Will’s eyebrows rose. Diana was kneeling beneath the dead tree, unpacking amid the scrub and sticks when a perfectly good mat of moss was a stone’s throw away.

  “Sit,” Ms. Temson called, patting the checkered cloth. “It’s your grandmother’s tree.”

  Will sighed as his backside hit the dirt, and he eyed the sapling they had brought out. If they thought he was going to go soft and sloppy and not log the woods because he had planted a tree with them, they were sorely mistaken. “She planted it?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Tea came with light conversation and terrible, dry crackers. Diana slowly lost her tension as Will told her about his life and classes—though he didn’t appreciate Ms. Temson’s nods and insinuating nudges. Even so, it meant more than it should to him when the young woman laughed at the face he made after trying the marmalade. He reached for the wine to wash it down, and Ms. Temson halted him with a brown, wrinkled hand.

  “Don’t drink it,” she said. “I’ll put it on the new tree.”

  Will stared at her, then at the label. “I bought what the man said,” he protested. “It can’t be that bad.”

  Diana made a rude sound, and Ms. Temson frowned at her. “It’s fine,” she reassured him, “but it’s for the tree. We’ll plant it far enough away from the others, but you never can tell. Wicked little things, they are.”

  He glanced from Diana to the old lady. “Um—Ms. Temson?”