Second String Savior

by Rick Gualtieri

  Dionaea winked. “I can’t make any promises.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The food piled on the table—bread and fruit and pies and all manner of tasty smelling things—put even a Flores barbecue to shame. A group of ladies in gauzy outfits danced and sang around the lone statue in the room, in the image of a well built and quite naked man, while a band played flutes and harps as they gyrated around his marble junk.

  “It’s impressive, isn’t it?”

  “Huh?”

  Olivia waved at the entire spread. “The festivities.”

  “Oh yes, yes of course,” I said, prying my eyes away from the massive marble dick. Dear God, was that hot tub full of pure hormones or what?

  I turned back to Dionaea. She had slipped off her robe and now was only in the teeny-weeny leaf and moss bikini. Definitely not helping matters. “So, um, why do you sound like you’re from Georgia?”

  “It’s terroir, sugar.”

  “Your accent’s not that bad—” I started.

  Both dryads burst out laughing.

  “Terroir, honey,” Dionaea said with wink. “We are products of the earth we come from. The land flavors us, if you will. I personally sprang to life in a little bog just east of what you know as Charlotte. But enough about little ol’ me. I want to hear about you. It’s not every day we get ourselves a prime virgin in our midst.”

  “Um . . . well. . .”

  Dionaea winked again. Maybe she had something in her eye or a twitch or something. “Don’t be shy, girl. You rode in on a unicorn, after all.”

  “Oh.” And that was the extent of my oh-so-intelligent response.

  Olivia poured something golden into her cup then motioned toward mine. I wasn’t sure what the legal drinking age was in a sacred grove, but being called out as a virgin in front of a bunch of forest spirits was probably grounds for sneaking an adult beverage.

  “Tonight is a night for introductions and merriment,” Olivia chimed in as she poured into my cup. “Dear little sister, would you be so kind as to make our guest welcome? I’m sure the conqueror in our midst would be more comfortable around the younger souls. Oh, and no biting.”

  Dionaea totally made a flirtatious chomping motion toward me and then winked. Oh boy. Was it the Greeks who held all those orgies, or was that the Romans? Please be the Romans.

  I took a long drink, hoping that what was in my cup was more potent than a Shirley Temple. Immediately my tongue tasted honey and flowers, but in a nice way, not a sucking down perfume way. I immediately took another sip.

  “Not so fast, sugah. Gotta pace yourself. Why, there are folks here who make me look like the patron saint of chastity by comparison. Might be best to not pass out too early around them.”

  I choked on my drink. “Um, so . . . my friends?”

  “Oh, my heavens, that fluffy one’s been running the Oak sisters ragged for over an hour, Boo, too. Poor child is so much younger than everyone else here that I can’t blame her for wanting to make a ruckus when she can.” Dionaea finally took a drink. “Ooh, you must be special. They broke out the good stuff. This is pure Dionysian Gold.”

  I glanced down at my cup. I guess that was good. “What about Gary? I thought you said he was here.”

  “Indeed. I did. Let’s hurry up and rescue that poor boy.”

  “Rescue him?

  “In a manner of speaking. From what I hear, every sapling old enough to wear britches is bustin’ their buds to get a crack at his taproot, if you know what I mean.”

  “Nope, I really don’t, nor do I want to.”

  Dionaea flipped her hair as she started for one of the tables. “Well you know, some of us like pistils, some like stamens, and some of us ain’t picky at all, sugah. How ‘bout you?”

  Yep. It was definitely time to take another drink.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Kegger of the Gods…

  I stopped cold at a table in the back of the sanctuary. A gaggle of young women in tiny tunics lounged around my wizard sidekick. One busty blonde fed him grapes while a girl with oil-slick streaks toyed with his skunk stripe. Every tree girl for a mile was giving Gary “come shiver me timbers” eyes. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

  “Jess? Um, can you believe it? The Meliae are real!”

  “This one got more looks than brains, sugah.” Dionaea cocked her head at Gary and rubbed her chin thoughtfully. It looked like something rippled across her alien eyes. “He does have power, though.”

  Gary untangled himself from his bevy of beauties, including a girl with pink hair who had slithered out from under the table. “This is Roselia and Rainbow and um. . .”

  “Myrtle,” Pinky said with a sniff.

  “They’re from . . . somewhere,” Gary sputtered as the red crept across his face. “Um, Australia I think.”

  “Well she’s certainly been down under.” I lifted my cup to my lips, finding it empty. When did I finish all the golden happy juice? Oh, well, it wasn’t important compared to the withering glare I shot back to him.

  Holy crap, I’m jealous. Why am I jealous?

  I decided to chalk it up to magic hot tub side effect number 26, but at the same time wasn’t about to let him off the hook, especially since his gaze was now firmly locked on the D-cups overflowing Dionaea’s leaf-bra.

  “They’re as real as the Meliae, sugah,” Dionaea said to him, apparently doing her best to make the situation worse.

  “I . . . don’t believe we’ve met,” Gary finally stammered out.

  “Dionaea Scarlett,” she said with a little nod of her head. “And unlike these weeds that have been hanging off you, I’m not quite so desperate to have my soil fertilized, if you catch my drift.”

  “Don’t listen to that man-eating witch,” Myrtle called out.

  One of her cronies chimed in, too. “Yeah, she’s nothing but a Venus cock-trap.”

  “Is that true?” Gary asked.

  “Of course not,” Dionaea replied. “There’re a completely different subspecies.”

  “I meant about you being a witch.”

  “I dabble in the arcane every now and then, sugah.” She turned and beckoned us both to follow. “Now, I was just showing our illustrious Burp Conqueror here around, but if you care to join us, I’d love to show you a thing or two as well.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “Welcome to the Temple of the Grove. As you can see, we are real big on our statues.”

  She wasn’t kidding. It seemed everywhere I turned there was a marble dick staring me in the face. The only way to block it was to lift my recently refilled cup to my lips and take another drink.

  “On feast nights,” Dionaea continued, taking the role of scantily clad tour guide, “there’s dancin’ and drinkin’ till dawn. It usually spills out to the grove proper and a good time is had by all, until it’s time for the servants to clean it all up.”

  “Servants?” I asked, pointing to a green robed woman slipping into a shadow. Dionaea nodded. “Are they, um, Meliae like you?”

  Dionaea laughed rather loudly. “We hid for forever and a day, so I guess I can’t expect outsiders to understand us, but damn is it funny to hear you call a house sprite a dryad. Why, that’s like looking at some fella’s dog and asking if it can whistle Dixie. You catchin’ my meaning?”

  Gary rubbed his chin and nodded. “Actually, now that you mention it, I was kinda curious about that.” Once again, his eyes seemed to be following a southern path along Dionaea’s cleavage.

  “About what?” she asked with a giggle, obviously aware of the fact that he was no longer making eye contact.

  I stepped in before he could embarrass himself further. “I think what Gary means is, we want to know more about the Meliae, where you come from, and . . . stuff like that.” Note to self: don’t go for a career in diplomacy or archeology. It wasn’t the most eloquent question, but at least I wasn’t practically drooling on her tits like someone.

  Dionaea motioned for us to follow her toward a quiet area between two
columns where more cushions and snacks were laid out. “First off, technically most of us are dryads. The Meliae are our ruling body, and one of our noble houses. To hear them tell it, they were the first to spring to life when the Sky-father got nipped in the nethers by his son’s scythe—”

  “So the dick blood story wasn’t a metaphor?” Oops, that was not my internal monologue.

  Dionaea snorted laughter. “I’ve never heard it put that way before, but yes, it’s true. One thing you gotta understand about them god types is that if any of their fluids get on you, boom, pregnant. His dick blood, as you so eloquently said, spilled onto Gaia, resulting in us.”

  “Are you saying that the earth itself is a goddess?” Gary asked. “Wouldn’t we kinda notice that?”

  Dionaea sighed deeply. “Gaia can inhabit this world and embody it. She’s bound to it just like we dryads are bound to our source roots. It’s hard to explain to mortals, but think of it like having souls that can move between multiple bodies. A part of me is forever bound to my home soil, but I can use a temporary body like this to enjoy myself just about anywhere.”

  “Soil? So you are plants. The names aren’t just a tradition?”

  “Bingo!”

  Gary leaned forward, although I wasn’t sure whether it was because he was interested in her story or her. From the rapt look on his face, I guessed both. “What else can you tell us?”

  Dionaea pointed to Olivia who kept drifting from table to table, chatting and glad-handing to anyone who would listen. “If you haven’t guessed, Olivia there is typically in charge of the day to day affairs of the grove, probably on account of her silver tongue and past relationship with Hermes.”

  “The god?” Gary asked.

  “Who else? Our sweet Olivia learned a lot from him. She’s always been a proponent of peace and tranquility. Y’all have heard of extending the olive branch, right? Well, that came from her.”

  I took another sip of my drink. “Peace is pretty much what we’re here for.”

  “Well, she’s the main reason the council allowed the sanctuary to be moved here.” She gave Olivia one more glance, then rolled her eyes slightly. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the whole peace, love, and harmony thing, but we differ in that there comes a point where it don’t matter how nice you are—especially when someone gets all uppity and starts taking your stuff and killing your friends—you gotta get mean.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  Dionaea pointed to another group, all of them armored and whispering among themselves. At the center I could see Sayuri constantly scanning the area. Every time she locked on to Olivia, her gaze hardened. “If Olive is water, then Sayuri is oil.”

  “I think you meant the other way—oof!”

  I elbowed Gary before he could finish his pun, then turned to Dionaea. “You were saying?”

  Our hostess leaned in and whispered, “You met Sayuri and her bitch face, right?”

  I nodded, a slight grin creasing my face.

  “She leads the opposition faction in the council, pretty much butts heads with Olivia on everything, oh, and as a general rule, she kinda hates humanity.”

  “How . . . nice. What did we do to her?”

  “You know how I said we can move our spirits from body to body, but we always have our roots? Well, those roots are usually hard to destroy, but Sayuri had a sister with roots in Nagasaki. After that, she was never the same.”

  We sat in guilt-ridden silence while Dionaea continued to point out various persons of minor interest, until she let out a gasp of surprise.

  “Well butter my biscuit. What is she doing here?”

  “Who?” Gary asked.

  She motioned to a woman wearing a robe of the purest green I’d ever seen. She was facing away from us, but I could see silver hair peeking out from beneath her hood. “That’s Ash. Do you have any idea what this means?”

  “No,” both Gary and I said in unison.

  “You asked me about Meliae. Well, now you’ve seen one. Ash is one of the last of the first, a sapling from the original grove in Ionia. You have no idea how rare this is. She normally hates parties and politics.”

  Ash turned our way as if she’d heard her name spoken. Unlike the other dryads present, she wore a wooden mask over her face. At least I assumed it was a mask—these were tree people, after all. She stared at Gary and me with eyes as pale as her hair. Something about her gaze sent cold shivers down my spine.

  “An actual Meliae,” Gary whispered, rising to his feet.

  Dionaea dragged him back down. “Listen, hon, you don’t approach the Meliae uninvited, not unless you want to meet the tip of a spear.” She motioned to the weapon in Ash’s hand. “And Ash is queen of the spear. She taught Sayuri how to fight and can still whup her ass any day of the week.”

  Ash kept staring our way. Her gaze danced from Dionaea to Gary to me. The Meliae turned to one of her companions, nodded almost imperceptibly, then went right back to the uncomfortable staring, this time solely at me.

  “What did I do?” I whispered.

  Apparently something, because all at once Ash swept her cape, superhero style, and made a beeline toward me, her spear tip lowered. Oh crap! A moment later she let it fly, and I just barely ducked in time as the spear buzzed past my shoulder and stabbed into a stone column behind me. Holy crap!

  What the heck did I do? Unfortunately, there wasn’t time to ask, as Ash was already on top of me. The Meliae let loose with a war cry and a backhand. I barely raised my hands in time to deflect it, but the force of the blow still sent me stumbling all the way back to the wall.

  I grabbed the spear handle to steady myself, and the entire room fell silent. It was as if nobody was even breathing. “Stop! I don’t want to fight you.”

  Ash didn’t seem to get my message, as she came flying at me with a vicious kick, sending me diving out of the way and leaving her free to pry her spear out of the wall. Gary and Dionaea both appeared frozen with shock while I fell back on a little Wing Chun and pleading to keep her from killing me. “I . . . don’t. . .” Dodge. “Want to fight!”

  Ancient Greek tree person or not, her knowledge of Chinese fighting styles was easily on par with mine, matching me strike for strike. I barely managed to block a blow to my midsection, only for a cheap kick to sweep my knee. As I landed on my butt, I could see the spear coming. Acting on pure instinct alone, I slapped the shaft to the side just enough that the blade clipped my ear rather than right through my face.

  Ash stood over me, her eyes flashing. She wasn’t the only one. A red glow was beginning to suffuse the area, with me as its source.

  “Not bad, but you need to be much better,” Ash said, leaving her spear planted in the ground next to my head and extending a hand toward me.

  Was this all some kind of sick test?

  I got to my feet on my own and glared at her, as much as I could do with her face hidden by a mask. “Then I’ll get better.”

  Ash snorted at my response. How do you respond to a snort? Snort back?

  I could feel everyone staring, as well as the heat rising atop my head.

  “Please, Great Ash Ornus, she is a guest,” Olivia called, approaching us. Those words made Ash pause. “She is my guest.”

  “Look, I don’t want any trouble,” I said. “I don’t know what I did or—”

  Ash did the snorting thing again. “You have done nothing. That is precisely the problem. You are a child. Neither your body nor soul bear the scars of a warrior chosen. You are an innocent swept along like a leaf in the breeze.” Her voice practically dripped with contempt.

  She’d already tried to kick my butt, so I figured I didn’t have much to lose by mouthing off. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “It remains to be seen if there is anything worth knowing.” And with that she turned sharply enough to slap me with her cloak. She stormed right past the naked statue of Uranus and all the way out into the garden beyond. Note to self: make sure to find anoth
er exit.

  I turned back to face my stunned companions, then grabbed the rest of my drink and downed it as they watched. “What?”

  “She didn’t kill yah,” Dionaea gasped.

  “I noticed.”

  “And the way you moved,” Gary added.

  Dionaea nodded. “How did you keep up with her?”

  “She threw a punch, I blocked. Simple as that. Jeez, it wasn’t that hard to—”

  “Who exactly are you, child?” scary Sayuri asked, walking up to us. What now? “Who trained you?”

  “Um, Sienna McAdams.”

  Sayuri raised a brow.

  “She’s an adept, a Magi,” Gary answered.

  “What he said. Look, I don’t want any trouble.”

  “And yet trouble seems to want you.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “I will have my eyes upon you, child. Know this. You have managed to leave an impression other than disgust. Rare for your species. Perhaps you are more than a mere hairless monkey.” With that, Sayuri turned and hit me with a hemline, much as Ash had. What was up with these bitches and their capes?

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Mercifully, Olivia lived up to her peacemaker reputation. She ordered music to be played, drinks to be refilled, and generally got the party going again.

  After a while I was able to ease my sore butt back down and rubbed my ear where I’d almost gotten the mother of all piercings. I turned to Dionaea. “Mind telling me why Miss high and Meliae jumped me?”

  “I honestly don’t know, sugah. Same way as I don’t know how you kept up with her or touched her spear.”

  I allowed myself a brief chuckle. “That one’s easy. With my hand.”

  Her strange alien eyes opened wide and she leaned in. “You don’t understand. Meliae spears are heavily enchanted. Only the . . . can . . . oh my gods, you’re her, aren’t you?” I had a feeling I knew what was coming next. “I thought maybe you just had a really aggro hair dresser, but you really are the maiden with hair of fire, aren’t you?”

  I looked to Gary, but he shrugged as if to say there was no point in lying. He probably had a point. This was their prophecy, after all.