by Jeff Wheeler
“That’s pretty dangerous. Your house might catch on fire,” I said.
She cackled. “Tak, tak. Anything worthwhile we do has a sense of danger, ni?”
I leaned my bike against the alley wall. I felt bad for her. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a chewy granola bar. She might not be able to eat it since she didn’t have teeth, but it was the only food I had with me. With the reverence of an offering, I set it down at her feet.
She dropped the match into a puddle. I thought she meant to snatch up the granola bar, but instead she grabbed my wrist. “You ask the wrong questions. Ni? Have you thought to ask why the forest kills?”
I yanked my hand back, and she released me. Her cackle followed me down the road. It clung to my skin like a film of dust. Only, I couldn’t remove it, even with a shower and a whole bar of soap.
* * *
“Hey, dudette. I brought my Snoopy Snow Cone Machine. I’m ready to make some snowballs out of holy water,” Jared said.
I didn’t have much hope in holy-water snowballs, but Jared was the only one with transportation large enough to accommodate me, Lucas, and six pagans. His hippie van didn’t have enough seatbelts, but we all squeezed in there anyway. It took almost two hours to get to my hometown. We stopped at the general store for a bag of ice.
Closer to the woods, the van kicked up dirt along the road. When I spotted the dumpy trailer outside the woods, I asked him to stop.
“Do you think that’s where your father lives?” Lucas asked.
I hoped it wasn’t. Maybe he’d sold the land to someone else.
“You don’t have to talk to him if you don’t want to.”
He didn’t understand. I did.
Lucas got out of the Volkswagon bus behind me and held my hand as I knocked on the door. There was no answer. I knocked again. I hoped Papa hadn’t gone into the woods. That would be just the kind of thing he would do, collecting apples for his samogon. A crash came from inside, and the metal door creaked open.
The stench of sour sweat and strong drink made me choke, and I staggered back. I could tell already this had been a mistake. Everyone would see him and know what kind of family I’d come from.
Papa’s nose was pink, and his eyes were rimmed with red. Food stains marred a threadbare shirt. It hung baggy around his emaciated frame. His dull eyes stared blankly at us, seeing but not seeing. A car door slammed behind us.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and greeted him. “Dobryj den, Papa.”
His eyes widened. He uttered something in Ukrainian and stumbled down the metal steps. He threw his arms around me and hugged me. “My little flower has come back.” He went on in Ukrainian, crying and laughing at the same time, making it hard to understand him.
When he let me go, I said, “I’m going to the woods. Don’t try to stop me.”
“I won’t.” He laughed and wiped away his tears. “I never stopped your mama from her trees. I knew you’d come back for them.”
More than ever I felt bad for him. Especially once he found out what I was about to do.
* * *
The rustles and creaks of spoken words coming from the trees reminded me of the danger ahead.
Jared lifted his Snoopy Snow Cone Machine. “Dude, let’s get this party started so you can live ‘appily’ ever after.”
“You can’t come with me,” I said to Lucas’s friends. My friends. “The tree might hurt you.”
Lucas squeezed my hand. “It might hurt you. I’m coming with you.” He kept his face calm and expressionless, but I heard the fear in his voice. For the briefest moment, the anguish in his eyes reminded me of the minister’s expression that day he’d approached me with the idea of starting a petition.
I unloaded the can of pesticides and my kit of bacteria specimens. No sooner had we stepped onto the overgrown path than the twisted brambles caught onto Lucas’s T-shirt and thorns raked over his skin. I didn’t expect the path to be easy. Surely the leshii knew what we meant to do. Another step and twigs caught in his hair and he stumbled over a tree root.
I remained untouched.
“Go back,” I said firmly. “The trees will hurt you if you don’t.” The tree. The woods. The leshii. I didn’t know who to blame, but I knew he wasn’t safe.
Lucas bit his lip. “The trees at home like me.”
“Well, these ones don’t.” But they liked me. The grumble of their toneless song shifted to one more palatable to the ears. The music was sweet and alluring.
My feet danced forward. Lucas stumbled after me, but a blackberry branch snapped against his chest in warning.
Hurt reflected in his eyes. “I want to help.”
“Join the others and pray for me,” I said.
I stepped into the beckoning trees. I didn’t remember the gnarled roots forming a stairway down to the apple tree. When I turned back, I could see Lucas standing at the entrance of the path above.
A snowball whizzed past me and splattered against the ground. Shriveled brown apples on the ground laughed. Dried roots lapped up the melting puddle.
What possessed me to remove my shoes, I didn’t know. My toes squished into the cool mulch of leaves. Below my feet pulsed a heartbeat, slow and sad. An excited chorus welcomed me back.
I set down the can of poisons and the case of bacteria specimens and placed my hand on the apple tree’s trunk. A low, mournful note rose and died away.
I thought of the baba’s words. I opened my mouth, and my mother’s voice came out. No, not my mother’s, but my own. Rich and harmonious, it resonated with magic. The tree silenced. The tree listened.
I asked, “Why do you kill?”
The bark shifted under my hand. Crevices deepened into eyes. An elegant nose and sensual lips formed underneath. His expression was hurt, his song lonely. It wasn’t the one of hatred and venom I expected. His voice reminded me of an old man’s, of my father pining for my mother.
He sang:
“Come tell me a tale of ferns and moss,
And I will tell you one of sorrow and loss.
Come sing me a song of happier times.
I will only sing of humanity’s crimes.
Come dance your dance and forget the past.
While I am haunted by the death of an outcast.”
For the first time, I really listened to the apple tree’s song. He unveiled the past for me, and I saw my mama’s death. At last I understood how she died. It had never been the tree that killed her, but the townspeople.
* * *
His song painted vivid colors in my mind as he told me a story about a woman, half-vila living among humans, not even knowing what she was when she’d first arrived from the old country. Her suitors were many, as was often the case with tree nymphs. The minister fell in love with her, and they had a child, only he wouldn’t marry her on account of her being unbaptized. She got rid of the child and years later married someone else. He hated her, and his jealousy grew. He accused her of witchcraft.
The night I had seen her dancing in the trees had been the same night the minister had led a group of townsfolk into the woods to stone her to death.
I listened to the song and saw the grandfather apple tree hadn’t just randomly lashed out. He sought vengeance on those who had harmed her. It wasn’t right, and I didn’t agree, but I understood why. And I understood why he hadn’t killed my father or me. The tree had tried to explain himself, but I hadn’t understood.
Now I did.
Another snowball splattered against the ground, falling short of hitting the tree. The melting ice shimmered with love and prayers, the energy trickling into the ground. For the first time, I truly saw the world as it was.
I glanced back at my friends. Jared, the theology student, glowed like an angel. The bearlike boy resembled a troll more than a human. He danced with a fairy girl at the edge of the woods. Two smaller imps circled and stomped their feet. Their voices rose and joined the lullaby of trees and ferns. They chanted and prayed, and as they did so,
I could see the sparks of power they fed the hungry woods.
Lucas stood tall and still. Twigs and leaves in his unkempt hair gave him a wild look. I sensed the leshii in him, the tree magic blossoming like spring around him.
I bowed my head to the tree. “I apologize for all the wrongs humans have done. I apologize for my ignorance and my refusal to listen. I didn’t understand. I do now. But I ask that you stop killing people. It won’t bring my mama back.”
He responded in song. “With each death I grow in power, so that I might avenge my flower.”
“But it isn’t right! You can’t just keep on killing innocent people who didn’t have anything to do with her death.”
His creaky voice grumbled, filled with the sound of wind rustling through leaves and twigs snapping.
“I will have their kin,
As penance for their sin.
You have come to help me.
You will make this be.”
The ferns and lichen chanted a chorus to his song, “Join us, help us. Lure him, kill him.”
I thought of all the kind and charitable things Margie and Rick had done for others. Did I want revenge, or did I want to forgive? “Hasn’t anyone ever told you to turn the other cheek?”
“Do I mishear?” The pops and snaps resembled a dark laugh. “You have already brought him here.”
The meaning of his words rolled off me. My gaze followed a quivering branch pointing to the path. Leshii magic sparked and rose from Lucas as he prayed, not so different from the time I’d seen my mother singing to the tree.
The others danced around him, lost in their own frenzied magic.
My mind revisited the apple tree’s words. Mama had gotten rid of the minister’s son. He didn’t mean she’d gotten an abortion. He meant she’d given him up for adoption.
I’d been drawn to Lucas from the start. His presence was comforting and familiar like a blanket warmed by the fire and wrapped snug on a cold winter night. Not because we were soulmates, but because we were related. My stomach cramped.
It couldn’t be true. I didn’t want it to be true. I loved Lucas. Tears filled my eyes.
“No!” I fell to my knees. “You can’t have him.”
Lucas must have heard me. He immediately started forward. In his hands he held an axe.
“Go back. Stay out of the woods!” My voice wasn’t my own. It was made of wind and scraping wood.
Lucas swiped twigs aside, but they tore at him to keep him back. They cried out in warning, but he didn’t heed them. I realized too late, they were trying to help him, not hurt him. It was the apple tree that wanted him.
The ground vibrated and rumbled like the apple tree might unearth itself. Twigs popped all around me, little bits raining down. The song of the tree became chaotic and garbled. Only the thunder of hatred came through.
“No!” I pounded on the ground with my fists. The tree wasn’t listening. I took in a deep breath and exhaled all my sorrow and regret into my song. “He’s her child too. He’s my brother. Please, anything but him. Let him live. I’ll do anything. I’ll give you anything. Take me instead.”
“Very well, I will let him live,” said grandfather apple tree. “I will tether you to my woods as servant and set him free.”
I ran to Lucas. Twigs grew out of his hair, and leaves sprouted from his arms, tearing at his clothes. His shoes shredded as his toes turned to roots. Anguish pained his face. Each step was a slow process while his roots planted themselves in the earth, only to be torn away as he planted a new step. He dropped the axe to reach out to me with spindly limbs, but his arms were no longer human arms.
“Stop it! You’re killing him,” I screamed at the tree. “You said you would let him live.”
“I am setting him free.”
This was the tree’s idea of freedom? Loathing flooded through me.
I picked up the axe.
* * *
I rose from my seat inside the trailer and pushed the screen door open with a weathered hand. The sunset painted the sky with streaks of blood.
“Servant,” I spat out. For many a year I had kept that title, kept that curse, and wore it around me like an old cloak.
I trudged down the path to the trees. With each step I felt like I descended further into my self-made hell. The trees greeted me with their usual lullaby. The ferns played a melody with the moss and lichen. The heartbeat below my naked feet kept time. I passed the stump where the first apple tree had been, the tree I had chopped down.
The new tree was young still, his limbs smooth and straight, unlike the previous one. Ripening apples hung from his branches. My tree. My brother. I plucked a red apple from above my head and inhaled the heady perfume. My mouth watered, but I didn’t taste the forbidden fruit.
My tree sang to me, a voice full of love and longing. When I opened my mouth, it wasn’t the voice of an old baba that came out. I had found my siren voice. It was one that could melt hearts and sing the spirits of the forest to sleep. It was a vila’s voice that could waken my leshii and make him dance in my arms when the moon was full and our magic was at its strongest. I sang my lullaby, awaiting the day I would join him.
About Sarina Dorie
Sarina Dorie has sold over 100 short stories to markets like Daily Science Fiction, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Orson Scott Card’s IGMS, Cosmos, and Sword and Laser. Her stories and published novels have won humor and Romance Writer of America awards. Her steampunk romance series, The Memory Thief and her collections, Fairies, Robots and Unicorns—Oh My! and Ghosts, Werewolves and Zombies—Oh My! are available on Amazon.
A few of her favorite things include: gluten-free brownies (not necessarily glutton-free), Star Trek, steampunk aesthetics, fairies, Severus Snape, Captain Jack Sparrow and Mr. Darcy.
By day, Sarina is a public school art teacher, artist, belly dance performer and instructor, copy editor, fashion designer, event organizer and probably a few other things. By night, she writes. As you might imagine, this leaves little time for sleep.
LEVI'S PROBLEM
By Brendon Taylor | 9,300 words
WHEN MY MIND finally began to clear, I took solace in the thought that I had expected my memories and cognitive processing to work like a bicycle with square wheels. It was a funny thing to think because I had never ridden a bicycle. At least from the puzzle of my memory, I thought that was true. Yet it was comforting because I recalled my grandfather using that phrase often. My second thought was less comforting. With my mind otherwise a mess, my mission beaconed like a solar flare – I had landed on an alien terra to explore a potential alternative to Earth for the survival of my species. Such prospects came with the definite possibility that death might find me at any moment. I pushed that thought out of my mind and remembered another phrase, “One man’s exploration is another’s invasion.” I could only hope my work here would not be viewed as the latter.
My first problem was to find a safe place to rest while the gears in my mind fully engaged. Unfortunately, I had no idea how long that would take and whether parts of my faculties would be permanently lost. My heart told me that the great risk had been worth taking, and that the sacrifice I was making came at a price worth paying. This was yet another thought about as comforting as a paper parasol in a thunderstorm.
The terra was dense, the atmosphere thick and viscous, and the ground beneath me clung and released my steps like tapioca pudding. No, more like flan. Now, those were unusual thoughts. In the decades since genetic modification had begun, food, nutrition and hydration had changed. The thoughts of those “foods” seemed like they belonged in my grandfather’s head because they had never been in mine.
At that thought, a piece of my mind puzzle snapped into place. I should have a neurolink to allow communication. I searched my thoughts trying to will a connection to someone. Anyone.
“Levi?” a voice whispered, resonating not in my ears, but within my mind. A familiar voice.
“Grandfather?” The word formed
as a thought. At least the neurolink seemed to be working.
“Hearing your voice feels better than April sunshine in a daffodil meadow.”
I laughed in my mind and the sound caught me by surprise. It sounded different in the neurolink, like a chipmunk chittering. “Do you keep a bagful of folksy phrases with you at all times, Grandfather?”
“Do you think I should?”
“You never seem to run out.” My mind was still more porous than a sponge, but connecting to my Grandfather’s strong, happy voice soothed me. A calmer mind would mend faster.
“Statement!”
“What?”
“You can’t recover with another question now. You made a statement – I win.”
Another memory fit into place. Grandfather loved to play a game of questions that came from an old play, “Rosencrantz and…somebody… Are Dead.” I was not familiar with the play and couldn’t remember who that somebody should be, but the game of questions was a favorite of Grandfather’s.
“You shouldn’t pick on me when my brain is mush, Grandfather. Besides, shouldn’t I be connecting to a commanding officer about the details of my mission?”
“Of course, how rude of me… don’t you think?” Grandfather waited until I chuckled before moving on. “It is precisely because your brain is mush that you are communicating with me first. Until you regain your faculties, protocol dictates that you link with a familiar person who can help you recover.”
I searched my mind for any other neurolink and found none. Admittedly, I was not sure how to even search for other neurolink possibilities. Guildenstern. That was the other somebody in the old play. “I’m trying to recall how the neurolink works. You put the thought about the square-wheeled bicycle in my brain, didn’t you?”
“I’ve been trying to reach you for a while now. We weren’t sure of when you would reach terra and arouse from stasis. I could only communicate once you were conscious, and could only speak to your active mind. Perhaps your sub-conscious felt me reaching for you and my genius wordsmithing was its finest option – the persimmon among the pigs, if you will.” Grandfather’s chuckle sounded familiar, not at all like a chipmunk. That was unfair, but welcome.
