dryad
Until I met my human, I never understood my sister's attraction to them. They litter. They waddle among us in a foul breathing wagon, jump out of it to scream and shriek, and rip bark and branches off. When they tire of their own caterwauling, they start artificial yowling that persists until they shut it off. When they finally collect themselves into their fumeniferous dray, they rock and creak away from their wastes. It takes the winds and me days to pick up and carry off their leavings and their odors. Sometimes a strong rain helps, or at least soothes.
In fairness, my sister is an aspen. We never have discussions because she cannot hold a thought that long. When she first chattered about a human, I expected her fervor to flitter away with the next eddy of breeze. That one did, but another returned, and another. I've lost count and she can't. Until I met my human, a conversation with my sister was the most disconnected experience I'd had.
How did I meet my human? Definitely by accident. One spring afternoon, a warm breeze finished melting the snow from around my roots, and filled the air with scents of grasses, flowers, and buds. I shivered in the core of my xylem. When the moon rose full and poured her silvery light into the clearing, I could no longer resist. Slowly I pulled myself loose from those stiff fibers and stood in my own shadow until I got my balance. Then I spun and twirled and leapt with the breeze and the moonlight, barely pressing on the new grasses, exhilarated with the return of new life and vigor. After a particularly leaping sequence of pirouettes mixed with somersaults, the breeze faded away and I sat down breathless near my tree. Clapping so soft I barely heard it appreciated my celebration.
Doubly breathless then, I sat forward and peered into the twilight across the clearing. A satyr, I feared, or something equally lurid. At best I hoped for a sprite or a cousin to dance with me when I could breathe again. Had I not owl's vision at night, I might never have seen him. A human sat at the edge of the clearing! Black boots and jacket, dark jeans and shirt, walnut hair and beard, he appeared a shadow himself, even as he drifted into the clearing.
Farther than two arms-lengths away, he sat when I leapt up and pressed against my tree, ready to meld myself back into it. How very peculiar! Could a human be sensitive also? This one barely smelled, and the soft richness of it reminded me of the scents that had drawn me from my tree. And he'd clapped so softly that he'd caught my curiosity instead of my caution. If he'd applauded loudly, I'd've fled into the shadows and merged into my tree.
Sitting there, too far to reach me, he spoke so softly I had to lean forward to hear his words. When I did, if I could've blushed, I would have. He said pretty things I liked to hear about my dancing and my tumbling; then he said nice things about my shape and particularly about my legs. When I smiled at his speaking, he praised my smile and my hair, almost as quietly as a breeze might. He asked about my dress, said it flowed and floated as if made from cobwebs and dew.
I'm sure my mouth fell open. No one ever told me humans could guess like that! He asked if he could touch it. I couldn't think why not, so I slowly moved into the moonlight and near him. He waited til I knelt there, legs ready to spring away, then slowly reached to touch my skirt.
Sneaky hunter! He really wanted to touch me. And he did! After he admired the fineness of my skirt's material he rested the back of his hand on my knee. I nearly leapt away, but didn't. A slow heat spread from his hand into my thigh. Distracted, I moved to push off his hand but it caught mine. He admired the texture of my skin, and stroked the back of my hand lightly. The same heat spread up my arm. He leaned forward, and led that heat up my arm with a fingertip of his other arm. He said pretty things about my sleeve then put his hand behind my neck. The heat ran around and into my cheeks and breasts. I breathed quickly and still couldn't get enough air! Slowly he leaned toward me and pulled me toward him. When our lips touched I feared I would catch fire! I fluttered back from his lips but wanted more of their soft touching. I didn't stop the slow, light drift of his hand up my thigh. Oh I didn't stop him at all!
When I caught my breath again from our celebrating together, the moon shone on our unclothed bodies and he slept against my breast. Thought began to return, and I wondered if I'd discovered how humans appealed to my sister.
After my breathing had become quite normal, I eased myself from under him. He opened an eye and mumbled, and smiled so I nearly snuggled back to him. Instead I slipped back into my frock and covered him with his jacket and his shirt. I rolled his jeans into a cushion and inserted that under his head. He smiled again at my touch, I think. I sat and looked at him for several minutes, amazed at how quickly I'd passed from despising humans to wanting this one's touch. Perhaps, I hoped, I'd only been swept up into the liveliness of spring.
I walked back to my tree, looked once again at his still form, and wondered at myself again. When I began to meld into my tree, my hips stuck. I had to really concentrate to get them to slide in among the grains and fibers. How good the woodiness felt again! All our cells touching, the tree's and mine, its sap moving nutrients into us both and through every fiber of me.
When I wisp out into my dancing form, I begin to forget how deliciously the tree and I become one. The breeze that shivers its branches and threads its needles also tingles my scalp and chirrs my every follicle. The dampness of its soil squishes between my toes like early summer mud. When I return and those feelings resume, I wonder whatever could draw me outside again!
That is, I wondered before I met my human. That night or early morning, parts of me kept remembering touches they'd never felt before. Even as I sighed with the pleasures of mingling my cells with my tree's, I sighed also for his whispers in my ear and the new joys he'd taught me. If I can smile inside my tree, I'm sure I did. I slept then, happy and secure.
Dawn came, and sunlight stirred the motes above my human. After a while, he sat and rubbed his eyes and peered around the clearing. Smiling, he dressed. I felt a little sadness that he might go and not return. Instead he walked all around the clearing, staring into the woods and peering at the ground. He knelt beside my tree and brushed away some needles to see the ground more clearly. He leaned a hand against the tree and my knee deep inside began to warm again. Oh, this was a dangerous human!
When he moved far enough away, I eased myself outside again and waited for the dizziness to pass. I flitted through the tree shade to meet him where his steps seemed aimed. He startled and looked quite ferocious before he smiled for me as he had in his sleep. He offered me his hand. I took it and walked with him farther than I had ever been from my tree. He showed me his vehicle, a two-wheeled thing he called a Harley.
When he asked if I would ride it with him, I shook my head and paled. If I were one to faint, I might have. Oh but I could see his delight in it. He fiddled with it, spoke to it almost like he had to me, and it began to rumble. The ground I stood on shook with the noise. He bade me watch and hurled it away from me as if he rode a storm. At edge of sight, he made it squeal and whirl around so it came back at me at the same storm speed. Terrified, I could not flee despite my desperation. I stared as he grew larger and the sound became all I could hear and he flew by just arm's-lengths away, then sped to sight's edge the other way. He turned more gently then, wafted to me, and stopped the noise.
"Sure you don't want to ride?" he grinned.
"Oh yes," I breathed, "oh yes," not sure myself which way I meant it.
He smiled again and asked if he could return that evening and would I dance with him. Not sure what he meant, I nodded and nodded again. He tossed a kiss at me and made his Harley roar then stormed out of sight faster than I could have imagined. I fled back to my tree and slipped inside, then dreamed that day away.
My human did return that evening. He tried to dance with me but could not. Mostly he was too heavy, I think, and he had no practice twirling and pirouetting. Very soon he sat wheezing, and only after more than a minute could gasp "dizzy". And I had no experience partnering in a dance, no practice to let another know what I would do next. I just threw myself into the breeze and the moonlight and did what seemed I must. In fact, having him with me in the dance confused the "I must".
I asked him to wait while he regained his breath and while I danced, and he did. Soon I felt him more as a scent and memory than an obstruction and oh! the dance took over again! Only when I could no longer breathe and feared a stitch in my side did I tumble over and sit beside him. While I wheezed and panted, he clapped as softly as he had the night before.
"Honey, when you do that, ...." he waited for words I think. Then tried again, "When I was little, my mama used to send me to a church. I got into some great fights and found two girls who had a teaching-me-to-kiss contest. It was wonderful! But it wasn't what my mama intended and it wasn't what the grownups at the church wanted. So they agreed I wouldn't go there any more, and I had to find new places for the fights and the contest. If I had found in church what my mama intended, maybe I would've felt there what I do when you dance."
He sat quietly then, looking away from me, his face as hot as I had felt the night before. When I breathed normally again, he took off his boots and jeans and jacket. "Watch," he asked.
He somersaulted again and again until he ran out of clearing, then leaped up and turned sideways-somersaults - he told me later to call them cartwheels - back almost to where I sat. He leapt into the air whirling and staggered when he landed. He whirled and turned and stepped halfway around the clearing before he fell and laughed. He stumbled to his feet and threw one foot out in front of him. He caught himself just before he must sit hard and bobbed sideways around the rest of the clearing, kicking one leg out and then the other, his arms crossed on his chest. Near me he fell to the ground and rolled over giggling and gasping. When he could, he begged "Water...."
I ran to the stream and brought him back two handfuls. He lapped them from my hands and gasped "... the sweeter for what holds it ...." I would have run and brought him more except he held my hands and looked at them as I might at the moon. I knelt then, to lessen the pull on my arms, and he transferred that look to my eyes or something he saw behind them. Something like hunger swirled in the adoration of his look.
He looked away, then, as if he needed another focus. He asked me where I lived. I pointed proudly to my tree, the tallest near the clearing. Somehow he looked beyond it into the shadows, and shrugged. He asked if my folks minded me spending time with him. I thought of my sister and giggled. He smiled again and held out his hand. Not knowing what else to do, I placed my hand in it. The dangerous heat crept up my arm again.
He told me about his mama and how she died, he told me about his friends and their Harleys, he told me what he did in something called "the city". I tried to imagine, but he might as well have told me how beetles think or ants. My answers to his questions should have meant as much to him, except he thought he understood.
I didn't care. I wanted more touching and so did he, and soon we celebrated under the moon again. This time we lay awake long into the night, touching and murmuring. We slept the short time until dawn and he woke me concerned that I needed to get home. He paled when I said it was just there, pointing to my tree. Once again he peered into the shadows; this time he looked at me strangely and tried to hide a shrug.
He said he had to go to work but would return, I nodded happily. We dressed and I followed him to his Harley and watched him rumble away.
Days and nights went by without him. Those that clouds enclosed or that brought rain soothed, but clear nights and dawns brought itches I had never felt before. I resolutely focused on my tree, its new buds forming, its stretch to a new height. The music of the stream took on a new attraction, so did a soaring hawk. My sister never spoke of longing like this, but she would not. A butterfly would steal her thought, or sunlight's play on one of her leaves. Those days and nights I might have wished for such easy distraction.
Then one late evening he stood in the clearing. Inside my tree I cannot gasp, but I can feel that surprise. He walked around the clearing as daylight faded, then found where last we talked and stared at me and past. He ambled across the clearing and patted my trunk, then walked into the woods. I thought he gave me time to extricate myself.
I eased from my tree and shivered in the lightness outside. Soon he came walking back and stopped when he saw me. That smile that drew me so spread onto his face. "I couldn't find your house," he said.
I laughed then, and patted my tree. "This is my other self," I told him.
His face went blank. "Okay," he said, "why not." It was almost as churlish as other humans had been.
He must have seen my face change. He quickly apologized and said he'd brought a picnic. I thought he meant a gift, and in a way he did. Human foods, he'd brought, dead animals and cooked grain, vegetable matter still crisp. I smiled and waved it away, and tried not to watch as he tore at it with his mouth. The closest thing he has to roots is his Harley, he told me that, to make me smile I think. He could not use roots in those heavy boots if he did have them. He offered me a drink, "wine" he called it, but it burned my mouth and insides so I took but one swallow. When he saw, he stoppered the bottle and put it away.
"I've missed you," he said around his food.
I thought to say he knew where I waited, but it sounded so churlish to me that I nodded and smiled and touched his cheek instead.
He looked at the bottle but left it alone. "What will you drink?" he asked.
I led him to the stream. He knelt beside me and drank from it too. We walked back to the clearing hand in hand.
We leaned against my tree and he told me what he'd done while he'd been gone, beetles and ants again. I made small noises when he paused and he seemed satisfied.
A half-moon spared what light it could and a small breeze shivered the needles all around us. I danced before him again, and found his face moist when I returned. In shirt and shorts he hurly-burlied across the clearing, for me I think, and finally fell to the ground beside me gasping and giggling together, and weeping I think. Even after his breath returned, he lay there gazing at me and smiling. I stroked his arm, and felt his heat in my fingertips.
That night and the next day we spent together. Touching and murmuring pleased us deliciously, but more and more we found conversation stopped. Perhaps the words we shared deceived us into thinking we understood or should.
Late in the afternoon he asked me to dance with him that evening. "Of course," I smiled delighted.
"Not here," he said and looked at me intently. My whole body stopped.
"You could ride with me, I'd go slow. It's only down to Jake's Place."
He could have buzzed and twittered for all I understood. Go, he asked, away from my tree, to some place beyond sight.
"I want you to know my friends, and them you," he said. Bring them here, my head said, but my tongue stayed trunk-still. I didn't want his friends in my breeze or clearing either, I didn't want to share moonlight with them.
"Please," he asked quietly. I stared at him.
He pulled me to my feet and led me to the Harley, pretending not to notice how stiff my legs and arms had become. He showed me where to sit and place my feet, and worried that I'd freeze. "We can borrow leathers for you after the dance," he reassured me and I nodded blankly trying to see my tree.
He swung a leg over and sat deeply in the Harley and offered me his arm. I clung to it, put one foot on the peg, and stepped across onto the other peg, shaking already. I'd never had both feet away from ground except in somersaults or midair twirls. He must have felt me shaking, I pressed so close to him and clutched him so. "Don't worry, honey, we'll be safe," he patted my thigh. I thought perhaps the highest tip of tree I saw might be my own.
Gentler by far than it had left before, his Harley rumbled onto the road and down it. Wind whirled my hair, sang in my ears, and almost tore my dress. My eyes watered as much from fear as wind. Even so, the ride exhilarated me. The Harley throbbed and growled as much a paean as my dance. The hardened road swept under us as if we were a wind. As darkness closed, my human leaned the Harley and the road curved with us to the left. Before I had accustomed to that lean, he shifted to the other side and the road curved obediently right. Suddenly the trees and ground and everything disappeared on one side, far below us stars twinkled. I closed my eyes.
After more leanings I only felt, my human slowed the Harley to a stop. I put my foot down and recoiled in shock. No soil! Not even dirt, only a frozen slime! Still jolted, I felt the Harley speed back up. Open-eyed I saw nothing, still cringing from what had touched my foot.
We slowed again, came to a stop. I put my foot down again, and jerked it back. My stomach heaved, but I had gone so long without touching ground that it had naught to work with. It heaved again despite, and my human pulled off the road and stopped. Gratefully I put both feet down. Dirt, dry dirt, no nutrients and no moisture. Instead of giving strength, it drained me. I lay against my human.
"Hang on, honey," he pleaded but I couldn't. Gently and slowly we rode through a fantasy of lights, simulated trees, and unnatural blocks. I barely cared. I craved soil. My human rode onto a wide clearing of congealed slime covered with the usual kinds of vehicles humans drove into my woods. They stank even more together.
"Can you get off, honey?" he asked. I tried and fell. He swung himself off and picked me up and hurried toward an immense unnatural block. I saw grass and pointed; where grass is, soil must be. He looked about as if he couldn't see. "Later, honey, later," he patted my back as he carried me.
He took me inside the block through a piece of it that flapped! Humans had hollowed out the block and swarmed about inside it. Many of them wore white and some wore green. A new stink reeked. He carried me to an altar and the woman in white said, "Have you insurance? Oh my god, what's wrong with her? What have you done?"
"I don't know," my human protested. "We were riding, she tried to throw up, and then went limp."
"Well of course she did," the woman said, leading us from the altar to a bank of curtains. She swept one aside, and my human placed me gently on something hard and rough, still without soil. "Look how pale she is!" the woman continued and put a hard smooth twig in my mouth. She told me to suck on it; but even though she left it in my mouth for minutes, it yielded nothing. She stared at it when she took it from my mouth. "She's freezing!" the woman accused my human. She held my wrist a while and turned pale; when I blinked she gasped. "I can't find her pulse!"
Soon other men and women in white crowded around me. I tried to beg for soil and water but they ignored me. My human may have heard through all their gabble. While they poked and pried, my human found a simulated reed and used it to get sips of water into my mouth. One of the dressed-in-whites stabbed my arm, and a dreadful ache began to spread from what he left in me. A simulated vine reached from my arm up to a bladder with some clear liquid. Another stabbed one of my fingers and exclaimed at what came out. Several of them yammered at my human trying to get him to say what he had done to me. No one listened to me.
That's not quite true. After they had yelled at each other for a while, they gummed things to me; the gum itched. Long strings draped from those things to other things that beeped and clicked and hummed. Perhaps they thought I needed artificial racket instead of nourishment. Anyway, the last few around me debated whether to send my human away, but left him with me when I moaned and reached for him.
He sat beside me and dripped water into my mouth. I wanted to ask him for stream water, but couldn't find the energy. At first he murmured to me that I'd get better soon, that people were doing everything they knew to do, that I mustn't worry because he'd pay for it somehow. All the time he talked I cared less and less what he said, just grateful that he stayed with me and talked. I must've let my eyes close.
As if from a great distance I heard him say something about mud. Opening my eyes took more work than the first separation from the tree after a hard winter. He sat again with one boot over his knee. He'd pulled a small piece of soil from his boot sole. I barely made a pleading noise, and he looked up startled. He grinned at me, "You want this, honey?" as if he couldn't believe it. I weakly nodded my head and waggled my foot.
"Okay, honey, as long as nobody sees!" He pressed the soil to my foot. Oh! such a tiny morsel! such enormous relief! He stared at the dust in his hand. Quickly he pried another little chunk of soil from his boot and pressed it to my sole. My whole body dragged at that tiny spot. He brushed dust from his hand and pressed another scrap to my foot, again and again until he ran out. I didn't mean to but I whimpered.
By that time his eyes had almost filled his face. "You need the earth around your tree," he said, almost a question; I nodded. "Honey, I need help. I'll be back as quick as I can."
He kissed me and disappeared. The curtains dimmed and even the sounds faded. A sudden scrape drew me back. A woman dressed-in-white said, "Isn't that just like a man!" and made a sequence of clicking sounds. She pushed another dangling bladder to my other side and stabbed its simulated vine into my arm on that side. "You'll feel better soon," she crooned but the new ache was much, much worse.
Then for a while I felt nothing, heard nothing. Another stab brought me back to that dreaded room. My eyelids fluttered. My human was back and muttering. He'd pulled out whatever the latest woman had stabbed into me, and then he pulled out the other simulated vine.
"Oh, honey, you weigh hardly anything," he pleaded as he scooped me up, "just stay with me for a little while longer." He sneaked me out of the curtains and down a tunnel. "Harry brought his truck, honey, we heaved the Harley into its bed," he said as if I'd know what that meant. We came to another piece of the block that also flapped, and he took us outside where the air stank less or differently.
He walked quickly to the grass, kicked some away, and put my feet down onto the exposed soil. Cool nutrients began a slow eke into my feet and ankles. "Honey, I'm sorry, we can't stay here."
He picked me up again and almost ran to one of the ugliest vehicles I've seen. He opened one side of it, and placed me beside a human. That one said, "Are you sure you're doing the right thing, man? She looks nearly dead and you want to take her away from a hospital?"
"Just drive, Harry. I don't know at all, but I think they're killing her. Maybe I'm killing her. Just drive, I'll tell you where to take us."
I went away again. My human told me later that his friend, Harry, drove us away from the hospital and away from the town. He'd brought a canteen, whatever that is, and my human trickled water from it into my mouth. Harry drove us up the mountainside and out into the woods nearly to the clearing. He and my human put the Harley on the ground and hid it in the trees. My human carried me into the clearing and Harry drove away.
I remember crying when he sat me against my tree and I could not get in. My human dug a hole for my feet and covered them with soil. He covered me with his jacket. Those acts I remember. He brought water from the stream, he later told me. Some he trickled into my mouth, some he poured on the soil around my feet. He didn't know whether he helped or killed me until dawn showed a little color in my face and arms. Again and again he brought new soil and stream water, he said, and all day I lay limp but color seeped up my body.
My human must have fallen asleep during the evening. He woke when a fading moon poured its weak light into the clearing. His jacket draped over the roots where I'd sat, and loose soil heaped where he'd planted my feet. No tracks showed that I had left or someone else had taken me, so he slept again until dawn.
When next I knew, I stood inside my tree and hurt everywhere. My tree accepted me and shared its sap, but tried not to share the strange things in my cells. Slowly it carried away the strangenesses and breathed them into the air. More slowly strength returned. When I finally cared to sense outside the tree, midsummer had arrived. My human slept around the roots of my tree. I smiled at that and slept another week.
"Honey," I heard him call, "Rosa? I need you now." Slowly my senses reached outside the tree. My human stood there, talking to my tree. Beyond him, in the clearing, three other humans waited. "Honey, these people think I killed you. Can you come out?"
I had to remember how, then eased out on the side away from them and waited for the swirl to stop. I walked unsteadily into the clearing, and gratefully took his arm. He led me to the three humans. "Honey, this is the judge who came here because I told him you can't come to him. This is the court reporter, and this is the deputy." Each nodded to me in turn. They thought I understood.
"Is your name Rosa?" the first one asked.
"I call her that," my human said, "because her other self is a Ponderosa, and after a while 'honey' sounds silly."
"What is your name then?" the first one asked impatiently.
I didn't know. I'd never needed one. "Rosa," I said to satisfy him.
"And your last name?" more generously. What else had my human called me?
"Ponder," I tried and the second human made clicking noises with something she held. The first one nodded.
He asked me many questions then, about our ride and the hospital. Fortunately I remembered that Harry had used that name for the block my human had carried me into and out of. I told them about getting sick and sicker, and having strange substances forced into my body. I told them what I remembered about sitting against my tree and standing in it, ill, a long time. Yes, this was the first time I'd come out of it.
Many questions later the judge concluded I had not died so my human could not have killed me. The third human took something off my human's wrists and waist. The judge reminded my human that he still had a debt to the hospital and the court would remain interested in this case. It sounded very serious. The three humans walked away.
Before they got far, my human called out "Judge?" They turned. "Could you, uh, marry us?" my human asked.
The judge looked at me and then at my human. "I don't know that you have her consent. I don't think she has any idea what marriage or consent is. If she's what you both say, I haven't the authority anyway." He studied us again. "Be satisfied with the relationship you have, or maybe consider professional help, both of you," he added. When the judge finished speaking, my human looked at me with a different curiosity and surprise.
Perhaps we have taken his advice, the judge's. My human spends most nights and many days near my tree except in winter. Nights when the moon is full especially, and many others besides, we dance and celebrate. During the days he stays with me we often wander in the woods. I no longer fear being out of sight of my tree.
Sometimes when I hear his Harley approach or depart, I remember the wind in my hair, the Harley's song in my ears and loins, and flying over the road like the wind. I remember, but I do not ride. Both feet stay near or on the ground. My human dances better than ever, and sometimes I think he almost hears the breeze or lets the moonlight guide his feet. I wish someday he might find a tree of his own nearby, but probably he cannot. I wish sometimes that I could tell my sister, but that would take too long.
Wyatt Underwood © 2024
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