Changer's Daughter (67 page)

He’d obliged. “Trees form those clumps naturally, and sometimes even a normal tree—if it has athanor heritage—will give birth to a dryad—but that’s rare. Sometimes we can help them along, and that’s a good way to expand the genetic pool.”

He had seemed to remember he was talking to a young coyote, because he simplified his words.

“But this tree is a dryad, and her child has been forming for years now. Pretty soon we’ll find a good place and set the little one to grow on her own, probably late this winter.”

Demetrios had danced a few skipping steps, happy as could be. Shahrazad had shared his happiness without completely understanding everything he was saying. One thing she understood fully was that babies of any of the athanor types were rare and wonderful. In some way, this tree was kin to her and this potential sapling a cousin.

Apprehensively, Shahrazad watches as the woman tucks her binoculars away, and begins to push her way through the undergrowth toward the dryad tree. Now the young coyote regrets not having called one of the fauns. She considers barking alarm, then stops.

She hasn’t seen a rifle, but what if the human has a smaller gun? The human could hurt Shahrazad or the fauns. Frank had made certain Shahrazad understood how dangerous guns were, and how easily hidden.

And what if the human saw one of the fauns—really saw him? Shahrazad knows that the athanor fear discovery over almost anything else. When Demetrios had left earlier that day he’d worn trousers and boots to cover his goaty lower body, a hat to cover his curving horns.

Humans are nearly as curious as coyotes. It isn’t enough to hope that the human won’t believe what she’s seen—and a faun coming in answer to a barked alarm wouldn’t know to disguise himself. The fauns don’t habitually wear human clothing here on their own lands. They find it uncomfortable and restrictive.

No. She can’t bark for help. She will need to drive this human off all on her own. Shahrazad begins to close the distance between herself and the human, sniffing the air, trying to detect the scent of oil, metal, and gunpowder that goes with a handgun. She doesn’t find it, but that isn’t proof the woman doesn’t have a gun. The human smells strongly of sweat, and if the gun hasn’t been fired recently the oil and metal scents could be lost—intermingled with the smells from the other gear the woman carries.

Shahrazad decides against being perfectly quiet. Speed is more important. She will pretend to be a dog. She will growl at the human, bark if she must and hope that the fauns take warning. An angry, defensive bark is very different from a “help me” bark. Demetrios would know this. Would his fellows?

Other than the possibility of guns and of bringing the fauns, Shahrazad likes her plan. Shahrazad knows that most humans are more afraid of dogs than they are of wild animals—for good reason. Dogs can learn caution around humans, but they aren’t deep down afraid as wild things are. Humans are their masters and allies, and they defend their masters and their territories as their own.

Shahrazad prepares to leap, to interpose herself between the dryad apple tree and the human. What she doesn’t count on is that the dryads might have plans of their own.

When the branches start moving, Johanna thinks a wind must be rising. Then she realizes that the sweat dampening her temples remains untouched. Given the chill of the winter day she should feel any breeze strong enough to move the trees.

But there is no breeze. The air hangs almost unnaturally still and cool. Yet the branches are moving, swaying almost lazily.

No.

Johanna makes her feet carry her forward, toward the promise of the apple tree and the cluster of twiggy growth that means her future and her fortune. She’ll need to climb a few feet off the ground in order to cut the witches’-broom out, but that won’t be hard. She has a rope ladder, but she shouldn’t need it. Apple trees are almost the perfect climbing trees, especially well-pruned ones.

This one has been beautifully tended. Awkward crossing branches have been sawn back so they won’t rub against each other and damage the bark. Old fruit has been cleared away so it won’t breed infection as it rots on the ground.

Johanna concentrates on her goal. She’s having more trouble reaching that tree than she had thought possible. Twiggy hands seem to be plucking at her, drawing her back. Saplings bend to interpose themselves across what she had been sure was a fairly open path. The ground is rougher than she had thought, too. Roots thrusting up through the leaf mold nearly trip her several times.

Of course they can’t be doing that. That’s only her imagination, just like it’s only her imagination that the apple tree itself is moving, that a flower garlanded woman is standing in front of the tree. She is pregnant, cradling her hands protectively in front of her abdomen, those hands cupping a shining apple. The woman’s expression is both frightened and resolute.

Johanna forces her foot ahead a pace. When the tree branches bend to impede her, she pulls out the two-edged saw she’d brought along for cutting away underbrush. One side of the blade is serrated, but the other is smooth and sharp, like a machete or a sword. She slashes out with the sword blade at the sapling bending in front of her, feels a certain satisfaction when the slender trunk parts in two. She takes two more steps, hacking away at anything that gets in her way. If she can just get out into the open, she’ll be fine. There’s only some winter dried grasses there, nothing to grab or claw.

Her heart is beating a crazy, erratic tattoo, her breath is coming short, but Johanna makes her determined way forward, her gaze fixed on the promise of safety ahead. She chops through another twisting limb, watches it fall.

When she looks up, she sees a devil standing in the meadow, goat-horned and goat-hoofed, just like the illustrations in her grandmother’s old Bible. The devil’s eyes are pale yellow with the same weird, squared pupil goats have. He smiles, but there is nothing friendly in his expression.

This final shock is too much. Johanna forgets the grasping hands of the trees, lets the saw slide from fingers suddenly numb, screams, and turns to run.

When the trees start moving, Shahrazad forgets about her plan to impersonate a dog. She’s suddenly one very frightened coyote, scenting malice as certainly as she had scented the odor of human sweat. She presses herself flat against the leaf mold, piddling in frightened submission. Her coyote brain doesn’t think in words, but if it did those words would certainly be: “Don’t hurt me!”

Other than where they accidentally sweep against her while straining toward the intruder, the trees seem to accept her plea. After a terrified moment, Shahrazad’s natural inquisitiveness reasserts itself. She lifts her head slightly, trying to figure out what is happening, understanding all too quickly that the trees are determined to drive the human from their midst.

Shahrazad watches, ears plastered flat against her skull lest one of the thrashing branches deal them a stinging blow. She recognizes that the power granting this almost animal movement to the usually stolid trees is not their own. It is coming from the half-dozen or so dryad trees growing around the edges of the meadow. They are using the more normal trees to extend their reach, sacrificing them to protect themselves.

The coyote understands that the human is lucky the trees—both dryad and more usual—are settled into their winter dormancy. Had it been summer, when the sap runs fast and hot, the woman would have been plucked from the earth and dashed down again before she could take more than a few steps. As it is, she is offering a good fight, trying to make her way into the meadow where the cold-burnt grass offers no life the dryads can awaken.

Then Shahrazad sees the faun. It is not Demetrios. She struggles to remember the human-language name by which this faun is identified. Kleon. That’s it. Kleon. A sound that tells nothing, convenient, though, for those who must talk.

Scents work so much better than names, for they are always unique. By this faun’s scent, Shahrazad recognizes Kleon as one of the bolder members of Demetrios’s flock, one with whom Demetrios sometimes butts heads over some incomprehensible matter of policy. For example, Kleon hadn’t wanted Shahrazad to stay with them. He had been among the last to offer her even grudging welcome—and that had held more the flavor of resignation than anything else.

Now Kleon stands in the center of the meadow, bigger seeming than Shahrazad remembers, but with his shaggy black and white flanks and small curling goat horns not too terribly frightening—certainly not in contrast to the tossing limbs and grasping twigs of the weirdly animated trees.

Yet the woman, who had stood her ground—even fought back—against the trees, takes one look at the faun, freezes, and screams with such pure terror that Shahrazad again flattens involuntarily into the leaf mold and squeezes her eyes shut.

When Shahrazad opens her eyes, she hears the woman crashing through the undergrowth in panicked flight, sees the faun leaping after in pursuit. Kleon is laughing, the sound cruel and harsh against the sudden quiet that comes when the trees settle into vegetative stillness once more.

Shahrazad understands what that laughter says more easily than she would have understood words. Kleon will not be content to drive the woman away. The woman has threatened his home, his dryads, and, perhaps worst of all, she has seen him as he is—an alien thing in the human world. For this she must die.

And Shahrazad, lectured repeatedly from puppyhood about the dangers that come from stirring up humans, realizes that the trespasser cannot be driven to her death. Killing her would bring far more trouble than it would resolve. The faun, however, is beyond clear thought. Kleon is not Demetrios, wise and wary beyond most to the dangers offered by humankind. Kleon will be foolish, and that foolishness might well destroy the very secrets he seeks to protect.

Shahrazad forces herself to stand on trembling legs, her tail limp behind her. As she does so, she sees motion from the direction of the meadow. A woman—and yet not completely a woman, for her slender limbs are more like branches, her long hair intertwined with leaves and apple blossoms—stands in front of one of the trees.

“Stop the faun,” the dryad says. “Please, leggy one. Stop him. We will help you if we can, but we are rooted.”

Coyote pride will not let Shahrazad give into fear in front of any plant—even one as wondrous as this dryad is proving to be. Shahrazad forces the weakness from her limbs, shakes herself, and bolts through the suddenly accommodating undergrowth in pursuit of the faun.

Johanna’s flight is blind. Fingers fumbling, she unstraps her framepack and lets it thump to the ground behind her. The release of weight gives her wings, but when she spares a single panicked glance behind she sees the devil still bounding after her.

There is a wicked grin on his black-bearded face, and his lack of clothing means that nothing hides the excitement the chase has aroused. One glance is enough. Johanna presses a hand to her thudding heart and runs.

Which way is the ravine? Can she even climb down the sides without slowing too much? Yet falling would be preferable to letting the devil catch her. The cold waters of the stream would be welcoming compared to what he intends.