The Family Tree (24 page)

The countess shook her head, as puzzled as I. “Foreign from where? Across the great ocean? No one crosses the great ocean! The transmontaine countries? Think how sparsely populated that area; think how rarely we see anyone from the transmontaine.”

We are not to speak of this to the others?” I asked.

Izzy shook his head. “Countess Elianne may speak of it to her secretary, if her discretion is trusted. I would not tell anyone else among our party. At least, not yet.”

“And why did you choose me to confide in?” the countess asked.

“Your attitude toward Fasahd,” he murmured. “We have seen clearly that you are not allied with him. And as for you, Nassif, I chose you because I like you, though you misled me.” He frowned at me sadly, shaking his head, and I knew he had at last penetrated my disguise. As I have said, Izzy is bright, but about some things he is impervious to the evidence of his senses.

He went on, “I have no reason to mistrust your Prince, but I have no reason to trust him, either. I would not confide in him yet.”

I nodded in agreement. I was not sure that I trusted the Prince myself. From one day to the next, I was not sure what he was up to.

D
ora came home from work to find Jared standing just outside her door, one white-knuckled hand clutching the door latch as though he had tried to get in and had forgotten to let go. He turned to stare at her, a strange, baffled look, as if he had expected someone else.

“What are you doing here, Jared?”

“I wanted to see where you’re living,” he said. His voice was distant, totally impersonal. “Momma gave me your address. It’s very difficult to locate places now, Dora. It was very hard to find this place. I had to use the city maps and count the streets. All the street signs are overgrown.” The words came in a tense monotone, each word of equal import and stretched to the breaking point.

“I’m sorry you went to all that trouble.” She noticed that her voice did not quaver, though she felt it should. Jared was the last person she wanted on her doorstep, and she had no intention of letting him into her house.
“You might as well let go of the door. I’m not going to invite you in.”

He merely stared with eyes that were sunken more deeply than she remembered. The lids were ringed with dark skin, almost like bruises. He had lost weight and looked haggard. Or hag ridden.

“I want you to come back to my place, Dora. I don’t like living at the boardinghouse. Having ten people around. It’s too…unsettling.”

She moved uneasily, wondering whether she ought not to leave, pressing her arm against her holster to reassure herself that she was, after all, able to defend herself. “Move back into your house, Jared. It’s still there. Ask your mother to find you a housekeeper.”

“I don’t like it there alone. I have to go in, to see to my…tools, but I hate all that…greenery. And I can’t get rid of it.” There was something plaintively demanding in his tone, like a whiny child. “If you come back, you can get rid of it.”

“What on earth makes you think that?” she cried incredulously. “Even if I could do it, I wouldn’t!”

“It tried to kill me,” he said, explaining it to her in that same strained monotone, his head cocked, peering at her as though searching for something unobvious but known to be present. “I know that. And you didn’t let it. So, you could make it…go away.”

There was a question here. He was asking her something, trying to hint at something, with a threat implicit in his posture, in his tone.

She shook her head, frightened by the intensity of his expression. “Listen to what I’m telling you, Jared. I can’t make it go away, I don’t even want to make it go away. I like the stuff. I think it’s great. If you don’t want to be surrounded by greenery, move into town. There are apartment houses, hotels, lots of places the trees have left alone.”

“I have to stay there where my work is,” he said, stepping forward with frightening speed to fasten a hand into her hair, twisting, pulling, then dropping the hand
onto her shoulder like a clamp, his thumb pressing deeply above her collarbone, his fingers making holes in her back. “And you have to help me with my work!”

“Let go of me, Jared.”

He glared, his face inches from her own. “I won’t. I have to stay there, in my place. All my equipment is there. And you can make the stuff go away. It didn’t come until you were there.”

Shuddering, she spoke between clenched teeth. “I had been there two years before it came, it came everywhere, and I had nothing to do with it. Move your tools, for God’s sake!”

“No. That’s where they belong. It’s my place. It’s where I mean to have them….”

He dragged her back toward her doorway, reaching for the latch with his free hand, fingering it as though there were a combination, a special touch that would open it and let him drag her inside.

She stooped suddenly, coming away from his clamping hand and stepping back, putting distance between them. She put up a hand, rubbing at the place on her scalp where he had pulled her hair. It was tender. The air had become very still, with that dangerous hush she had learned to listen for.

“I’ll make you come back,” he said, craning his neck forward, showing his teeth. “It would be easier for you to just do it now, but I will use you to get rid of all this, all this stuff growing.”

He made a gesture, an awkward motion, but so studied as to appear hieratic in its intention, then repeated it exactly, his eyes fixed burningly on her own. The air simmered and left her lungs in a rush. She felt dizzy, her eyes fogged, she tried to breathe and couldn’t. The world began to darken.

Above Jared’s head the leaflets on the weed turned in his direction, and several tendrils dropped suddenly across his face, scraping his eyelids, making him blink and push them away.

She gulped for air, suddenly released. The tendrils
were still there, fringing his face, and he batted at them, like a man fighting bees.

She gasped, “You won’t make me do anything, Jared. I’m divorcing you.” She put her hand on her gun but didn’t pull it, preferring a weapon less dangerous, less fatal. “I…have a new boyfriend. He’s a professor at the university. He likes trees. All this greenery doesn’t bother him.”

Jared’s face, already gray, became ashen. “Do you…have you…does he come here?”

“Of course he comes here!”

“Does he sleep here?”

“Yes,” she said, shouting the lie, making it more vehement. “He does. All the time.”

He stepped away from her, mouth working as he mumbled: “That’s it. You’ve spoiled it. Too late now. You can’t do it now. I’ll have to find someone else.” He walked to the gate, opened it, stood for a moment framed by the side timbers, looking back at her over his shoulder. “I’ll make you sorry for this, Dora. You shouldn’t have moved out. You betrayed me. I needed you there and you betrayed me. You could have gone on living, but now you’ll die with them….”

The gate swung to behind him, closing with a solid clang. Behind her, a tree rustled, just one, then others, the movement extending from her little garden out into the woods and away west.

“What was all that?” she whispered. “What in the hell was all that?”

Was the man sane? Had he ever been sane? She stood shivering, her whole body shaking uncontrollably, hugging herself, holding herself together, shutting her eyes, taking deep breaths, trying to think of something, anything but Jared. Her scalp still hurt, and she rubbed it again. He’d pulled some hairs out, for sure. After a time she heard birdsong and realized it had been going on for a while, which meant he was gone. How she knew this was a mystery she did not want to bother to pursue.

She let herself in, carefully locking the door behind
her, stepping between boxes and over crates to be sure the large overhead garage doors were locked as well, thinking as she went up the stairs that no one could get through the bedroom or bathroom windows, overgrown as they were.

“Someone might put a ladder up against the big living room window,” she told herself from the top of the stairs. “And break the glass.” She stood in that window, looking out. This window was the weak point. Someone could get in that way. Not just someone, anyone, but Jared, who said he would kill her. And why in the name of heaven did he want to kill her? It was crazy!

She dropped into a chair beside the table, dug her notebook out of her purse, opened it to a clean page and wrote down everything she could remember of Jared’s maundering. She had spoiled what? She couldn’t do what? He would have to find what? Why? He’d fallen apart when she said she had a boyfriend. When she said the boyfriend slept over. At that point he’d stopped insisting she move back and instead he’d accused her of…whatever. Betrayal. Which meant…which meant that having a boyfriend somehow changed her own…status? Qualifications? For what?

He needs a virgin
, an inner voice said.
Dora, he needs a virgin. He thinks a virgin can get rid of the greenery
.

She put her head into her hands as she heard her own voice making sounds, half giggle, half scream. She was imagining things. My God, what did she think he was going to do? Sacrifice her to the Tree? Use her blood as weedkiller? Jared needed a cook-housekeeper, that’s all. It didn’t matter who she was, so long as she kept everything clean, cooked that damned vague tomato food and kept her mouth shut.

She didn’t like having made up the story she had. Lies could be dangerous. They could blow up in your face. Would he recognize the story for what it was? If he hung around out there, if he watched the house, and if he saw no one here…. He could lie in wait for her. Now that forest covered everything, there were so many hiding
places. But…maybe…maybe she could arrange for it to be more than a mere story.

She went into the bedroom and pulled out the top bureau drawer, the little one, meant for keeping handkerchiefs or gloves, dumping it on the bureau top. She had put Abby McCord’s card away among old receipts and odds and ends of makeup and a few bits of jewelry. She had promised to tell him about Harry Dionne, so she had a perfect excuse for calling him.

The phone rang six times before he answered. “McCord.”

She cleared her throat. “Abby, it’s Dora Henry. I told you I’d let you know when I spoke with Harry Dionne. I had breakfast with him recently. Would you like to come over for a drink? I’ll tell you about it.”

Long silence. “Can I get there? Can I find the place?”

“You can drive as far as the avenue. I’ll meet you at the corner. It’s only half a dozen blocks.”

He wrote down the landmarks she gave him and told her he’d be there in thirty minutes. She took twenty of them to straighten up the place, check that there was beer in the fridge, and get out some chips and salsa. She had wine, too, if he’d rather. She’d bought herself half a dozen bottles as a housewarming gift. As she was about to leave, she turned back and got two steaks out of the freezer and put them in the microwave on thaw. Maybe he’d stay to dinner.

Wind chased her bicycle, scudding her like a leaf beneath the overhanging branches. She had thought she might be late, but it was almost twenty minutes more before Abby’s little red car showed up, the convertible top raised against the threatening sky.

Dora motioned him to come over and park next to the tree that minded her bicycle for her. When he did so, she spoke to the tree, conscious of his eyes on her. “This is my friend, Abilene McCord. This is his car. Will you watch it for him, please, until he comes back?”

Branches lowered protectively. She turned to find him staring at her, brow furrowed in concentration. “It’s all
right,” she said, fighting the laughter that threatened to erupt. “The tree won’t let anyone fool with your car.”

He backed away from the tree, watching, finally turning to walk beside her as she wheeled her bike down the curving path that had once been a quiet residential street.

“After what you showed me the other day, that shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. Why haven’t the trees invaded the campus? They’ve let the campus mostly alone.”

Dora nodded. “Also the football stadium, and the baseball park and the parking areas around them. They’ve left the city park fairly open, as well, though a lot of trees have come up in the zoo, in the enclosures and along the paths. Highways aren’t bothered. Railways aren’t bothered. The airport is still wide open. Downtown parking lots are open, just like the downtown streets. But the suburbs…” She shook her head.

“Doesn’t it all imply motivation?”

She wiped a lone raindrop from her nose, squinting up at the lowering clouds. “I stopped by the library the other day to look up some articles I sort of half remembered. All over the world, cities and highways have been eating up the best land—I mean, the most fertile land, the best for growing things. Maybe the trees want to take it back.”

“By making it difficult for suburban housing and streets? Why are they taking it easy on cities and public transportation?”

Dora grinned, remembering Grandma. “Maybe they don’t want to kill us, just teach us a lesson.”

He made a doubtful noise in his throat. “What did you find out from Harry Dionne?”

“Wait until we get to my place,” she said. “Then I’ll tell you all about it.”

She put out beer, salsa and chips on the table by the window and pulled out the two leather chairs so they could look out at the grassy swale that led away to the clear line of sky between mountains and cloud. From
long habit, she got out her notebook and went over the conversation she’d had with Harry Dionne, including the bits about Jared and the girl, but leaving out Harry’s reference to women’s “kernel of wildness.” If she still had some wildness floating around, that was her business.

“Phil told me about your ex-husband,” Abby remarked when she had finished. “Phil said he was a stick.”

“In all the time I’ve known Jared, he’s been almost completely unemotional,” she admitted. “Though when he was here tonight—”

“Tonight?”

“He was waiting for me outside when I got home from work. He thought I would be able to remove the ‘greenery’ from around his house, the one we lived in.”

“Why on earth…?”

She shrugged, uncomfortably. “He got stung, and I guess I was responsible for saving his life. The only logical explanation I can come up with for his attitude is that he misinterpreted my saving him. It wasn’t that I had any power over the growth, it’s just that I knew CPR. And considering how he looked, I think the poison has affected his mind.”

“Phil says he works for Pacific-Alaskan. If I were a tree, that would make him enemy number one. I’m not surprised he got stung.”

She dipped a chip and munched it slowly. “You questioned motivation a few minutes ago. Are you now implying that the trees might know who Jared works for?”

“If they’re aware enough to guard my car because you ask them to, or to provide me with a cutting because I ask them to, then, yes, they’re aware enough to know what we do for a living. At least those of us who might prove to be threatening.”

She mused. “I know Jared is a neatness freak, but I never thought of him as anti-tree, in a general way. Trees are his business. He talks a lot about sustainable yield…”

Abby snorted. “Sustainable yield means a single-species tree farm, which is about as far from a forest as you can get without paving it over. You know those ads Pacific-Alaskan runs on TV? The ones where the little girl asks if there will always be trees, and the company spokesman shows us his damn tree farm and says, Yes, Virginia, there really will be trees, as he walks down these endless beds of absolutely uniform seedlings. It’s a case where you can’t see the forest for the trees, because there is no forest! No birds, no wildflowers, no butterflies, no nothing but those rows and rows of absolutely uniform pines.