When the horse slowed to a trot on the pocked and gravelly road, Leitara tightened her handful of horsehair and the clasp of her knees, and leaned into the semblance of a natural saddle posture.
When a passing wagon's fur-clad humans had snow-white skin tattooed with roaring animal heads, the dyed wolves and bears seemed to scoff at her discomfiture with Hravakian wildlife. Further down, three more wagons traveled in train, and to her left, eleven skeletal corpses clung to posts, their forearms tattered by the cruel manacles from which they dangled. Though there was no sign, Leitara read the posted dead women perfectly: this is the fate of Codura. Where puddles collected under their bodies, black birds drank, their heads so out of place between their wings that they could have been giant thumbs fumbling in whatever foul human liquid pooled there.
When Leitara jumped down, the horse broke into a spiteful gallop, and she made for the trees. As she could barely breathe human air, she wanted nothing more of humans, not even to walk their roads. And definitely nothing else from the double-minded consort of the pretender.
As Leitara moved through the bramble, she frowned at the scrubby trees. As the arboreal creations of Hravak were insignificant next to the colossal Tree-Mothers or even the lesser, barely sensate boles of Ielnarona, this Human World could easily be called the Dwarf World. It all depended on your point of view. It would be a good tonic for the egotism of the meat men to see the sublime trees of Ielnarona. In Tree-Mother groves, a Tree-Woman might walk along branches for miles without touching the ground, and in the lesser groves, where only a few dryad covens grew, the smallest trees were still sizable pillars.
The flowering growths of Hravak were also diseased, insect eaten, and blighted,
like the moral and intellectual development of its champion species, whose growth as a world culture was stunted by avarice masquerading as enlightened self-interest.
While the overgrowth was impassable for beasts of flesh and blood, Leitara had a dryad's tricks and woodcraft, and, moreover, the plants of Hravak shied away as if she was a ghoulish third cousin; at the gentle brush of her hand, the ropy vines disentangled with a hasty shudder, and at her light step, the undergrowth unsnarled. Three roving wolves eyed her curiously, and after a close, cursory sniff, trotted off without a yap. What proved the most serious vexation was a rapacious blue bird that gripped her cheeks and pecked so close to her eye blossom that had she not grasped its neck by reflex, she might have traveled half-blind. She twisted its head around, then dropped it to the grass of a small rise, where she looked down at a placid lake undisturbed by a single lily pad, or even a bug, so that its glistening hoard of rocks and bones doubled in the refracted Abyss-light.
Though thirst overwhelmed her at the sight of cool water, she knew it was poisonous from the brown grass fringing its shore. Hearing a wet gurgle within earshot, she followed the sound to find that someone had dammed this dying lake's inlet, and the pooling waters formed a new pond, with lush green banks bearing two houses, one freshly painted, and another the natural grain of its dark brown wood.
Thinking not to stir the residents, Leitara stole to the shore, knelt, and cupped her hands for the cool water, which was rich with the fragrance of the fertile soil it had drowned.
Two gnarled hands creaked open a window and leaned on the sill. "You may join me at my table if you wish." The voice was abrasive and feminine.
"No thank you."
"As I just sat down, it is no imposition—moreover, cooking for one is too tricky for me, and I often throw away food."
While Tree-Women never know hunger, Leitara felt that her overwhelming thirst and fatigue stemmed from waiting too long on her first solid meal. Dryad stomachs store their infrequent meals as compost, which in decomposing and fermenting, releases the nutrients rooted plants get from soil. In essence, Tree-Women create their own soil from consumed legumes, grains, and flesh, to carry inside these intestinal alimentary beds. The whispers of past seed-selves confirmed that her exhausted rootlessness stemmed from not having this fresh ground at her core. She smiled grudgingly, and said. "If you are certain it is no trouble."
"None." The hands left the windowsill, and an old woman opened the door.
Nearly everything in the two room house was wooden, not only the table and chairs, but the cups, the fruit bowl, and the picture frame bordering a portrait of an astonishing red-haired beauty with lupine sarcasm in her cheekbones and chin but eyes so soft it seemed that kindness had melted them to limpid pools. While the old woman's eyes were the same, everything else was different, as she was not only hunched, but had moles, age spots, and locks that were far from lustrous, with wispy strays at the end of a thick, white braid hanging as slack as a dead hand.
"Do you like that? It was painted by my first husband, Druvek. I am Elani." When she glanced at Leitara, the Tree-Woman again saw her uncanny resemblance to the commanding eyes.
"What are you, Elani?"
"What am I?" laughed the old woman. "So blunt! Do I not seem human, Tree-Woman?"
"In a word, no. Every human I've met has begged of me or bragged over me. You seem more comfortable in your skin, Elani."
"You can see that I am no Tree-Woman. Nor am I Nahurian or Uenarakian, thank the spider. But you are right that I am not fully human, though it is half of my inheritance, and I barely remember my human mother now."
"What of your father?"
"While he was a wastrel and scoundrel, that Alfyrian taught me magic, by which I maintain this woodland fief. Cuvaernei and Drydana give me a wide berth due to my mastery of shapes, as more than one would-be thief crawled or slithered home from here. But we should eat while the food is warm, and talk while we dine, or after if you prefer."
It was a tempting but intimidating meal. The weirdly tapered light meat was carved in uniform ovals; a tureen of red wine gravy bubbled and glittered; a stuffing of nuts, peppers, roasted dumplings, and peppercorns smelled of thyme, mint and basil; and, an oily yellow sauce drenched roasted green stalks sprinkled with pungent onion slices. As the short table's spread might have beggared a larger board, Leitara suspected the witch had conjured the surreal feast.
"Did your father not provide the secret of Kinulcra?" Leitara sampled the meat, and finding it too inoffensive to deserve being thought bland, soaked it in the fulgid gravy. The next bite was laden with greasy aromas, but still more blank than bland, more spell than substance.
"Your answer should be obvious." The old woman frowned, then brightened almost immediately. "Forgive me. I am not used to company."
"Don't get used to it. I'm just passing through." Leitara picked at the stuffing, but finding her first bite delicious, and with an undercurrent of citrus accentuating the pepper, she shoveled it into her mouth.
"What are you looking for?"
"A dryad."
"There are no Tree-Women on Hravak, whether in these woods or elsewhere."
"This is no Tree-Woman, but a Tree-Man named Sarin Gelf."
Elani glowered over an ironical smile. "I know Sarin Gelf, but not that he was a dryad. Knowing might have made my research easier."
Leitara ate the roasted stems so quickly that soon there was only one, and the next to the last was in her mouth. The sauced and herbed stalks were so savory that when she suppressed the impulse to snitch the last spear, her fingers drummed on the table. Though she stared at it ravenously, Elani not only did not get the hint, she had not yet served herself from the provender.
"What was your line of inquiry?"
"Perhaps I'll tell you. I know—tell me why you seek Sarin Gelf, and I'll explain my interest in dryads."
"I want to know how he broke the dryad life cycle--how he has lived for a hundred years."
Elani laughed. "I would think you a liar if my father had not taken me to Gelf's curiosity shop seventy years ago. He looked the same then as he does now."
"As Tree-Women only live seven years, my exile from Ielnarona is a death sentence; indeed, I am already a wasted life, as my Tree-Mother was burned, and my memory cannot be subsumed. While you humans resign themselves to oblivion as your common fate, to dryads there is no point to living without the possibility of remembrance. But even if I exist in denial of this ultimate dissolution, I hope to learn his secrets and prolong my life."
"Can you apprentice to an iconoclast? Sarin Gelf may be an accident of nature."
"Then I must know the truth of that, and either live as he does or live my brief span for pleasure."
"That is as noble a cause as self-interest permits, young lady," said Elani with a note of approval. "When I said father did not leave the secret of Kinulcra, I misspoke; it is only that its crucial ingredient grows on another world, and I could only procure it by unfavorable negotiations or happenstance."
"Happenstance happens now, Elani." At the witch's quizzical look, Leitara told her of the Abyssal oasis trapped in Hravak's orbit.
"You say it is descending?"
"If the oasis was at peace in your sky like the moons of the Elven or Goblin Worlds, why is there lightning, turbulence, and a stormy wreath of clouds?"
"We needn't guess, Leitara. I have a glass."
"You mean an altanava?" An altanava was a lens for magnifying celestial bodies in The Abyss. As dryad science was in the throes of a revolution in optics, every year perception was altered by a different device, so that they seemed less inventions than subcreations that deepened and enriched the worlds.
"Follow me." Elani stood from the table. Her plates, utensils, and even her glass, were still sparkling clean.
Leitara stood, stretched, and thought how best to extricate herself from this lonely old witch.
As if reading her mind, Elani said, "While you have better things to do, there will be little point in finding Sarin Gelf only to be buried under miles of Abyssal oasis."
Thus persuaded, Leitara accompanied the old woman to her unpainted workshop, which from the outside appeared longer and deeper, but only one floor. Once inside, however, the laboratory dropped to a split level as it stretched to its lakeside windows, which were embedded in a balk wall twice the height of the front.
After climbing a ladder to the lower level, they walked to the back, then ascended a spiral staircase of black iron to a protruding sphere. Inside this metallic observatory, a gleaming tube pointed toward the Abyss.
Through a lens fogged by long use, Leitara glimpsed the nebulous Abyss, then swiveled the instrument to cloud-fringed Ielnarona, the serrated fjords of Nymerea's monstrous contininents, and the scudding oases obscuring the Five Worlds' central swath of light. Though Alfyria was a cloudless orange, and its civilization invisible on its arid disc, and Nahure was an equally uniform brown and green circle tinged with grey—as if oxidized by its teeming goblins—both worlds were spangled by bright, flitting moons.
"Ielnarona's farseeing lenses are petty compared to yours," said Leitara. "While the Dryad World has no kinulcra to postpone death, they would give you the recognition you crave."
"It's only a hobby. My main interest is potions, although even that waned from pursuit to pastime over the years." Elani gestured to the worskhop below, where wooden tables bore alembics, measuring cups, and various colors bottled in vials. While many vessels were fogged with dust, about one in three were clearer, from the polish of careful, routine handling.
"You have that backwards, wood-witch, as your hobby expands the mind and develops your intelligence, and your pursuit is a series of puddles."
"You think chemical research pseudoscientific, as imprecise as each scientist. As the Inamu proverb says, 'clouded minds muddle through life.' That said, the Five Worlds are marvelous and motley factories of beings, materials, and images; even your memories were alchemized in this series of appearances. Might I have a look?"
"Of course. I forgot why we came here."
"I understand. I cannot restrain myself from any enigma." Elani bent to the lens, steadied it with one hand, then propped her back with the other as a spasm shook her head to toe. Despite the shuddering of her gaunt, bony frame, she persisted in pressing her eye to the lens until she yelled "Yevoti!", backpedaled, and stumbled into Leitara.
"What is it?"
"You are right, Tree-Woman."
"Call me Leitara. It is better than codura."
Elani chuckled. "You have met my Cuvaernian neighbors."
"I would not use such a gentle word as met."
"Then you are lucky to be here. And I am lucky to have you here."
"After what you have seen, you are anything but lucky."
"Perhaps I see things differently."
"If you saw an Abyssal oasis trailing lightning as it shreds your sky, your peculiarities are beside the point."
"Don't be smug! You're my guest, Tree-Woman."
"Your hospitality is just as immaterial. Not only do you still call me Tree-Woman, but that monstrous rock is coming for Hravak. Although I am sorry for your sake, and the Inamu, whom I wish I knew better, when I think this stone might be aimed at Cuvaernei, it fills me with glee."
"While one as judgmental as you won't be happy on any world, you might find momentary peace on Alfyria."
"There is no harmony outside a grove."
"Then choose an oasis. Just not that one."
"When I do, you are welcome to join me, Elani. One so kind should not share the fate of the Cuvaernians."
"You do not mean that, Tree-Woman. We are all unrefined meat to you."
"While I will not deny that you look and smell repulsive, and that when you speak I hear your animal saliva, as if you masticate your words, in the kindness of our conversation I feel fellow feeling for a like mind."
Elani only smiled. "I appreciate your honest generosity. I will strive to speak likewise. And if you'd like to do me a favor, I have something else in mind."
"If it is in my power, I will grant it, though you have not long to enjoy it."
"Give me a swath from your garment."
Leitara flushed. "You put me in an awkward position twice over. If you know the properties of my garment, you know it does not unbutton or unlace, but must be sloughed, like a tree shedding leaves."
When Elani's eyes dilated and her nose flared, it seemed less apprehension than lust. "Shedding skin is my desire, Tree-Woman."
"And you think a meal and a peep in your device a fair trade for my modesty?"
"What would you have?"
"You know why I am here. Find Sarin Gelf, and I will fill your wardrobe."
"One garment will suffice." As she ruminated, Elani pursed her lips and furrowed her brow. "I know a spell that calls like to like."
"Very clever."
"Whatever do you mean?" The witch's smile was coy.
"You expect the garment first."
"Like things attract in magic as well as in nature. Through your garment I can scan for other dryads on the skein of this world."
"Very well. Do you have an enchantment to molt my raiment?"
"I do."
"You might have done that at any time."
"If I am a wicked person, and a fair to middling witch, I should at least be a good host. Moreover, you are armed."
When Elani descended to her laboratory, Leitara followed. Although Elani was very old, from long experience she glided downstairs amid the glittering potions, as if she practiced ghostly habits near the end of her days, while Leitara jostled stacked crates, tripped over the split level, and ran into the corner of a worktable.
"Do not think I will drink anything you concoct, Elani."
"I only distill a fortifying elixir, so that I might weather the rigors of enchantment. Certain magics wrack a crone's heart, and I must survive to be judged by that mighty rock."
Upon imbibing the strengthening potion, Elani turned to Leitara, entered a milky-eyed trance, and swayed, not only on her feet but in the swaying syllables stretching the skin of reality, preparing to flower. Although Leitara steeled herself for the burgeoning spell, it was a painless unzipping of the royal raiment, which cascaded in a blue and scarlet flutter to be caught at one end by Leitara, while its hem was snapped up by Elani. Gripping the satiny fibers spun from her own torso, she wondered if it would regrow. She was not, after all, a royal dryad.
Elani said, "you see? Nothing could be easier, and you have nothing to be ashamed of. I should wish to have the form of such a young, beautiful woman, Leitara."
"Say not the form of a woman, Elani. Though our cities mimic your own, Tree-Mothers produced Tree-Women centuries before we knew your kind."
"I meant only flattery, Tree-Woman. If it makes you feel better, I did not mean it."
Alternately complimented and insulted, Leitara did not know how to respond to the old woman's plainspoken deceit, and turned aside as Elani worked her next spell. Though Leitara was naked, the witch's workshop was warm, and her spells gusted warmer blasts, so the Tree-Woman climbed the cold metal staircase in no discomfort and put her eye to the glass.
Having swiveled the objective for a taste of home, she coveted Ielnarona and felt envy bite back, for though she was cleanly uprooted, she had long memories of belongingness. She brooded on the Dryad World's black-hearted monarch, with whom she shared many memories, as the long lives of Tree-Mothers are lived through their innocent proxies, who are often blind to each others' scheming; while a Tree-Mother saw the big picture, the malice she cultured for her competitors often went over the heads of their offspring until the next generation of seeds awoke with a revised clutch of memories. Cycling through the roll of rememberance, Leitara remembered how they collaborated in building Wywynanoir and feasting their first goblin guests, and how she allowed Inglefras to take the lead and regale them with stories of Hravak, Nymerea, and Alfyria, for the princess had sowed her royal seed on all Five Worlds. When humans were in fashion, one of her seed-selves dwelled in a grand manor bordering the palace, so that they bragged like human neighbors about their handiwork and their pride in their residences, which fueled backbiting and gossip until Leitara not only believed the illusion, but their game, and burned with envy for Inglefras's position. Although the next generation of games were wargames played on real battlefields, and they scored by slain seed-sisters, it was still only a game of resources. Alhough the rules favored the princess, who picked the battleground and risked none of her own doubles, only a sore loser would envy a Princess her advantages.
"I am ready." As if decanted from a younger witch, the voice poured sweeter and thicker,
flooding easily from the workshop to the observatory.
When Leitara turned, indignation and amazement flared. "Should I feel betrayed or impressed?" The spell had unraveled Elani's wrinkles, smoothed and mellowed her skin, straightened and swelled her bent frame until she was a head taller than Leitara, rounded her face and molded the beautiful and mighty figure of an Alfyrian warrior. Only snub ears remained of her human inheritance, and only white hair and eyebrows remained of the ancient. "You said you did not know how to restore your youth."
"I said that my father did not reveal the secret of kinulcra, and that is true."
"You said you would locate Sarin Gelf."
"The garment is still intact." The younger Elani's tone was no longer gristly meat, but sweet meat, and disconcerted the Tree-Woman. "I will honor my promise. Forgive me—the magic implicit in your castoff efflorescence was so intoxicating that I could wait no longer. If you were on the verge of death, and new life was a drink away, would you stay your hand?"
"I might be happy for you, if your next words are your promised enchantment."
"While you are neither as calloused nor as violent an adventurer as you pretend, Tree-Woman, and you do not inspire me with dread, I will always hold you in high regard. If the power of my spell was not in the formula but in your heeding my prayer, I would not worship you any more than I do now. Smile, Leitara, and enjoy your desire."
Elani bowed over the lustrous garment, entered another white-eyed trance, and again seeded her spell in reality, branching through time and space for the prophetic fruit Leirara craved. As this spell lasted much longer, Leitara would have returned to the observatory if she trusted Elani. Elani twisted her enchantment for so long that Leitara became thirsty.
When Elani spoke, there was a note of exhaustion. "Though yours is not the only drop of dryad blood here, no other dryad walks on the Human World."
"What does that mean? Where is Sarin Gelf?"
"If he is a dryad, he is not on Hravak."
"What of these other drops of dryad blood?"
"While there are no other Tree-Women, something in Drydana answers to this garment."
"That is impossible, Elani. Tree-Women may mimic loving your kind, but we can not interbreed with humans, or elves, goblins or giants for that matter."
"Is it so strange, Leitara? Here on Hravak we hear the rumors of Inglefras's prince consort, and their litter of bastards spawned by a giant."
"The reason Inglefras covets those hybrids is that dryads are too unlike the other peoples of the Abyss. However much Inglefras and Khyte brag about their love, plant cannot breed with animal."
"Perhaps you are only closed-minded, Leitara. Everything is possible, and for the impossible, the remedy is magic."
"You lecture me, but have not yet asked yourself why the dryads fled Hravak. Not one dryad on this entire world?"
"You insinuate that this oasis is no accident, but a diabolical weapon in an act of war?"
"As you have just said, that which is possible is often likely."
"If it was moved, then it might be stopped or volleyed back to your world."
"While I learned some magic across the centuries, this seed has neither practiced nor studied. But if I heeded your lecture correctly, even the impossible might be nurtured by magic. Can you move it by witchery?
"I know mainly shaping magics and potions."
"There are other witches. Including that aforementioned giant, who is also a witch with the power to lighten great weights and diminish material objects. One of my seed-sisters disappeared in her companionship."
"You mean Eurilda. My father entertained that witch when she stopped here with her lover, an adventurer and hero."
"Had you not said hero, I might have thought you meant Khyte of Drydana."
"I do."
Leitara sighed. "Having followed me here, that plague now has the audacity to pop up in conversation."
"While Khyte's best friend--my father--spoke ill of his wits, he praised him for his discretion and usefulness."
"What discreet use could you possibly have in mind?"
"That handsome man? I can think of a few." The witch giggled and blushed.
"With a great rock ready to crush your home, you feed your carnal appetites?"
"What can I say? The young have shameless thoughts." A youthful smile spread through Elani's blush.
"As he is not only married, but vain, your overtures will fail unless you dye your hair."
"As the tresses grow, the black hair of my youth will be restored."
"What of your maidenhood? Is that restored as well?"
"Speak no more of this." Elani's cheeks were enflamed.
"I did not mean to embarass you. If Tree-Women are not active, their hymen regrows. If your rejuvenation flowed from my flowering garment, I thought you might also suffer a dryadic reversal to virginity."
"Even after sixty years without it, I would not desire that blessing."
"Blessing? This curse commits Tree-Women to constant fornication, periodic discomfort, or celibacy. As the sexual congress of Tree-Women has no issue, and its monotonous repetition in our long memories diminishes our pleasure, most of my seed-selves chose celibacy."
"How can a new life not choose pleasure? Haven't your sensations regrown? Not to mention that after years of thin desires and spotty memories, your insinuations kindle long dead passions with the blush of life, and breathe lifelike vigor into re-imagined past caresses. Say no more, or I know not what I will do."
When Elani's hand mingled with Leitara's, the Tree-Woman gasped at the surge of the chrysalizing enchantment still residing in the witch. Although the galvanic shudder nearly numbed Leitara's hand, the tingling trickle not only thrilled her with pleasure, it fueled her pulse with exuberant life, and she could not relinquish her hold. Since waking to new life, this intoxicating rush was the first thing she wanted.
When Elani's eyes closed, and her lips parted, the face blurred in their shared afterglow. While her flowering garment had suffused the spell, scented the workshop with efflorescent aromas, and ameliorated Elani's meat smell, it was the exhiliration of the bewitching touch that dissolved Leitara's repulsion, and when the curtains in her hall of memory closed on the prejudice inherited from her Tree-Mother, she was isolated in her choice. If Elani's caress was always amplified by enchanted excitation, in time she would call that love.
Though she laid back on the warm wood of the table and lent herself to Elani's insistent lovemaking, she could not brush aside the whispers of her curtained memories—that they were both new lives, with newborn impulses and feelings fed by fears of extinction—Elani, by the death of her world, and Leitara, by the inevitable death of her memory.