Son of the Tree

I was nervous. I had trouble sleeping. Days were slipping away. Out west, the Great Tragic was gnawing its banks. A four-legged monster was running to its overlord with news that it had been found out. Darling and the Lady were doing nothing.

Raven remained trapped. Bomanz remained trapped in the long fires he had called down on his own head. The end of the world tramped ever closer. And nobody was doing anything.

I completed my translations. And was no wiser than before. It seemed. Though Silent, Goblin, and One-Eye kept fooling with charts of names, cross-indexing, seeking patterns. The Lady watched over their shoulders more than did I. I fiddled with these Annals. I bothered myself with how to phrase a request for the return of those I had lost at Queen’s Bridge. I fussed. I grew ever more antsy. People became irritated with me. I began taking moonlight walks to work off my nervous energy.

One night the moon was full, a fat orange bladder just scaling the hills to the east. A grand sight, especially with patrolling mantas crossing its face. For some reason the desert had a lilac luminescence upon all its edges. The air was chill. There was a dust of powder swirling on the breeze, fallen that afternoon. A change storm flickered far away to the north. …

A menhir appeared beside me. I jumped three feet. “Strangers on the Plain, rock?” I asked.

“None stranger than you, Croaker.”

“I get a comedian. You want something?”

“No. The Father of Trees wants you.”

“Yeah? See you.” Heart pounding, I headed toward the Hole.

Another menhir blocked the path.

“Well. Since you put it that way.” Faking bravery, I headed upstream.

They would have herded me. Best accept the inevitable. Less humiliation.

The wind was bitter around the barren, but when I crossed the boundary it was like stepping into summer. No wind at all, though the old tree was tinkling. And heat like a furnace.

The moon had risen enough to flood the barren with light now argent. I approached the tree. My gaze fixed on that hand and forearm, still protruding, still gripping a root, still, it seemed, betraying the occasional feeble twitch. The root had grown, though, and seemed to be enveloping the hand, as a tree used for a line post will envelop a wire tacked to it. I stopped five feet from the tree.

“Come closer,” it said. In plain voice. In conversational tone and volume.

I said, “Yipe!” and looked for the exits.

About two skillion menhirs surrounded the barren. So much for running away.

“Stand still, ephemeral.”

My feet froze to the ground. Ephemeral, eh?

“You asked help. You demanded help. You whined and pleaded and begged for help. Stand still and accept it. Come closer.”

“Make up your mind.” I took two steps. Another would have me climbing him.

“I have considered. This thing you ephemera fear, in the ground so far from here, would be a peril to my creatures if it rose. I sense no significant strength in those who resist it. Therefore …”

I hated to interrupt, but I just had to scream. You see, something had me by the ankle. It was squeezing so hard I felt the bones grinding. Crushing. Sorry about that, old-timer.

The universe turned blue. I rolled in a hurricane of anger. Lightning roared in Father Tree’s branches. Thunder rolled across the desert. I yelled some more.

Bolts of blue hammered around me, crisping me almost as much as my tormentor. But, at last, the hand turned me loose.

I tried to run away.

One step and down I went. I kept on, crawling, while Father Tree apologized and tried to call me back.

Like Hell. I would crawl through the menhirs if I had to. …

My mind filled with a waking dream, Father Tree delivering a message direct. Then the earth got quiet, except for the wish as menhirs vanished.

Big hoopla from the direction of the Hole. A whole gang charged out to find the cause of the uproar. Silent reached me first. “One-Eye,” I said. “I need One-Eye.” He is the only one beside me with medical training. And contrary though he is, I could count on him to take medical instructions.

One-Eye showed up in a moment, along with twenty others. The watch had reacted quickly. “Ankle,” I told him. “Maybe crushed. Somebody get some light up here. And a damned shovel.”

“A shovel? Are you off your gourd?” One-Eye demanded.

“Just get it. And do something for the pain.”

Elmo materialized, still buckling buckles. “What happened, Croaker?”

“Old Tree wanted to talk. Had the rocks bring me over. Says he wants to help us. Only while I was listening, that hand got ahold of me. Like to ripped my foot off. The racket was the tree saying, ‘Now stop that. That’s not polite.’”

“Cut his tongue out after you fix his leg,” Elmo told One-Eye. “What did it want, Croaker?”

“Your ears gone? To help with the Dominator. Said he thought it over. Decided it was in his own best interest to keep the Dominator down. Give me a hand up,” One-Eye’s efforts were paying dividends. He had sponged one of his wild jungle glops onto my ankle—it had swollen three times normal size already—and the pain was fading.

Elmo shook his head.

I said, “I’ll break your damned leg if you don’t get me up.” So he and Silent hoisted me, but supported me.

“Bring them shovels,” I said. A half dozen had appeared. They were entrenching tools, not real ditchdiggers. “You guys insist on helping, get me back over to the tree.”

Elmo growled. For a moment I thought Silent might say something. I eyed him expectantly, smiling. I had been waiting twenty-some years.

No luck.

Whatever vow he had taken, whatever it was that had driven him to abstain from speech, it had put a steel lock on Silent’s jaw. I have seen him so pissed he could chew nails, so excited he lost sphincter control, but nothing has shaken his resolution against talking.

Blue still sparkled in the tree’s branches. Leaves tinkled. Moonlight and torchlight mixed into weird shadows the sparks sent dancing. … “Around him,” I told my body slaves. I had not seen it myself, so it must be beyond that trunk.

Yep. There it was, out twenty feet from the base of the tree. A sapling. It stood about eight feet tall.

One-Eye, Silent, Goblin, those guys gobbled and gaped like startled apes. But not old Elmo. “Get a few buckets of water and soak the ground good,” he said. “And find an old blanket we can wrap around the roots and the dirt that comes up with them.”

He caught right on. Damned farmer. “Get me back downstairs,” I said. “I want to see this ankle myself, in better light.”

Going back, with Elmo and Silent carrying me, we encountered the Lady. She put on a suitably solicitous act, fussing all over me. I had to endure a lot of knowing grins.

Only Darling knew the truth even then. With maybe a little suspicion on Silent’s part.