Authors: Katharine Kerr
Siiri opened her eyes. Robert sauntered across the clearing,
britches already undone and shirt pulled from them. His move-
ments were sloppy with drink and hungry with lust. His eyes
were crazed. She was sure he was only seeing her. Morgan got
off her to let his brother take his place. With Morgan off her and
with inner strength she knew they did not suspect, she was ready
to spring at Robert, not knowing exactly what she was expected
to do or how the six trees and the Goddess would help her.
EVERYTHING HAS A PLACE 349
But Morgan's face was the one the Goddess showed her, not
Robert's. None of it made any sense, but the Goddess insisted.
* Siiri's hand, unbidden, picked up a small handful of pine needles
and flung them toward Morgan's chest. Just as they left her hand,
she felt them grow. She watched with fascinated horror as the
needles extended into spikes twice the length of her hand, each
one firm and sharp. Everything seemed to slow as twenty or
more two-edged barbed knives found homes in Morgan's body.
The leering smile with which he had been watching her turned
into a expression of horror first, then pain, and finally realization
that he was going to die.
Siiri did not need the Goddess to urge her to grab for more
needles and throw. This was for Julianne. Fingers felt in the dust
and grabbed and threw handful after handful. Morgan staggered
backwards and was finally impaled against a tree, which leached
fluids from the small body through the needles and into the
trunk. She scrambled to her feet, a strange lightness in body and
head, and turned on Robert. He had not moved, but a growing
horror on his face told her that he knew his own fate as well.
Siiri did not disappoint him. Two handfuls of needles flew at
him. The war cry that was now her own escaped her lips. The
horses pulled loose from their tethers and ran from the smell of
blood and fear.
It seemed forever before Siiri could move to be sure both were
dead. Part of her was numb at what she had done, but another
part of her was the Goddess. They were no longer separate. As
she looked at Morgan's body, the needles began to shrink and he
fell loose from the tree, a desiccated shell of a human. All that
was left were the clothes, skin and bones. On the tree, a new
branch was forming and the needles were visibly coming back to
freshness. She walked numbly to Robert and saw much the same
thing. She touched the needles. They were warm. Under his
body, fresh grass was poking up and small flowers tufted ground
cover at his feet. Rain droplets touched her face. The glade was
growing. A wave of green crossed from edge to edge. Bird
sounds began and were finally a noisy chorus. Siiri sat down
hard, mouth and eyes wide open in amazement. More animal
calls joined the birds and animals out of season and those which
should not be awake this time of day. Siiri heard each new part
join a chorus to the Goddess.
Siiri crawled across the now-plush forest floor to her sister,
cradled Julianne in her arms, and rocked. She could barely see
350 Barbara A. Denz
through the tears. "Bring her back, too," she called to the
Goddess. "Let her grow. You promised."
There was no response except the sound of the rain. Siiri
waved at the desiccated skeletons that now lay empty on the
ground and the six tall trees in the grove. All that remained to
identify the sons were then- blood-soaked clothes, jewelry, and
skeletons. "She gave her blood so you would have the strength
to help me. Now give her back!"
She held Julianne like that until the body was cold to the
touch, pleading the entire time. Tears joined the rain that washed
her face. Finally, numb with grief, she gathered branches of the
downed tree, now dead and dry again, and piled them around
Julianne.
She watched, quietly, as the pyre ignited on its own. Fire
sprites that all looked like Julianne danced in the flames, each
signaling her to join them. She swiped at her eyes, finally ac-
knowledging that her sister was as much a part of this glade as
she must be. She took a deep breath. Above her, the clouds
parted, and stars were bright. A brilliant moon shone with her
sister's face.
Siiri walked to join the six maidens who stood waiting for her.
She took the two hands offered and completed the ring. As they
danced, a new tree began to grow.
<'
Trees Perpetual 01 Sleep
by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Nina Kiriki Hoffman lives in Oregon's Willamette Valley
where she spends a month or two each year housebound
from grass pollen. She has written many short stories and
a novel. The Thread that Binds the Bones. Other stories
about Matt Black have appeared in the Axoloti novella
"Unmasking" and in F&SF.
They were way too far into the woods and away from human-
made things for Matt's taste. When choosing for herself. Matt
called the whole world home, but she generally stayed in the
parts of the world where there were cars and roads and buildings
and people, things she could talk to. She wished she had never
met Miss Terry Dane, teenage fashion victim and witch.
Cricket noise and stream murmur edged the forest air with
sound. Sunlight was just fading from the tops of the trees around
the clearing, and the intense blue of midsummer sky was staining
slowly into night. Everything smelled green and wet. The marshy
ground squished under Mart's army boots,
Terry laid red roses in a ring on the fire-scarred altar rock in
the middle of the clearing and opened her backpack. She whis-
pered words while she pulled all kinds of weird things out of her
pack. She set each item carefully on the rock, blessing it and pre-
paring it for use.
Matt wished there were somewhere to sit. If she sat on the
grass, she would get her jeans soaking wet. Dum Terry and her
Midsummer ceremony, anyway.
The whispering tree on the far side of the rock, the only tree
352 Nina KinKi Horrman
in the clearing, had big roots, some of them with knees and
knuckles sticking up above the ground. Matt edged around the
big gray altar stone and sat on one of the tree's upthrust roots.
Terry opened her big time-nibbled book and set it where she
could see it, as though it were a cookbook. She made some
passes with her hands and spoke some words. She lit red candles,
and then she lit a piece of stick incense which she waved in a
pattern, leaving little trails of thin smoke and the scent of a dis-
tant country. She stacked wood on the rock in a triangle within
the circle of roses, and snapped her fingers. The wood blazed up.
It was fairly impressive.
Matt pulled her knees up to her chest and leaned back against
the tree's trunk. Its rough bark caught at her crewcut. She didn't
know what kind of tree it was, but it sure smelled good, a little
like fresh pencils at the start of a school year.
Terry spoke softly, reading from the book and touching the
things she had laid on the rock, lifting water, crystal, incense,
salt, and a knife. Gripping the knife in her right hand, she stood
a moment, her eyes lifted to the darkening sky above, then cut
across her left palm and dripped blood into the fire.
"Dedication," said the tree Matt leaned against.
"Mm," Matt murmured. She had learned to keep quiet when
Terry was in the middle of something; she had talked during a
summoning spell Terry was doing once, and the little wind Terry
had been calling up got loose and pestered both of them for three
days.
"I used to have that. Almost."
"Shh," said Matt. Golden-orange light was gathering around
Terry's head and hands. She held her hands up to the sky and
spoke some more words, and the light brightened around her.
She closed her hands a moment. She opened them again, and
red-gold tight flowed from her palms, half to the sky, half to the
earth. She pressed her palms together and stood silent, and the
light seeped away. Everything got quiet.
Terry drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly. She shifted po-
sition, her shoulders relaxing. She blessed all her tools and stored
them again, and last of all she passed her hands through the
flames, which rose up and then died down.
"Discipline," said the tree.
"Shhhh!" Matt said.
"She's finished."
"Shh?" Terry said. shaking her hands and smiling at Matt. The
slash on her left hand had closed clean.
TREES PERPETUAL OF SLEEP
353
"I wasn't talking to you," said Matt. "I was talking to this tree
... this tree?"
"Thought you didn't talk to trees," Terry said.
"Not usually," Matt whispered.
"I used to have that kind of dedication and discipline." said
the tree again. "Well, maybe not as intense."
"You said you only talked to man things," Terry said. "What
does that mean?" She patted her backpack and floated up to sit
on the highest part of the rock, above where she had performed
her ceremony.
**I can talk to things people have messed with. I know that
feeling, so we can relate."
"Hmm," said Terry. She opened the outside compartment of
her backpack, fished out two granola bars, and tossed one to
Matt. "But now you're talking to this tree."
Matt edged out on the root so she could look at the tree's
trunk. Its bark was almost fuzzy, with shallow fissures running
up and down. She placed her palm against it and felt a rough sur-
face but not a splintery one. "How can I talk to you?" she said.
"I don't know anything about nature."
"I'm not natural," said the tree.
"Oh," said Matt She wondered whether she should stand up.
She decided she'd rather sit on an unnatural tree than try climb-
ing on Terry's rock.
"I used to be a witch," the tree said. "Now I just watch
witches come and go here at the Gateway Stone. Powerspill
wakes me up sometimes."
"So what is it saying?" Terry asked-
"What happened to you?" Matt asked the tree.
"I got carried away during a spell, and it turned on me."
"Wow," said Matt, wondering if it could happen to Terry, and
if she maybe wanted it to.
"Could you let me out of here?"
"What?"
"I've been thinking about it for an age. I've worked out a spell
that should release me, but I need help."
"Matt." Terry said. "Talk to me." She was using her pushy
voice.
"He used to be a witch until he messed up and got trapped in \
the tree," Matt said, not realizing until the words came out of her j
mouth that the tree was male. One of the things she hated most
about her relationship with Terry was that Terry could just tell
her to do stuff and Matt would have to do it without being abl&J
^^
354 Nina KirURi Hoffman
to think it over first Terry didn't do it very often—if she had,
Matt would have found some way out of the tether spell, even if
it involved not surviving. "He's worked out a spell to let him go.
He wants us to help."
"She coerces you?" the tree asked.
'Tether spell," mumbled Matt.
"Sympathies," said the tree. "How did that happen?"
"Uh," Matt said. She should never have stopped to fix Terry's
car. The car had warned Matt that Terry was a witch, but she
didn't realize it meant literally until too late.
In spite of the tether spell. Matt had liked living with Terry
and her mom, at first. Lately it had begun to grate.
"Oh. Right. Not easy for you to explain when she's listening,"
said the tree. "Hmm. You can hear me and she cannot, eh?"
"Mm."
"Are you a witch?"
"No."
"You're not? Wait a moment. How can that be?"
"I'm just me, Matt."
"Matt." said Terry. She drummed her fingers on her knee.
"What?"
Terry frowned. "So?"
"Do you want to help him with his spell?" asked Matt.
"How good a witch is she?" the tree muttered to itself. "No,
don't answer that. I have watched her work, and she's one of the
best I've ever seen."
"Have him tell us the spell." Terry unzipped her backpack and
pulled out the ancient book, opened it to a page near the back.
She got a pen out of the backpack's outside compartment. "I'll
think about it."
"She's a good witch, but is she a good witch?" the tree mut-
tered. "Evidence: she does her solstice ceremony alone. Not a
communal witch. Cast out. or alone by choice? Evidence: she
tethers another to her. Hmm. Hmm. Did she tell you why she
tethered you? Did you do something to her?"
"Yes. No," said Matt-
"Does he want our help or not?" Terry asked- She frowned.
Matt knew by now that with Terry, irritability was the first step
toward true discomfort for anybody she was around.
The tree said, "By wit and by will, I bound myself- By witch-
ings and workings I bound myself. By wood and by water I
bound myself. By one into other I bound myself. Now I am
ready to release myself. Now 1 am ready to face my fear. Now