Authors: Katharine Kerr
really."
Rebecca patted her mouth with her napkin and smiled.
"Thanks, Matt."
"You're welcome." Matt ate her hamburger.
*T don't know much about you either."
"We could talk about it," Matt said.
Rebecca grinned.
"For starters, I've done a lot of traveling," said Matt.
Terry returned, subdued.
"He okay?" Matt asked.
"He wants to go back."
The four of them sat out on the back lawn at Terry and Rebec-
ca's house, drinking lemonade and looking at city-hazed stars.
Someone on the block was watering the lawn; the air carried the
sound of false rain and the scent of wet grass.
"Everything," Lewis said, "everything is different. I can't eat
this food, and I'm starving. Music is different. Buildings are dif-
ferent. People dress differently, and they use a lot of words that
don't make sense. The prices on that menu scared me! I could
have rented a room for two weeks for the amount of money that
steak cost, and I couldn't even eat it. How can things be so ex-
pensive? There are all kinds of devices in your house that I have
no idea what they do, and I don't want to find out. Ail these
years, the witches have been the same; but everything else has
changed."
"So you want to run away and hide?" Matt said.
"I don't see how I can survive here. I can't just mooch off
Terry and Rebecca, can I? But how could I get a job? I don't un-
derstand anything about this new world."
Matt thought about mooching off Terry and Rebecca. She
didn't want to do it much longer herself, now that she had a
choice. Something in her, the wandergod part of her, longed to
move on, wash her present off, and start over someplace new
with no complications or expectations. She had been living her
TREES PERPETUAL OF SLEEP
367
life in short bright sections for more years than she bothered to
count. The road was continuity enough.
"Aren't you ever curious?" she asked. "Don't you even want
to find out?"
His answer was a long time coming. "Maybe. In a way."
"You were a Crafter once," Terry said. "What happened to
your desire to shape things?"
"Hmm," he said. "I think ... as time passed ... I figured out
what to want. Sunlight. Rain. Snow. Dead oiganic matter. And
freedom, and someone to talk to. Maybe I was shaping as much
as I could. Or maybe I was just accepting what came. It was al-
most enough."
"Dead organic matter is mostly what we eat," Terry said
thoughtfully. "You're doing okay with the lemonade, aren't
you?"
"Hmm," said Lewis, looking into his cup. "It tastes good."
"What kind of tree are you when you're a tree?" Rebecca
asked.
"Something local. A cedar, I think. I'm not sure exactly."
"You could put down roots," Rebecca said slowly. "And pick
them up again."
"I don't know," said Lewis. "I left my tree behind."
"You started rooting in the house."
"Huh. Yes."
"We could use some more shade in the back yard," she said.
"You could just -.. stay here a while and maybe ieam some
more about now."
"You could stay here for a while and then go somewhere else.
Learn new things all the time, and new places. Root. uproot,"
Matt said. "That's how I live. Try a different place every little
while. You could come with me. I could teach you." She touched
her mouth after the words were out. Part of her lifeway was to
be alone; to always make friends, but never to take them with
her on her journey from one piece of life to the next. What had
come over her?
"Matt, don't go," said Terry.
"What am I doing here?" Matt said. "I need to go."
"I could teach you to root," Lewis said. He laid his hand over
hers on the lawn. His fingers plunged down into the soil, caging
hers between them.
"No!" said Matt, tugging, but her hand was locked to the
Earth.
"Relax," said Lewis.
368 Nina Kirifci Hoffman
"No!"
"1*11 let you go in a minute. Relax."
Everything in her was twisted tight and squirming. Every les-
son she had learned early in life was about getting away before
the Bad Things could find her, and now she was trapped. She
pulled in breaths and let them out slowly, trying to relax. At last
she asked Lewis' clothing if it could strangle him for her, and it
said it could do that if she wanted. She relaxed, and felt—
Her fingers aiming downward, digging into dirt, reaching
deeper than their lengths, seeking and finding deep cool comfort;
and a language that spoke so slowly a word would take a lifetime
but be worth waiting for; and things seeping into her through her
fingers, things that tasted like steaming mashed potatoes drown-
ing in butter, and hot apple cider, and chocolate ripple ice cream;
and a sense of strength infinite and offering itself to her; all she
had to do was stay. Warmth. Comfort. Eternity. A cradle.
The pressure on her hand went away. Her hand pulled back
into its own shape, and she was sitting, bereft of contact and
comfort, on the lawn again, a world away from the eternal com-
munity. Shivering started in her arms and traveled through her.
"Are you okay?" Terry asked, gripping her arm. Matt shook
for a little longer. The warmth from Terry's hand felt good.
When the shaking stopped, Matt patted Terry's hand and said,
"Don't do that to me without asking, Lewis. Don't."
"You would have said no. And I could never describe it."
"Don't do it like that again."
He hesitated, then said, "I won't."
Matt sipped lemonade. Half had sloshed out of her glass while
she was shaking. "I'll try it again tomorrow," she said, "if you'll
come to town with me and Terry."
"All right," he said. "For tonight, I'd just like to stay out
here."
"Pick a spot away from the house and not under the power
lines," Rebecca said.
"I will. Thanks to all of you, for everything."
Matt was brushing her teeth while Terry rubbed astringent
over her face. "Pay attention to your dreams tonight," Terry said.
"It's a time of pollination. Seeds get set."
"I don't want any dreams," Matt said, but her mouth was full
of toothpaste and the words didn't come out.
She dreamed of Home.