The Watchtower (28 page)

Then Will suddenly noticed, amidst the poplars, that one tree seemed different. He knew it could be his imagination, and a desperate imagination at that, but the tree seemed to have a slender, angular face near the top of its branches. Almond-shaped, sap-glistening eyes were staring directly at him. Other trees were bending away from him in the recurring gusts, but this tree leaned consistently toward him, peering at him to get a closer look. Will gasped in amazement as the tree stepped fully out of its grove and took a gigantic stride across the path toward him.

A face was clearly visible near the top of its crown, but the trunk, several feet below the face, shrouded in underbrush, turned out to be not quite a trunk. It forked midway down into two bark-sheathed legs ...

Will was tempted to flee, but decided to maintain his ground. He wasn't going to get far anyway against the giant strides this creature could take. So far she--something in the way the tree moved made Will think of her as female--hadn't displayed anything n the way of teeth, her apparent mouth an irregular pink gash in the silver, speckled bark of her highest branch. Her fingers and hands were glossed over with benign-looking leaves; her feet were shaggy roots like slippers. No cutting edges.

Tree woman, if that's what she was, continued to gaze down at him from a few feet away, at last shaking her slanted head as if in disapproval. Long branches coming out of her scalp that seemed to be her hair but resembled a myriad of bark-covered snakes rippled with her motion. All the branches were greened with poplar leaves, except for one of bright gold.

"What are you doing here, Sad Boy?" the creature asked him in a rasping voice, as if her vocal cords were pieces of broken wood, roughing up against one another as she spoke. "You've been haunting these woods recently, with some sorrow of yours. I'm watching you and wearying of it. These are
my
woods, except when that horror of horrors comes around. So fess up! Now!"

"I fess up, as you put it, to few. Actually, right now, to none." Will appreciated her interest, but saw no reason to confide in this ungainly stranger. "I can't fit you in as a confidant after such a brief introduction." He glanced upward, as if to emphasize how little room there was to fit her in anywhere.

Then he felt twigged fingers grasping his right shoulder from above, an arm shadowing his face against the gray light, leaves that dangled against his neck not altogether displeasing in their silken touch. The hand began to draw him toward her, and Will felt the undeniable strength of this creature, and he felt a bit fearful. He tried to surge out of her grip. After a stalemate he felt her let go, with the snapping of a few twigs; whether that happened from his tugging or hers, he couldn't tell. The let-go was sharp, and he fell and sprawled flat on the rough ground, his hands bracing his fall at the last instant. To add to this ignominy he heard a high-pitched, brittle crackling high above him. Laughter! The witch--or whatever she was--was laughing at him.

The nerve!

Will leaped up and drew himself up to a rather flamboyant full height. He was angry, but under sufficient control that he took a few precautionary, further steps back once standing. He was surprised to see the creature, branch-arms, twig-fingers, and all, drooping, as if she was disappointed in his retreat. Will saw a new glistening in her eyes, as if resin had dripped there all of a sudden.

Tears?

"Why can't you confide in me, Sad Boy?" the creature asked in a softer tone. "I live in a world of silent trees, rocks, and dirt. Am I cursed to never hear meaningful speech again?" She extended her right arm toward him, slowly, as if she shyly sought an embrace.

Despite his wounded pride over falling, Will felt sympathy for her. He stepped forward and took one of the leaved twigs on her right hand between his thumb and forefinger, gently. "What's your name? I can't confide in someone without knowing"--he hesitated over gender again, but, after glancing up at the lengthy branches that were her hair, went on--"her name!"

"I am Sylvianne the Dryad." After a moment's hesitation she added, shocking Will, "And the truth is, I love you."

"You what?!" Will was tempted to respond sarcastically, but he caught himself and instead replied, "Why how very magnificent of you to say that, my dear." Given her treesomeness, he didn't see much risk of this entanglement going further. Isolated and despondent as he was, was he supposed to turn away an unexpected admirer completely?

Her lips--faint pink lines in bark--barely fluttered, but Will guessed this was a smile. "Does 'magnificent' mean hope?" she asked in a plaintive tone.

Will let go of her twig finger and grasped her entire right hand firmly in his. "It might under nearly all circumstances, my dear, but common decency now makes me warn you that there is another."

"Another?! Is that whom you're looking through your Galileo cylinder for? But you don't even seem to know where she is!"

Will wondered if her sharpness was jealousy. Sylvianne appeared mercurial in her moods.

"You queried me on my sadness, madame. Do you want illumination on this point or not?"

"Unburden yourself in a wordspill, Sad Boy!"

Despite wondering at her peculiar language--perhaps English was not her native tongue--Will unburdened himself. Sylvianne listened impassively for the most part, though at one point crossing her leafy arms and shrugging in a way that seemed to make the entire forest tremble. When Will finally got to Marguerite's immortality, his burning need to attain it, and his current frustration, Sylvianne bristled.

"
Stop!
You insolent human!" she shrieked at Will, who felt her voice as if he were wood and it a saw. He retreated a half dozen steps from her.

"How dare you speak of immortality to me as something inaccessible, impossible, that only this lady of the night"--Will bristled in turn at
this
reference--"Marguerite or whatever her name is, can grant you.
I
am one of the grandest immortal creatures in the the universe. And
I
can grant immortality to whomever
I
choose. Insulting me, Sad Boy, is not the way to gain my favor. By imputing my powers to another, no less. Believe me, it just isn't."

An angry tear dripped down gleaming from Sylvianne's almond eye.

"I am so sorry, madame," Will said humbly. "I did not mean to give offense."

Something like a sly look settled then over Sylvianne's features. "And why should I grant you immortality anyway, Sad Boy? So that--that--slut"--she coughed in disgust, and spit a clump of resin on the ground--"can perpetually enjoy your charms?"

Two contradictory emotions boiled up in Will, one blinding him with rage, the other exalting him with hope. Even as he recoiled from this monstrous mischaracterization of his bloved, it crossed his consciousness that Sylvianne could make him and Marguerite whole through eternity if he engaged in just the right bit of flattery, if he massaged her delusion, if he seduced her into thinking ...

"Can you really grant immortality?"

She looked at him shrewdly. "Not to just anyone. It could only be given to a ... loved one. And I don't exactly grant it. But I can take you there, Sad Boy. Let's put it that way. I can take you there."

"You can?" Will looked Sylvianne up and down as lasciviously as anyone could, a gaze she appeared to bask in.

Then she gathered herself together again, more coldly. "And what of it?" she barked at Will.

"You do have a certain elegant beauty," he mused aloud. His eyes met hers for a lingering gaze. "In fact, I hear my poet's voice speak within when I gaze at you:

You are more elegant than any swan,

or monarch, star: you make all numbers one.

Alluring as sunlight in winter's storm,

you turn eternity so bright and warm!

Sylvianne began to blink rapidly, and then her eyes were glistening once again.

"Note that I've simply said before that there was another," Will went on provocatively. "I didn't say she was an insurmountable obstacle."

"You've painted her as the center of your world," Sylvianne complained.

"Ah, but women love a romantic," Will explained. "So why shouldn't I try to appeal to you? I am a poet. Poets exaggerate because they do not really live in this world."

"Are you saying there is a chance for me?" With an impetuous rustling of leaves, she took a few strides toward him.

"As an immortal, I would revisit all the decisions in my life," Will said coyly.

"That's not a lover speaking, that's not even a poet," Sylvianne said harshly. "That's a clerk." She flung her right hand at him, and it came dangerously close to slapping his face.

Will knew a decisive moment had arrived. A dryad was a supernatural creature, so he could not question Sylvianne's knowledge of immortality, but he doubted she would make him an immortal in exchange for mere words. "As an immortal, I know I would be strongly drawn to you."

"You're not now?!" With a gigantic rippling in her leaves, she began to stalk off. Will gasped with disappointment; his one hope was leaving!

But then he had a positively luminescent intuition. Maybe Sylvianne herself
was
the purpose of Marguerite's directing him, through Madame La Pieuvre's agency, to Fontainebleau. That seemed to contradict Marguerite's love for him, but, maybe this was all the help she could render him.

Will raced toward a wild embrace of Sylvianne. He flung himself at her as if she were Marguerite, utterly persuaded that Sylvianne was the gateway to his true love. And indeed the dryad's leaves about him quickly became silken and sweet. He could hear her moaning softly, well above, almost in the sky. Her greenery wrapped around him as if in a whirlwind, and he felt as if he were in a merge of inner vision and outer ecstasy, at other moments making love to a voluptuous, black-haired woman whom his senses told him was Marguerite--but he couldn't see her face--at still other times feeling as if he were a tree, sap in his veins on fire, woods whirling around him, a returned sun dazzling with summer heat, Sylvianne kissing the back of his neck while whispering, "I love you." It was all confusing and fragmented, yet ecstatic and sun-bright.

At the end Will found himself lying across the same rock where his adventure had begun, gasping and spent. He didn't
feel
any more immortal than he had an hour before, shaking his arms and legs to make sure. No. Not that he had any idea what immortality felt like. But he didn't feel anything but the spent afterglow of love.

Sylvianne had gone back across the road where he had first seen her, staring down at him somewhat critically. "Do you love me now?"

Will smiled as sweetly as he could. "Yes. As I have always loved you. As I will always love you. You are mine, Sylvianne.
You are mine!
"

Sylvianne's look changed to lascivious. Her eyes took Will in greedily; she made him feel uncomfortable, and cheap, and disloyal to Marguerite. But the main thing was, now he was either immortal or about to become that--hadn't Sylvianne promised? He gave her a penetrating gaze. "I don't
feel
any different."

"Yes, you do. You feel the exhilaration of having loved me!"

"Yes, that, of course. But I don't quite feel ... immortal. I thought I would know it when I felt it. I don't."

Sylvianne cluck-clucked sympathetically, as if to a child. "Come here, Sad Boy."

With a sigh, Will got up, crossed the road, and tentatively approached Sylvianne. He felt none of the erotic rush of before, but he did feel a serene, pleasing sensation at coming so closely into her presence. The next thing he knew, it was as if he were swinging in a hammock, supported by two of Sylvianne's lower limbs rocking him, and she was planting a sap-rich kiss on his forehead. She reached up to her scalp, snapped off a branch, and laid it in Will's lap. It was gold, and glimmered in the renewed afternoon sunshine as if a piece of the sun had fallen there.

"Will, you take this gold branch with you to the pool at Paimpont and stand on its western bank at sunset. Hold the branch up so that it can summon the sun's rays to it like a magnet. That is the key to entering the Summer Country, where immortality is the rule. Morgane will see the glittering key and take you across, and you can return here as you please as Will Hughes, immortal. I will be waiting for you, darling. We can marry, for you are the grandest mortal I have ever beheld. As an immortal, you may well be my equal!" Sylvianne swooped down with a whoosh and planted another gummy kiss on Will's forehead. Then her voice turned to ice.

"But if I find out that you have tricked me, Will Hughes, and gotten me to give you this immortal key because of your obsession with that scarlet trash, I and my multitudinous legions will track you down to whatever corner of the earth you hide in and impale you on one of the earth's cracked bones.
There
you can hang for all eternity, instead of being held safely in my arms, an object lesson for the winds and birds, for humanity, to see. And even at that your fate will be a much too kind one."

Will, disappointed to learn he wasn't already immortal, found himself shivering at the scale of her threat. It almost made him reconsider even his love for Marguerite. But Sylvianne was simply overwrought at the depth of her love for him, he reassured himself. That could change. She might encounter someone else she really loved. He'd just have to take his chances.

Will grasped the gold branch firmly in his right hand and struggled down from her hammocklike embrace. As he stood again, he was surprised to find himself directly facing Sylvianne's features; at a glance down he saw that her trunk legs were splayed out at right angles beneath her. She was kneeling to be on the same level as him!