Why The Moon Bleeds

Here's a little myth from Rothganar, as told by Dingus. It's a human myth, about human gods. The "now hear this" at the beginning is the traditional signal that the teller intends to tell a story from the mythos. 

Now hear this:

Long, long ago, before the world knew any queen but Naheel Queen of Heaven, when people didn’t know how to build cities, and lived in huts and caves, when everyone in his heart feared the dark most of all, this was the beginning of the hate between the Bright Lady and Oda King of Hell. Everyone praised Naheel’s name and gave Her offerings of their best, but they loathed and feared Oda, and only appeased Him with shiny trinkets when they had to be out at night. Oda started to grow jealous, more and more, every time He rose above the world and made the shadows creep. At first He only turned His face away, but even that didn’t help His envy and anger, because He still didn’t hear the prayers He longed for.

One bright day, Oda grew so angry He couldn’t stand it any longer. He rose up in the daytime, like He does sometimes, but invisibly, so nobody could see what He did. Slowly, so slowly, He sneaked between the world and Naheel’s face, and by the time She realized what was happening, the whole world was black as night. The screams of the people came to Her ears. They cried out to her, with words and beyond words, desperate and terrified, to deliver them from darkness. And Oda smiled at Her, white teeth shining in His silver face, and slipped away again before She seized on Him.

The Queen of Heaven’s wrath burned in Her heart like a furnace, but She stoked the fire and bided Her time, thinking on the justice She would serve to the King of Hell. On a night when Oda had turned His face full toward the world, the better to watch what happened in the deep shadows He cast, She came upon Him and struck Him down, and His blood covered His face so that the moon showed red in the sky. Death has no power over Oda, and the next night He returned full, brighter than ever, but to this day it’s the same: every so often He gets one over on Naheel and hides Her light from the world; but more often, as a punishment, the King of Hell dies a mortal death – and so the moon bleeds.

Commission -- Caticorn Vibes

This is my half of an art trade with @JesseD_Art! He wanted a piece of ambience about his beautiful character, Penelope, and I was happy to deliver.

***

Smoke drifted in a shifting cloud through the hot beam of the single spotlight. On the stage, a woman stood, a woman with soft fur and pierced cat's ears. She had lovely lush waves of red hair, but that wasn't the real story.

A single, iridescent horn, like a unicorn's, caught the light and dazzled anyone who looked at it too long. First-timers were bound to gaze at it, rapt, but the regular crowd knew the action was happening just under it. She wore a red dress, strapless, that parted effortlessly over her sleek-furred leg. It was strapless, and the neckline came nowhere near her neck.

She filled her lungs with smoky air, tasting the beer on it, and the cologne. The eager chemistry of her audience flooded her nose, and the sweet strains of guitar and harp caressed her from the darkness around the spotlight. A hush, the quiet tension of dozens waiting for her to sing.

She sang.

The tune was a simple one, not showy, but it displayed her tender, husky voice to perfection, and it spoke to her soul. She sang it from there, the place that longed for home, the place that longed for love. She shaped the words with her mouth, and her lungs carried them out over the silent audience, but her soul gave them weight. The pressure of emotion brought her lids down to cover her eyes; it was too intimate to share, too intimate to do anything but show.

"I'm not alone," she sang, "in the night..." She stroked listening ears with, "When I can have all the love that you write," and she saw a tear from a hard-faced man in the front row, a single tear sliding down his weathered cheek, sparkling at the edge of the spotlight's blaze.

She made each one of them alone in the night, alone with her. As she crooned to them she brought them close to her and cradled each one in song. Through her voice, she made them feel the softness of her, the curves, the fur, and caressed their ears with the pads of her hands.

Across the lounge, far to the back, was the hot red cherry of a cigarette. There were plenty of other smokers here tonight, but she didn't care about them, not as much as she cared about the owner of that particular cherry. Her eyes met his, and a thrill passed up through her shoulders. She couldn't see his silly coat from here, from the island of light in the dark, but she could picture it, and it made her smile secretly like a woman opening a love letter.

The song was new to her audience, but not to her. She knew every note like it was her own flesh, and she sang it like she owned every line, and when it was over, when the last whispering, pleading harpstring fell silent, there was a moment's spell of calm over the whole place. A kind of sigh followed it, nostalgia and longing. She let it hang, until at last she took a breath to fire something witty at the crowd--she barely knew what.

Instead they broke into a rippling wave of applause, and she didn't bother to hide her pleasure. She beamed, and bowed low, because they wanted it, her hair falling in front of her breasts. She raised her palms to them, glowing from within, and when it was quiet again, relatively, she started the next number. Joy filled her chest, and her heart bounded with delight.

Her name was Penelope, and she loved to sing.

A Wing and a Prayer

Here's another really old one. Three years, give or take. It's about Vandis Vail, and he swears a lot, so consider yourself fucking warned.

A Wing and a Prayer

Vandis hit his forehead. He’d been having the most wonderful dream, all open air and soaring and Her. She’d kissed him, right on the—well, not right on the mouth, but right at the corner, and he touched the spot, for one moment back in that tingly space. Here he was, though, in the shitty apartment he shared with Evan and Santo, with a pain in his head and his feet two yards above the floor and—and—

“Holy fuck,” he said, looking down.

“Too early,” Santo groaned from across the room, pulling a pillow over his shock of black hair.

“Uh…”

“It’s too early, I said.”

Vandis used his fingertips to pull himself along the ceiling. Is this Your doing? he asked Her.

What do you think?

I think I’m stuck up here until I can wake Santo. He crawled across until he hovered over Santo’s bed, legs swinging beneath him. “Hey, help me out.”

“Fuck off. Tryn’a sleep.”

“Goddammit, Santo!” The force of Vandis’s yell pushed him back a few inches. How about a little advice?

Just think yourself down, My own.

Think myself— Vandis let out an audible growl. Fine. Down, I want to go down.

He fell, bouncing his legs off Santo’s footboard, and landed yelping on his ass in a tangle of white flannel nightshirt. “What the fuck!” Santo shouted. “Didn’t I tell ya—what’re you doin’?”

“Just scratching my nuts,” Vandis said, pained. He gave up and flopped onto his back to stare at the ceiling. It really was high.

“Well, I’m up now.” Santo swung his legs out of bed and scrubbed at his face. “Thanks a lot.”

Vandis didn’t want to, but he scraped himself off the floor and limped, aching, over to the clothes press. He was pulling out a pair of breeches when his feet started to rise again.

Come on, Vandis! Don’t you want to play, then? I thought you’d be a wee bit excited about this, She said, the hurt in Her tone unmistakable.

I’ve got class, he said, but he wasn’t protesting too hard. He clutched at a drawer pull as his legs went higher and higher. The nightshirt slipped down his thighs, and when he let go of the drawer to tug it into place, he floated back up to the ceiling.

Class! What fun is that? You can fly, and you’re going to waste your morning at a lecture?

I like lectures.

She huffed. You do not.

I can’t get a Bachelor of Arts in Flying. Until then…

As if your attendance record couldn’t stand a single absence!

Vandis’s hair brushed the ceiling as he hunched over. He didn’t want to hit his head again. His back bounced gently, then came to rest against the plaster, but he felt himself being drawn upward, a pull beneath his diaphragm. “Almost perfect” doesn’t count as perfect. If I miss—

“Vandis,” Santo whispered from below. “Vandis, you—”

“Yeah, I know.” He couldn’t keep himself from grinning. Every bit of color seemed to have drained from Santo’s pleasant, dark-olive face, leaving him greenish and pasty, with wagon wheels for eyes. “I tried to tell you, but oh, no, it’s too early you said.”

“I—” Santo sagged, defeated, and Vandis chuckled.

“What’s the matter, never seen a flying man before?”

“Don’t talk stupid.”

“You sure you—” Vandis grunted when his back slammed the ceiling. A little bit of plaster fell at Santo’s feet. All right! All right!

It’s not everybody’s goddess tries to convince him to skive off, She said. You might be thankful at least.

I am. It’s just— Vandis couldn’t put his finger on it. This was bound to be trouble, somehow, some way. “Mind opening the window?” he asked Santo.

“Okay,” Santo croaked, and crossed to the tall casement on the wall next to Vandis’s bed. The glass had long since been broken out of it. He opened the shutters and morning washed into the flat.

“Beautiful day,” he said. In spite of the early chill, it was blue-glass clear outside, with only a few high clouds marking the sky, far out to sea. The spring dawn shone on the floor of the attic flat, gleamed off what roofs he could see, and cast the east side of Old Town into shadow under the City Redwood.

“Yeah.”

“Well, see you later, I guess.” Vandis shuffled himself over to the open window and grasped the head to pull himself down. His legs floated up the moment he put them outside, and when he looked down—well, his knuckles went white on the window head. Please don’t let me fall.

Why would I do a nasty thing like that? Let go, My own.

He shuddered, took a deep breath of the clear air, and opened his hand. He didn’t shoot up like he’d feared he would; instead he drifted gently higher.

“Vandis!” Santo called, leaning out. “You forgot your pants!”

“Aw, shit!” Now that Santo mentioned it, he felt a breeze on his nethers. He pulled the nightshirt down. “Toss ’em to me quick!”

“Which ones?”

“They’re hanging out of the drawer! Hurry up before I get too far.”

“Okay, okay…” Santo disappeared inside and reappeared a moment later with Vandis’s breeches wadded up in a fist. “Ready?”

Vandis held out his hands. Santo wound up and flung the breeches. They unfurled in the air. As Vandis stretched forward, his nightshirt went up around his waist. He yelped, and the breeches started to fall, ten feet short of his grasp. His mouth dropped open, and he forgot about his nightshirt for a moment, trying to swim in midair to catch the pants, but it was air—there was nothing to pull against.

His breeches flopped onto the cobbles, three stories down. He swore so foully even Santo’s shrinking face looked shocked.

“Want I should try again?”

“What’s the point?” He’d drifted even farther into the sky, and he’d just be out his other pair. Wind tossed his hair and flapped at the flannel. “Pick ’em up for me, would you?” he called. He couldn’t quite hear Santo’s answer. Higher and higher he floated, shivering a little and wishing he’d caught his pants. And then—

Well, he forgot all about it. The city spread itself beneath him, bay to Pit. The people, horses, and carriages shrank away, into dolls, into dots, and then into nothing at all. He laughed, wondering if anyone had ever been so high in the history of the world.

Yes. She laughed in his mind. But not in your lifetime.

He might have said more, but the sight of the city stilled him. It was like the scale model in the square up at the Palace, but bigger, breathing, through a furry smoke haze. He couldn’t pick out the apartment building anymore; then he couldn’t find Knights HQ, or the Cathedral of the Winds, or even the Palace Complex, high on the cliff in New Town. He couldn’t even see Last Resort all alone on the promontory.

When he drew in air, it didn’t satisfy—and his hands, he realized, were numb with cold. His feet, too, and his arms and legs prickled. He struggled for breath. I need to get down. I need—

Vandis plummeted. He left his stomach behind and dragged a girlish scream like a streamer through the frosty sky. The skin of his face flapped; his nightshirt snapped and cracked in his windy wake, plastered to his body, and Dreamport rushed up to meet him, swelling and exploding before his watery eyes, faster and faster. Help! was the only word he could push through his panic.

Just tell yourself to stop, She lilted.

He spluttered, or would have, if his lips worked. As it was, they didn’t even close enough to hold his spittle in, and wasn’t that about the dumbest thought that could come into a man’s head at a time like this?

Best hurry, My own…

He howled, “Stop!” as well as he could manage. His stomach jarred back into its proper place. His heart slammed; his head spun; he opened his eyes. His nose was six inches from the slates of a rooftop. He gasped for air, sighed out relief—at least until he felt himself rising once more, and saw the slates dropping away. “No! Nonononono! Stop, wait, I don’t want to go up again!”

He stopped. His heart pounded away in his rib cage, and his gasps sawed in and out, but he hovered stationary and relatively safe. After some minutes, though, he started to wonder how he was meant to go anywhere or do anything. Swimming with his arms and legs wouldn’t get him far. It was always so easy in his flying dreams, when She took his hand in Hers. Can I go forward? he asked.

Why not try it?

He didn’t like that innocent tone of Hers a bit, but he didn’t see what choice he had. Okay. I want to go forward. And he shot smoothly away, bounced off a chimney, and tumbled into the narrow space between two houses. This time, he managed to catch himself before he got within arm’s reach of the ground. Need to learn to maneuver. I can do that, right?

Of course. Try looking where you want to go, and moving your body a bit to match. Like—like sledding, or swimming.

I want to go slow, he told himself, or maybe Her, willing himself to drift along, skimming the rooftops of Dreamport’s New Town. When he reached the edge of the crater, he floated over that, too, and thought himself carefully into descent under the branches of the City Redwood. He spread his arms, getting the hang of it now, and tilted himself into long swoops around the trunk. His fingertips brushed the thick cracked lines of the bark, around and around, nearly to the ground, before he pressed for height again.

Up above the city, near the top of the great tree, he marked HQ, just there to the east on Temple Row. The great cathedrals pressed close to one another, but there was space around Knights Headquarters, grass, the chapel at the front, a little rectangle at this distance. Vandis thought himself out over Crater Bay.

The sea air filled his lungs. Below him, water sparkled with the dawn. Bliss.

You could go a bit faster, My own, She suggested.

I’m still getting used to it, he said defensively.

Oh, go on, stretch your legs. So to speak. I won’t let you hurt yourself.

He snorted, pushing an image at Her, the roof slates from six inches away.

You can’t begrudge Me a laugh every now and again.

It’s not funny enough I’m up here in my fucking nightshirt?

Just a bit faster. You’ll like it. I promise. And She gave him a little nudge. He zipped forward again and found himself in the middle of the bay, heart pounding, with white sails and blue water below.

How fast can I go?

Faster than I can explain to you.

Vandis thought about it without the form that words give, without the solidity of image. He wanted it. It wasn’t safe, but what about this morning was safe? He wanted it, and while he wanted, the waves began to slip away beneath him, faster and faster, and he was bolting north like lightning. The air dragged at him, but it couldn’t stop him. He blew right past, quicker than the wind. He could outrun the wind.

Vandis’s delighted whoop trailed away behind. He was freezing his eggs off, hundreds of feet high, terror pushing at the boundaries of his mind. He’d never felt so good in his life. The sky rushed around his body, through his hair, clear and blue and beautiful. He spread his arms, exulting, exalted. My Lady…!

She laughed, as delighted as he was. Turn southwest.

Can’t I go a little—holy shit, is this Rodansk? It had to be. A small harbor exploded and receded, so far down, and he flew over black basalt cliffs, greening mountains.

Yes. Turn back. If you’re not careful, you’ll get too cold.

He swung himself south again, into a broad loop. The curvature of Rothganar’s surface greeted him, blue sky touching deeper blue water. In the distance he saw Dreamport, a dark smudge in the blues. Could I fly around the world?

Not without heavy clothing. At top speed, in a few hours.

This isn’t top speed?

Heavens, no!

Maybe it was fast enough for today. Already Dreamport grew in front of him, buildings sharpening and swelling, the Redwood stretching tall. What a morning! He’d already been to Rodansk.

Slow down. You’ll overshoot.

It wasn’t until he did slow that he felt how fast he’d really been going. He had to hold the nightshirt down. As he pulled back over the harbor, a delightful thought occurred to him. Dawn service should just be finishing up. Why shouldn’t he grind it in the faces of everyone who disliked him?

Oh, he hoped Reed Westinghouse was at service this morning. He hoped it with fire in his heart. She snorted into his head as he cruised over Temple Row, between two spires of the Cathedral of the Winds.

Vandis descended gracefully on the chapel, getting his feet under him. He was sure he looked magnificent. Then his nightshirt flapped up. He gave an unmanly squawk, lunged for the hem, and planted his face in the dirt between two stone pews. Occupied pews. With his bare ass in the air like a white, hairy banner. “Fuck,” he said, indistinctly, and sat up on his heels. His cheek hurt, and when he touched it with a cold hand, his fingers came away red. That’s what I get for showing off.

His Lady giggled.

Hilarious. Now everybody’s seen my ass.

“Vandis?” Pearl said, a tiny whisper, and he turned wide eyes up to her. Right in front of Pearl. All he could think of was the night she’d tried to kiss him, and his face flamed.

“Uh—” Pearl just saw my pasty ass, he thought, and scrambled to his feet. He barged through, up the aisle, past Hieronymus laying sandalwood on the incense burner, and inside.

“Pardon me,” he heard Hieronymus say as the door swung shut.

The Head had followed him in.

Fuck.

*

Less than five minutes later, Vandis sat in a chair in Hieronymus’s office with bare knees sticking out of his nightshirt and bare toes propped on the floor, gripping the seat with both hands. His stomach growled more fiercely than it had when he was still growing.

“How have you done this, Vandis?” Hieronymus asked, rather gently, given the circumstances. His black eyes didn’t gleam with their usual humor, or with anything at all. If he wore an expression, it was fear. For a moment Vandis was tempted to worry. What would happen to him now? But this was a gift. She was on his side. She had given this to him, and he had to trust it would be all right in the end.

“I didn’t do it,” he said. “I didn’t do anything. It was Her. Lady Akeere.”

Black eyes met his. Hieronymus dipped his white-bearded chin in a slow, careful nod. “All right.”

“She told me—”

“Stop.” The Head raised a palm. “You don’t need to convince me.”

“You believe me?”

“Of course I do.”

Vandis sat back. It couldn’t be that easy. An unbelievable thing had happened, and Hieronymus believed it.

“I’m old. I’ve met a man like you before. In the old days, we wouldn’t have questioned. Menyoral, we would have said. A rare thing, even then, vanishingly rare. Acacius Xavier was the first one in centuries, and he died when I was very small.” Hieronymus came out from behind the desk and leaned his long body against the front, thin, bent with age. “He was the peace at the eye of the storm. You could feel it. Maybe it was because he was old. No peace in you, Vandis Vail.”

Hieronymus was wrong about that. Maybe there wasn’t much of it, but sometimes. Sometimes things were just so right. And She was there, and everything felt… perfect. He couldn’t have described it.

“We’ve had a lot of peace since it happened,” Hieronymus said. “Not sure that’s a good thing. If it isn’t, I’m to blame. Maybe we need the storm.”

Vandis grimaced. “Can we not talk about that?”

“You don’t think someday you’ll be behind my desk?”

He thought for a moment, hands on his bare knees. “Whether I’m before or behind, I hope I have pants on.”

“Oh,” Hieronymus said, looking down. “Why don’t you?”

“Didn’t get the chance.”

“Go and get some, then. Come right back.”

“I don’t know if I’m getting through the outer office,” Vandis said. He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the thick oak door. It muffled some of the sound from without, but not all by a long shot, and he could hear voices, shuffling bodies. Full house out there. At Hieronymus’s confused glance, he said, “Lots of people out there.”

“Hairy ears. Can’t hear through ’em,” Hieronymus said. “Well, they’ll have questions. Go on. Don’t swear.”

“Look who you’re talking to.”

“I’m looking.” The Head shrugged. “Like I said, maybe we need the storm. Keep the cursing to a minimum. That’s all I ask. Holy men aren’t supposed to say ‘fuck’ every other word.”

Vandis rose from the chair. “Good thing I’m not one. And I haven’t said ‘fuck’ in ten minutes. I’m starting to get itchy.”

“Vandis.”

He paused with his hand on the latch, looking back over his shoulder.

“You are,” Hieronymus declared. “The minute you got in my face about Pearl, I knew. How old were you? Sixteen?”

“Uh—”

“I knew I’d be talking to you like this someday. There’s something about you that’s… apart. Different. If you weren’t so down-to-earth, we’d have a real problem. But I suspect She keeps you grounded. Even while you fly.” Hieronymus stopped, and Vandis was on the point of lifting the latch when he added suddenly, very quietly, “You’ve seen Her. Haven’t you?”

Vandis dropped his hand. “I have.”

“I did, once. Afar off. A little figure in the distance. It was—I knew it was Her.” Hieronymus shook his head. “Willing to bet She gets pretty close to you.”

“Yes,” he said, nothing more. He didn’t see the need to tell Hieronymus how close. How She touched him so deep in the soul it bled into his flesh and left him thrumming on his bed some nights, sweat-slick, breathless, the secret thing She gave him, too intense to be called pleasure, too sweet to be called pain. Ecstasy. And the unthinkable thing he had cradled in his heart for Her since he was a boy, which he was certain She knew better than he did, and of which they never spoke. He would die for Her. Not only in Her service, though if he thought She required it he’d throw his life down singing. But for Her. Maybe that was why She called him “My own.” Doctrine aside, he’d never really felt he belonged to himself.

That was all right. He’d rather belong to Her.

“Be careful with Her. She’s beyond what we can know.”

“I can’t. From my secret heart to the hairs on my head, there’s no part of me I can hold back from Her. I’m Hers.”

Hieronymus drew breath to speak, but Vandis turned and swiftly lifted the latch. The moment he opened the door, questions slapped him in the face: how’d you do it, what was it like, why aren’t you dressed, what’s your name? It was too much, too many, all this attention, and he reached for Her like he always did when he was afraid. My Lady…

She answered. He drew Her love around him like a cloak and stood as tall as a man five-foot-nothing ever had. What was there to fear? She was with him. “I’m Vandis fucking Vail,” he said. “Get the hell out of my way.”

And they did. He met Santo at the outer door, Santo and Evan both, and his friend held out an armful of rumpled clothes. “Thought you’d want these,” Santo said. “Sorry I dropped your pants. Didn’t get much on ’em though, figure they’re clean enough to get along with.”

“Thanks.” Vandis dropped the rest and put his breeches on, right there. The questioners from the office surged toward the door.

Evan slammed it shut and leaned against it, casual-like. For a long moment there was silence, at least among them. Then Santo said, “You’re the worst flyer I ever saw.”

“You’ll need loads of practice, so you will,” Evan said.

Vandis couldn’t have asked for better friends. “That’s all you’ve got to say?”

“Did you expect we’d be surprised?” The door bowed against Evan’s small weight. “You’ve always been a bit uncanny.”

“Weird,” Santo agreed. “C’mon, let’s go get a beer. You’re buyin’.”

Invisibly Yours

I wrote this story almost four years ago. It's about a tree.

Invisibly Yours

Now hear this.

Long and long she had lived here at the top of this forsaken hill, if living it could be called. Nearly forty long sleeps, in the cold time, nearly forty longer days, when the sap stirred and she quickened and leafed. Nearly forty almost-deaths, when the darknesses yawned wider and all her green diadem turned to gold and then withered into dead-wood brown; while it all blew away she would fall into a deep, static slumber and hope never to wake.

She was alone here, and could not depart to dance as she had once, from sycamore to ash to yew. All of her winged people, who had attended her in multi-colored, glittering clouds, were fallen into dust. She missed their hymns, which had floated upon the night air with the songs of the crickets, but more clear and more sweet by far.

A forever, it seemed, though compared to the rest of her life it was hardly the blink of an eye. Once a Lady had come to her, how long ago she could not have told: an ancient Power in a Lady’s form, with hair like flames and white dove’s wings on Her ankles, and carrying a Staff. “Please do be watching over My lad, Moira, if ye can,” She had said.

She failed to see how she might watch over any Lady’s lad, being a tree, if you please, a damned tree, though a damned fine oak she was; and she forgot the request and sank bitter roots deep into the hill. Only the squirrels visited her nowadays. A few built drays in her branches, but for company, they were worse than worthless, always chittering and fighting and mating. She shook her branches sometimes, to see them scatter. Even the sheep stayed away.

What was today but one more bead on a ceaseless string of todays? Except that she felt in her roots a faint vibration, like she had not known in who could say how many trapped years, of feet on the grassy hill; but she ignored it, for surely the owner of the steps had not come to see her.

It had not. For it came close, under her branches, and quite suddenly threw itself upon the ground and rolled at tearing speed down the hill—laughing, in the sweet free manner of her lost people. When it crashed to a stop at the bottom, it ran back to the top and repeated the process, over and over. It was a child, clad in a brown smock and little short pants. Its bare knees and feet bore the greeny-yellow stains of crushed grass; and it had bright red hair that stuck to its neck in fat, sweaty curls; and at the heart of it she saw the whisper of that Lady Who had known her name.

Was this it, then? The lad? For there was a whisper of Power in its heart. Perhaps it lived in the village beneath the hill. After a while it came and laid itself flat in her shade, panting, and she looked on it there. It was passing beautiful to her, with its face smiling so, flushed and delighted. When it caught its breath it came to her trunk on the side that did not face the village, lifted its smock, and drew a child’s penis out of its short pants. Why, it meant to—

She pushed herself out of the trunk, head, shoulders, and folded arms. “Put that away!”

He drew in breath so quickly it peeped and yanked up his little pants. “Sorry!” he said, hazel eyes round as the full moon, retreating. “Sorry, sorry, sorry!” His bare feet pattered away down the hill. She melted back into the heartwood with a regretful sigh like a breeze through the leaves. She would not see him again.

The sun beat down the next day from a bright blue sky dotted with clouds like the sheep that dotted every hill but hers. She was scattering squirrels with lazy flicks of her limbs when the boy returned. She stilled at his coming, the feet treading up her hill. Perhaps he would roll again, and laugh; but no, he stopped at the trunk where he had just yesterday. “Sorry I went to pee on you,” he whispered to her. “Didn’t know you’re a person. Brought you this, so’s you’d know I didn’t mean it. It’s my best one.”

He squatted to place something at her roots, and she could not resist. She pressed out of the trunk again. “What is it?” she asked, and he gasped, sitting down hard; but for all his startlement, he gazed on her with wonder.

“You’re real...”

“Quite so.”

The boy’s breath trembled. “Brought you this,” he whispered, holding out something clutched in a grubby hand.

She stretched out her palm and he placed his offering in it: a small, dark rock streaked with sparkling white.

“It’s my best one,” he repeated. “On account of it’s real shiny, and I found it when my grandpa took me out fishing, way on the bottom of the crick.”

Turning it over and over in her fingers, she felt the Power in it, not in the rock itself, but in the gift. “Thank you,” she said, very softly, and looked up at him.

“I’m real sorry.” Tears hung in his voice. “I’d never go pee on a person, honest I wouldn’t.”

“All is forgiven.” She glanced down at the rock again, thinking that he did not know what he had done for her. “What are you called?”

“Dingus. What’s—what’s your name?”

She told him.

“Moira,” he repeated, and the very sound of it from mortal lips shivered Power into her roots. She stretched out her hand, farther, her hips slid from the trunk, and her fingers touched his cheek. He was warm, so very warm, and he stilled like a frightened deer. She drew back.

“It is,” she said slowly, “a precious rock. I shall treasure it.”

He blushed and twisted his smock in his two hands. “Glad you like it. Maybe I could—”

“Dingus!” came distantly up the hill, and he glanced toward the sound.

“That’s my ma. I gotta go.”

“Come back to me, Dingus.”

“I will,” he promised. “Bye now!” And he was gone in a scuffle of bare feet, leaving a smile behind. That night there was a thunderstorm. She stretched up her limbs and reveled in the wind and rain, exalted by a little rock from a little boy’s hand, and the lightning fell around her, but it never touched a leaf.

And he did come back to her. Again and again he came, bringing her offerings. Most often, it was flowers.

One overcast day he came to her bleeding. His mouth—bright red blood oozed from a swollen lip, and she could not come out quickly enough. She burst from the bark, demanding he tell her what had happened.

“I have never heard of this thing,” she said, when he poured out some story, accompanied by many tears, about being dilihi, and how the villagers reviled him.

“It’s ’cause of my father. He don’t live here, on account of he’s human and he don’t fit.” Dingus dragged the sleeve of his brown smock across his eyes. “I don’t fit neither, but I can’t leave…”

“Dingus,” she murmured, as the leaves shifting, and realized she did not know what to say to him. She cupped his face in her two hands and swiped at the blood dribbling down his chin with her thumb. When she touched it, a shock of the Power stilled all her sap; she might have torn him apart for more of it, but that she had come to love him. He was more beautiful by far to her than any gifts he carried or any Power in his blood. When he climbed her, his small weight on her up-slanting limbs sent a vibrant quiver of magic through her heartwood.

The days were long and hot. The flowers he laid among her exposed roots dried, crisp at the edges, with a memory of scent, and blew away on the breeze. He came to her, he said, as much as he could, but it never seemed enough compared to the time he was not there to cover her in worship; for when he brought her his cares, tiny though they seemed to her, and wept bitterly with his forehead pressed to her bark and his little hands clutching, he cast his soul before her and bid her take.

Her diadem began to turn gold, and he came and played in the leaves that fell, and took them home, crumbled, in his hair and clothes. Also, he thought of her often, and that brought her a tickle of Power, until more and more she could press from her trunk. At last, though her sap had begun to slow and her diadem had fallen nearly to the last leaf, she could slide free and take some few steps away, to the very tips of her limbs. If she tried to go farther she would be pulled back into her prison of wood.

She stood before him to say good-bye. His eyes traveled slowly up her form; he was still small, but he did not seem so very small when she wore a two-legged shape. “You’re beautiful,” he said, and gave her his child’s smile. Perhaps she retained something of what had made her people trace glimmering patterns in worship.

“I am going to sleep for the cold night,” she said to him, and a thin line of worry appeared between his red, red eyebrows.

“So I won’t be able to come visit?”

“You may come, if you like, but I will be sleeping, and I will not speak to you.”

The gaze he turned up to her brimmed with hurt. A tear slid down his cheek—a tear for her. Swiftly, she bent her knees and caught it on her fingertips. It rolled like a droplet of water down a leaf to the bottom of the groove between her fingers, there to disappear into the wood of her hand. He loved her.

“I will want to speak to you,” she said, “but I will not know you are here.”

He did not weep more, but he bit his lower lip and looked away from her face.

“Dingus.” Her voice drew his eyes once more. She felt his misery as she had felt the miseries of those who called upon her, long and long ago: a yawning gulf at the edge of her vision, which she could no more comprehend now than then, but she knew that it pained him. “When the greenwood grows, I will speak to you again.”

“It’s an awful long time.”

“Will you forget me?”

“No...”

“When the greenwood grows, then.”

He lurched forward and embraced her with his soft little arms, only briefly, before he ran away down the hill. She watched the bright blue dot of his jumper as it shrank away into the bare wood between his village and her hill, waiting for it to disappear before she slid back inside, deep into the rings of old growth at the tree’s center. She slept, borne away by his thought of lacking her.

In time, she woke again. The greenwood had just begun to grow. The snow still lay thick on the ground, but she saw the evidence that her sole acolyte had performed his sacerdotal duties far beyond what she would have expected—for in truth, she had expected nothing. A beaten path stretched from out of the wood up the hill. He had made a lopsided snowman for her, and left offerings in a row on a flat stone: a few sparkling rocks, a squirrel’s tiny skull, a cat carved inexpertly from wood. Later that day, he came bearing a fistful of snowdrops and crocus. He had grown.

He grew, her Dingus, and he came less often, but still he came. Less and less, he brought her tears. Through greenings and Longest Days, through the times when her diadem turned and fell, and even as she slept, he grew taller and thinner, as if stretched by some invisible hands, and spots appeared with his bruises. One spring he planted a violet under her branches; and she wanted to love him. He didn’t come back for weeks afterward. Nearly until Longest Day, she waited for him, watching the violet’s slow spread over the ground beneath her. When he came, bringing her a rabbit’s tanned pelt, he leaned his warmth against her trunk and talked of hunting with his grandfather.

She put her arms around him then, as she so often did, and which he liked if she were gentle with his hurts. His neck tasted salt. As it always had, his heat called to her. He trembled, wordless, and relaxed against her, offering her his trust; the knot in his throat bobbed. His flesh stirred to her caress. He made low sounds while she pressed him to a peak, and that too was worship, as sweet as the hymns that used to ring from thousands of tiny throats.

All that he was, he offered to her. She could not quite grasp his pain, but he cast it before her, always. She could not quite grasp his pleasure, either, the so-mortal, so-sensitive thrills that skittered up and down his meridians and stoked the divine fire at his heart; but that was hers, and to watch his physiology while he leapt from the mountaintop gave her more than Power. All the brief nights of that summer, he came to her, and when again the nights stretched, he kissed her good-bye for the winter.

When she woke again, he’d grown taller yet. Under his tunic the bruises clustered on his ribs. Every time he came, there were more, before the old ones healed, so that when the Longest Day came he cried out in pain at the twiggy touch of her hands. She was gentler with him then, though the reminder that he was mortal enraged her. Afterward he lay quiet, cradled at the crook of trunk and limb, in the same manner he had as a child, but nude. All his soft hot skin touched her bark. “If I stay here much longer,” he said, with his sad eyes reflecting the moonlight, “they’ll kill me.”

“For being this thing that you say you are.”

“Dilihi. Yes.”

He reminded her often, but she tended to allow the word to slip from her mind. As well call the wind a fart. It was not what he was. At length she said, “I do not understand them.”

“You and me both,” he said, with one of his strange and mirthless laughs, and then he covered his face with his hands and wept. She slipped her legs from the trunk and sat astride, removing his hands with the inexorable strength of a tree. When she kissed him, she tasted the salt that ran with his blood, rather than the sweetness that ran through her; she kissed him until he quickened, and he was with her again.

It was the last time.

He had not, lately, come as often, and he was gone a long time, or it seemed so. She felt his thought of her; his desire to see her sang from the tiny houses below, and she fancied that she saw his red head moving place to place while the sun shone. She longed to dance again, dance away from her oaken prison and go to him, but though the gifts he had given her drew her forth, she could not leave the hilltop. She had gone to her people, once, their calls to wine and song, but there was only Dingus now, and there was only so much he had to give.

When the Power touched him, its presence swept from the heavens like a mighty wind. She felt it descend and toss what-was-Dingus before it, a leaf borne on a bloody gust. “He is mine!” she cried in despair. “You have many, but I only the one! Leave him to me!”

“No,” the Power said, whispering, pitying. “He is Mine. But I am sorry to take him from you.”

A tree’s silent scream could not express her pain, for as much as she tried. But later, when it had grown dark and she felt his long strides run up the hill, she slid a woman’s shape from the tree to greet and farewell him. He carried a satchel on a strap across his chest, and the Power’s presence clung thickly around him, though Moira could not hear Her name as yet, only her own.

“I have to go,” he said to her.

Between her hands, she took the face that had made these years seem so short. Still a young face, so painfully young, and however it would look in the years to come, she would not see it. She drew him to her and kissed him. A long time, she kissed him.

“I wish you could come with me.”

She took a step back and extended her arm toward the tree. “I cannot.”

“I love you, Moira.” Many a time before, he had said so to her, but he would not say so again.

“And I you,” she said, as she never had.

His shoulders, thin, with the bones that jutted as if he too were a tree, rose and fell with a breath. “I know.”

She would have kissed him again had she not felt the alien tread in her roots, that of many feet, like the earwigs that roamed inside her bark or the centipedes that wandered just under the earth. “What is this?” she asked, alarmed at the flames she saw over his shoulder. As long as she lived, she would never understand these people. Her little ones had been so much simpler.

He answered her with a groan, so like the sounds he made when she touched him that it confused her yet more when he pushed her before him until the tree swallowed her. She wondered at the trembling she felt in his frame; and it was only when the ones with the flames began to shout, when one of them lunged forward and broke the strap of the satchel, that she did begin to understand. He clung to her rough bark with his soft mortal hands, soundless now but for his jagged breathing. Rocks struck her trunk, and one struck his head, too, with a frighteningly similar thud.

Blood ran from the hurt, and when he opened his mouth, it was to plead with them. What he had done, she never did understand, but he said he hadn’t meant to. It ought to have been enough.

“Climb up, Dingus,” she told him, but he would not. His despair fouled the wind when he said that they would burn her. They would kill him. She saw that now, in their eyes all maddened the same way, and long ago she had seen enough of the world to remember what the rope meant, and how they meant to use her limbs.

She would not allow it. “No, Moira,” he said. His voice shook. How could he know what she meant to do? She clutched around his waist and called to the Power he had given all-unknowing through the years. The shouting grew louder. She heard him begging, and she scraped at the bottom of what had once been a great river. If only she could open the Doors that once flew wide at her lightest touch, she could take him anywhere he wanted to go in a twinkling—but, though he had given her all that he was, it was not enough.

The deep bite of steel in her arms shocked her back to awareness, in time to see Dingus kick out. For her, he would do this, but not for himself? “Let go—let go!” he told her, and she could not do less than he asked, nor could she forgo the kiss she brushed along his cheek before she released him. He lurched away from her then, and they dragged him down in the violets he had planted for her and kicked him until his blood seeped into the ground, and she felt his thoughts of her. She did not understand. She did not understand any of this, the stool, their voices, so loud and confused; but the hands on her, she would not have, no. They were not his hands.

She stretched, and danced her anger at the intrusion. She could not bend as she would have liked; but she thrashed, and thrashed, and at last she threw the climber off a thick limb, hard enough to break him. Dingus laughed, so brightly it might have been any other summer’s night, at least until he fell.

When another kick landed, his blood spattered the violets. “You never wanted me here,” he said, in a thick voice, “but see, I never wanted to be here neither. I never asked to be born!”

It was important, she felt sure, that he had said so. He must have more to say, but there was one with blood on him, and he kicked Dingus hard. Oh, could she touch a fraction of her former strength, she would smite them. Vines would strangle. Violets would grow from their soft mortal flesh and they would scream, they would twist, as they made him cry out. Still he thought of her, when the hemp loop slipped over his head, and still he thought of her when he began to die.

Some little apprehension of his pain came to her then—some little feeling of it—and that he had felt safe with her. Retreating into her growth rings, she wept. In the end, all his love of her had profited him nothing. He would die.

“He will live,” said the Lady, a whisper, and she felt the mighty wind of that Power Who had touched him, the wind that did not stir so much as a leaf. In a moment she felt a breath, trembling in the ground, and it was Dingus’s.

All the dark time, she felt him lying on the hill, and through the sun’s return; she felt him stir and rise, and the steps of another, too. His touch came to her again, once, but she did not speak to him, though she wished she had when he was gone. He belonged to that Power Who wore the Lady’s shape. But every so often, in the depths of her heartwood, she felt his distant thought of her, and stretched inside at the warmth of his worship. It was very nearly enough.