Then I tore apart the cavern he had made for his life force. Dismantled the walls, the emptiness, the death he had surrounded himself with. And I cut through the tendrils he had once again sent down into the church land. To the vampire tree. I sliced and destroyed the vine-like coils and shoots of himself that he had sent into the tree. Not hurting the tree itself, but destroying the roots and vines where Ephraim’s life had touched it, had shaped it. He had taken over the tree, turning it into a death tree. He had done this and I hadn’t noted it, hadn’t understood.
When nothing was left of Ephraim or his prison or his control of the vampire tree, I turned my attention back to the land where my burned body lay.
Entwining my energies with the roots and trees nearby, I fed them. Pulled their energies in, replacing the death of the land around me with life. Soulwood stretched out and joined in the battle against the fire, sending groundwater up toward the surface, engulfing the roots, protecting them. The warmth and love and joy of my land entwined with my own soul. Together we communicated goodness and health and strength to the trees all around me, bringing the burned land and all that still contained a spark of life to fecund, flourishing, abundant health.
Life, green and full of all good things, burst forth.
Feeding it, I claimed the land.
I felt it when roots grew into and from my body and plunged deep. I felt it when they rose again and burst through the crust of dead grass and sprouted new trees. Felt it when the trees sprouted leaves out of season. Felt them grow tall and strong. Grass and vines and flowering plants followed. The land came alive. It pulled me into it. It enfolded me. And the pain of burning I hadn’t even noticed vanished. I leafed out. I grew.
Yes, I whispered to the land, to the trees. Grow. Live.
? ? ?
Much, much later, after the full moon had waxed and waned, I felt the vibrations of footsteps, footsteps I had once known. And . . . ahhh. Soul. Soul, in human form, walked across the new leaves and grasses growing atop the crisped and charred land to me. I felt her kneel beside me. Felt her touch on my side. But I couldn’t come back to her. I was part of the earth now. I was part of this land. Here there was no fear or grief. No worry or pain. Here I would stay. I felt Soul move away.
? ? ?
Sun fell upon me. Rain watered me. Moon rose and fell, waxed and waned and waxed again. Birds perched on me. My forest grew. My trees grew. Grasses and shrubs and deer and rabbits. Foxes. A family of bear. I was alive. I was the land and it was me. Soulwood was part of us and roots thrust deep. The land was alive with me.
? ? ?
Moons later, when the days had grown longer and the earth had warmed with spring, I again felt Soul return, this time not alone. There were others with her, tromping on the earth, between the saplings and mature trees that were my land. There were humans and were-creatures and a witch and they gathered about me. And . . . there was a creature like me.
Some part of my understanding woke. I understood what Soul had done. She had brought with her the sentient creatures that my former self knew. There were two in animal form, one which belonged to me, which I had claimed. Rick LaFleur. That was what this one was called. Black were-leopard. He had died. But he had died on land I claimed. And I had . . . I had given the land a great portion of the salamanders’ life force, but I had kept something back. With it, with the help of Soulwood, he had been healed.
Rick draped himself across my body. Purring. His claws extruded and pressed into the wood that I had become. He milked the wood, claws in and out, pricking me as a woodpecker might, though there were no insects within me.
Occam pressed beside him. Occam had died as well, and I had shared the land with him. I had claimed him as I had claimed the trees. He was mine. He laid his cat across my roots and he shifted into his other form. His human form. He was different, disfigured, scarred from the salamanders’ fire. I had not been able to save him from all the damage.
T. Laine, moon witch. Soul herself. Tandy, empath, whose thoughts were clear to me. He missed me. He wanted my old self back. JoJo, who was human and silent and perhaps . . . appalled at my new form.
And Mud, sister of my mother’s body. She was like me. She was part of the land.
Mud placed her hand upon my form and said, “Nell, come back. I’m callin’ you’un back.” She pressed her fingernails into the wood that had once been my shoulder and said, “Come back. Come back now.” She shoved Rick out of the way and pressed herself onto the wooden shape that was all that was left of the human I had never been.
Mud’s strength. Her life. Her greenness reached out to me. Her life force was strong and dancing, the way buttercups danced in a summer wind. The way tree limbs beat against the sky in a spring storm. And she watered my wood.
“You’un need to come back,” she wailed. “You’un need to teach me. And you’un got to deal with the vampire tree. It’s growing to your’n land. It’s lookin’ for you’un, putting up sprouts everywhere, between the church’s gate and the cliff to Soulwood. If’n you don’t come back, Sam’s gonna set something he calls C-4 on the tree and explode it. Or poison the land to stop it. But I don’t want it to die. It’s special, or it can be, if’n you’un’ll finish what you started.” Softer, she said, “I need you, Nellie. I’m scared. And I’m alone. And I’m afeared they’s gonna give me away, no matter what I do.” Wetness fell upon my bark and my bare wood. She watered me. She watered my wood.
Tears. Mud was crying. For me. For herself.
Daddy had been sick. Daddy had been failing and growing close to death. Daddy might be dead . . . If he was gone, then no one stood between the churchmen and Mud. They would force her . . . force her to marry one of them.
I tore my arm, with its roots, out of the earth and reached around. Clasped Mud’s body to me. With my other hand, I reached up and tore my jaw free of the roots that bound me to the earth. “Cut me free,” I said, the words grinding as sand on stone. “Cut me free of the land. Take me to Soulwood.”
I felt the blade cutting me free, hacking me from the earth, tearing me out of the soil. The air felt strange on my roots and limbs, and my bark shivered and ached as I was moved. And then I was resting on Soulwood, on the land behind my house. I dug my fingers into the earth and slept. Days passed.
But every day there were the humans and a predator cat, talking, talking, talking, making me listen. Making me care for them, for the things they had to say. And every day, more of my bark slipped from me, fewer leaves grew upon me. And I stood from the earth and walked upon my land.
The humans and a predator cat came and went and fed my mouser cats and brought me food and water. I woke and I ate and I drank. I listened to the noises of the humans as they spoke and told me tales. With them and alone, I walked around Soulwood, silent, touching my trees, knowing the earth. I slept in the woods, sinking deep, communing with the resting power beneath the ground.
And finally, one day I looked at the predator cat and I said, “Occam?” He chuffed and shifted to human and held me in his arms. He was scarred, missing part of his hand, most of his roots. Not roots. His hair. I closed my eyes and wrapped my limbs about him, sad that he was still so damaged.