The trees stood in a line, a hundred feet long, at least three trees deep. As if guarding the road to the house and, perhaps, the small graves. The tree had no fruit, no others of its kind to mate with, so until it figured out how to cross to itself, it propagated via runners, rootlets that pushed through the soil. The roots had to extend far onto my land and also back, the many, many yards, beneath the top of the hill east of my land, to the original tree on church land.
Sneak attack. Dang tree.
I blinked the tears away, put the car in park, and walked across the dirt to the grass verge, the engine still idling. The afternoon temperatures didn’t prove it, but it was technically autumn and there were a few colorful leaves on the ground, mostly maple and poplar. My three acres needed to be mowed, but it took a while to cut that much grass, even using the new small tractor and large mower attachment I had bought recently.
I walked to the graves, still easy to pick out even now. The rocks I had placed over them were mixed river rock and broken hill-stones, iron brown and deep gray, some with sharp edges. I stood between the graves, regarding the trees. They— No. It. It was a fast-growing hardwood, once an oak, now a meat-eating monster, despite its claim to be the Green Knight. A squirrel was speared on one of the thorns and a vine was circling around it. I had never watched to see how the tree ate. I didn’t really want to know and, as if the tree knew that, it pulled the squirrel around back, out of sight.
I sank onto the ground and put my hands flat on the grass, wriggling my fingertips in through the roots into the soil. Good, rich Soulwood soil warmed me up through my hands and arms. It was like getting a hug from Mama, safe and protected.
I reached into the ground with my gift, deeper into the soil, bypassing the bones of my dogs, not encouraging the earth to digest them. I touched buried rocks and clayey soil and various layers from floods. Roots from all the nearby trees had encroached onto the land. Including the roots of the vampire tree.
They knew I was there, underground, with them. I let my eyes close and my shoulders slump. Conversation with the tree wasn’t easy. It didn’t have eyes or language as people understood it. However, it had absorbed mammals, probably even the man who had gone missing on the church land, a slime of blood the only trace. It had digested and taken in their sensory perceptions, perhaps even their memories. It had created for itself the human-shaped persona of the Green Knight to protect me and talk to me. Communication was possible, strangely image-based and concept-based. I envisioned the place where I sat, the house behind me, the grass beneath me, the trees in front of me.
I got back an image of a green horse, nibbling green grass.
I sent images of human shapes cutting down oak and pine and walnut and hickory trees, sawing them to make boards.
The horse raised his head and looked at me, long tufts of grass waving in his lips as he chewed.
I sent a vision of my house being built from the wood. Visions of the wood in its walls, on its floors, siding, window frames. And then I sent images of me walking on the cut boards, touching cabinets. Of me being able to commune with the land beneath simply by taking off my shoes and touching the boards that had grown on Soulwood.
The green horse was joined by the Green Knight, his hand on the horse’s neck. Waiting. Interested.
I sent it images of the vampire trees being cut down, shaped into logs, some cut into boards. Of being made into a house.
The horse stomped, nostrils flared. The Green Knight fisted his hand in the mane.
The tree sent me images of bloody tree stumps and roots, of bloody leaves waving in the air. Of vines coiling around my wrists. Sticking thorns into my flesh. Pulling me beneath the ground, wrapped tightly in roots.
Defensive moves. Saying no.
I called on Soulwood. Its power rose up in me, warm, alive, and . . . mine. I gathered it into myself. And shoved. Shoved the roots away, breaking them, tearing them, crushing them. Then sending an image