I’ve never had any desire to revisit that part of my past. It feels morbid, like visiting your own grave.
I know my fallen oak at Nidhi’s house was taken by a lumber company, but I never learned what they did with it. Perhaps it was mulched for wood chips to spread beneath playground equipment or to landscape someone’s yard. I prefer to believe it was dissected into usable timber, that my tree went on to become something beautiful. Bookshelves, perhaps. A comfortable chair. A bedframe.
In C. S. Lewis’ book The Magician’s Nephew, Digory planted the core of a magical apple from Narnia, and the seeds grew into a wondrous tree. When the tree blew down in a storm years later, he had its wood fashioned into a wardrobe, the same wardrobe that transported four children to a magical world a generation later.
What power might my trees possess once I leave them behind? What magic could one pull from shelves made of my oak? Where might a door built of my former body lead?
None of my acorns ever gave birth to another dryad. I don’t know why. It was an acorn from my own book that created me. Most of the time, I consider this sterility a blessing. The last thing I wanted was to bring forth an entire race of slaves. Fortunately, by the time I was aware enough to worry about such a possibility, it had become clear that my own seeds could produce nothing but ordinary saplings.
But what about my human body? Could this flesh become pregnant? I never had with Frank, and with Nidhi, it hadn’t been an issue. But if my lover wanted a child, and my body responded to his desires…
What would a human/dryad baby become? Strong and powerful? Beautiful and pliant?
Would she be free?
I often wonder.
QUESTIONS AND HALF-FORMED PLANS clamored in my head like a basket of hyperactive puppies. How had Deifilia and her followers escaped the mine without Gutenberg noticing? How many more of Bi Sheng’s students had she created, and were they protected by the books I had made? How had they entered Copper River unseen?
There were countless weapons we could use. I could fly in and drop a fairy bio-bomb from Artemis Fowl. Or let Gutenberg unlock the D&D handbook, and see how Deifilia liked playing catch with a sphere of annihilation. Assuming they didn’t simply absorb the magic of our attack and dissolve our weapons into nothingness.
“Lawrence, Whitney, what books do you have?” I hadn’t stocked up for a direct assault on Deifilia.
“Isaac…” Toni began.
“Thirty minutes,” I promised. “One way or another, you’ll know.”
It was an older fairy-tale-style romance that offered what I thought was my best chance at walking away from a confrontation with Deifilia. When I told Lawrence what I wanted, he looked past me to Toni, as if asking for permission.
“You’re sure about this?” Toni asked.
“Not in the slightest. But people are dying.” I waited for Lawrence to reach into the book. “Tell Pallas to evacuate the town.”
Toni folded her arms. “She’ll want to know why.”
“I know. Tell her I’m doing something stupid again.” I returned to the car and waited while Lena and Nidhi said their good-byes.
“What about megaspider over there?” Whitney asked.
Smudge scurried toward us. Whitney, Lawrence, and Toni jumped back as he placed his front legs on the bumper, as if he wanted nothing more than to climb up onto the Triumph and become the world’s first road-surfing spider.
“I don’t think so, partner,” I said. “Would one of you mind pulling the White Rabbit’s fan out of Wonderland and shrinking him back down to his travel-size?”
Once Smudge was back to normal and sitting—rather sullenly, if you asked me—on the dashboard, Nidhi and Lena ended their kiss. Nidhi stepped back.
“Isaac…”
“I know.” I glanced at Lena, who was slumped in the seat, her eyes closed. She held the branch from her tree across her chest. “I’ll keep her safe.”
Before, I had been too intent on staying ahead of our pursuers to truly see the damage Deifilia’s creatures had done. Driving back through town, I noticed everything. The playground behind the tennis court looked like a tornado had touched down. Whatever had come through here had ripped chain-link fence like cobwebs.
Sirens wailed from every direction. Twice we had to backtrack because police cars blocked the roads. Dogs were howling from their yards. Others sprinted through the streets in a panic. We passed a pair of EMTs assisting a man covered in blood. A half mile farther on, the mining museum was on fire. I slowed the car.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Lena. “You’re in no shape to help.”
“I’ve got two books in this car that could give me enough elemental control to—”
“They’ve got a fully equipped fire engine. Let them do their job. If you overdo it, you’re likely to make things worse.”
I tightened my fingers on the wheel and kept driving.
“What’s in that vial Lawrence made for you?”
I started to answer, then hit the brakes as a wendigo staggered out of McDonald’s. Its stomach bulged like an overstuffed sack. Before I could grab my shock-gun, a blue Harley-Davidson sped at the wendigo from the opposite direction. The driver appeared human, but the woman in the sidecar was in the hybrid form some weres could take, all muscle and fur and teeth, but still humanoid. She jumped out of the sidecar and tackled the wendigo while the driver pulled onto the sidewalk and grabbed an aluminum bat.
“Don’t kill it,” I shouted.
“Easy for you to say.”
It was anything but easy. The wendigo had fed recently. I suppose it could have stuffed itself on Big Macs and fries, but I doubted it.
“The vial?” Lena asked again as I turned into the drive-through to get past the fight. Wendigos were slower when sated, and the werewolves appeared to have things under control.
“The Porter database catalogs it as Love Potion 163-F. It’s fast-acting, works on contact, and lasts for up to ten years.”
She pushed herself up in her seat. When she spoke, she didn’t bother to disguise her anger. “One dryad isn’t enough for you?”
“You know I don’t want Deifilia for myself. I want to stop her. If we fight her head-on, she’ll crush us. But if I can create more of a conflict inside her, split her loyalty long enough for Bi Wei and the others to act, we might have a chance. We might even be able to save her.”
“Save her?” Lena repeated softly. “With the magical equivalent of a date rape drug?”
“I wouldn’t—”
“I know. That doesn’t make it right.”
I couldn’t argue. I had racked my brain for another way to stop Deifilia and resolve this mess. But even if I could have risked using my own magic, it never would have worked. Lena and I would have to fight through wendigos and metal beasts while the students of Bi Sheng countered my every spell.
“163-F has an antidote. If we can capture her alive, we can reverse its effects. I’m open to other suggestions, but people are dying, Lena.”
“I know,” she said again.
“The trick is getting it to her. She’s going to make sure we leave any potential weapons behind. No books, no swords, and nothing magical. But she’s new to our world, and there are things she might not recognize as weapons. One of those old prank calculators that’s actually a squirt gun, or maybe—”
“You think your love will be enough to overpower the Ghost Army’s wishes?”