“I don’t want anything you have to give.” She pulled a blade from her bedside table. “Leave.”
When he went, he left the vial beside the place from which she had pulled the blade.
Hours passed. Days drifted like wayward clouds. One month without her family made of her a waif without the will to hunt on her own. She had asked the gods for freedom and had been granted an excess. She had asked to be looked at and now faced the sorry stone gaze of each villager she passed any time she left her hut. No one helped her. No one spoke her name when she was there.
She drank the syrup. Her branches broke through the thatched roof of her hut. Her roots broke through the stone of the floor, sending cracks like lines drawn to indicate the dreamy shapes of constellations. For years no trees grew around her, until her name had been forgotten and her legend erased. We uncovered it, of course. We uncover all such legends and bring them here to the Orangery where they might live again.
And what of the roots, the empty hole? She did not die in her tree-form. No, she was cured. Yes, there is a cure, or was. There is one man who knew it. One man who brought it here, who thought to use it to fuel his own long-lost desire. But should we name it cure or curse? Who’s to say that the trees don’t prefer being trees, that the burden of womanhood is too much for some to bear?
You understand. I see the way you touch these trees. There is no coming back from it. There is no escape that erases all the memory from your bones, even when you no longer have bones, even when you no longer have memory. There and back again. I still feel his hands, burned like imprints in my skin.
To say I didn’t long for him would be a lie, for I ached deep in my belly to feel the prick of that spear. But it could have been any man, any skin so much like the skin of my books but warmer and softer to the touch.
“Come here.” Apollo beckoned with one long finger.
I stood beneath the cabin ceiling so low it brushed the top of my head. Cracks in the wall zigzagged like lightning bolts. The trees held this place together while tearing it apart. Through those cracks I glimpsed the limbs of trees poking through, more insistent than a single man’s finger.
“I will not,” I said, crossing my arms to cover my chest.
“Why not?” Apollo propped himself up on one bent arm. “The looks you’ve been giving me.”
I looked from crack to crack, tree to tree. “Aren’t you here for someone in particular?”
He raised a single eyebrow, a pirate villain, a lothario, a lion in man’s clothing. The books, at least, had prepared me for men like him, if my lack of contact with them hadn’t.
“You’ll take me to her? Even without my offering?”
“What else can I do? You’ve come all this way.”
He stood from the bed and slipped on his blue shirt, pulled on his overalls. Through his belt loop he wore a tiny ax. How had I failed to see it before?
“I didn’t come a long way,” he said. “Don’t think I’ve been missing her my whole life or anything. Had a job near here is all. Thought it’d be silly not to look her up, see how she’s been.”
“I think you’ll find her less than communicative about her life since you.” I gathered my shawl to cover as much of my body as I could, to protect against both the cold and the man. “What’s your work?” I held the door open for him to pass. He brushed against me as he exited the cabin.
“Lumberjack,” he said. “Well, I operate the lumber company.”
I stopped and gripped harder the knife at my hilt.
As he turned to me, the shadows fled from his face. “That’s not what I’m here for. It’s just another strange job for a strange life. To stay in the mortal world, one must play the mortal game.”
I loosened the grip but didn’t let go. “If you try to hurt her, I’m obligated to slice your throat open.”
The man smirked. “Specificity may be your strongest suit. I’ll keep your threat in mind.” He gestured at the long, dark path before us. “I don’t know the way.”
“Of course.” I stepped before him. I led us past the grove of Dante’s suicide trees, men who’d died for love or shame or the numb that gripped so many by the throat. This, too, I knew from books: men were also delicate, some with skin so thin you could tear it if you bit too hard. I longed to tell him of the treasured trees, to point to and tell her story so that she might be known again by someone more than me. It had been years since the Orangery had seen a tourist.
“There are so many,” he said as we passed a grove thick as the porridge congealed on my stove. “Why do you women fear men so much that you would rather be tree than give a kiss?”
“I am not a tree,” I said. The shadows reached across our path. I waited for them to recede before passing. “And I do not fear you.”
“Well, these women feared us. You can’t tell me they didn’t.”
“These are not all the changed women of the world. All forests are filled with them. You think of that next time you steady your ax. The women here are the lucky ones. The poorer women, women of lesser fame, aren’t so lucky.”
“We use saws now,” he said.
I eyed the ax.
“Just for show.” He ran his finger along the blade. “See? It’s dull.”
When we came to the grove where I had christened the new Daphne earlier that evening, I slowed. Would he sense the true Daphne out there, farther along the trail?
“Why have we stopped?” He squared his arms on his hips and glanced about us. “Is it safe to stop here?”
The trees mumbled. I worried that they might release their potent poison and kill us both, but these trees were older, less apt to react to human presence. Besides, the trees of the Orangery had grown fond of me, and I of them. My stomach turned at the thought of my betrayaclass="underline" to lead such a dangerous creature into their midst. But he couldn’t harm them with me there, my hand against the hilt of my blade. My presence was the reason no rabbits bounded along the paths, no insects dared to feast upon the trees’ succulent leaves.
“Do you not sense her here?” I said. “We’re in her presence as we speak.”
Apollo the lumberjack looked madly about, as though his franticness might call her forward from the darkness rather than send her slithering back into it as frightened trees may do.
“No, no,” he said. “Which is she? It’s been so long.”
“Over there.” I pointed to the tree with Daphne’s plate at her roots.
“How little she has changed.” He wrapped his arms around the mislabeled tree, rubbed his cheek upon her, and caressed a low-hanging leaf. “She’s better than I remember her.”
“Yes, she has flourished here.”
“I never intended to take her,” he said. “But I wonder if she might be allowed to come if persuaded?”
“You may try, but you will fail.”
“Would you like to come with me?” he asked the tree. She didn’t speak in return. Likely the warmth of such a stranger did nothing to impress or provoke her. I wanted to laugh with the other trees whose branches began to rustle.
“They speak,” he said. “But she doesn’t.”
“She doesn’t.”
“What do they say?”
“We don’t love our strangers here,” I lied. “They ask when you will leave.”
“Daphne?” said Apollo. “Perhaps if I sing?” He sang three lines of an ancient song. The trees’ branches rustled faster, stronger.
“We best go now,” I said. “She’s given her answer.”
“She has said nothing!”
“Then you must accept that she’s forgotten you.”
“I won’t,” he said. He reached into his pocket and pulled from it a vial. I drew my blade and moved forward. But he had turned the vial upside down, the clear liquid already soaked into the dirt at her roots. I couldn’t kill him until I knew the consequence of his actions, and any possible remedy.