“I want you to help me tell it to behave.”
“I see.” Tandy’s tone suggested that he didn’t see at all and didn’t know how to go about talking to a vampire tree.
“You think you can get close to the tree?”
“It likes me,” Tandy said. “So yes.”
“Okay. You get close. I’ll sit right here. With your keeping it calm and my hands in the earth, I’ll tell it the facts of life, survival, and death. Then we’ll sacrifice a rooster.”
Tandy was silent a moment. He said, “We’ll do what?”
“When I claim land I use blood. I want to claim the tree and all its saplings, and the land they live on. Jane Yellowrock said it may take blood to accomplish that.”
“I see,” he said again. But it was clear he didn’t. Tandy stepped to the vampire tree and put his hand on the bark. He leaned his head in and touched it. Then he laid his entire body against the tree. Minutes passed. “Now,” he said quietly.
I dropped my dirty pink blanket to the ground and sat, the rooster squirming in my lap. I pulled off my shoes and put my bare feet flat on the ground. Instantly vines burst from the ground and twined around my feet and ankles.
“Nellie?” Mud asked, worry in the word.
“No thorns. It stopped at my ankles. I’m good.”
“Okay.” But she didn’t sound as if she was okay. She sounded scared. Good. If she was scared she might not try the things I had. She might stay human. Longer than I had.
“You sure you want to be part of this?” I asked her.
She heaved a breath. “Yup. Move over.” She sat beside me on the faded pink blanket and crossed her legs, pulling her dress down to cover her knees. “I don’t gotta be barefoot, do I?”
“No. I just want you to have the chance to see and feel what this is like. But if it goes wrong, you pull out and get away. Fast.”
“Okay.” She grabbed my hand and we interlaced our fingers, holding tight.
“I’m dropping into the earth now,” I said. I closed my eyes, concentrated on the link in our hands, felt the land through the soles of my feet, and dropped into the earth slowly, easing Mud with me. Into the dark, into the deeps. She gasped in delight, her fingers tightening on mine.
I reached out and found the tree, a green, green,greenbeing with a mind full of curiosity—curiosity about Tandy, who it liked, and me, who it didn’t. About Mud, who it considered only a twig, of little importance. About Brother Ephraim and why he was no more. The tree had noted his absence as it might a lull in the rains.
I had no language to share with the tree, no common... ground. Mud laughed at the thought, and I nearly laughed with her.
Instead I remembered what it had felt like to be a lump of root and limb, tethered to the land, part of it, but not. Healing it, growing the trees. And I sent the vampire tree the feeling of rain falling upon me. The warmth of the sun filtering through bare branches to caress my wooden form. I showed it Soulwood and the extension of Soulwood on the banks of the river at the two Tollivers’ homes, on the bank of the Tennessee River, the few acres that now contained mature trees. Land that now really and trulylived.
The tree followed me, absorbing the impressions, the presence of life and death. The tree understood. It turned its full attention to me. Without words, it thought at me, sharing concepts, meaning, all without words or pictures.Seeding, rooting, fruiting, reproducing. Mostly that.Reproducing.
I empathized, as Tandy did, understanding, comprehending, accepting. The tree was the only one of its kind. Like all trees, it needed to make more of its species. It wanted to spread into the land. It wascompelledby Nature herself to reproduce. And it had no place that was safe to live in. No sexual opposite that would allow it to reproduce.
Humans wanted it dead.
It was... lonely.
I thought back, showing it the rootlets at the gate. Springing up, leafing out, becoming saplings. Uncut. Unmolested. Allowed to grow. The land dedicated to it alone. But not allowed to kill or seek blood. Not allowed to thorn or trap with vines. It considered this, but its loneliness was acute. It was isolated, solitary, abandoned, lost. It wanted what I had. Unlike other trees, it wanted... family.
Mud’s mouth opened in awe. “Nellie,” she whispered.
I promised the tree that... that I would claim it and keep it as part of my woods.
That it could become part of Soulwood, part of the trees there. But it had to live in harmony with the other trees and animals, wherever it grew. And it must no longer kill. If a human cut it down, it could come back from its roots, but it could not attack or resist. It must live in harmony with other trees in the wood. It must allow humans dominion. It must serve, not fight back. If the tree did these things then I would claim it as family.
The tree went silent. The concept of harmony and servitude was not foreign to it. Trees and the land had lived in servitude for ten thousand years. It understood. It agreed.
It agreed to being claimed as part of Soulwood.
