* * *
I knew it was a dream, but it was also a form of reality. Quantum mechanics and all that stuff…
The Green Knight sat on his stallion, on the crest of a low hill, overlooking a battlefield in a narrow valley. His body was full of arrows, the shafts sticking out here and there. He bled from numerous sword cuts.
His beautiful horse was bleeding, standing on three legs. The stallion had been hamstrung, blood pouring down the injured back leg. He was out of the game.
Not a game.
A war.
A war between life and undeath.
In the valley below the knight lay felled trees bleeding from stumps, branches intertwined on the ground. Vampire trees. All dead. Destroyed.
At the feet of the horse, Mud, Esther, the twins, and I lay in a tangled bloody heap.
“Nnnnn. Nnnnn,” I tried to shout, tried to deny what I saw. But I was frozen. I was dead. I was too late to save my sisters.
“It’s a dream. Wake up!” a voice demanded.
Dream. A dream, yes. Not real. Not yet.I fought to wake. Fought to move. The dream held me in place.
A hand gripped my shoulder. Shook my body. My left leg fell off the sofa and my bare foot hit the wood floor. “Wake up, Nellie. Wake up!” Mud’s voice was panicked. “There’s vampires at the house. I can see them in the moonlight.”
I woke. Hard. Clearheaded. “I’m awake.”
I sat up, on the sofa and yet still in the land. In my visionMud was with me. We were alone on the hill in front of the house. The forest all around was upright, deep in winter sleep, standing, uninjured. But the trees knew, Soulwood knew, that danger walked the land. The battle hadn’t happened yet. Not yet. But the enemy was here.
“Vampires,” Mud whispered, warning.
“Yes.” I remembered what T. Laine had said about circles of power, and that the way my sisters and I merged our visions was similar to a witch circle. I unwrapped my bandages, pulled off my socks, placed my bare feet on the boards, and held out my hands. “I’m in the land. Try to see what I see.”
“Yes. Okay.” Mud kicked off her shoes, sat on the floor in front of me, and looked at my hands. They were weird and rooty, but Mud grasped them as if they were normal. The vision of the forest and the valley came clear, but it wasn’t the vision of my dream.Thank God. Not the vision of my dream.
We were on the hill, the house behind us. The trees were standing and alive. The Green Knight was armed and healthy. The dream hadn’t been a current reality but a possibility, because the warhorse wasn’t maimed and the knight was unbloodied.
Just as in the first time when I guided Mud and Esther to meet the tree, the horse now wore Mud’s mark, a bloodred handprint on his face. The knight stood beside his warhorse, his standard a war pike, the handle buried in the ground, a pale green war banner flying, as if claiming the hill.
The green cloth banner displayed a different crest: a tree in full leaf, similar to the tree of life, but with roots reaching deep, and blood falling from the green-leafed branches. The cloth billowed in an unseen, unfelt wind.
The knight was in full armor, his shield on his left arm, his sword in his right hand. On his back and at his sides were strapped a mace, a hand ax with a steel knob and a spike opposite the blade, and a flail, its three smaller spiked balls secured with a leather strap. Various blades were on his belt at his waist and hips.
Mud and I were barefoot. Each of us wore a dress with long hair bunned up. Churchwomen clothing. In the vision, I changed us fast, one blink to the next, both of us with shotguns, wearing jeans and sturdy boots, flannel shirts, short hair to our shoulders. I had my sidearm, still loaded with silver-lead rounds. In the vision, leaves grew from our hairlines, trailing down ourbacks, and from our fingertips. In the vision, I sent vines snaking down our arms and legs, across our hands, not binding us, not touching the ground, not part of the vampire tree. Part of us. Plant-women. Instead of vampire tree vines, they wereourvines, encasing us in flexible, movable, portable armor.Ourarmor. Our defenses. The defenses of the land.
“Not skin,” Mud murmured. “Woody, pliable, bendable vines at joints and for movement. But here and here and here”—she pointed at arms, legs, thighs, chest, belly, back—“ironwood. Harder. Stronger.”
I followed her instruction.
“Fanghead teeth will snare at joints,” I said, “and break on the ironwood if they try to bite us. If they shoot us, the rounds won’t penetrate ironwood.”
The wood of the vines hardened and twisted.
“And weapons of thorns,” I added.
They grew beneath the vines, ready to react, ready to punch out and kill. On the hill that fell away to the curving road, Mud and I stood, facing the wood line, staring over the place I had buried my dogs after the churchmen killed them.
As if the thought of dead dogs had brought her to us, Cherry burrowed between us, onto Mud’s legs, whining. “It’s okay, girl,” Mud said. “It’s okay.” The dog was panting in fear. But we weren’t afraid. We were plant-women.
