I took down a list and texted it to Sam. Then, as casually as I could, I asked, “Anything new or different about the land or the trees?”
Esther’s face went from quietly happy to suspicious in a heartbeat. “Why you’un askin’?”
I laughed and held up my hands as if to ward off a blow. “Nothing, nothing, nothing. I promise. It’s just the first snow since you moved here and, since the trees of your house are alive, I just wondered what you could tell about the land through the wood floor.”
“Oh. I ain’t tried that. Can you do that? Read the land through the floors a your’un house?”
“Yes. And I wondered if it might be even easier since your walls and floors are still alive.”
“Well,” Esther said, looking around the small living room. I figured she would refuse to do anything related to her being part plant, but she surprised me when she slipped off her shoes and socks. “Let’s see.”
I know shock showed on my face. Esther was willing to read the land with no prodding? The weather outside might be proof that hades had frozen over.
Mud kicked off her shoes too, so I unlaced my work boots and toed them off. We sat around the table, bare feet on the wood floors, hands spread flat on the table. “Now what?” Esther asked.
“Just think about the trees and the land and how it makes you feel.”
“Safe and protected,” Esther said instantly.
“Usually happy and loved,” Mud said. “But I can’t get past the floors.”
I took Esther’s hand and Mud’s and said, “Mud, let’s try now.”
Together, we pushed through the unfamiliar wood—I felt Esther’s presence and Mud’s through our feet and our joined hands—and into the earth beneath her house. The mental virtual landscape below us opened, widened, deepened, earth that was dark and sleepy and warm. “Ohhh. Yes,” Mud said. She sighed long and soft, as if relaxing in a warm bath.
We all went silent, sharing breath, until Esther said, “We got us some thriving chestnuts. I’m thinking about encouraging a grove. You’uns okay with a grove of chestnut?”
We all murmured agreement.
“That green man is still here,” Esther said. “He seems a mite upset.”
“Esther, use sign language to tell the Green Knight we want to visit with him,” Mud said.
“I don’t know how to sign no language, but I done gave him a fierce look and he backed away, like a man should when a woman’s mad.”
I smothered my laugh.
Wood, living and breathing, was everywhere, strong and resilient, elastic and bending to the air, resistant to, and yet responsive to, snow and ice, full of sap running high and life running deep into the earth. Life and trees, shrubs, vines, fungi, molds, all showing minuscule mutations and health and strength. So much strength. Esther’s acre had spread into my own as if joining forces and, like my own, had crossed the drive onto the Vaughns’ land and crossed beneath the main road into the empty land there. Her power had claimed a good five acres altogether, and her life force—and the life forces of the twins—had made the land healthy and fecund and bountiful. It was wondrous.
Mud whispered, “I want me some land. I…want. I want this, what you have and what Esther has.”
Quietly, I said, “I been planning to deed you a few acres. You’ll have to tend it like Esther’s.”
“I don’t tend nothing,” Esther said. “It just is.”
“Oh, you tend it,” I said. “You tend it by loving your babies and by protecting your babies. The land knows what you feel and what you do. So it helps to protect you and the babies.”
“I hear screaming,” Mud said.
Leaving Esther on the surface to bask among the trees, I followed Mud’s lead, dropping below the tangle of trees and roots, plummeting deeper, deeper into the land beneath. I was familiar with the land all around Oliver Springs, the broken ledges and crumbling scree, even deep into the dark weight and heaviness of the tectonic plates, and deeper yet, to where the spirits of the deep stirred from time to time.
What’s that?Mud thought at me. I rose to her and saw the small magma pool I had allowed to rise.
A mistake,I thought back.Don’t tell the land you’re cold. It might send warmth.
Mud laughed and then thought,I still hear screaming.
That was bad.Where?
