textfiles/magazines/TANJ/tanj.136

There Ain't No Justice - #136
Being a Tree, by Arifel
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`how do you get out of this
 nature's revenge
 nature cage craving
 wonder the worth of it
 scream
 at the top of your lungs
 so many times
 tried not to wonder...'

  - skinny puppy, `nature's revenge'


It was bitterly cold this morning, but she came to visit me again. A
creature of habit. Or possibly something to do with the spell that
holds me here. It's more likely that she does it simply to torment
me.

It's not as if i'm in extreme pain; it's more the discomfort you
would feel if you had to stand with your arms in an uncomfortable
position for a long time. Well, I've been here almost two months
now, and I still haven't got used to it.

I don't understand how I can see her when she leaves her cottage
each morning, to go picking medicinal herbs in the forest... I don't
think I have `eyes', but I seem to have at least five `arms', or,
more precisely, `branches', spread out as if I were reaching for the
sky. You don't follow me? Very well, I'll start at the beginning.

Anya had a reputation in the village as `the local witch'. She
didn't like it, but then again, she never refrained from using her
reputation to intimidate the hicks. She was (still is, and I suspect
probably always will be) quite young, but even the smith, a great
hulking bear of a man, used to back down when she narrowed her eyes,
muttered an incantation and reached for her sacred dagger.
Occasionally, if the hicks were desperate for some sort of magickal
help, they'd approach her, caps clutched in shaking hands, and beg a
favour. She'd regard them with a crooked grin and avarice glinting
in her brilliant green eyes, usually taking them for everything that
they could spare.

Naturally, some of us were skeptical about her.

Tybalt, Jonah and myself were out in the woods one afternoon, idly
tossing stones at dragonflies and discussing Anya's alleged
capabilities. Tybalt hunched over, imitating Old Giles the Crofter:

`Well, she turned me into a newt!' We sighed, waiting for the
punchline.

`... I got better...' he concluded. we snickered. Tybalt said,

`She's probably over at Arnalt's Pond, now, fishing for frogs.'

`What's she want frogs for?' Jonah asked, turning over a broad, flat
toadstool with his toe.

`Didn't you know? She turns them into horses and sells them at
Banbury Market.' Jonah pushed Tybalt into a bush, and they fought,
pummeling each other playfully for a while. I leaned against a tree,
lost in my own thoughts, until they both leaped on me and pushed me
into the bush.

We found ourselves only a few minutes' walk from Arnalt's Pond, so
we decided to sneak up and try to spot her catching frogs. As we
neared the pond, we made our way more cautiously, until we could
hear a clear soprano, singing:

 `Strip me from the bundle
 of balloons at every fair
 colourful and carefree
 designed to make you stare...'

I carefully crept closer through the thinning undergrowth, not
realising that Tybalt and Jonah had hung back, watching to see how
close I'd get.

 `but I'm lost, and I'm losing
 the thread that holds me down,
 and I'm up hot and rising
 in the - ah, got you!'

That doesn't rhyme, I thought, as I caught sight of her, black
velvet dress hitched up around her thighs, wading through the reeds
at the far end of the pond. She had just caught a large toad, and
was carefully placing it in a bag. I was momentarily entranced by
the way the brackish water lapped around her legs, when she suddenly
turned and looked straight at me. I froze.

`Why, hello there, Jermayn,' she called to me. `have you lost
something over there in the grass?' I desperately wanted to turn and
run, but I was held there, like a rabbit cornered by a snake. My
mouth was dry, my eyes opened wide in something distantly related to
terror. She strode through the water, knotting and tucking her skirt
at her side, holding the bag above the water, without taking her
eyes from mine. The rest of the world seemed to sway and swirl
around an axis that ran from her eyes to mine, the branches of trees
on the periphery of my vision seeming to shift in sympathetic motion
with her short blonde hair as she approached me. My breath was
stopped somewhere south of my throat. She emerged from the pond, her
white legs glistening, and noting a blade of grass stuck to her
thigh, I found myself wanting to pick it off, and then run my hands
up her legs and to stroke her hips. She seemed to realise my desire,
although I swear that I had not moved a muscle. She undid the knot
that held her skirt up, and as it dropped to drape her legs, I
regained enough control to spring up from the crouching position I
had held, only to trip over a gnarled tree-root and fall flat on my
back. She giggled, and held her hand out to help me up. After a
moment's hesitation, I took it. It felt cold and the grip was firmer
than a girl's should be if she had spent her life indoors, dicing
herbs into a cauldron. She smiled and said,

`You naughty little boy. Spying on me! Well, you will be in a
position to watch me as much as you like... soon.' As she tugged me
to my feet, I felt that I wanted to escape more than ever, but I
followed her quietly.

Her cottage was deep in the woods, far from the village and the
barley-fields that surrounded it. The trees that grew here seemed
bigger and the foliage darker than the forestry that Tybalt, Jonah
and I frequented. Some of them seemed twisted into unusual poses, as
if they had once been alive and had somehow been frozen into those
agonised poses. I became aware firstly of a deep, rich odour, the
smell of fresh earth after an autumn rain, mixed with the sharp tang
of pine needles, and then I heard her singing softly:

 `We'll wait in stone circles
 'till the force comes through,
 Lines join in faint discord
 As the Stormwatch brews...'

I had been following a couple of yards behind her, and there was
just enough light to see that the back of her skirt had been dipped
in the pond and was clinging to the outline of her hips and her
behind. With nothing else particularly interesting to look at as I
followed her, deep in some mindless trance, I gazed at the feminine
sway of her rear as she stepped lightly along the uneven track. I
began to feel an unfamiliar stirring in the pit of my stomach, or
possibly a bit lower.

She stopped at a clearing a few yards from her cottage. Through a
window, I could see part of a large four-poster bed, some clothes
draped over one of the posts. Around me, the trees had been cleared
to leave a circle about twenty yards across in the middle of the
forest, outside her bedroom window.

She led me over towards the middle of the circle. She cast about for
a few moments, as if seeking the exact centre, then she drew her
dagger, closed her eyes, muttered something and let it drop to the
ground. It stuck in the soft earth, point first. She glanced down,
noted where it had hit, pulled it out and dug her heel into the spot
a couple of times. With each stroke, as she dug deeper, my fear
increased. When she had gouged out a pit about a foot across, she
stepped back and nodded with satisfaction. She turned to face me and
a cold shock ran through me.

`Jermayn,' she murmured, `come here. Kneel down.' I did so, my knees
trembling with barely suppressed rebellion. She kneeled with me, and
took my hands in hers. She gazed into my eyes, smiled warmly, and
some of my fear evaporated. She put one arm around my neck, drew me
closer and kissed me.

This was the first time that I'd been close to a girl; I'd always
wondered what the fascination was... I found that I could move my
arms, so I held her to me and returned the kiss. That strange
feeling which was centered around my groin intensified as she rubbed
her free hand down my stomach and between my legs. My breathing grew
deeper as she undid the front of my pants and grasped my penis in
her fist. When her lips weren't pressed against mine, she was
whispering in some strange language that had a lot of words like
`achad' and `khad'ulu'; I began to feel very strange, in that my
breathing seemed to be slowing down, and yet as her hand moved
slowly but insistently, there was a nervous warmth in the pit of my
stomach that was slowly growing more intense.

Then, I felt a pressure building up within me, which grew stronger
as she pressed her lips against mine and squeezed me in her fist. My
eyes opened wide in panic as she forced my erection downwards,
rubbing her hand up and down my shaft rapidly, forcing her tongue
between my lips. She seemed to be tracing some sort of pattern on my
tongue with hers. I felt a sudden flow of warmth to my groin, the
muscles along my back and around my buttocks contracted sharply, and
the warmth seemed to rush out of me. A slow shock-wave of pleasure
surged up my insides, bringing a hot flush to my face, and my vision
blurred. Despite my paralysis, I managed to gasp with the sensation.
Anya held my erection pointed downwards, into the hole. After a few
moments, she released her hold on me and stood up. `Very good,
Jermayn. Now, stand up.' I felt dizzy and somewhat drained, but with
her help, I staggered upright. I stumbled, and put one bare foot in
the hole. A spasm of agony shot up my leg, like cramp, and I cried
out. She released me, and I would have fallen back, but my foot was
firmly fixed in the hole and my leg had stiffened. It turned numb,
and the pain shot down my other leg and up through my stomach at the
same time. I don't mind admitting that I screamed then; the pain was
terrible. She suddenly took my hands and drew my arms up. The pain
shot up between my shoulders and seemed to pierce the top of my
skull. I saw my splayed-out fingers suddenly turn dark brown. As my
shoulders stiffened and turned numb, I managed to face forwards
again, to see a branch grow from my chest and poke up, mimicking my
arms. My head was forced back, my vision dimmed and I lost all
feeling.

I regained a sort of consciousness later. I couldn't tell how long
it had been. I was able to sense everything around me in a dim
fashion; it was strange to be able to see in all directions at once.
The numbness (and, thank the gods, the pain also) had faded, and now
I had a vague sense of my own position. My arms had thickened, my
fingers had grown longer, and in some horrible fashion, my head had
become two bifurcated branches. It was a bit like leaning to one
side - except I felt that I was leaning to both sides at once. A
soft breeze blew through my leaves. I could sense the sun rising
behind me and to the left, and I began my first twelve-hour-long
inhalation.

A few days later, she emerged from her cottage. I could sense her
vaguely, even hear and understand her when she spoke to me. I got an
impression that she had some glittering metal implements in her
hands. Then, I felt a sharp pain down between where my legs used to
be, as she hacked away at the branch that grew from where my
erection had been. She carved the branch and filed it with a flat
piece of sandstone, until she had fashioned it into a smooth
protruberance with a rounded end. Although the rest of the details
were blurred, I plainly saw her crooked grin as she hung onto the
branch that grew from my chest and then slowly lowered herself.
Repeatedly.

She visits me every few days, knowing full well that I can't feel
much. I can hear her gasps and moans, even sense the way she
shudders as she hangs onto my branch. I'd ignore her altogether,
but...

it's so damned boring, being a tree.


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