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Dryad
Chapter 2
RENNEN
Decades later...
The dawn brought no answers. The ritual had failed Rennen Deeproots.
Rennen stood while the others still lay in a spell torpor around their fairy ring. They slept peacefully, in piles of haphazardly strewn limbs. Their quiet connection had always been just out of her reach. No matter what she’d done, she’d never really belonged. The ritual had been meant to heal her estrangement with her tree and then open that connection with the rest of the hamlet.
She rubbed her eyes. If she could rest in her tree that would reinvigorate her. She, like all descendants from the tree protector line, had oaks in the south end of the hamlet away from the normal clusters. The normal Dryads.
The trickle of worry about whether her tree would still accept her seeped down her back, leaving a small chill. Her connection to her oak had been drifting away much like a fall leaf in a stream.
She left the fairy ring and walked along the footpath next to the creek. The creek with the round stones burbled happily, unaware of Rennen’s worry. Her bitterness about that lack of connection still stung.
Her tree looked the same. The main trunk broader than she could wrap her arms around, the first branch above her head was a place she’d loved to climb and hide from the world. She pressed her forehead to the ridged bark and waited for the tingle at the base of her spine that would serve as a greeting and allow her entry. She waited for some sign that she still belonged.
As the moments trickled away, the air felt heavier. Her breath caught in her throat. Even her tree, the one she’d lived in since she was little, had rejected her. But she wouldn’t die. Oh, no, she was her mother’s daughter after all. Tree protectors could live without trees.
She lifted her head from the tree and really looked at the place she could no longer call home.
Dappled sunlight played in the small glade where she’d first met other Dryads. The rest of the hamlet mothers had kept their children away from her and from one other family.
When she’d asked when she would get red hair like her mother, she’d been told that ancient magic had shattered her people and spawned the cursed, marking them with dark hair. Earth Mother had responded by forming the tree protectors. They looked like any other Dryad with green hair until they chose to fight.
Her gaze fell to the black elm that had once housed Gant. Her stomach twisted. He’d been the dark-haired child that day, more than willing to spar. They’d both been outcasts, who’d over the years become friends, then lovers.
The glass of the promise necklace was warm under her fingertips. Gant had refused it each time they finished their lovemaking and finally on the day he’d left for Cursed Keep.
Before he left, Rennen had begged Gant for one last meeting. They were to meet today just after mid-morning.
Her stomach churned, as if aphids had invaded her gut. This could be the last time she saw him unless she could get him to promise to her. She pushed away the idea that he’d refused time and again. That no amount of seduction on her part had made him want her bond.
“How could you choose darkness?” she asked the wind and the trees and Earth Mother.
The rustle and creaks of the trees gossiping above stopped at her voice. They seemed to wait to see what she would do. For a moment, she wondered the same thing. What could she do? She didn’t want to be an outcast and abomination like her mother, but her options grew more limited with each passing season. Her fate had been sealed when she and Gant had been unable to form a love bond.
She shook herself, banishing those thoughts. She knew what she had to do. Today was her last chance to get Gant back from his curse. The last chance for her to live a normal life here in the hamlet. If she took the shortcut past Shattered Oak, she could be to the Cursed Keep before mid-morning. He should be waiting for her.
When she saw him, she would convince him to bond even if she had to seduce him again. Bonding would break their curses. Gant had been a good lover. Though, if she was honest with herself, it had been just a fun physical act, nothing deeper. And that was the problem. Maybe if she tried again, it would be different this time. It had to be.
She hurried along the sacred way. Gray trees stood as somber guards along the path. How long before they considered her an outsider?
With each step away from her hamlet, the tension in the air grew. The morning was unbroken by the hoot of the tawny owl. The normal bird chorus was strangely quiet. The squirrels, usually rustling in the leaves hunting for nuts, were hiding within their dens and hidey-holes. Perhaps there was a storm approaching. Although that explanation felt wrong and added a chill to the air.
The soft tinkle of glass in the breeze drew her from her thoughts. Shattered Oak stood in the clearing. The old matriarch towered above the slender adolescent trees like a storyteller surrounded by children.
The ragged, black scar branded by unbearable heat centuries ago had filled in over the years. This wound had caused the cursed to spawn. A splinter of evil lodged in their line. It was her ancestor saving the tree that caused the Earth Mother to notice and transform her into a Tree Protector.
Hanging from Shattered Oak’s branches, thousands of the promise necklaces glittered in the sun. Each necklace had been placed there as a symbol of the couple’s promise to be together. Rennen touched the promise necklace around her neck. The glass was smooth against her fingers.
She swallowed convulsively and leaned her forehead against the rough tree bark. The tree responded with a spark of recognition that started in her spine, "Seedling of the Dryad who saved me."
The tree’s deep musky scent relaxed Rennen’s shoulders and back. Perhaps she was not doomed. Perhaps her mission to Cursed Keep was not hopeless. Perhaps she was not cursed to become like her mother. Someone fated to fight. Someone who was able to kill. Someone who survived without a tree.
"Have you found that thing you must fight for?" The rustling sigh of Shattered Oak's leaves punctuated the tree's question.
A shudder rippled through her body and her hopeful thoughts fell away like leaves in the fall. The tree that was central to the Dryad people knew she was doomed.
Her hand slid down the jagged bark from as high as she could reach to the top of the roots in ritual farewell. Her fingers broke contact and the tree quivered.
She hurried through the forest and followed deer trails out of the Dryads' protected land. The cursed land started after a swath of barren field. Perhaps some ancient war had burned the trees so that the cursed folk might be watched. Or perhaps the healthy trees had slowly migrated away from the fouled land. Whatever the reason, a clear divide marked the land.
She waited, senses open for a hint of Gant’s vibrations. His vibration had been solid but different from the rest of the Dryads. Darker, wilder. His connection to his tree just as loose as her own.
His vibrational trail led her closer to the keep. Each step closer, her stomach twisted at the extra note of darkness that now pulsed through his vibration. Then she saw him, a hulking shadow waiting under an elm with drooping branches.
She crossed from healthy waving grass to dried, cracked ground and then to black-trunked trees with bark and leaves covered in fine white lines. The air had a tang of sickness and decay. She shivered, but kept moving.
Gant stepped into the light.
She gasped and felt as if she had been flattened by a rush of wind. Had it been only a week since he’d left the hamlet? Like an overripe fruit left to rot, Gant’s bruised, tattooed skin pulled tight over bone. Sunken, shadowed eyes bored into hers. They were darker and more menacing than she remembered.
A shiver of fear raced up her spine and lodged at the base of her skull. Leave. Leave now. He was already lost to the evil lodged in his soul. She shook her head, grabbed her courage, and stepped closer. No, he was her only hope. If they could merge the lines by love, they could fix the rift in the Dryads. She would not be doomed to kill. He would not be transformed into a monster.
His gaze met hers and the young man she had known all her life surfaced, pushing back the binding curse. The dark tattoos faded from his face.
“Bind with me to break the curse.” She reached out to touch him.
“I cannot. You don’t love me.”
She flinched at the truth in his words. She cared for him. All she had to do was say she loved him. He would believe her and bond with her. But when she opened her mouth to say it, nothing came out.
He caught and kissed her hand, bringing it to his cheek. “It is far too dangerous for you to be near the keep. You must leave me to my fate,” he said, his voice a rough croak so different from the smooth tenor he’d once sung to her with.
She frowned and the forest darkened. “Don’t you love me?”
Gant crouched so they were eye to eye and kissed her on the lips. The kiss was not a renewal of passion, but of goodbye. “That doesn’t matter. The darkness has too great a hold on me. Our bond would be false. You would become as I am, a slave to the Master.”
She stared into his eyes trying to decipher the emotion on his face. For a moment she saw it, he did love her. He loved her enough that he did not want her to suffer with him. He wanted her to be free. Her heart ached. There must be something wrong with her that she couldn’t love him.
“You must go. The wolf will find you. Or worse yet the Master.”
She shivered. He would not mention a normal forest wolf. This wolf must be one of the race of shifter folks. A feral, violent people. If the Master had made one his slave as he had with the cursed Dryads, he would have a powerful hunting dog. Her heart beat frantically. Only a wolf was able to track a Dryad.
“I will go to Zinnia or another tree protector.” She hugged herself and stepped closer to him. “They might help because of Mother.”
Slowly the light faded from his expression and the shadows gathered. The magical tattoo wrapped around his face and neck like barbed wire. He would no longer meet her eyes. “I will become a monster. Tell the Tree Protector it is on my upper right arm.”
“What is? Why would they care?” She did not want to think about what it meant.
“There is only one way to remove my curse now.” He said this softly, his voice resigned.
Her stomach plummeted and tears pricked her eyes. A cursed Dryad would become an almost invulnerable monster. Only a Tree Protector might be able to kill him, and only if they knew the source of his brand. “I could―”
“No. It doesn’t matter. Don’t come back here again.” He kissed her hand before releasing it and backed away slowly, reluctantly, as if he ripped himself in half with each step. The dark tattoos swirled to consume his face, neck, and arms, leaving only a pale trace of untouched skin near his ears.
This was it. The last time she would ever see him. Her last chance at being normal.
Her heart shattered like a tree struck by lightning. She dropped to her knees and moaned. “Don’t leave me.”
“I–” His mouth snapped shut, caging what else he might have said. He glanced deeper into the cursed woods. “Damn, the wolf is near. You must fly from here. If we are lucky, he will follow me.”
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