The Green Man Page 7

  She set the painting box down and sat on her ankles in front of Frank.

  “I didn’t know you were a musician,” she said.

  “I’m not.”

  He held up his reed whistle—obviously something he’d made himself.

  “But I used to play as a boy,” he said. “And there was always music there, on the other side. I thought I could wake something. Call me to it, or it to me.”

  Lily raised her eyes to the paintings on the wall.

  “How did you cross over the first time?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. That was Milo’s doing. I was only tagging along.”

  “Did he… did he make a painting?”

  Frank’s gaze settled on hers.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  She pointed to the walls. “Look around you. This is the cave, isn’t it?”

  He nodded.

  “What do you think these paintings are for?” she asked. When he still didn’t seem to get it, she added, “Perhaps it’s the paintings that open a door between the worlds. Maybe this Lady of yours likes pictures more than She does music.”

  Frank scrambled to his feet and studied the walls as though he was seeing the paintings for the first time. Lily was slower to rise.

  “If I had paint, I could try it,” he said.

  “There’s the painting box I found,” Lily told him. “It’s still full of paints.”

  He grinned. Grabbing her arms, he gave her a kiss, right on her lips, full of passion and fire, then bent down to open the box.

  “I remember this box,” he said as he rummaged through the paint tubes. “We were out painting, scouting a good location—though for Milo, any location was a good one. Anyway, there we were, out in these woods, when suddenly Milo stuffs this box of his into a tangle of tree roots and starts walking. I called after him, but he never said a word, never even turned around to see if I was coming.

  “So I followed, hurrying along behind him until we finally came to this cave. And then… then…”

  He looked up at Lily. “I’m not sure what happened. One moment we were walking into the cave and the next we had crossed over into that other place.”

  “So Milo didn’t paint on the wall.”

  “I just don’t remember. But he might not have had to. Milo could create whole paintings in his head without ever putting brush to canvas. And he could describe that painting to you, stroke for stroke—even years later.”

  “I read about that in the book.”

  “Hmm.”

  Frank had returned his attention to the paints.

  “It’ll have to be a specific image,” he said, talking as much to himself as to Lily. “Something simple that still manages to encompass everything a person is or feels.”

  “An icon,” Lily said, remembering the word from another of her books.

  He nodded in agreement as he continued to sort through the tubes of paint, finally choosing a color: a burnt umber, rich and dark.

  “And then?” Lily asked, remembering what the Apple Tree Man had told her in her dream. “Just saying you find the right image. You paint it on the wall and some kind of door opens up. Then what do you do?”

  He looked up at her, puzzled.

  “I’ll step through it,” he said. “I’ll go back to the other side.”

  “But why?” Lily asked. “Why’s over there so much better than the way the world is here?”

  “I…”

  “When you cross over to there,” Lily said, echoing the Apple Tree man’s words to her, “you give up all the things you could be here.”

  “We do that every time we make any change in our lives,” Frank said. “It’s like moving from one town to another, though this is a little more drastic, I suppose.” He considered it for a moment, then added, “It’s not so much better over there as different. I’ve never fit in here the way I do over there. And now I don’t have anything left for me here except for this burn inside—a yearning for the Lady and that land of Hers that lies somewhere on the other side of these fields we know.”

  “I’ve had that feeling,” Lily said, thinking of her endless search for fairies as a child.

  “You can’t begin to imagine what it’s like over there,” Frank went on. “Everything glows with its own inner light.”

  He paused and regarded her for a long moment.

  “You could come,” he said finally. “You could come with me and see for yourself. Then you’d understand.”

  Lily shook her head. “No, I couldn’t. I couldn’t walk out on Aunt, not like this, without a word. Not after she took me in when no one else would. She wasn’t even real family, though she’s family now.” She waited a beat, remembering the strength of his arms, the hard kiss he’d given her, then added. “You could stay.”

  Now it was his turn to shake his head.

  “I can’t.”

  Lily nodded. She understood. It wasn’t like she didn’t have the desire to go herself.

  She watched him unscrew the paint tube and squeeze a long worm of dark brown pigment into his palm. He turned to a clear spot on the wall, dipped a finger into the paint and raised his hand. But then he hesitated.

  “You can do it,” Lily told him.

  Maybe she couldn’t go. Maybe she wanted him to stay. But she knew enough not to try to hold him back if he had to go. It was no different than making friends with a wild creature. You could catch them and tie them up and make them stay with you, but their heart would never be yours. Their wild heart, the thing you loved about them… it would wither and die. So why would you want to do such a thing?

  “I can,” Frank agreed, his voice soft. He gave her a smile. “That’s part of the magic, isn’t it? You have to believe that it will work.”

  Lily had no idea if that was true or not, but she gave him an encouraging nod all the same.

  He hummed something under his breath as he lifted his hand again. Lily recognized it as the almost-music she’d heard before, but now she could make out the tune. She didn’t know its name, but the pick-up band at the grange dances played it from time to time. She thought it might have the word “fairy” in it.

  Frank’s finger moved decisively, smearing paint on the rock. It took Lily a moment to see that he was painting a stylized oak leaf. He finished the last line and took his finger away, stepped back.

  Neither knew what to expect, if anything. As the moments dragged by, Frank stopped humming. He cleaned his hands against the legs of his trousers, smearing paint onto the cloth. His shoulders began to slump and he turned to her.

  “Look,” Lily said before he could speak.

  She pointed to the wall. The center of the oak leaf he’d painted had started to glow with a warm, green-gold light. They watched the light spread across the wall of the cave, moving out from the central point like ripples from a stone tossed into a still pool of water. Other colors appeared, blues and reds and deeper greens. The colors shimmered, like they were painted on cloth touched by some unseen wind, and then the wall was gone and they were looking through an opening in the rock. Through a door into another world.

  There was a forest over there, not much different than the one they’d left behind except that, as Frank had said, every tree, every leaf, every branch and blade of grass, pulsed with its own inner light. It was so bright it almost hurt the eyes, and not simply because they’d been standing in this dim cave for so long.

  Everything had a light and a song and it was almost too much to bear. But at the same time, Lily felt the draw of that world like a tightening in her heart. It wasn’t so much a wanting, as a need.

  “Come with me,” Frank said again.

  She had never wanted to do something more in her life. It was not just going to that magical place, it was the idea of being there with this man with his wonderfully creative mind and talent. This man who’d given her her first real kiss.

  But slowly she shook her head.

  “Have you ever stood on a
mountaintop,” she asked, “and watched the sun set in a bed of feathery clouds? Have you ever watched the monarchs settled on a field of milkweed or listened to the spring chorus after the long winter’s done?”

  Frank nodded.

  “This world has magic, too,” Lily said.

  “But not enough for me,” Frank said. “Not after having been over there.”

  “I know.”

  She stepped up to him and gave him a kiss. He held her for a moment, returning the kiss, then they stepped back from each other.

  “Go,” Lily said, giving him a little push. “Go before I change my mind.”

  She saw he understood that, for her, going would be as much a mistake as staying would be for him. He nodded and turned, walked out into that other world.

  Lily stood watching him go. She watched him step in among the trees. She heard him call out and heard another man’s voice reply. She watched as the doorway became a swirl of colors once more. Just before the light faded, it seemed to take the shape of a woman’s face—the same woman whose features had been carved into the stone outside the cave, leaves in her hair, leaves spilling from her mouth. Then it was all gone. The cave was dim once more and she was alone.

  Lily knelt down by Milo Johnson’s paint box and closed the lid, fastened the snaps. Holding it by its handle, she stood up and walked slowly out of the cave.

  “Are you there?” she asked later, standing by the Apple Tree Man’s tree. “Can you hear me?”

  She took a biscuit from her pocket—the one she hadn’t left earlier in the day because she’d still been angry for his appearing in her dream last night when he’d been absent from her life for five years. When he’d let her think that her night of magic had been nothing more than a fever dream brought on by a snake bite.

  She put the biscuit down among his roots.

  “I just wanted you to know that you were probably right,” she said. “About my going over to that other place, I mean. Not about how I can’t have magic here.”

  She sat down on the grass and laid the paint box down beside her, her satchel on top of it. Plucking a leaf from the ground, she began to shred it.

  “I know, I know,” she said. “There’s plenty of everyday magic all around me. And I do appreciate it. But I don’t know what’s so wrong about having a magical friend as well.”

  There was no reply. No gnarled Apple Tree Man stepping out of his tree. No voice as she’d heard in her dream last night. She hadn’t really been expecting anything.

  “I’m going to ask Aunt if I can have an acre or so for my own garden,” she said. “I’ll try growing cane there and sell the molasses at the harvest fair. Maybe put in some berries and make preserves and pies, too. I’ll need some real money to buy more paints.”

  She smiled and looked up into the tree’s boughs.

  “So you see, I can take advice. Maybe you should give it a try.”

  She stood up and dusted off her knees, picked up the painting box and her satchel.

  “I’ll bring you another biscuit tomorrow morning,” she said.

  Then she started down the hill to Aunt’s cabin.

  “Thank you,” a soft, familiar voice said.

  She turned. There was no one there, but the biscuit was gone.

  She grinned. “Well, that’s a start,” she said and continued on home.

  Charles de lint is a writer, musician, and folklorist who was born in the Netherlands and now lives in Ottawa, Canada, with his wife MaryAnn Harris, an artist and musician. Medicine Road, Tapping the Dream Tree, Spirits in the Wires, Seven Wild Sisters, and Waifs and Strays (Viking) are the most recent of his many mythic novels, illustrated novellas, and story collections, many of them set in the imaginary city of Newport. The latter two books were named World Fantasy Award finalists—he is a seventeen-time finalist for the award, and won for Best Collection with Moonlight and Vines. He is also the author of A Circle of Cats (Viking), a children’s picture book illustrated by Charles Vess.

  For more information about his work, visit his Web site at www.charlesdelint.com

  Author’s Note:

  A couple of my best friends are Karen Shaffer and her husband, Charles Vess. I’ve known Charles for years—and for years we’ve been trying to do a larger project together, something more than simply a chapbook with illustrations here, a comic book there.

  We finally got the opportunity through Sharyn November at Viking (a children’s picture book) and Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press (a short illustrated novel). The two projects are related through the character of Lily; this story takes place in between the other two books. The setting, while ostensibly the hills outside of Newford, (the imaginary city where many of my stories take place) is, in reality, the wooded hills across from where Karen and Charles live in Virginia. The cabin is there, an hour’s walk in from the road. The creek is there. The sprucey-pine and beeches.

  I don’t doubt that the Apple Tree Man is, too.

  The title of this story comes from a line in an Incredible String Band song written by Mike Heron.

  Among the Leaves So Green

  Tanith Lee

  “For I shall wed a fine young knight

  A handsome knight, quoth she—”

  sings Bergette as she throws open the wooden shutters.

  Ghilane hears her, and knows this means trouble. Oh yes, despite the golden sun now falling in across the floor and bed like spilled honey.

  Bergette is Ghilane’s sister. Her half-sister. Their mother, the village’s easy-woman, went with a woodcutter, and one year later there was Bergette. Then, two years after that, there was the other woodcutter. And then there was Ghilane. To the village, both girls are eyesores, the produce of sin. To Bergette, though, Ghilane is worse than that. Bergette was the first. Ghilane’s an invader. From the beginning, Bergette has taken her revenge on Ghilane for being born, in one way or another. It used to be slaps and pinches and lies, and the stealing of food. Now it’s often more rough—and more gloating—more inventive.

  “Get up,” says Bergette, turning and kicking at Ghilane. But Ghilane is already away and out of the bed.

  They’re lucky to have this straw bed up here. Their mother, because of her work, sleeps separately. (Last night the innkeeper was with her. They heard him scurrying off an hour ago, at cock-cry.) Unlike most of the village, neither girl is encouraged to get up too early. It might embarrass some retreating customer.

  “And he will dress me in gowns of silk!” sings Bergette. She’s sixteen, and black of hair, pale of skin. Ghilane, at fourteen, is the odd one, with her fair brown hair and light brown skin—where did she get those? Each has green eyes though, Ghilane’s grape-green, Bergette’s like the green of a snake’s venom. Both would normally be married off by now, but that won’t ever happen, seeing whose daughters they are.

  Mother calls them in her demanding, unliking voice.

  Bergette laughs, suddenly pushes Ghilane so she staggers, and goes down the ladder to the cottage’s lower floor.

  Before she follows, Ghilane glances out of the window at the village, an untidy smelly muddle of huts and lopsided houses with a grim stone church. Then she looks up the slope to the forest beyond. The forest which is so unsafe and uneasy, and for which the village is named. “Keep her away from me today,” whispers Ghilane to the forest. “Please.”

  They are sent on an errand the moment they’ve cooked and eaten the lumpy burnt pine-nut porridge.

  “Go up to the Widow and get some eggs.”

  “No,” says Bergette.

  So Mother clouts Bergette across the face. And Bergette bursts into tears as hysterical and trouble-promising as her singing. What Mother does to her, she will later take out on Ghilane. There really is no escape now.

  And why say no? They’ll have to do it anyway, both of them.

  The reason for the errand is threefold. 1) It gets them out of the house so that their mother can “entertain,” or just frowst about, more easily; 2) It gets them into the
forest, which is dangerous—full of wolves, wild tusked pig, snakes, sudden traveler-gobbling bogs, and demons—and so is generally avoided by most of the village; besides, the Widow’s shack is off the beaten track, so has yet more potential for getting them lost or in the way of a hungry large animal. The idea is, of course, though their mother would never admit this, to be permanently rid of them. 3) (Last and perhaps least), it must be the baker who’s coming to visit today, because he likes eggs.

  As they walk through the village someone throws a stone. It hits Bergette, who turns, ready to kill, but no one is to be seen. Anyway, anyone could have thrown the stone. They all hate the easy-woman and her children—even the men hate them, this side of their house door.

  The two girls both know too that a time will come when they won’t be able themselves to put off their Turn, as Mother calls it. That is, when they take over Mother’s job. Both Bergette and Ghilane choose to ignore this.

  On the slope leading up through the coppice woods, into the main forest, Bergette sings again how the knight will court the lady.

  Ghilane wants her to be silent so she can listen to the trees and everything that moves among them. But she has the sense not to ask Bergette to shut up.

  The coppices are copper-red with buds and green with sap. But the forest, which is full of evergreens, is black and hardly ever loses its shadow. Pines and hemlocks, cedars and firs tower up, and holly trees still dappled with last winter’s blood-showers of berries.

  The sky is closed away.

  Sun gone.

  Bergette stops her singing.

  “Now, you little pig—”

  Ghilane is already running before the clawed hand sweeps her face. (Bergette, if she badly scratches her sister, can now blame it on the holly trees.)

  But Ghilane runs fleet as a deer, ducking under the boughs, not stumbling on the great roots hooped up from the forest floor, where mushrooms sometimes grow or patches of briar and bladed grass. Bergette pounds after, not quite so clever at avoiding things.