Eye of Flame (17 page)

That had to be an illusion, a trick of the moonlight shining through the boughs. The face changed as I stared at it, reshaping itself into that of a wolf. Seeing a face in the tree didn’t frighten me, though, because I had noticed other strange things lately—marks and symbols on trees that looked as though they had been made by knives, the throbbing sounds of drums in the night until hooting owls or the snarl of a bobcat drowned them out. I had grown to accept these passing sights and sounds, which seemed to belong to the forest and mountains.

I must have fallen asleep after that, and woke up on the studio couch in the living room, my head pounding. I lifted my head, then realized I would never make it to my bedroom without collapsing or vomiting—maybe both. My head fell back, and then I was outside, under the big pine.

Two men in feathered caps and deerskin robes stood near the tree. One lifted his hand, and then I looked up to see the eagle flutter its wings in the branches overhead.

“Do you know what tree this is?” one man asked.

“My grandmother’s,” I replied.

“It is more than that. Your grandmother planted the cone from which it grew, but that cone fell from an ancient pine, the one under which I had my vision of peace, the vision that united the Five Nations of the Iroquois. I am the Peacemaker, child, and this tree—”

But before he could say anything more, I was back on the couch, covering my eyes with one hand against the light. “Jennie,” my sister said.

“Jesus Christ,” My jaw ached, and even moving my mouth hurt. “Turn off the light,”

“You’re drunk,” she said.

“So what?”

“Is this what you do when you’re alone, just drink yourself silly?”

“No. This is what I do when you guys won’t leave me alone.”

She pulled me up from the couch and helped me toward my bedroom. “You ought to know better, Jennie, what with—”

“I had a dream. I have to tell you—”

“You probably had a nightmare, in your condition.” She let me fall to the bed, then took off my shoes.

“It wasn’t a nightmare.” Something else my grandmother had said was coming back to me. Dreams were important; in the old days, an Iroquois who had a vivid dream would go to every longhouse in his settlement, recounting his dream until he found someone who could explain it to him. I didn’t think Evie would be able to explain my dream to me, but it clearly had something to do with our land and the tree outside, so I felt it was something I had to tell her. Maybe the dream would persuade her to give up her plans.

“I was outside,” I continued, “and these two men—I’m positive they were Mohawks, or Iroquois anyway, were standing—”

“Give it a rest,” Evie burst out. “I’m going back to sleep. Talk to me when you’re sober,” She stomped out of the room.

I don’t know why I thought telling her about the dream would bring her around. The fact was, I didn’t have to come up with brilliant schemes for keeping the land. All I had to do was tell Evie I wasn’t going to sign any papers, and she and my brothers wouldn’t be able to do a thing. I hadn’t wanted to state the matter quite so bluntly, but she had pushed me to it, so there was nothing else to be done.

But I didn’t know if I would have the fortitude to hold out against my brothers and sister forever. I could disappear, but the rest of them—Curt especially—wouldn’t give up until they found me, and they might use my disappearance against me. If they got desperate enough, they might even get me declared incompetent, and they would have enough grounds, what with my wanderings, erratic work history, and bouts of manic-depression. I had gotten my mental shit together before coming home, but it could still look bad, so I’d have to make sure they couldn’t find me. If that meant leaving the forest that had finally calmed the storms that often raged inside me, I would still have the comfort of knowing the land was safe.

I slept for a while and woke up with a bad case of the dries. Somehow, I managed to stumble into the bathroom for a glass of water, and then the telephone in the kitchen started ringing. I found my way to it, shading my eyes against the morning light as I leaned against the wall and picked up the receiver.

“Hello,” I mumbled.

“Hey, Jennie! This is Curt. Gosh, it’s great hearing your voice again—been a long time,”

I sank into the chair below the phone. “Yeah.”

“Evie said she was going up there this weekend. Wish I could be there with you guys.”

I always got nervous when my brother sounded cheerful, especially at that hour of the day. “She’s trying to talk me into letting the rest of you sell,” I said.

“Well, I know, but don’t think we’re going to get rid of the camp or anything. I was talking to Sam last night, and we were thinking that maybe you should get the deed to the camp, along with your share of whatever we get for the land. We owe you something for taking care of Dad before he went to the hospital, for coming home when he got sick,” So Curt was offering me a bribe. “I know the place means a lot to you, so maybe you should have it. Of course, I hope you’ll let your old brother come to visit once in a while.”

I was silent.

“You’d have enough money to get another place for yourself, get a new start, but the camp would be there for the summers. You could—”

“I won’t sell,”

“What?”

“I’m not going to let this land be sold. I won’t sign any papers. I won’t go along with you.”

“Jennie? Jennie?”

I rubbed at my aching temples, refusing to answer him.

“I want to talk to Evie,” he said at last.

My sister was standing in the doorway. I got up, handed her the phone, and went to my bedroom. Evie was talking in a low voice, but sounds echoed in the kitchen, so occasionally I caught a few words. “Crazy” was one. The words that disturbed me most, though, were “power of attorney.” So they were considering that option already.

A rumbling sound came from under the cabin. Another small quake, I thought; they were certainly coming more often lately. I heard Evie hang up, and then the banging of pots in the kitchen. I dozed off, and woke to find Evie carrying a tray into the room.

“You need breakfast,” she said as she set the tray down. “There’s coffee, eggs, and toast. You’d better rest today—you look like you might be coming down with something. I’ll stay here until you’re feeling better, and then I’ll head into town to pick up more groceries.”

She handed me the coffee; I sipped at it. “You should know better than to drink so much,” she went on, “what with your manic-depression and all.” She was already laying the groundwork, but not out of malice. Like my brothers, she was probably half-convinced that I really was demented, and that it would all be for the best in the end. Evie could persuade herself that I would be better off in treatment, with others handling my affairs. She would play nurse this morning until I felt better, and then go off to town, where she would probably call Curt from a public phone so that they could decide what to do next. They would tell themselves they were saving my life, that they were helping me.

“You look like death warmed over,” Evie said as she lit a cigarette. I set down my cup. She seemed to be holding a glowing coal to her lips as coils of smoke drifted toward the ceiling. Her dark eyes glittered, and her face was as still as a mask.

Masks, I thought, and recalled something else I had read. I had been reading a lot while living at the camp, going into town to buy old books at garage sales and to take others out of the library. That was how severed I was from our traditions; I had to pick up a lot of my people’s lore from books. Now I remembered reading about the False Faces.

The shamans called the False Faces would come to the longhouses to heal the ill, bearing hot coals in their hands. They would put on their masks and sprinkle ashes over the ailing person, and if by some miracle they saved him, he had to become one of them. I drew in Evie’s smoke; an ash from the end of her cigarette fell on my hand.

She was a False Face, I suddenly realized, but one who served evil spirits. She would nurse me and heal me and bring me back from the dead. Then I would have to join her and my brothers and the society of those who bought and sold and tore at the land instead of living lightly on it, giving back what they took from it. I would have to live in their world.

“Get away from me!” I was on my feet, struggling against her as she tried to restrain me. Evie was three inches taller, and a good thirty pounds heavier, but I broke her grip and pushed her against the wall. She fell, and then I was running through the living room toward the porch. It was dark out there for that time of day. I lifted my head and gazed through the screen.

The big pine had grown during the night. Its trunk was much wider, almost cutting off the dock from view. Nothing could grow that fast, and yet the great tree’s roots now twisted over much of the cleared land around the cabin. I looked up through the lattice of green branches at a patch of sky. The pine had grown past the trees around it; I could no longer see the top.

“Oh, my God,” I said under my breath.

“You crazy bitch.” I turned to see Evie stomping toward me. “I tried to be reasonable about this. You really are nuts, and—”

“Get out!” I shouted. “Get the hell out of here.” I went at her, but she jumped back before I could hit her.

“You’ll be sorry for this, Jennie.”

“Get out!” I swung at her, then ran after her as she retreated across the kitchen. My knee caught the table, and I was suddenly on the floor. By the time I got up, Evie was gone.

I stumbled toward the door. Evie was making for her car across a maze of roots. A bulge in the ground appeared near the cabin, as if a giant mole was burrowing nearby. “Evie!” I shouted, but she was inside the Honda and barreling up to the road before I could get to her. Brown tentacles snaked after the car, scattering dirt and grass. I don’t know if Evie saw the roots. Maybe by then she was too concerned with getting away from her crazy sister to notice anything.

The ground heaved under my feet; roots spread out around me as I walked back to the cabin, swelling in size until they reached nearly to my knees. The pine now blocked most of the path leading down to the lake, and the smaller trees around it nestled in the furrows between its roots.

The cabin shook, but I felt calm as I sat down at the kitchen table. It came to me that I had been waiting for something like this, and that the pine and its burgeoning roots might solve my problem. Nobody would want to buy land near a spot where trees behaved this way.

I went to my bedroom, picked up the remains of my breakfast, then made more coffee. The floor trembled, but I made no move to leave. A glance out the kitchen window revealed that the roots had surrounded my car and that more had tunneled up to the road; I would never be able to drive over them. I might be able to get to the camp overlooking the channel on foot. Maybe the people there, the closest neighbors to me, had seen the giant pine springing toward the sky. Perhaps its roots were already moving in that direction.

Father had posted a list of numbers near the telephone. I found the number of my neighbors, then dialed it quickly.

“Simmons here,” a voice said in my ear.

“Mr. Simmons, I’m your neighbor, Jennifer Relson, from the other end of the bay. I think I’d better warn you that a tree around here seems to be out of control.”

“What?”

“It’s growing really fast. I can’t even see how tall it is any more, and the roots are going all over the place. What I’m trying to say is they might come your way.”

“What?”

“The tree’s roots,” I said. “They’re growing all around this camp now, high as walls!”

“Look, lady, I was just on my way out. I don’t know what you’re smoking, but—”

I hung up. Maybe he would believe me when he saw the roots moving toward him, if they got that far. How far could they spread? I went outside to find out. The tree’s trunk had grown as wide as the cabin; the pines around it swayed as smaller roots twisted across the ground, then burrowed into it. I climbed over roots, into the ways between them, and over more roots again until I could see the lake.

The yodeling cry of loons greeted me; five more had joined the one I had been watching. The pine didn’t seem to be growing any more, but long bands of brown bark were winding among the trees on the other side of the bay. I sat down, resting my back against a root. Dark veins snaked through the forest until the hills across the lake seemed enmeshed in a network of tunnels.

Strangely, none of the maples and pines seemed harmed by the roots, which bulged up and around the trees without crushing them. The loons bobbed on the smooth, mirror-like surface of the water, the turtles basked on their logs, and deer had come down to the opposite shore to drink. The birds and animals were undisturbed by the roots branching out around them; the loons filled the air once more with their wild laughter.

I turned away from the lake and clambered back over the roots. Above, the cabin nestled among curved brown walls, an outpost of order in the midst of disorder. The phone was ringing when I went inside. I waited for a bit, then picked up the receiver.

“Listen, Jennie,” my sister said. “I’m trying to understand, I really am. I’m willing to come back if you’ll promise to be sensible,” There was the sound of country-and-western music in the background, which meant Evie was probably calling from the Brass Rail, the only bar in town. “If you don’t,” she continued, “I’m going to call Curt and Sam, and discuss this, and we’ll decide what to do about you,”