Hellenic Immortal (36 page)

Except the dryad already had a starring role in the first sentence. And ten minutes earlier, I’d stood on the stage and reclaimed my erstwhile godhood about as clearly as it can be reclaimed, so maybe I was looking at it all wrong. Maybe the end of my sojourn was simply the day I rejoined the Mystery Cult.

If that was the case, nothing Cassandra had said could help me anymore because the prophecy was complete. All I had left to go on was Ariadne’s prophet insisting I could tame a dryad, and I still didn’t have a clue how to do that.

“We will get you some more time,” Hippos said. He took back the TEC-9 I’d been holding for him, walked twenty paces and took up a position between me and the dryad. The other three satyrs followed suit.

But then Gordon started crying.

He’d probably been doing it for a while, but it was the first time it was quiet enough for anyone other than Ariadne to hear.
 

“I am here,” he repeatedly chanted, and it had finally caught the dryad’s attention. Gordon began walking towards the creature.

And what was worse, Ariadne was still beside him.

“Ariadne, get out of there!” I shouted.

“I’m trying!” She was pulling Gordon by the arm, but he was too strong and too crazy. And the blindness probably didn’t hurt, because no matter how insane you’ve become, if you could see what the dryad looked like, you wouldn’t be walking toward it.

“Let him go!” I said, which was not nearly as effective as Mike’s reaction. He left my side and reached her in a matter of seconds, nearly tackling her.

“But it’ll kill him!” she screamed.

“Yes, it will,” Mike agreed. “But you don’t have to die with him.”

“I am here to do your bidding, O Transcendent One!” Gordon shouted, spreading his arms wide and walking toward where he imagined the dryad must be standing. He was a little off, but the creature took care of that by taking two giant steps toward him. “I am Dionysos, and I am pure!”

Ariadne was still fighting Mike, and he didn’t much care to be directly behind Gordon for what was bound to happen next, so rather than wait for her to regain her senses, he threw her over his shoulder and carried her back behind the satyr line of defense.

Meanwhile, Gordon and the dryad were sharing a moment.

Gordon was standing still, arms outstretched, a look of ecstasy on his damaged face. Not knowing quite what to make of a human that wasn’t running and screaming and bleeding, the dryad cocked what passed for its head, puzzled.

“Philopaigmos,” Hippos said. “Should we . . . do something?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “This is different though, isn’t it?”

For just a few seconds, I thought maybe Gordon had been right all along; supplication was the key to survival. And that would have been really embarrassing.

The dryad held out one of its hands, looking at it first like it was going to pick up Gordon, or pet him. But then it put one pointed claw tip on Gordon’s chest and pushed. Slowly.

It sounded a little like a sword being sheathed. Gordon gasped as his lung was punctured, and then let out a meager scream that became a gurgle. The dryad held him up and watched him die. Then it flung the body into the woods.

“Gordon . . .” Ariadne cried. She was at my feet by then, as Mike had brought her to me and dropped her in the snow there.

“Hey,” Mike said as Gordon flew over our heads, “would this be a bad time to tell her she’s under arrest?”

“Probably,” I said.

With Gordon dispatched, the dryad turned to look at us again.

“Sojourner . . .” Hippos said. His men were ready to fire.

I shook my head. “Not yet.”
 

It tilted its head this way and that, looking carefully at each of us, almost as if it had just noticed we were there. And again I wondered if we were being granted a reprieve of some kind.

“Hey,” Mike muttered, “stupid question, but that thing is made of wood, right?”

Hippos heard this, and he and I both turned to look at what Mike was already staring at—the torches on the altar.

Hippos glared at me meaningfully.

At around the same time, the dryad decided that whatever it wanted, we didn’t have it.

Arching its back, it tilted its head toward the sky and let loose the loudest and most horrific sound I’d ever heard. (It’s beyond my ability to adequately describe the sound. But late at night, I still hear it sometimes.)

“Go,” I said. “Hurry.”

Hippos tossed his TEC-9 to Mike. “Keep it occupied!” he ordered. Mike and the three satyrs opened fire. It was no more effective than at any other time, but it gave Hippos an opportunity to reach the stage and grab one of the torches without the dryad noticing.

Of course, when you’re a living tree, you tend to be more actively interested in the current location of all sources of fire, so Hippos didn’t remain unnoticed for long. About to attack the firing line, the dryad abruptly shifted direction and lunged at the stage. But Hippos was already on the move, and if there’s one thing satyrs are naturally good at, it’s leaping to the tops of trees.

With a tremendous jump, Hippos landed on the dryad’s back and touched the flame to its skin.

“
More torches!
” cried one of the other satyrs, and they quickly scattered to find new sources of fire. Hippos, after starting three hotspots, found the creature’s back too perilous to remain upon; he launched himself off, landing only a few feet from us.

“Will this work?” Mike asked.

“It
is
made of wood, half-breed,” Hippos said. “I felt the bark myself. And wood burns.”

The dryad’s back was blazing freely, and once the other three satyrs got into the act, so were one of its legs. It shrieked in pain and stomped around the snow-covered beach furiously, trying to put itself out. And it refused to use the available water source right behind it.

It was soon fully engulfed in flames, and we were fresh out of extra satyrs; the chaotic motion of the dryad was too difficult to predict and one by one they’d ended up kicked or stepped on. But the thing was burning.

And then the oddest thing happened. It stood still—looking a bit like a gigantic effigy—and it started to sing.

“What is that noise?” Mike asked, covering his ears.

“Maybe . . . it’s dying?” Ariadne offered, getting to her feet and deciding, I guess, to finish mourning Gordon later.

“Maybe,” Mike said.

It wasn’t dying. “It’s healing itself. Look!” The flames had started to flicker out. Grass all around the dryad’s feet sprang up from the ground and in a widening circle. In the spots on its body that were no longer afire, I saw a thick layer of sap pouring from the creature’s body.

It was re-growing itself.

“It is as self-healing as the forest itself,” Hippos said. “We cannot possibly kill it, anymore than we could kill nature.”

Ariadne said, “ ‘In touch with all the plants of this world.’ ”

That sparked something. “What was that?”
 

“Just something Gordon had said.”

“That’s the answer.”

“What is?” she asked.

I strode forward purposefully, holding the thyrsos above my head. “Dryad!” I shouted, as loudly as I possibly could. I wanted its attention. “
I am Dionysos Lyseus! I am your destroyer!”
So saying, I snapped off the long part of the staff that was holding Gilgamesh’s rock, leaving only a short haft.

My declaration got the creature’s attention. I stepped to the edge of the new grass the dryad had grown, and stopped.

It showed no particular interest in kneeling before another god, nor did it act as if it planned to run away anytime soon. Instead, it raised itself up to its full height and bellowed. I don’t speak dryad, but I imagine it was saying something along the lines of
oh yeah?

The open maw of the creature presented a very appealing target. I threw the Hammer of Gilgamesh into it.

The dryad’s roar was cut short by the sudden and unexpected introduction of a rock to its mouth. It looked surprised—a really fascinating expression for a dryad—but no less interested in killing me than it was before.

“Oh please, oh please, oh please,” I said to myself. I’d pray, but to which god?

It lifted its arm, sap flying off in every direction, preparing for the killing blow. I stood my ground, figuring if I was going to die anyway, better to look good while doing it.

But before it could administer me my final moment, it stopped. Its hands reached for the spot I took to be its neck, and started digging. It made a sound that was almost a wheeze.

“Is it choking?” Mike asked.
 

I hadn’t even noticed him joining me. “No. Not exactly.”

A greenish-brown moss started spreading from the dryad’s mouth, across its face and down its arms and legs.

“Um, we should step back,” I said. “Quickly.”

“Yeah. Actually, maybe running would be good.”

We spun around and started running toward Hippos and Ariadne. “Move!” I shouted. Hippos, who could see the same thing we had, swept up Ariadne and bounded toward the shelter of the woods. Mike, alas, wasn’t nearly big enough to carry me, or we would have been right behind them.

I snuck a glance over my shoulder. The dryad looked a lot like a rooted tree that had been stuffed with an angry rhino. It bulged and splintered and groaned under the pressure and then . . . it exploded.

I dove forward, smacking Mike in the back to push him down, and the two of us went face first into the snow as dryad body parts—excellent projectiles—flew in every direction.

And then, silence. Blissful normal forest silence.

“You hurt?” Mike asked.

“Don’t think so.” I rolled over and sat up. Mike got to his feet and helped me to mine.

“What’d you throw in there, a grenade?” he asked.

Ariadne and Hippos emerged from the woods, looking as stunned as the two of us must have looked.

All that was left of the dryad was its feet, which looked like hollowed-out tree stumps that had stood there for decades, and in those decades had been covered with a brownish green moss. In fact, the moss was everywhere.

I walked into the middle of the carnage and reached into one of the legs, pulling out Gilgamesh’s rock.

“He was right all this time,” I said to the others.

“Who was right?” Ariadne asked.

“The man who gave this to me. He insisted until the day he died that it was a weapon. He was right.”

“What manner of plant is this?” Hippos asked. He was examining the moss.

“Don’t touch it,” I said. “In fact, all of you should back away from here; some of it may be airborne.”

“Poisonous?” Mike asked.

“No,” I said, “but it’ll give you one hell of a trip.”

*
 
*
 
*

Several hours later—by then past midnight—the first outside authorities began to arrive. Mike had radioed them in, explaining he was at a scene that had multiple injuries and over two-dozen deaths. That got helicopters into the air pretty quickly.

I was sitting beside the kiste, drinking a lukewarm cup of coffee and watching the proceedings. Peter—finally awake and very confused—and Ariadne and Hippos were all being led away in handcuffs by representatives of the state police. They would be flown off just as soon as all the wounded were evacuated. Meanwhile, all of the stoned-out mystai had been helped off the ice and were being administered to by park rangers who had arrived by snowmobile from all over the place. Mike had gotten the grassy area cordoned off by placing torches around it and tying ropes from torch to torch. It wouldn’t be necessary for much longer; the moss was already dying. When enough people were present to ensure that things could run smoothly, he joined me on the stage.

“We had to arrest them,” Mike explained without being asked. “The big Greek guy . . .”

“Hippos.”

“Yeah. He’ll probably end up on a plane in a day or two, seeing as how he’s an ambassador and all.”

“And how he didn’t commit a crime?” I asked.

“Oh, there are plenty enough crimes here to go around. One or two would stick if we wanted them to. Kidnapping, for instance. He told me he brought you here against your will. In fact, he went out of his way to make sure I understood that. Seems he wants to keep you out of trouble.” He sat down next to me. “Is that true?”

“That I was kidnapped? Yeah.”

“You gonna press charges?”

“Hadn’t planned to, no.” I sipped my coffee. “And Ariadne?”

“She’s in a lot of trouble,” he said. “But we’ll see. She might come out of this okay.”

“Peter?”

“Do you care?”

“Not really, no,” I admitted.

“He’s a fugitive. The trial might go his way, but there is the matter of him skipping bail.”

“Think a jury will believe his defense that it was a nature-beast from hell who killed his friend?”

Mike smiled. “I think you’d be surprised at the things a jury will believe.”

We sat quietly for a while. I was thinking how great a beer would taste.

“So how’d you know?” Mike asked. “How’d you know that would work?”

“You saw how it was healing itself, right? It was drawing from the plants around it and incorporating the healthy plant matter into its own body. I figured that was something it couldn’t just turn off like a switch.”

“So that mossy stuff grew out of the rock, just like the grass,” Mike said. “Fine, but why did that hurt it?”

“It’s like Gordon said—it was in touch with all the plants of this world.”

“And?”

“And that moss wasn’t from this world,” I said. “The rock came from space.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“That’s quite a find,” he said. “I have a bunch of scientists on their way here to figure out how a tree managed to walk around and kill people. I bet they’ll find that interesting. You don’t happen to know where this rock might be now?”

“It’s back where it should be,” I said.

“In this here box.”

“Yeah.”

“The box is evidence.”

“Good luck opening it,” I grinned. “Let them study the moss on the ground if they want. Just make sure they’re wearing gas masks or something first, or they’ll be one loopy set of scientists.”