“The man who lives among the dead returns.”
“What?” I asked, blinking at her in the warm morning light. We had fallen asleep in our perch near the top of the tree, and slept through the night swaying gently in the wind.
“The man who came and saved you. Who, brought you to me when you were dying beyond my roots.”
It seemed forever ago but had only been a day. A day since I woke anyway.
“I told him to come back after three days,” she said. “He is unusual for a human. Very kind, but conflicted, his heart, I don't know.”
We could see him coming from the top of the tree, though it would still be some time before he arrived. He traveled with a companion, Jade I guessed, and they had several animals with them bearing sacks. Goats it looked like.
“You must go with him my love,” she said softly, moisture welling in her eyes.
It was as if a great stone had collided with me. I started and slipped from the perch. Another branch caught me before I could fall and she was holding me then.
“You must not, I mean, my mistress, I must obey but, I will,” I was sobbing and rambling and she held me gently, not speaking but holding her crumbling lover together. I sobbed and fell into her a blubbering wreck. She held me and she loved me.
“My love, my love I wish that you were not so enthralled. A man, even a king, I would slay his armies to keep you, my love, my love, I love you. It is not so. It is not so. I love you.”
The words crushed me with their terrible truth. I was dizzy and weak and tried to pull away to sob alone, but she clutched me to her perfect white breasts and rocked me as a child.
A whimper, a whimper like an infant's, “you are all I live for.” I was pathetic, stupid, muttering cliche like a hack writer. Stupid, stupid, my sniveling weakness would repulse a lesser lover, should repulse her, should make her throw me from her tree. But still I could not halt the sobs, I could not stop them, they shook me, but still she held me and rocked me and I gripped her back. For a long time she held me. Until all my tears had fallen and I was numb and empty vessel in her arms.
“I will always love you, my love my love, but I cannot come. My roots, I cannot. But there, it is no abandonment. You must go and free yourself. He is a demon and not a god, it may be done! He is despised by some gods, some of them, they will help you, they will tell you how.”
I was drained, empty. No less upset but out of tears. I stared bleakly at the ground as she pet my hair.
“The man, he is fleeing there for his life. You, I will give you the aid I can, and it will be safer for a group.”
I clutched her and we did not speak.
It was not only Argyl but Jade as well who came to us. Argyl wore his heavy black robe and sturdy boots. Jade wore many furs and a sword. Her brown hair pulled tight in a pony tail. My lover opened her boughs to them. They indeed had several goats with them, who foraged for food nearby as they entered the tree. They seemed very far below us.
She climbed down to them, her small strong muscles giving powerful strength to her form. Longing surged within me, and with it a terrible ache. I would leave her. And all I did was moan to myself in trite unspecific terms. Longing, ache, terrible and vague. A great splotch of black ink seeping into the world around me. Love made a terrible poet of me. I would leave her. I was leaving now. It was happening. And I helpless, a scared little mouse burrowed down in this damn body, useless helpless little shit. I should rage against the world! Call my master to me and murder him. Storm the heavens and slay what gods aligned against my love and me.
I was leaving her. Trudging after my little masters like an obedient hound, my nascent will bending like a hinge. And to the will of those who did not even desire my subjugation, much less command me. My master's will that I should suffer excruciations and be ground away under his yoke. My lover's will that I should share my body and my joy with her, that I might live happily. And what of my will? That I might stay with her? That I might die perhaps? That I might put a bold final period on all my ramblings.
And then my lover was kissing me and holding me and I held her back for a long time. I was leaving her. Tears flowed out of me again, and she too was crying. We held each other for a long long time, our tears mingling amongst her roots. I felt distant and numb.
She broke the silence still choking on sobs, “I have, I made you things my love, I,” she let me go and pulled from a low hanging branch what seemed a bunch of needle leaves. Jade and Artgyl were pretending to check the goats. My lover lifted the bundle over my head and pulled down over me a dress of leaves.
“My, it will, it is not smart, it will act to protect you, not smart like me,” she was crying and stammering. “But it will act, be like steel if it, when a sword or arrow strikes.” It was the bright frosty green of her leaves, hair and eyes.
“And here,” she said, bringing forth another bunch of leaves. “They are boots, gloves and a mask too, to protect you and keep you warm in the mountains. And, and I made you this,” she grabbed something small from a branch.
“It is,” but she was crying to hard to continue and wept for a while. I came forwards to hold her, but she stopped me and clutched at my left hand. She took it and slipped onto my fourth finger a simple amber ring. It seemed to shrink a little to fit my finger.
“It is just to,” but she just held me and I held her. It was different with the dress. Her body was very soft, the skin of her back smooth to touch. My eyes had dried and itched, I wanted very badly to itch them but I had to hold her for she was trembling and I did not think she could stand without me. I felt the strength and will drain from me as if my life blood had all seeped from an opened vein.
“You must go,” she whimpered, but did not release me. I held her, for her now more than me. I filled my senses with her smell, of the tree and the salty taste of her tears. We stood there a long time, but I did not mind.
“I will go,” I said at last, “because you will it, my love.” She looked up but was crying too hard to speak. My tears were still all gone. I kissed her, and we lingered on the warmth of contact for just a moment. Then I turned and walked away. I heard her sob but I walked away. It was her will and so I did it. I had clutched in my hand the boots, gloves and mask. I did not remember picking them up but they were there.
When I reached Jade and Argyl they had the goats ready. I suspected they had just been acting busy for a time anyway. Jade's eyes were moist with unshed tears.
“I am very sorry,” Argyl said. I looked at him. His features were carefully neutral.
After a few moments, “You should put your shoes on hun,” Jade said. I did so. They fit perfectly, and rose halfway up my calves.
Jade turned abruptly and led the goats away. I followed mutely, felling numb and stupid. I did not know if Argyl followed. I stared at the ground and trudged after Jade as a zombie.
I trudged behind her for a long time, staring at the ground before my feet. My mind was empty. I did not so much think of my lover as remember sensations, the press of her lips against mine, the feel of her warm flesh as we drifted in and out of sleep. The touch of our hips. The knowledge that these things were memories now, not part of the continuation of my life, weighed on me as a great stone. I felt too, something. Something at the corner of my mind, always just out of reach. Something I should be thinking of but could not. My mind wasn't much good anyway. On I trudged.
We stopped at some point and I was handed something bland to eat. They were talking to each other but I did not pay attention. When twilight came we stopped again. They went about unpacking one of the goats. Jade looked at me for a moment. I was standing still, where I had stopped walking. Then she approached me.
“Look hun, why don't you go get some wood together or something?”
“Wood?” I asked as if I did not recognize the word. What was I forgetting?
“Yeah, you know, for a fire? But don't cut anything living, just find dead wood. We promised your tree lady friend we wouldn't kill any trees and she doesn't seem the type to cross.”
“She is my lover.”
“Right. Well. About the wood?”
“Wood?”
“Shit.”
“Yes, I remember wood mistress.” I was back a little. They would need a fire. The required me to fetch them wood.
“Yes, mistress. Obedience is my food and drink.”
She regarded me with an expression of uncertainty. Wondering, I supposed, if I was sane. Was I?
“If I give you a hatchet are you going to off yourself?”
“No mistress, I will obey.”
She looked at me hard for a moment, then returned to the goats. I had forgotten to kneel. Would my masters flog me if I did not show respect? Obedience is food. Obedience is water. Obedience is food. Obedience is water. I kneeled on both knees before her when she returned. I kept my gaze down as I ought. The man, what had his name been? The man was watching us now. Concerned, worried I thought. Did they think that I would not obey? Jade held a hatchet out to me and I accepted it, eyes still down.
“Do you still not know your name?”
The question confused me.
“I'm the forty second of the fifty third of the seven hundred, mistress.”
She seemed not to know what to say. “No, well, um, you're Kara now, okay?”
“Yes mistress.”
“Okay, go get wood, but stay close enough we can call you back.”
“Yes mistress.” I rose, eyes down, and went into the woods.
The forest was old and untouched, so there was plenty of wood to gather. The trees were conifers of some kind, and were fairly dense. It was dark, with few low branches. I saw no animals except what looked to be cockroaches, save they were many times larger and had massive mandibles. They were brown and black, winged, and stank of carrion. There were dozens of them. They seemed wary more than frightened, and also seemed more intent on me than foraging.
My lover had made the dress for me, that is, the bosom was made for my single breast. I stacked many sticks and small logs on my hip, securing them with my arm. The trees rustled far above me and seemed to sing to me, a sweet sad melody to sooth a child to sleep. It intoxicated me and I felt as though I were floating. There were many, many more insects now, all seemed to be staring and then I heard my name, the insects were watching me and I heard my name yelled, the name they had given me. Was it mine? I walked to my masters.
They had erected a small tent and gathered some wood. Jade was striking a flint to a bunch of dried leaves and twigs. I added the wood I had collected to their larger pile and kneeled to await my next command. The trees still sang to me and I drifted in their music and felt I was forgetting something. But it was so hard to think, and I drifted, drifted.
“Please sit, if you wish to,” said the man. He had brought a pan with water and put it near the fire.
“Yes master,” I said absently and sat cross legged on the ground.
“You don't have to call my master.”
“Yes master.”
He sighed and sat a few feet away. Jade had the fire burning then and sat to complete a triangle. We watched the fire a moment. It was large for the amount of fuel, consuming the leaves and twigs before it settled onto the larger logs to simmer in its rage. I drifted with the smoke and leaves, a few leaves blown away into a great and open sky. The pot of water was boiling amongst the embers and then I had a bowl of boiled grains. I ate mindlessly.
“How do you feel Kara?” asked the man.
“Master, I drift away.”
They were quiet a moment and my bowl was empty.
“Kara” Jade spoke sharply and I looked at her. “Do you know where you are?”
“In the woods mistress.”
“Um, do you know where you are going?”
I had to think about that for a moment. What was I forgetting?
“Am I not following my mistress?”
“Um, oh.”
“Kara,” interjected the man, “your, um, tree friend, she told us you might be, disorientated. Do you remember your tree friend?”
“She is my lover, master.”
“Am I, are we your masters now?”
I had to think about that. It was hard to think.
“Yes, you are, master, mistress, you are my little masters. I have, I, there, I have two greater masters?” It ended as a question somehow.
“I don't know, can you tell us?” Jade asked.
“One is, a demon? He, he commands my blood. The other, I, I don't remember. I should not have two masters. But, I don't remember.”
She handed me a couple pieces of jerked meet and I chewed them. They were very brittle.
“What's your demon master's name?” the man asked.
I tried to think but the trees sang to me and it was so hard to think.
“I don't know it master. Mistress.”
They were quiet a moment, looking at each other.
“How about your tree lady friend?” Jade asked.
That answer came much more easily. The trees seemed to whisper it to me.
“Mistress, I don't believe she has one.”
“Does anything have a damn name?” she stated more than asked, exasperation in her voice.
“Mistress, I,”
“I think I can answer that, in part at least,” interrupted the man. He began speaking and I drifted back into the music of the trees and watched small flames flick about the embers.
“Wait,” Jade interrupted him, “Kara, pay attention.”
“Yes mistress.”
“Okay love, start again.”
“Um, okay. I was saying to a tree, trees don't think of themselves the way we do. They don't differentiate themselves from everything else. There is a tree, but then there is the soil, and often a fungus in the soil that cooperates with the tree, and the air and wind, and the sun of course. And the forest. They see themselves as the whole. Or, well, and or as a particular perspective of the whole.”
“Okay, I'm almost with you. Is there an easy explanation of the 'and or' bit?”
“Uh, no.”
“Didn't think so.”
“So,” he continued, “To give a name to a piece of the whole is, well, they wouldn't think of it. What does your liver think its name is?”
“My liver doesn't think. Well, I hope not anyway, it would hate me.”
“Right, but if it did. Or, rather, if you considered the liver's point of view. That is, you, Jade, are the whole, but you could consider how things seem to different parts. From the perspectives of different parts.”
“That doesn't make any sense to me.”
“It's a bad metaphor I think. Maybe mood would be a better one. You see things quite differently from different moods. Bleak when you're depressed, joyous when you're happy, sexually when you're horny. And so on. But you don't have a different name for yourself when in each of your moods. They are all part of Jade.
“That almost makes sense. What about crazy people who thing they are more than one person?”
“Right, exactly. It's a continuum, not a switch.”
“Odd definition of 'right exactly' you have.”
“Well.”
“How about the demon?”
“Demons have names, and I haven't heard of one keeping theirs secret.”
“Is something wrong with her then? She can't remember names for some reason?”
“Hmm. Kara?”
“Yes master?
“Do you know my name?”
I tried to think but my mind was dark and misted over.
“Master, I cannot recall it.”
“Do you remember anything about it at all?”
“Master, it was like Agravayne and Artigal. But those are from poems? Or stories?”
“You don't need to call me master.”
“Yes master.”
He scowled but Jade laughed.
“So,” she said, “do you remember your old master's name? The one before the demon?”
I was drifting badly, pulled aside by the singing of the trees, lulled to sleep, my eyes weighing down, wanting to shut.
“No mistress.”
“How do you, I mean, if I asked you a question and you had to talk about him, what would you call him? What do you call him when you think to yourself about him?”
“Mistress, I would call him my old master, or my second master. To myself he is the old motherfucker.” It was hard so hard to focus and the realization of what I had said aloud penetrated my awareness only slowly.
“Master, I have wronged in profaning a master. I accept my punishment.”
After I spoke I realized Jade had been laughing and the man smirking. He grew serious.
“Kara, I will never punish you. I haven't the right. I do not think you are truly a slave.”
“Yes master.”
“So what does all this mean practically?” Jade interjected.
“Well, the more we understand the better. If we can understand her, the demon, and her tree lover, we can at least help her, and at might be able to leverage some pretty powerful allies.”
“No, I mean, what the hell are you getting at?”
“To her, I think, names are not necessary or important. She doesn't think in those terms. She exists as a binary relation to a master. She is slave. Master is master. What else does she need to know?”
“Um, okay. I'm either developing a horrid headache or I almost understanding part of what you might be getting at.”
“I think it sheds light on her behavior. Why did we have to tell her specifically to pay attention to us? She is totally uninterested in anything that isn't an order. She functions for people, she isn't a person. I mean, of course she's a person, but that's not how she thinks of herself. She is slave.”
“Huh.”
“I think it sheds light on her behavior. Kara, I've known you almost a month, but you've only been awake for a few days of that. You've gone from a crazed kidnapping drug addict to surly and very confused about basic questions of your identity, to a homicidal maniac, you came to kill us both, right, not to free me?”
The memory seemed very far, far away.
“Yes, master, I thought it would please my master.”
“Fuck,” Jade said, turning to the man, but he held out his hand to hold her at bay.
“Then immediately you were running away from that, suicidally. You knew you would have frozen to death, naked in the autumn mountain woods.”
“Yes master.”
Jade sighed and rubbed her temples.
“Then you were throwing yourself on a sword, then madly, passionate in love, then completely heartbroken, heartbroken as if your whole world was destroyed, and now you are a content, passive and obedient slave.”
“Yes master.”
“You knew her what, a day and half?”
“Yes master.”
“Yet you're madly in love with her.”
“Yes master, she is my love.”
“Do you miss her?” asked Jade.
The memory of the soft flesh, the press of her body against mine, the look in her eyes as she lowered herself to please me with her tongue and lips, orgasming hard and knowing she was as well. I was crying, but not hard.
“I'm sorry,” Jade said softly. “It was rude, I didn't think.”
“Mistress, I don't understand.” I looked at her, then remembered to cast my gaze down.
She didn't say anything.
“We should sleep,” said the man quietly.
Nobody moved for a moment. I shut my eyes.
“Kara,” Jade said. I opened my eyes. The man was gone and the fire was only embers now. She took my hand.
“Please come to bed.”
“Yes mistress.”
She led me back to the small tent. It was very low, so that we would have to crawl in. Jade stopped at the precipice and took off her boots, placing them just inside. I felt that she wished me to do the same and so I did.
There were several large blankets on the floor with very little room around them.
“I'll sleep in the middle hun, just take the side there.”
Moving at all took effort. I crawled into the spot she indicated. She pulled off her furs; it was actually a pair of outer pants and jacket with a hood. She put them over the other blankets. She wore red hose and a simple white blouse underneath. I began to remover my dress but she stopped me.
“Leave it on hun, you don't need to be naked.”
“Mistress, I do not mind.”
“Leave it on. I don't want Argyl getting any ideas.”
I tried to focus on what I was saying, but it slipped away from me.
“Should I please my master before we sleep?”
“Please him?”
“Yes mistress. Please him with my body.”
Her eyes widened and she pressed her lips.
The man spoke. “Kara, I am not your master and you must do nothing, least of all that.”
“Yes master.”
Jade laughed, almost hysterically, then bit it off. I wondered if my body displeased them but lay in the spot Jade had designated. She climbed over Argyl to take the middle. Her body just barely touched mine.
As if I was watching someone else, I went to her, I put my army around her.
“Stop!” she snapped. “I'm not into girls. Shit,” then “Oh,” when she realized I was weeping hard. She held me awkwardly at first, then she put her arm on my back and rubbed as if to soothe me as I sobbed into her blouse. She held me until I cried to sleep.
I dreamt I was in a large steel box. It was chill but I had my lover's dress and only my bare feet lost warmth to the metal. I paced the room but there was no light so I collided into the walls when I came to them.
I collided with a body and I knew that it was my lover. We had bowled each other over but I jumped up and rushed to her to hug and kiss and kiss, and we were holding hands and my other hand was remembering her nude form.
“I came from the frost where ten thousand little things, little things like mice and sparrows, little things like leaves and bugs, where ten thousand little things were dying and all I could do was turn my wood to steel and trap myself inside. And they banged on the steel but I am an ancient tree. No ax nor fire nor demon's minion will breech my walls. But I miss you, my love, I miss you. My love, my love. Do not be angry when you learn. Just as you are what you are, I am what I am. A tree does what it must do. A tree does what it must do.”
I was alone again in the way of dreams, now naked and wandering a dark wood. I was me except my severed breast had been restored. My feet kept me moving but I had no urgency or sense of destination.
“YOU WILL NOT ESCAPE ME.” The weight of my master's thought tumbled me to the ground. He was there, all clacking beak and claws. His body now was a crab's body, with the tail of a lion and the head of a vulture.
“YOU WILL SUFFER YOU WILL SUFFER”
The beast was excreting a terrible stench, and it urinated on the ground as it gaped at me. Then it spit on me. A sticky and heavy gel that weighed me down.
A naked man with the head of a bull watched us from the darkness. The saliva stuck me to the floor and I tried to pull away, panic vibrating through me, and clack clack clack that terrible vultures beak came snapping close to me, clack clack clack. I could not pull away I could not pull away, I could not, I was stuck, I could not pull away. And my ears deadened from the great sharp clack clack clack and his breath reeked like carrion and I was gagging but his crab's claws held me down, rent the flesh from my arms' bones and I could not breath I was choking on my vomit and that terrible reek of death and rot.
And then there was a great pressure in my head and ringing in my ears, my master's filthy presence in my mind. Memories came, unbidden images of my past. Cold damp stone against my child's body as firm invasive fingers inspected every bony angle. Soft bright silks and the feel of eyes inspecting, enjoying. The boredom of harem life, a sex slave barely used. The sharp pain of clamps and knives as the old motherfucker violated me with a metal phallus, too impotent to rape me, yet still the torture, the sting of knives that cut deep burrows into my back. The thirst and delirium of long days tied and sometimes tortured. The great heavy darkness of the drug, the wonderful drug, that kept all the terrible world safe and far away. Brief images then, fuzzy and cold, the dissection of that woman's body. The retching of the soldiers who came to take me.
Then the cabin, where the man had tended me. The memories slowed. The smell of wood burning, the bitter taste of the medicines he made me drink, the stench of the ointment he smeared on my chest. The smell of blood and the murdered men. My mind lingered on the face of the man with the broken leg.
And then my lover. I choked and could not breath. The pain pushed harder within my skull and her warm body was with me again, and the taste of her tears, but I could not see her face. And I could not breath, I was spasming and choking on bile, and my mind was ten thousand shards of glass, all grinding and refracting, and my memories were all there at once, drowning me, I could not breathe, I choked and choked and could not see, my mind my mind it was too much, a billion colors refracting and I could not see or think or breathe, and then my master was pulling out like a long filthy rope pulling from my stomach and stretching my nostrils and slimed up up up.
Then he was over me, I was back and gasping and sputtering but air was in my lungs! I was coughing and couldn't stop, then air was back.
“YOU WILL NOT DEFY ME.”
My head rattled but he was gone. The bull headed man walked slowly to me, as if I were a mouse that might scamper away.
“I too serve the vile lord,” he said. He was very muscular, with red skin. Both feet and hands were blades. Sharp, long and curved. His cock too, but it hung limp between his legs.
“All evil is the evil of him. All evil is the man's cock.” His great bull head turned sideways and tilted to cast an eye down.
“All evil is sharp, sharp birds, broken rent carcasses, jagged jagged like torn cloth, like a jagged sky, all bloody and bloody, it was fucked apart, the sky was fucked apart and it is red and bloody bloody bloody. A wind of sea salt and blood blood, the hair lifted just so and just so, the stench of the sea, of rotted fish, the stench of the sea now a mountain.”
I was backing from him. Watching those blades. They were caked with blood and filth but very sharp very sharp. I felt them shave my skin, the scrape of the edge, the burn of it.
“Please,” I said. “I do not wish to defy him. How do I serve him?” My voice was small and thin.
“We all serve, all serve. All the time. We are all vile vile things. Like worms and mucus and filth filth filth.”
I backed into the edge of that great black room and he pushed a blade hand into my chest, pinning me to the wall. I felt the cock blade slowly rise, jabbing and bouncing against my thigh. Did I fear? I do not know. I felt nothing and everything. Meaningless abstractions, but that was all I was then. Incredible pain, his free hand blade buried deep into my eye. It began to slice, little wet sucking sounds as it rent my brain. He cut away my childhood, my pain, my torture, my self and I was nothing, only one free eye staring at the great bull head. Blinking, but not comprehending.
He stood suddenly back and I felt my brains drip out along my cheek. He scraped his erect cock with his hand blades, screeching metal splitting the quiet room.
“You have hid it well, slut thing. Some bit of you is cut away already. The bit our master desires. You would do well to bring it to him.”
“I don't know! I wish to serve, please tell me how to serve!”
“Slut thing, I do not care. I obey. I obey but I do not care. I obey or I would rape and murder you, make your soul another blade.”
“I don't believe in souls,” I whispered.
“That does not matter, slut thing.”