Tex and Molly in the Afterlife, page 13
Afterlife Factoid #9
You can give up trying to understand.
Nothing is ever the whole story.
Tex said cautiously, "So it's Beale, right?"
"Beale,'' agreed the Presence—pronouncing it differently, though, as if the word were not an English one. "And to answer your question, it's not a boy's name or a girl's name. It means sacred tree."
"Sacred tree?" said Tex. The idea seemed to perk him up. He grimaced slightly as the pain in his leg reasserted itself. "Are you like, a Native?"
"Absolutely." Beale pointed at Tex's leg. "I see you've been injured."
Tex shrugged.
Beale nodded, understandingly. "Was it a god or a goddess?"
"Say what?"
"Who broke your leg. This happened in the Otherworld, right?"
Tex opened his mouth and closed it. A narrow smile formed at his lips. "Goddess," he said. "She kissed me, can you dig it?"
Beale shook his head. "Too bad. Goddesses are the worst. What form did she take?''
"A gigantic raven," said Tex. "Smelled like ... why do you ask? Some friend of yours? Are you a goddess too? Or a god?"
"Ha." Beale picked up a stick and poked it in its mouth. "Forget goddesses. And gods. They're hopeless. They're done for. Me?" Taking the stick out, gesturing with it. "I'm a dryad, man. I'm genderless. I'm older than the gods."
"No shit," said Tex. He sat up straighter, pain or no pain. Beale's rap was reeling him in like a sucker off the street, hooked on a game of 3-card monte.
"Truthfully," said Beale. Warming up now. Getting into the rhythm of this human patter, like. "The gods only exist because of you people, you know? You humans. You invented them. Your old storytellers made them up. This was, I don't know—50, maybe 60 thousand years ago. Believe me. I remember."
"You do?"
"Mm."
"Listen." Beale leaned over, tearing through the remnants of the energy web. He patted Tex on the foot. "Look what's happening to me. My appearance is becoming more human, isn't it? In fact, I'm taking on the attributes of your male gender, because you're thinking of me that way. It gives you a handle, a metaphor. A way to grasp me. See how it happens? I'm real. But at the same time, you're making me up. And in that sense, you've got power over me. Just like you've got power over your own gods."
"Yeah?" Tex cocked his head—bemused, but obviously pleased by this idea.
"Absolutely. Think about it. Think about what I look like, right now."
Tex chuckled. He didn't have to think. He said, "You look like a bum."
"A what?" (Seeming to take offense.)
"You know," said Tex. "A street person. Someone who's homeless."
Beale reared up, indignant. Then, quite abruptly, he flopped down into his battered overcoat as though his body had been deflated.
He said, "You're exactly right," with a long weary sigh.
His voice had changed. More aged and wistful now.
"I am?" said Tex.
Beale nodded. He looked like an old man, worn and beaten. Tex's words did appear to have magically transformed him.
"Homeless," he said. "That's what I am. A street person. Or at least, a ground-being. I've lost my home and there isn't going to be another one. Not for a long time. Maybe never. The thing that happens to your gods, the slow fading—that's happening to me. I'm different, I'm older, but the process is the same. Out of the explicate world, back into darkness."
"Wow," said Tex. "Is there ... like, anything we can do?"
"We?" said Beale. "Ha."
"You, then?"
"No. You. It's you—you humans—that made me this way. Didn't I tell you? I'm a dryad. That's a human word, like Beale. It means tree-spirit. But I'm older than the word. I'm an ancient potency associated with oak trees. In particular, with a northeastern variant of the American white oak. Quercus alba. My last home was a 200-year-old specimen growing in one of the unincorporated townships."
"So what happened?"
"I was, you might say, evicted. My tree was aging, and there was a rotten section near the core. So I was ... harvested."
"Harvested." Tex recognized this as a euphemism.
"The tree was not suitable for commercial lumber use, so it was sawed into sections and fed into a biomass-fired power plant. That did not affect me, of course. In the course of things, I would simply have passed into acorns, and thence into seedlings, and finally into a mature tree to succeed the one that died. Or two, or possibly more."
"Wait. You can be in more than one tree at the same time?"
Beale made a fluttering motion with his hand. "Your mind is not structured in the way necessary to conceive this. But we dryads do not have the absolute barrier between one individual and another that you animal spirits have."
"Animal spirits? That's what I am?"
"Please. Let's stick to one thing you won't understand at a time. What has happened to me is, my particular species variant—the subtype of Quercus alba that is a physical expression of myself—has been completely eliminated from the North Woods. There are many white oaks left, and many other variants, and therefore many dryads similar—even almost identical—to myself. But a large and growing number of the old patterns are simply vanishing. I mean literally vanishing: passing out of the visible realm of the world. We still exist, of course. And certain aspects of us are still active and growing and individuating. It's ... complicated. But I, to the extent that I can be separated from my kindred spirits, am without a single tree to inhabit. I am homeless. Just so."
"Wow."
Tex was hunching forward, crouched up in a little ball. He appeared oblivious to the broken leg.
"Wow," he said again. "Homeless nature spirits. What a concept."
Beale said nothing. He seemed to quiver on the edge of the unmanifest. At certain instants, Molly could begin to see through him; then he grew solid and opaque again.
Tex said, "Are there a whole lot of you guys?"
Gus shrugged. "You mean, all over the world? I'd guess tens of thousands, at least. More perhaps. Hard to say. As I was trying to tell you, the boundaries that determine what is an individual—"
"Tens of thousands of homeless dryads." Tex's mind kicked into its speed-guitar mode. "Think of that."
"What else is there for me to think about?" said Beale, a little irked.
«You watch out» Molly tried to warn him. «You've got my Bear all worked up now. There's no telling what he's going to do. You poor dryads aren't used to this.»
"You know," said Tex, sounding much more rational now, which was the worst possible sign, "you guys ought to think about getting organized."
"Organized?" said Beale. "But that's precisely what we are, in a way of speaking. We are organization. Each of us represents the organizing, the organ-making, pattern or growth-field of a particular type of tree."
"No, not like that. I mean, get really organized. Form like, a union. A political action committee. Some way to come together and make your voices heard."
"We don't have voices," said Beale, testily. "We are incorporeal matrices of life-potential. By strictly physical standards, we do not exist at all."
"Now, you see?" said Tex. "That's just the kind of negative thinking that's got you guys into this mess in the first place."
"Your negative thinking. Not ours."
"Let's not get caught up in recrimination. Let's start thinking about concrete steps we can take. Maybe we should start with some kind of exploratory meeting, just to create some heightened group awareness. Is there any way to get a message around, or post a notice or something? Some kind of Dryad sig?"
Beale sighed. He seemed to regard Tex from a great temporal distance, and to decide that further argument would be unproductive. As a family, primates had not evolved much further than the Age of Reason. There was no sense trying to dispute with them over matters of Higher Truth.
"This is far out," said Tex.
And Molly reflected that she had not heard him so excited for quite a long time. He had not been nearly this excited about the affairs of his mortal existence: the boat, the Street Theater, his partnership with Jesse. He had been going through the motions of those things, as though dutifully playing a role. But now...
Molly looked at Tex, practically frothing with excitement. And she thought «It's like Death is what it took to bring him back to life.»
THE SEED
"Hide," said Beale.
Tex did not hear him. He was lying on his back staring up at the hemlock tree. The sun had moved into the west and was making interesting yellow-and-black patterns among the limbs.
"Someone is coming," said Beale, "who will be able to see you. Transform yourself, if you can."
Tex looked around. "Say what?"
"Do you want to be caught again?" To the extent that a dryad can convey a sense of urgency, Beale's voice sounded urgent. "Do you want to have another one of those woven around you?"
He pointed at the ground, at the trail of shredded moss that ran in a circle around Tex and around the tree.
"No, hey—" Tex sat up. "Wait, I remember now. The little girl. And Syzygy's boy. He did something to me, cast a spell or something."
"Not a very strong one," said Beale. "But yes. You were enmeshed in an energy web when I discovered you. And someone is coming now who might be able to weave a stronger one. You might be trapped for quite a while. So if you can take another form—an animal, for instance—now would be a good time to do so."
Tex sat up and listened. Voices were coming from not far off, outside the green cave of hemlock boughs. He said, "But—I don't know how."
"You don't? But you said a goddess kissed you. She must have given you the ability to transform. It's standard procedure."
Tex's mind flickered briefly over the series of shapes he had occupied before coming to lie here. A snake! he recalled, disbelievingly.
The voices were getting closer.
"Right," said Tex, trying to think fast—something he had never been too good at. "Listen, you don't happen to have any reefer on you, do you?"
"Are you making a joke?"
"I just thought ... you know, a street person ... Never mind." Tex laid his head back. "I'm kind of new at this."
Beale scowled. "Obviously."
The voice of the boy, Ari, could be heard distinctly now. "No, this way," he said. "Under that tree there. Mm-o-m! Aren't you listening to me?"
After a pause: "There's more here than just a man," said the voice of Syzygy Prague.
Beale told Tex, "Listen to me now. I am going to transform you into an aspect of myself."
"Finest kind, bro. Is it going to hurt?"
"Only when you germinate." Beale reached out and, with astonishing strength, seized Tex and the dirty Wizard cloak and threw the two of them together into the stream. Quickly he rolled the cloak up and pulled it out, dripping.
Tex was nowhere to be seen.
Then Beale was nowhere to be seen, either.
Ari, followed by Winterbelle and Syzygy, and finally by Pippa Rede, came brushing through the curtain of hemlock branches. The wild-haired, dark-skinned boy rushed into the open space beneath the tree.
"Here!" Ari proclaimed, pointing down at the cloak.
Syzygy stepped nearer, coming to stand next to the stream, very still. Winterbelle raced excitedly about, and Pippa said in her timid voice: "That looks like Guillermo's—"
"Where?" demanded Syzygy at last. "Where is this so-called hippie you drew your circle around?"
Ari shrugged. This seemed of secondary importance to him. He dashed after Winterbelle, around the massive trunk. From behind it he called, "Anyway, there's the cloth with the stars on it, like I told you."
"I see," said Syzygy. She stepped cautiously past the line of moss and into the broken circle. She bent to pick up the Wizard's cloak. Her dark eyes were open wide. Her fingers, with nails as dirty as a farmer's, probed the cloth firmly and efficiently. Then they found something.
From one of the inner folds of the cloak, Syzygy pulled out a computer disk. Its label, slightly smeared by the water, read
Strategy Briefing—
Restricted
Availability
"Probably ruined," said Pippa, who had taken a computer literacy class at the local U.M. extension. "I mean, from the water."
"I see," said Syzygy again. She probed deeper into the pockets of the cloak, as though convinced that some treasure must be buried there. At last she plucked out a small brown thumb-sized object, which she held close to her eyes and regarded very carefully.
"It's just an acorn," said Pippa, so quietly that her words were almost impossible to hear.
Syzygy said, "You are completely right."
The two kids came scampering out from behind the tree, grinning as though they were in on a diabolical secret.
"It is an acorn," Syzygy declared. You would have thought this was a fact of resounding importance.
"Mommy," said Winterbelle. "Ari just said a squirrel told him it's time to go home."
Pippa looked at Ari worriedly.
"A flying squirrel," he amplified.
Then Winterbelle giggled and raced off, ducking under the limbs of the hemlock and out of sight. Ari gave a funny little bow to the two women, then he hurried after her. Their mothers stood together for a while, looking at the spot where the kids had vanished.
"Is it my imagination," said Pippa, not quite so softly as usual, "or are our children becoming more elflike?"
Syzygy turned to her and gave her an unexpected smile, radiating warmth. She touched her friend in the lightest way on one arm. Pippa smiled back, shyly.
"Becoming more elflike?" Syzygy said, as though the thought entertained her. "But that is only to be expected, when you consider the tunes we are living in.
To be expected, and to be
most fervently
hoped."
another time, before that,
* * *
Ludi had come back to the Linear Bee. She came looking for Tex & Molly. But also she came looking for peace, for sanctuary. Seeking refuge. Because the world was too much with her—the world in this case meaning Guillermo Goban—and as they say in the movies, he knew where she lived.
He knew where Tex & Molly lived too, of course. But he was afraid of Molly. And Tex bugged him. You could tell.
WHO KNOWS THIS?
Molly, eventually.
HOW?
Because of the magical salmon she ate.
BUT WAIT. THIS HAPPENED BEFORE TEX MET, OR WILL MEET, BEALE THE HOMELESS DRYAD?
That is correct. Two days earlier.
DOES THIS MAKE SENSE?
Yes & no. Sense—Reason, Logic, Induction, Proof, & alia—only arise because of the linear structure of Time. Whereas in the Otherworld, there is no Time.
THAT IS NOT STRICTLY TRUE.
No. But it is not strictly untrue, either. In the Otherworld, Time is a story that is told and retold, each telling always resembling the others but endlessly varying.
MMM. BUT HOW CAN THERE BE STORIES WITHOUT TIME?
Ah: that is a logical problem—a paradox. And Logic has no standing in the Otherworld. That's why Tex will be so happy there.
AND WHO KNOWS THAT?
Ask anybody. Now listen—a story does not reveal itself all at once.
IT TAKES TIME?
Mmm. Yes &
NOT KNOWING
Quietly, on tiptoe, Ludi poked about the Linear Bee.
Quiet, because she did not want to awaken any ghosts. And the houseboat was full of them. You could tell. (Actually Ludi could not tell, but here is how she looked at it: If ghosts were going to be anywhere, wouldn't they be here? With all this weird old stuff, masks and skulls and bones and rattles? If Ludi was a ghost, this was exactly the kind of place she'd want to hang out in.)
Tiptoeing, because she didn't want to disturb the evidence. When you are looking for clues you have to be careful not to mess up the scene of the crime. And if that sounds too extravagant, then try to explain
The Mystery
Where have Tex & Molly been for the last 6 days?
Because it was not like them just to disappear like this.
Actually it was like them. But the timing was wrong. Molly would not have buzzed off with the Street Theater in such a state of squabbling and dissension. The Midsummer Night performance was coming up and there was no agreement as to what kind of performance it should be. Tex, besides, would not have walked away from an interesting environmental skirmish like the thing with the Goddin base. No, Ludi believed firmly that something was wrong, that something at least unexpected and possibly very bad had come to pass. There had been, she suspected, some kind of misadventure.
Ludi loved that word. Misadventure. It was bookish, and romantic, and Ludi loved books and romance. Especially children's books, and above all fairy tales. She loved flowers too but somehow usually managed to kill them. Askance, she looked at a row of pots containing Molly's angel-wing begonias. Shading them, its broad leaves gracefully recurved, stood one of Tex's rare palms. Its plastic label read Pinanga speciosa. The very thought of things that only had names in Latin made Ludi uncomfortable. Did any of these plants need watering? She felt the soil, which seemed quite dry. She bit her lip.
In the galley she found the Majolica teapot and the Sun & Moon mugs sitting on the table. The tea leaves inside the pot had sprouted a crop of woolly gray mold. Geraniums bloomed gaily in the window, but some of their petals had begun to fall onto the countertop. Decorative—even romantic, like fallen rose petals—but also sad and untidy.
At that moment Goblin the Cat-Person sprang down from a shelf, alighting just in front of Ludi—who yelped.
"Oh, it's you, cat," she said, pressing her hand to her breastbone.
Goblin said, "Wwrrrrow."
"Sure," said Ludi. "I'll get you something to eat. Where do they keep your food?"
It was a relief to hear her own voice, breaking the silence. Exploring the cabinets, she could feel her shifting weight cause the boat to rock. It was a funny sensation, but you got used to it, and after that it was fun. All she could find for Goblin was a can of tuna, the people kind.
