There Ain't No Justice - #136 Being a Tree, by Arifel ----------------------------- `how do you get out of this nature's revenge nature cage craving wonder the worth of it scream at the top of your lungs so many times tried not to wonder...' - skinny puppy, `nature's revenge' It was bitterly cold this morning, but she came to visit me again. A creature of habit. Or possibly something to do with the spell that holds me here. It's more likely that she does it simply to torment me. It's not as if i'm in extreme pain; it's more the discomfort you would feel if you had to stand with your arms in an uncomfortable position for a long time. Well, I've been here almost two months now, and I still haven't got used to it. I don't understand how I can see her when she leaves her cottage each morning, to go picking medicinal herbs in the forest... I don't think I have `eyes', but I seem to have at least five `arms', or, more precisely, `branches', spread out as if I were reaching for the sky. You don't follow me? Very well, I'll start at the beginning. Anya had a reputation in the village as `the local witch'. She didn't like it, but then again, she never refrained from using her reputation to intimidate the hicks. She was (still is, and I suspect probably always will be) quite young, but even the smith, a great hulking bear of a man, used to back down when she narrowed her eyes, muttered an incantation and reached for her sacred dagger. Occasionally, if the hicks were desperate for some sort of magickal help, they'd approach her, caps clutched in shaking hands, and beg a favour. She'd regard them with a crooked grin and avarice glinting in her brilliant green eyes, usually taking them for everything that they could spare. Naturally, some of us were skeptical about her. Tybalt, Jonah and myself were out in the woods one afternoon, idly tossing stones at dragonflies and discussing Anya's alleged capabilities. Tybalt hunched over, imitating Old Giles the Crofter: `Well, she turned me into a newt!' We sighed, waiting for the punchline. `... I got better...' he concluded. we snickered. Tybalt said, `She's probably over at Arnalt's Pond, now, fishing for frogs.' `What's she want frogs for?' Jonah asked, turning over a broad, flat toadstool with his toe. `Didn't you know? She turns them into horses and sells them at Banbury Market.' Jonah pushed Tybalt into a bush, and they fought, pummeling each other playfully for a while. I leaned against a tree, lost in my own thoughts, until they both leaped on me and pushed me into the bush. We found ourselves only a few minutes' walk from Arnalt's Pond, so we decided to sneak up and try to spot her catching frogs. As we neared the pond, we made our way more cautiously, until we could hear a clear soprano, singing: `Strip me from the bundle of balloons at every fair colourful and carefree designed to make you stare...' I carefully crept closer through the thinning undergrowth, not realising that Tybalt and Jonah had hung back, watching to see how close I'd get. `but I'm lost, and I'm losing the thread that holds me down, and I'm up hot and rising in the - ah, got you!' That doesn't rhyme, I thought, as I caught sight of her, black velvet dress hitched up around her thighs, wading through the reeds at the far end of the pond. She had just caught a large toad, and was carefully placing it in a bag. I was momentarily entranced by the way the brackish water lapped around her legs, when she suddenly turned and looked straight at me. I froze. `Why, hello there, Jermayn,' she called to me. `have you lost something over there in the grass?' I desperately wanted to turn and run, but I was held there, like a rabbit cornered by a snake. My mouth was dry, my eyes opened wide in something distantly related to terror. She strode through the water, knotting and tucking her skirt at her side, holding the bag above the water, without taking her eyes from mine. The rest of the world seemed to sway and swirl around an axis that ran from her eyes to mine, the branches of trees on the periphery of my vision seeming to shift in sympathetic motion with her short blonde hair as she approached me. My breath was stopped somewhere south of my throat. She emerged from the pond, her white legs glistening, and noting a blade of grass stuck to her thigh, I found myself wanting to pick it off, and then run my hands up her legs and to stroke her hips. She seemed to realise my desire, although I swear that I had not moved a muscle. She undid the knot that held her skirt up, and as it dropped to drape her legs, I regained enough control to spring up from the crouching position I had held, only to trip over a gnarled tree-root and fall flat on my back. She giggled, and held her hand out to help me up. After a moment's hesitation, I took it. It felt cold and the grip was firmer than a girl's should be if she had spent her life indoors, dicing herbs into a cauldron. She smiled and said, `You naughty little boy. Spying on me! Well, you will be in a position to watch me as much as you like... soon.' As she tugged me to my feet, I felt that I wanted to escape more than ever, but I followed her quietly. Her cottage was deep in the woods, far from the village and the barley-fields that surrounded it. The trees that grew here seemed bigger and the foliage darker than the forestry that Tybalt, Jonah and I frequented. Some of them seemed twisted into unusual poses, as if they had once been alive and had somehow been frozen into those agonised poses. I became aware firstly of a deep, rich odour, the smell of fresh earth after an autumn rain, mixed with the sharp tang of pine needles, and then I heard her singing softly: `We'll wait in stone circles 'till the force comes through, Lines join in faint discord As the Stormwatch brews...' I had been following a couple of yards behind her, and there was just enough light to see that the back of her skirt had been dipped in the pond and was clinging to the outline of her hips and her behind. With nothing else particularly interesting to look at as I followed her, deep in some mindless trance, I gazed at the feminine sway of her rear as she stepped lightly along the uneven track. I began to feel an unfamiliar stirring in the pit of my stomach, or possibly a bit lower. She stopped at a clearing a few yards from her cottage. Through a window, I could see part of a large four-poster bed, some clothes draped over one of the posts. Around me, the trees had been cleared to leave a circle about twenty yards across in the middle of the forest, outside her bedroom window. She led me over towards the middle of the circle. She cast about for a few moments, as if seeking the exact centre, then she drew her dagger, closed her eyes, muttered something and let it drop to the ground. It stuck in the soft earth, point first. She glanced down, noted where it had hit, pulled it out and dug her heel into the spot a couple of times. With each stroke, as she dug deeper, my fear increased. When she had gouged out a pit about a foot across, she stepped back and nodded with satisfaction. She turned to face me and a cold shock ran through me. `Jermayn,' she murmured, `come here. Kneel down.' I did so, my knees trembling with barely suppressed rebellion. She kneeled with me, and took my hands in hers. She gazed into my eyes, smiled warmly, and some of my fear evaporated. She put one arm around my neck, drew me closer and kissed me. This was the first time that I'd been close to a girl; I'd always wondered what the fascination was... I found that I could move my arms, so I held her to me and returned the kiss. That strange feeling which was centered around my groin intensified as she rubbed her free hand down my stomach and between my legs. My breathing grew deeper as she undid the front of my pants and grasped my penis in her fist. When her lips weren't pressed against mine, she was whispering in some strange language that had a lot of words like `achad' and `khad'ulu'; I began to feel very strange, in that my breathing seemed to be slowing down, and yet as her hand moved slowly but insistently, there was a nervous warmth in the pit of my stomach that was slowly growing more intense. Then, I felt a pressure building up within me, which grew stronger as she pressed her lips against mine and squeezed me in her fist. My eyes opened wide in panic as she forced my erection downwards, rubbing her hand up and down my shaft rapidly, forcing her tongue between my lips. She seemed to be tracing some sort of pattern on my tongue with hers. I felt a sudden flow of warmth to my groin, the muscles along my back and around my buttocks contracted sharply, and the warmth seemed to rush out of me. A slow shock-wave of pleasure surged up my insides, bringing a hot flush to my face, and my vision blurred. Despite my paralysis, I managed to gasp with the sensation. Anya held my erection pointed downwards, into the hole. After a few moments, she released her hold on me and stood up. `Very good, Jermayn. Now, stand up.' I felt dizzy and somewhat drained, but with her help, I staggered upright. I stumbled, and put one bare foot in the hole. A spasm of agony shot up my leg, like cramp, and I cried out. She released me, and I would have fallen back, but my foot was firmly fixed in the hole and my leg had stiffened. It turned numb, and the pain shot down my other leg and up through my stomach at the same time. I don't mind admitting that I screamed then; the pain was terrible. She suddenly took my hands and drew my arms up. The pain shot up between my shoulders and seemed to pierce the top of my skull. I saw my splayed-out fingers suddenly turn dark brown. As my shoulders stiffened and turned numb, I managed to face forwards again, to see a branch grow from my chest and poke up, mimicking my arms. My head was forced back, my vision dimmed and I lost all feeling. I regained a sort of consciousness later. I couldn't tell how long it had been. I was able to sense everything around me in a dim fashion; it was strange to be able to see in all directions at once. The numbness (and, thank the gods, the pain also) had faded, and now I had a vague sense of my own position. My arms had thickened, my fingers had grown longer, and in some horrible fashion, my head had become two bifurcated branches. It was a bit like leaning to one side - except I felt that I was leaning to both sides at once. A soft breeze blew through my leaves. I could sense the sun rising behind me and to the left, and I began my first twelve-hour-long inhalation. A few days later, she emerged from her cottage. I could sense her vaguely, even hear and understand her when she spoke to me. I got an impression that she had some glittering metal implements in her hands. Then, I felt a sharp pain down between where my legs used to be, as she hacked away at the branch that grew from where my erection had been. She carved the branch and filed it with a flat piece of sandstone, until she had fashioned it into a smooth protruberance with a rounded end. Although the rest of the details were blurred, I plainly saw her crooked grin as she hung onto the branch that grew from my chest and then slowly lowered herself. Repeatedly. She visits me every few days, knowing full well that I can't feel much. I can hear her gasps and moans, even sense the way she shudders as she hangs onto my branch. I'd ignore her altogether, but... it's so damned boring, being a tree. ----------------------------- Phoenix Modernz Systems: 732/xxx-DEAD! BBS's are DEAD, do you hear me?!? However... www.etext.org/Zines/ASCII/ThereAintNoJustice or... members.bellatlantic.net/~talmeta/ (official homepage of TANJ etc.) TANJ Lives! (for today, anyway...)