Codex Born

20

I often wonder what became of my first oak, whether it yet survives in the woods outside of Mason, or if it succumbed to old age or one of the winter ice storms. Or those woods might have been bulldozed years ago, paved and transformed into another subdivision with spindly maples and anorexic pines in place of the majestic trees that once grew there.

I’ve never had any desire to revisit that part of my past. It feels morbid, like visiting your own grave.

I know my fallen oak at Nidhi’s house was taken by a lumber company, but I never learned what they did with it. Perhaps it was mulched for wood chips to spread beneath playground equipment or to landscape someone’s yard. I prefer to believe it was dissected into usable timber, that my tree went on to become something beautiful. Bookshelves, perhaps. A comfortable chair. A bedframe.

In C. S. Lewis’ book The Magician’s Nephew, Digory planted the core of a magical apple from Narnia, and the seeds grew into a wondrous tree. When the tree blew down in a storm years later, he had its wood fashioned into a wardrobe, the same wardrobe that transported four children to a magical world a generation later.

What power might my trees possess once I leave them behind? What magic could one pull from shelves made of my oak? Where might a door built of my former body lead?

None of my acorns ever gave birth to another dryad. I don’t know why. It was an acorn from my own book that created me. Most of the time, I consider this sterility a blessing. The last thing I wanted was to bring forth an entire race of slaves. Fortunately, by the time I was aware enough to worry about such a possibility, it had become clear that my own seeds could produce nothing but ordinary saplings.

But what about my human body? Could this flesh become pregnant? I never had with Frank, and with Nidhi, it hadn’t been an issue. But if my lover wanted a child, and my body responded to his desires…

What would a human/dryad baby become? Strong and powerful? Beautiful and pliant?

Would she be free?

I often wonder.

QUESTIONS AND HALF-FORMED PLANS clamored in my head like a basket of hyperactive puppies. How had Deifilia and her followers escaped the mine without Gutenberg noticing? How many more of Bi Sheng’s students had she created, and were they protected by the books I had made? How had they entered Copper River unseen?

There were countless weapons we could use. I could fly in and drop a fairy bio-bomb from Artemis Fowl. Or let Gutenberg unlock the D&D handbook, and see how Deifilia liked playing catch with a sphere of annihilation. Assuming they didn’t simply absorb the magic of our attack and dissolve our weapons into nothingness.

“Lawrence, Whitney, what books do you have?” I hadn’t stocked up for a direct assault on Deifilia.

“Isaac…” Toni began.

“Thirty minutes,” I promised. “One way or another, you’ll know.”

It was an older fairy-tale-style romance that offered what I thought was my best chance at walking away from a confrontation with Deifilia. When I told Lawrence what I wanted, he looked past me to Toni, as if asking for permission.

“You’re sure about this?” Toni asked.

“Not in the slightest. But people are dying.” I waited for Lawrence to reach into the book. “Tell Pallas to evacuate the town.”

Toni folded her arms. “She’ll want to know why.”

“I know. Tell her I’m doing something stupid again.” I returned to the car and waited while Lena and Nidhi said their good-byes.

“What about megaspider over there?” Whitney asked.

Smudge scurried toward us. Whitney, Lawrence, and Toni jumped back as he placed his front legs on the bumper, as if he wanted nothing more than to climb up onto the Triumph and become the world’s first road-surfing spider.

“I don’t think so, partner,” I said. “Would one of you mind pulling the White Rabbit’s fan out of Wonderland and shrinking him back down to his travel-size?”

Once Smudge was back to normal and sitting—rather sullenly, if you asked me—on the dashboard, Nidhi and Lena ended their kiss. Nidhi stepped back.

“Isaac…”

“I know.” I glanced at Lena, who was slumped in the seat, her eyes closed. She held the branch from her tree across her chest. “I’ll keep her safe.”

Before, I had been too intent on staying ahead of our pursuers to truly see the damage Deifilia’s creatures had done. Driving back through town, I noticed everything. The playground behind the tennis court looked like a tornado had touched down. Whatever had come through here had ripped chain-link fence like cobwebs.

Sirens wailed from every direction. Twice we had to backtrack because police cars blocked the roads. Dogs were howling from their yards. Others sprinted through the streets in a panic. We passed a pair of EMTs assisting a man covered in blood. A half mile farther on, the mining museum was on fire. I slowed the car.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Lena. “You’re in no shape to help.”

“I’ve got two books in this car that could give me enough elemental control to—”

“They’ve got a fully equipped fire engine. Let them do their job. If you overdo it, you’re likely to make things worse.”

I tightened my fingers on the wheel and kept driving.

“What’s in that vial Lawrence made for you?”

I started to answer, then hit the brakes as a wendigo staggered out of McDonald’s. Its stomach bulged like an overstuffed sack. Before I could grab my shock-gun, a blue Harley-Davidson sped at the wendigo from the opposite direction. The driver appeared human, but the woman in the sidecar was in the hybrid form some weres could take, all muscle and fur and teeth, but still humanoid. She jumped out of the sidecar and tackled the wendigo while the driver pulled onto the sidewalk and grabbed an aluminum bat.

“Don’t kill it,” I shouted.

“Easy for you to say.”

It was anything but easy. The wendigo had fed recently. I suppose it could have stuffed itself on Big Macs and fries, but I doubted it.

“The vial?” Lena asked again as I turned into the drive-through to get past the fight. Wendigos were slower when sated, and the werewolves appeared to have things under control.

“The Porter database catalogs it as Love Potion 163-F. It’s fast-acting, works on contact, and lasts for up to ten years.”

She pushed herself up in her seat. When she spoke, she didn’t bother to disguise her anger. “One dryad isn’t enough for you?”

“You know I don’t want Deifilia for myself. I want to stop her. If we fight her head-on, she’ll crush us. But if I can create more of a conflict inside her, split her loyalty long enough for Bi Wei and the others to act, we might have a chance. We might even be able to save her.”

“Save her?” Lena repeated softly. “With the magical equivalent of a date rape drug?”

“I wouldn’t—”

“I know. That doesn’t make it right.”

I couldn’t argue. I had racked my brain for another way to stop Deifilia and resolve this mess. But even if I could have risked using my own magic, it never would have worked. Lena and I would have to fight through wendigos and metal beasts while the students of Bi Sheng countered my every spell.

“163-F has an antidote. If we can capture her alive, we can reverse its effects. I’m open to other suggestions, but people are dying, Lena.”

“I know,” she said again.

“The trick is getting it to her. She’s going to make sure we leave any potential weapons behind. No books, no swords, and nothing magical. But she’s new to our world, and there are things she might not recognize as weapons. One of those old prank calculators that’s actually a squirt gun, or maybe—”

“You think your love will be enough to overpower the Ghost Army’s wishes?”

“I only have to distract her, to create enough of a conflict for us to act.”

She took the test tube from my hand and carefully locked it away in the glove box. “I’ll do it.”

“You’ll do what?”

“The same thing I did to you in the library,” she whispered.

“How is that better than my so-called magic date rape drug?”

“It’s not.” She straightened. “But Deifilia is family. A sister. She’s my responsibility. If anyone does this to her, it will be me. Not a human.”

“And what if she turns that power back on you?”

Lena managed a smile. “One way or another, you’ll have your distraction.”

I hadn’t liked my original plan. I liked this one even less. It was one thing for me to try to enchant Deifilia, and to risk whatever backlash might come if my plan failed. It was my research that had started all of this, after all. But if Lena failed, she would take the brunt of Deifilia’s punishment.

I turned onto my street, and a metal eagle swooped down to land on the top of the windshield, talons grating against the crystal. I slammed the brakes, stalling out the engine. Smudge lit up like a flare.

“That’s why you didn’t get to stay supersized,” I said as I waited for my heart to recover. “You’d have set the whole car on fire.” I nodded to the eagle. “We’re alone.”

The eagle spread rust-edged wings and gave an ear-stabbing shriek. Tiny, layered scales of sheet metal served as feathers. The edges were irregularly cut.

“I have the books.” I restarted the engine and edged the car forward. The eagle didn’t appear to object, though it watched me closely with eyes made of iron pellets. I was more fixated on the damage Deifilia had done.

I lived on the edge of Copper River, in a moderately wooded area. Deifilia had turned the trees against my neighbors. Using oak and maple as giant clubs, she had smashed rooftops and fences, flattened cars, and ripped through power lines. My house was the only one undisturbed. Deifilia had put the trees behind my house to another use.

I couldn’t decide whether to call it a grove or a fortress. Oak trees had sprung up in a rough circle throughout the backyard. Branches wove together to create a fence of living wood. The trees were a good forty feet higher than any others, and the smallest was three feet in diameter.

Wendigos watched us from the upper branches. Metal glinted among the bark and leaves. I saw no sign of Deifilia or her human followers. Presumably they were inside the grove.

“That’s impressive,” I said. “Terrifying, but impressive. Of course, now all the neighbors are going to want one.”

We stopped in the driveway and climbed slowly from the car. The moment Lena’s foot touched the grass, she froze. “It’s all one tree. Isaac, this is my oak, and Deifilia is inside of it.”

On another day, I would have come up with something better to say than, “Wow.” Not only had Deifilia created a grove of cloned oak trees, she had done it in less than an hour.

“Be careful,” said Lena. “Anywhere the roots or branches touch, she can strike. The roots will encircle and break your legs, or drag you into the ground until you suffocate. Or maybe they’ll just sprout spikes and impale you.”

“Making Deifilia into Sleeping Beauty and the enchanted hedge all in one. Perfect.”

A slender figure stepped out from between the trees, the branches bending aside to let her pass. Bi Wei gave no outward sign that she knew me, though we both knew Deifilia was aware of our earlier contact. “Leave the car and any weapons. Including your books.”

I stripped off my jacket, tucked my pistol into an inner pocket, and set it inside the car. Lena did the same with her bokken, but she kept the graft from her tree. She rested one end on the ground and leaned on it like a crutch. At this point, the branch was probably the only thing keeping her upright.

Bi Wei studied us both. A pair of metal grasshoppers nested in her hair. They could have been decorative, save for the way they rubbed their forelegs together as they watched us. Harrison’s millipede circled her throat. “You carry spells,” she said, stepping closer. Her fingers touched my temple. “Here. And another, deeper within.”

I tapped my head. “I have a fish in my brain. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It translates languages for me. Slimy and a bit gross putting it in, but it works well.”

For an instant, I saw amusement in her eyes, and something more: a libriomancer’s delight at discovering a new trick. But the emotions didn’t reach her voice. “What of the other spell?”

I had left the potion in the glove box, and I wasn’t carrying any other magic. Everything was locked in the car, my books, my jacket, even— “Smudge. I created him, and it’s my magic that helps to sustain him. He’s staying with the car.”

Bi Wei tilted her head, listening to sounds I couldn’t hear. “You’ve brought our books?”

If I said yes, they could kill us and rip the car apart to find them. They’d be pissed to discover the books weren’t there, but that would be little comfort, what with me being dead and all. “First I need to talk to Deifilia. She needs to leave Lena and Copper River in peace.”

She bowed slightly, then beckoned for us to follow.

“I like her,” Lena said. “She’s cute for her age.”

Each step we took whittled away at my confidence, and I hadn’t been terribly confident to begin with. Partly it was a matter of scale. From the street, the trees looked enormous. Here in their shade, with the roots turning the ground to hard lumps and coils of wood, it was like crossing into another world, a world in which Deifilia was creator and goddess. The trees muffled the sounds from outside. The canopy turned the sky green. Leaves swirled through the air, a gentle and deceptively peaceful effect.

Wendigos climbed lower, preparing to pounce. I tensed, but Bi Wei never slowed. These wendigos were fully transformed. The students of Bi Sheng must have found a way to complete the process. Flakes of ice drifted from their bodies like snow as they moved about.

The branches parted, and Bi Wei escorted us inside.

Nothing remained of Lena’s garden. Her oak stood in the center of a swamp of tree roots and fallen leaves, without a single flower or blade of grass to be seen. Lena’s central tree was unchanged, but dwarfed by the surrounding oaks.

A man and a woman stood in front of the central oak. I could feel the magic wafting from them, like heat rolling from an open furnace. Both wore loose silk tunics, but the embroidery didn’t appear to be Chinese. The necks were cut in a low V, revealing white undershirts. The man wore blue leather boots that rose just past the ankle. I’d have to check my books, but the fashion looked European. Not the wardrobe I would have expected from Bi Sheng’s followers.

Neither one showed any hint of sanity. They didn’t move at all. I didn’t think they were even breathing, and if they blinked, it was too quick for me to see. Their eyes were wide, their mouths parted as if to speak, though they never did.

“Their books were destroyed?” I guessed.

Bi Wei said nothing, but her back tightened.

The others Deifilia had restored were trapped within the roots, bound so tightly they could move only a finger here, a toe there. She hadn’t bothered to provide clothing, though little flesh could be seen through the gaps. I counted four more.

August Harrison was here as well, and he was awake. He sat, shirtless, at the base of Lena’s oak. A single root circled his neck. Judging from the bruises around his arms, he had been bound more tightly until recently.

Had I been a more petty man, I might have gloated. This was the man who had broken into my house, stolen my research, and used it to attack my town and the woman I loved.

On second thought, I had time for a little pettiness. “You see what happens when we steal other people’s magic toys and try to use them without knowing what we’re doing?”

He watched in silence as Lena and I stepped carefully over the outer edges of the roots. I stepped carefully, at any rate. Lena was barefoot, and strode as easily as a cat. Being here seemed to have restored some of her strength, though she still leaned on her branch for support, her fingers lost in the budding leaves.

“This is your doing,” Harrison said. “Victor’s death at the hands of creatures the Porters hid from the rest of us. The students of Bi Sheng, victims of Gutenberg’s war.”

“And this is your plan to make it better, eh?” I pretended to look around. “How’s that working for you?”

His face reddened, but before he could respond, the root around his neck pulsed. His fingers went to his throat, and then he settled back. He glared hatefully, not at us, but at the trunk of the oak, where Deifilia was emerging from the wood.

Harrison’s dryad had auburn hair, and her skin was a lighter tan than Lena’s, but she had come from the same mold. She was eerily familiar: short and plump and delightfully curved, like an assembly line doll painted by a different artist.

A sleeveless gown made of interwoven leaves clung to her skin like scales. Her legs were bare from the knees down. A wooden sword hung from her hip, though I saw nothing holding it in place. It could have been a part of that living dress. A smaller wooden knife clung to her opposite hip. Both had straight double-edged blades and heavy pommels.

She stepped toward Harrison and stroked her fingers through his hair. To Lena, she said, “You have something for me, sister?”

“I thought you loved him,” I said, nodding toward Harrison.

She smiled. “He’s a beautiful man. I owe him my existence.”

“What do your other lovers think of him?” Lena asked.

Her loving expression never changed. “She sees a pathetic, magically worthless worm of a man.”

“She?” I repeated. Jeneta had referred to a “she” when talking about the devourers in her dreams. “Does this other woman have a name?”

“You’ll learn her name soon enough,” she said lightly.

“How did you get out of the mine without Gutenberg seeing you?”

“You don’t understand.” She gestured to the two people standing like zombies. “Your Porters study magic, but they are magic. We flew through earth and stone as easily as air.”

“Cool.”

Lena’s toes dug into the roots. “It must be difficult, loving someone you can never touch.”

I searched for the glint of metal among the green of Deifilia’s dress. The leaves clung like a second skin. The cicada had to be on her, but where?

“She’s waited more than a thousand years,” said Deifilia. “I can wait, too.”

“You long for her, don’t you?” Lena stepped closer. “You hear her whispering to you, but a ghost isn’t enough. You want to feel her legs curling with yours, the sweat as your bodies tighten against each other.”

Deifilia didn’t answer, but I saw goose bumps on her skin.

I caught Bi Wei’s attention, wishing there were a way to communicate without Deifilia overhearing. She inclined her head ever so slightly. Doubtless she could feel Lena’s magic. I turned toward Deifilia’s two mindless guardians, both of whom were now watching Lena.

“I know what it’s like to feel alone.” Lena pointed to Harrison, then to me. “They would have us kill one another, the only other person who understands what it’s like. Who knows the strength and passion of the oak.”

“His wishes no longer matter,” Deifilia said.

“Can you imagine the things we could do together?” Lena whispered.

There was a question with more layers than I could count. Yet, on some level, I think she meant it. The longing in Lena’s words wasn’t sexual. Not just sexual, at least. She reminded me of myself years ago; the first time I met other Porters. The first time I truly understood that I wasn’t alone.

Deifilia’s answering desire was enough to flatten me. She spoke, but the drumbeat of my blood deafened me to her words. All I could see was the longing in her eyes.

Lena’s hand snapped out, catching my arm and stopping me from walking toward her, from pulling those leaves away one by one.

The touch of Lena’s hand both helped and made things worse. I clasped my fingers over hers, my mind careening into a new and utterly inappropriate fantasy involving my lover and the woman who would happily destroy everyone and everything I knew.

Lena bent my arm, wrenching me around behind her without ever breaking eye contact with Deifilia. With her free hand, she reached for the other dryad.

Just before Lena made contact, Deifilia realized what was happening. Her arm snapped up, striking Lena’s hand away. Lena spun with the impact and whirled around like a dancer to slam the back of her fist into Deifilia’s cheek.

“Oh, hell,” I muttered to myself. “All right, time for plan B.”