*

It was well past sunrise by the time they picked up the trail and Soren Pickett had been asleep in the saddle when they did. It was her father who’d spotted the tracks of her brothers mare. They followed to where the creature was grazing by an ancient hickory tree. Soren's grandma, her father's mother, called the trees Carya's and insisted she do the same. She died last summer. It wasn't Soren's first brush with the concept but it had still felt like a first. Her father whistled quietly in her direction and Soren sat up in the saddle with a sharp intake of breath. Her brothers colt hadn’t slept in the storm. The way its eyes darted about, Soren knew it had seen something it shouldn’t have. She hadn’t thought much of her brother’s disappearance until that moment.

“He probably went off with that Wilkins girl. Made a detour on the way home I’ll bet.” she had grumbling under her breathe.

She was supposed to be up early today. It was Serastiday, second longest day of the week and usually a day of hard labor. Yet today, she… She must have slept late without anyone waking her. Though if she thought about it, she couldn’t actually remember waking up. As if conjured by the thought; memories of her mother's shouts, “Looouis! Loooooouis!!” came to the forefront of her Languid mind. Something about the voice snapped her into awareness of the dream she was in. With the realization, she thought she'd have more control over her dream. Instead, like whisper not quite heard, she forgot her dream again. A passive sense of Déjà vu permeated her but her perception focused on the horse hair in front of her. She was on a saddle, riding out from the old Carya tree not far from the south gate.

Her brother left days ago and was supposed to return last night. She knew she had slept restlessly by the odd weight under her eyes. She could remember dreaming of strange oceans of rainbow black oil, then fire. It was hard to remember, she thought she might have fallen into the oil. She remembered looking up and seeing the warm licking flames. It was all jumbled and foggy when she thought of it now though. Soren usually remembered her dreams very well. She tried to remember again, had there had been a strange film on her skin? Now her skin felt as it always did, dry and callused like leather. Her memories and ‘now’ seemed to be enmeshed in ‘then’.

Now she was following her father to the stables, now riding towards the southern gate, towards the old Hickory tree. She couldn’t remember saddling her gaunt pony but there she was, saddled up. Now she was following her father out past the small apple orchard in between the barn and southern gate. The trees looked as haggard as everything else but a few orange apples still hung on a few branches. Being a Shamash year, the trees should have been weighted down with bright orange apples for harvest. Now, the desiccated branches barely held twenty fruits between them. She picked what few of the mealy things she could find as they rode past. Her father’s black Friesian led them them along in the morning lights. As they approached the old Carya tree Soren looked back. Her two interlocking shadows looked like some terrible spider. The twin lights of the suns doubling the number of limbs. She looked up at the old Carya, having dismounted at some point. The old tree rested just on the other end of the main fence. Soren’s spotted pony was contentedly nibbling the dry grass under what shade the ancient tree provided.

It was a bright hot day right from the beginning. The sky blistered with citreous intensity of disproportionate fervor. The siren calls of the cicada-wasps mantra soon turned the midday electric. The insects undulating sound only added to the oppressive heat. The two sensations mixed with the open landscape to become claustrophobic and muted. The day smelled of horse and sweat and damp leather to Soren.

It smelled of fear and exhaustion to Dolor Pickett. Somehow, Soren felt her fathers memories swell with the scent. There was something else in the air he couldn’t quite distinguish as they wrangled Louis' exhausted and wild mare. When they found the horse, Soren couldn't quite remember. Holding a taut rope and watching the chaotic scene in front of her, she was suddenly distracted by a flash of terror in her father’s eyes. Lightning fast he turned from Louis’ mare to face her,

“Take that horse and get back to the house Soren Pickett, double quick.” He said letting go of his rope. Why had he let go of his rope, she couldn't wrangle Louis' mare on her own.

“Papa?”

“Right now young lady.”

“Papa.”

“I said now!”

“Papa!” She pointed behind her father to the ridge off less than two hundred yards away. It looked like a line of bumps or an ancient wall. Yet, in all the years the Pickett family had owned that land, no wall ever stood there. In fact, nothing ever broke that land save a stray dire-cayote or the occasional traveler from the far north or west. He turned and stared, dumbfounded.

“This… this cannot be!” he said in a half whisper. Soren had already swung her horse towards the nearest and largest mound in the broken line.

“Soren No!” he said in a tone that usually shocked Soren into obedience. Yet she rode on anyway feeling somehow detached from her father, or consequence. Dolor Pickett followed close behind, Louis' mare completely forgotten. His curses were lost to the wind and heat and cicada-wasp calls. Soren reached the largest of the mounds and stopped abruptly, her father pulled up short just behind her. She turned to him, Louis' mare had disappeared into the painted surroundings. Her mind ignored the discrepancy, turning around to face one of the largest mounds in the unending row of varying sized swells.

It was at least twenty feet high though too broad to cast a shadow. The dirt was soft, as if someone had sifted it lightly down. It reminded Soren of the way her mother made bread with flour yet, no bread nor any sign of life dwelt near those mounds. Now she thought of it, she no longer heard the cicada-wasps or soft chirping of birds or anything save the wind. Though the air smelled fresh and moist, something was repulsive about it. It was a scent Soren didn't immediately recognize though Dolor knew all too well.

She dismounted her pony, feeling a strange alacrity to her body that was not her own. Before she realized what she was doing, Soren reached into the soft and foreign soil. She faintly heard her father yelling for her to stop, somewhere far behind her. Yet the soil pulsed with energy, it was impossible not to touch the mound. She gently poked a finger into the soil. It was soft all the way through like freshly fallen snow. No clumps or rocks or even sand, just fine soft dirt, light as a feather.

Sometime later, Soren realized her father was hunched next to her. He was feeling the soil too and Soren saw something in his eyes, fear? She couldn’t be certain. Though their lassitude was palpable, they began digging and kicking at the soil with their hands and feet. They were puppets on strings now, soon neck high in the finest soil either had ever seen. Sweat and pure dirt streaked both their faces and unbidden thoughts swam through their minds. Moving what should be about fifty pounds of soil with a sweep of her hand, Soren's perception stretched, a moment in time pulled like soft taffy. She saw her father try to make the same sweeping motion. As he did, his forearm struck something hard. It cut into his arm and Soren saw it stick a little when he pulled it back out. The puncture was deep. It bled profusely mixing with the dirt and immediately Dolor felt wrong. His mind snapping back as if he had been slapped awake.

Buried in the mound was one of Soren’s favorite climbing trees. It was an old Elephant Tree older than her grandmother had been. She came to it often and whenever she played in its branches, the lemon-pine aroma of its sap would stick to her all day. Yet the sight of it here was so incongruent. She couldn’t place what it was at first. That Elephant Tree was on the other side of their property, easily eighty miles from where they were now. Dolor Pickett looked at his forearm, it was deep but not as long or jagged as he'd have expected. Though it was serious enough to send a steady stream of blood into the unnatural soil. That was not what had him worried though. As he wiped the dirt from his forearm with his shirt, the dirt and blood mixed and became something entirely different than mud or blood. It turned to something too sticky to be blood and too fragrant to be dirt. The pain was already gone and as he looked down where the drops of blood had fallen on the soil. The shoots of small, blood red seedlings sprouted as he watched.

“You ok, Papa?” Soren asked. His back was still turned and she couldn’t see the startling scene before his eyes. Still, she knew something was wrong. Whatever spell these mounds had cast on the two of them was gone now. Dolor couldn’t for the life of him remember why he had been digging in the soil in the first place.

“Fine Soren, just fine.” He said looking down at his forearm.

“You go back home now, go tell your mother ‘bout all this.” He said gesturing to the unbroken line of mounds in both directions. He stepped on the plants at the same time, before his daughter saw.

“But I wanna help.” She protested.

“You are helping, we need water an’ food an’ some shovels to dig up whatever is buried ‘round here.” His eyes were shadowed and she couldn’t see them, yet his smile was as reassuring as it always was. He hid his forearm behind his back as he turned to her. Soren's perception of watching him from above saw the cut on his forearm. That perception had seen the seedlings sprouting from his blood and saw now as her father tried to hide it all from her. The Soren standing in front of her father noticed nothing and was already processing the trek back to the house. They both looked at him pointedly for a moment before she mounted her horse.

“Do not forget those shovels!” Dolor said with forced nonchalance to her back. Soren didn’t look back as she replied.

“Kay!” she nudged her pony and it kicked up small mounds of dust as she disappeared into the orange haze of horizon.

Soren Pickett rode hard and fast, small globs of dust lingering where her pony galloped on the dry and brittle dirt beyond the mounds. Then she was home. It hadn’t taken long enough, how had she reached her home already? Soren pushed the thought aside as she raced inside without tying up her horse. Now she couldn’t remember any of the actual ride. She was next to her father one moment, then galloping up to her house the next. Bursting the door open, she destroyed an uneasy tranquility that had fallen over her mother and the house.

“Mama! Papa got hurt, he’s bleeding some, we need shovels and food and probably some bandages or somethin’.” She said in a deadpan tone.

“Where is Papa?”

“Over out by the mounds we found.” She said through bites of biscuit her mother had just taken out of the oven.

“Mama, we need shovels.”

“What mounds? Soren Pickett you are filthy get outside. And how hurt is he?”

“He got cut on his arm, he’s ok though. But mama, the mounds! The mounds that showed up last night!” She replied with another mouthful of biscuit.

“Did you find Louis?” Soren’s mother asked in an odd tone,

“Uh, not yet. Mama we need shovels.” Soren didn’t see the blank expression come over her mother’s face.

“The shovels are in the barn, go pack them up and I’ll make lunch.” She said,

“Thanks mama!” she said running out the front door, half a biscuit between her teeth.

Soren found one of the shovels almost immediately, hanging next to an old rotted yoke and some rusted band saws. The other one had taken some time. She finally found the small portable shovel. It had the look of military proficiency and when collapsed it was easy to carry. The shovel was very old and painted green, the rusted out metal pieces nearly useless. The wood had begun to wear away along the handle with long hours of use and sweat. The paint there was so worn it was difficult to imagine it had ever been a uniform color. She packed the shovels behind her saddle and mounted to meet her mother in the front of the house.

“Here take this for your father, he’ll be thirsty.” Soren’s mother said, handing her a large water skin. Then she handed her the pack, it was her brother’s old pack. A thing of supple leather, dark tan from rain and weathered use. Inside were bandages, a salve, biscuits, apples, hunks of dried fruit and sunflower seeds salted with the dusty salt that came from a failed well and a small pocket knife her brother kept in the bag for emergencies.

“You two come straight home as soon as you find your brother or the suns set whichever comes first.”

“Ok mama.”

“I expect you two back by dinner.”

“yes, Mama.”

“no adventures, its already too late.”

“Yes, Mama!” Soren said this last part as she pulled her reigns and set her pony back towards the mounds in a frenzied gallop. As she left she heard her mother yell,

“And be safe!”

It felt like hours and also no time at all before she finally got back, it was still midday and the suns were still hot as and the cicadas-wasps were as loud as ever, how long had it been midday? She thought. Again, she couldn’t actually remember traveling the distance and soon realized she couldn’t find her father either. She followed the mounds in one direction for what must have been hours yet the suns never shifted in the sky. Eventually she got scared and rode back the other direction. When she finally decided to turn around the large mound where her father had cut himself was right behind her. She stopped and got off her horse. Soren uncorked the water skin and took a long pull from it. The moment seemed to go on and on. As she craned her neck back, she noticed the tree suddenly behind her. She paused and watched longingly at the suns sparkling through the light green that hadn't been there only a moment ago.

Soren whipped her head back, recognition of the tree flooding her mind. There had been no tree, how had she missed it? She thought. Soren looked around. Against the other end of the large mound, a new Elephant Tree was growing not far from where the old one had been buried. She knew her father would be resting under its shade. Approaching the canopy, she looked around a smile on her face. Then she saw it and her stomach lurched. She dropped to her knees and felt bile rise from her stomach. She felt herself vomit biscuit and water yet couldn’t recognize herself actually doing it. Soren had found her father, almost exactly where she thought she would find him. Instead of reclining against the tree however, she was now staring into the dark eyes of what could almost be a strange carving of her father. Soren knew this was no carving.

He was the tree, so life-like no one could have carved it. The tree seemed to have grown the face of her father. His hands rested at his sides becoming roots into the ground. His legs and feet deep underground were now searching tirelessly for water. From his head sprouted life, green and rich and it towered over Soren. She began to cry as she looked into her father’s eyes, once the color of sky now the green hue of young wood.

“Papa!” she screamed, and cried the harder for it, wrapping her skinny arms around the wooden waist of her father. She hardly reached a quarter the way around the massive trunk.

“Soren” was all the reply she heard, even that was barely the whisper of wind through new leaves. Still, the happiness in his voice was something Soren Pickett could neither understand nor get out of her mind.

“papa.” Was all Soren could reply, low and quiet and full of grief. She let go of her father and stepped back. She was covered in sticky sap. It was fragrant and clean and smelled like the old Elephant Tree and sage. Her father spoke, barely moving the pieces of bark that used to be lips,

“take… it…” was all he could manage. Soren looked down through tears and watched as two rather large roots parted. A small gem rose among the myriad tiny vines right where her father’s chest would have been. Suddenly, foreign inclinations came over Soren. A force she didn’t recognize pushed in her mind with uncomfortable pressure, directing her. Soren watched as her hand grabbed at the light with uncanny speed, anticipating it. The speed of her hands startled her, and if there had been a flash of uncertainty in her fathers’ eyes, Soren had not seen it. As her hand clasped the gem, she immediately realized it was much too light to be a gem of the earth. This stone was a gem of waking life and dreams mixed together, Something more and somehow less tangible than any other gem.

This was Ochre. Soren had heard stories of it. Her mother said it had belonged to The Dream-Walkers who used them to travel great distances. Of the Dream-Walkers though, there were precious few stories. She remembered one, an ancient story of strong dreamers who connected the dream world and the real world around them.

“Papa,” she whispered again. But he was weeping, his face unmistakable and unmoving, the look of a father’s happiness. It was the look of a father watching his daughter and it became permanently engrained in the tree’s bark. She pushed tears from her own eyes and sap from her fathers and the two mixed on her fingertips and on the gem as she touched the stone in her hands. She shoved the thing in her pocket and kissed the Elephant tree, its face slowly turning from happiness to sleep. Restfulness flourished on that wooden face, and remained forever.

She stayed there for a long time, on her knees clutching the weightless gem in her pocket with one hand, the other resting on her father. She let soft tears roll from her and into the soft soil. The tree seemed to breath each time her tears fell and she hadn’t noticed the way the tree swayed with each drop. It was the quiet rustling that finally drew her up. It was too measured, too synced with her own waves of grief. When she opened her eyes, she was in the dark shade of a council grove.

The world was dark green and shadowed by the eternal emerald night. Her father had grown around her in a near full circle with a hallowed glade in the center and a narrow entry way to the north. High above, the trees rounded leaves glistened like jade with the hint of blood on the tips. The wind blew and was cool and lemony laced on her sticky skin. She listened to the wind and time fell softly for Soren Pickett. When at last she stood, she knew she was no longer alone with her father. Her resolve suddenly fell as she saw her mother standing at the entrance of the grove.

“I…” was all Soren could get out. Her mother looked perfect measures anguish, pride, fear and wonder and Soren had trouble looking at her. She turned once to the engrained face of her sleeping husband then quickly away as if it couldn’t possibly be the man she’d married, the man she’d known and loved for nineteen years.

“Soren, get away from there.” she barely whispered. Her daughter obeyed implicitly, before realizing what she was doing. As if she too wanted to believe the wooden beast next to her was some dangerous double of her father, not the real thing. Though she knew it was him, was what used to be him at least. Soren stopped halfway between her mother and father and the tree stood silent, not a single leaf rustling. Their daughter held the piece of ochre in her hand, the warm glow of it pulsating to her own thumping heart, quick and desperate. She clasped the gem in front of her, cheeks streaked with dirt and tears and sap. The waves of grief and despair fell over her again, one after another without end.

She looked to her mother and suddenly watched with horror as her mother burst into flames. Soren heard herself screaming. As her mother ran past, Soren could feel the heat emanating from her. Soren’s mother-flame embraced her father-tree, instantly enveloping the entire grove in flame. Flames licked all around her as Soren backed up away from the sight of her mother and father. Backing up a bit too fast she tripped on her own feet, and fell backwards. Instead of hard ground however, she fell into an inky blackness with a splash. It felt oily on her skin as she sank and she looked up to white, orange and red lights dancing above her.

She watched the conflagration above her and the circle of fire spread out to all corners of her periphery. As she closed her eyes, Soren suddenly became aware she was holding her breath. Now that she was aware of it she was unable to hold it. She opened her mouth and reflexively tried to breath in the black oil. She immediately felt the soft warm fluid fill her lungs. She choked and coughed sure she was about to drown in a lake of flames and oil. Then, just as suddenly the coughing fit finally force her from her sleep. Her eyes snapped open in terror as she choked, coughing in desperation. Slowly the morning light around her bedroom began to focus. When she had finally caught her breath, and opened her eyes, Soren flopped back onto her sweat-soaked bed and allowed sweet relief to wash over her.

*