However, something to her left felt soothing, like a fire crackling warm and yellow and fragrant on the hearth. She followed it, uphill, and the snow grew both harder and shallower as she climbed. Soon she was only ankle deep again, and her breathing calmed.
She saw him. No mistaking that huge old tree with the lightning scar spiraling down from its highest branches to the earth. He stood on the crown of a small hill, and the sun and wind had opened bare ground at his roots. Jo brushed the lingering ice from her jeans.
Father Oak. She'd just shaken her head at Maureen for years, the voices of schizophrenia and her claim that God lived in everything. That even trees had souls, and voices that could speak if you just sat still enough and listened.
She clumped up to the tree, leaned on it while she pulled off her left boot and emptied it of melting slush, then did the same thing for her right. Then she squatted down on a gnarled root that somebody's butt had worn smooth through years of contact. Maureen's most likely, although other people might have worshipped at the same shrine.
The trunk felt warm against her back, warm and strong and thick-barked against troubles. The sun warmed her face, as well, and she left her jacket open to the gentle breeze. Maine weather, you could sometimes change seasons just by walking fifty yards.
"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been twenty years since my last confession."
Silence answered her.
"You're supposed to ask for my confession."
Father Oak waited.
"Right. You're a Druid, if you're anything. Not a Catholic priest."
Jo chewed on her guilt. "Well, I'm going to dump it on you anyway. I'm a bitch. The world hurt me, so I hurt David. I wanted to hurt him. It felt good. Then it felt shitty."
She stared off into the trees. "And I'm going to do it again. I don't have an off-switch on my temper. Just like that stupid popcorn maker we bought -- plug it in, and it's on. I tried to unplug by leaving Maureen's forest, and that didn't work."
{Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.}
She couldn't tell if that was the tree speaking, or her memories of Sunday school. How did those gentle words turn into dogma that justified the rack and the stake? And why would Father Oak trigger memories of old gray smile-wrinkled Sister Anne sitting in a basement classroom of Saint John's?
Jo pulled out the crucifix she wore around her neck, ran her fingers over the body tortured there, and wondered. It meant so many different things to so many different people. She wore it mainly because it had been a gift from Grandfather O'Brian -- he'd given one just like it to Maureen. It obviously hadn't meant the same thing to him that it did to Mom.
He'd found warmth and strength and friendship in his religion and his God, not fear. But then, the old man hadn't paid much attention to Saint Paul or the Apocalypse. Grandpa's religion centered more on the Christ who had made sure that a wedding party didn't run out of wine and that everyone at his sermons got enough to eat.
Grandfather O'Brian and his daughter, such a contrast. Grannie hadn't been that hard-shelled, either, what Jo could remember of her. So something else had happened to Mom. Now Jo had a glimmer of just what that was. Something had scared the shit out of Mom, once upon a time, and she'd fallen into the same power that grabbed Jo when she was scared or angry and turned her into some kind of avenging Fury. And that had frightened Mom even more. She'd chained it with her rosary and walled it off inside a barred iron cell of denial and damnation.
And then there was Dad. If you're already in Hell, it's pretty easy to believe in the place.
Jo closed her eyes and relaxed, soaking up the peace and warmth and strength that surrounded Maureen's oak. She fingered the crucifix again, transported back to Sister Anne's class and acceptance. "Our Father, who --"
A drip splashed on her nose, intruding. She blinked, and then blinked again. The forest lay shadowed around her, late evening, and a gentle rain pattered down through green leaves.
Green leaves.
"What the fuck!"
She staggered to her feet, stiff from sitting, seeing the whole world at a tilt. She grabbed the tree behind her to find her balance, and her hands fell on a scarred welt of bark healing a wound. The lightning strike. This was the same tree, in a different forest.
{My roots drink the waters of many worlds. God wears many faces. Look behind the mask to find out if what you see is God, or something else.}
Things moved between the trees in front of her, a gray shadow and a black, and then she stood in Carlysle Woods again, leaning on the old oak and shaking. She pressed her forehead against the rough bark, welcoming the way its edges bit into her skin. It felt solid. It felt real.
The magic was growing, transforming like some insect larva inside her that would split its husk and emerge as something different. Goddamn Maureen's naturalist images, it'd be a help to know if this was a butterfly or some kind of parasitic wasp.
Jo was sure that glimpse had shown her Maureen's forest. She'd felt her sister somewhere near -- nearby and in a dangerous temper. Jo had booted her back to the Summer Country -- nothing the kid could do to help Mom. And she had enough troubles of her own.
The boundaries wore thin. Now Jo could move from
