That's the heart of it. Way down deep, you're not afraid of the trees or the briars or even that damned dragon. You're afraid of Jo.
No couple ever lived in perfect harmony. Ever. David knew his parents hadn't. Married thirty years now, three kids, got along okay and seemed to love each other, but they had frictions. They had fights. Words were said and left hanging overnight, never taken back.
Jo's parents. Jo had talked, late at night and sleep in her voice, bits and pieces she usually kept hidden behind her face of strength, proof of how much pain there could be in words, never mind the fists and belt.
With Jo, words could kill.
Words and determination. If she ever got really mad at him, he'd be dead. Nothing stood between Jo and what she wanted. No muscles to speak of, but she was the strongest person he'd ever met.
{If the will exists, a way exists.}
Tell that to a Black kid in the ghetto. And yet, some of them broke free. Will and luck and the gifts of mind or body they inherited. Jo and Maureen had the gifts of the body, their Blood inherited from the Old Ones. Would his mind make a substitute, be a way?
He could feel the tree calling to him. His feet found the proper trail, clear against the falling snow.
{Come.}
If she ever got really mad at him, he'd be dead.
Coward. But what if she doesn't want me to follow her?
David stood on the trail, sweating as if he already walked the Summer Country instead of Maine woods in a spring snowstorm. As if he stood under that dragon's nose with nothing but words as a shield. A shield made of tissue paper. Thinner than tissue paper, thinner than thin air, against teeth and claws that would shred him in an instant.
Jo needed him. He hoped she needed him. He loved her.
"In the beginning was the Word." Words held power. "Workers of the world, unite." Words could shatter and kill, even without the Power of the Blood behind them. Words were the only weapon he had. The only way he had.
{If the will exists, a way exists.}
He stepped off the trail, sinking into the old snow under the fresh white veil. He followed blurring tracks that led straight, up over drifts and down into hollows and across gurgling water hidden deep underneath the snow, a promise of spring that even the storm couldn't kill. He felt Maureen's tree in front of him, her Father Oak, not warmth and not pressure and not music but some indescribable essence of strength and stability and protection. Even he could sense it. Even a human.
The tracks led to that strength. He barely noticed the cold snow packing down into his shoes and soaking his pants. Fat Christmas-card flakes hung in the air, gentle and windless, hazing the forest until a mound stood isolated in front of him and he climbed to the crest of it. The tree waited, huge and gnarled, looking as old as the hill on which it stood.
Jo wasn't there.
The tracks seemed fresh, barely melted, barely filled by the snow squall, less than a day old to his unpracticed eye, but they were empty. They came and stood and turned and led away again, and then they vanished. He'd missed her.
The tree didn't offer any words of wisdom. It just stood there, solid as the rock beneath his feet, and endured. Humans, even Old Ones, passed like ghosts through Father Oak's life. A flash of seasons, and they were gone. Dead.
Even Father Oak would die, somewhere down the centuries.
David wiped his palms again. He formed Jo's face in his eyes and smiled at her.
"Hair of fire and temper matching,
"Passion and clear eyes well wed.
"Witch blood drawing ever onward,
"Past obsidian armored head."
She sat huddled in a corner in a stone room, shivering. A half-empty goblet sat on the flagstone floor by her hand, red wine in exquisite cut crystal. She was crying. She needed him. He had to take the chance that she also wanted him. He drew a deep breath.
"To the forest, through the shadows,
"Came the warrior and the bard,
"Seeking heart-songs, seeking lovers,
"Drawn by need to face the guard."
The veil of snow lifted, showing leaves, showing branches green with spring, showing forest duff wet from recent rain.
Showing a dragon.
Obsidian scales, yellow slitted eyes, teeth longer than the span of his hand, great charcoal-gray feet with claws even longer and more evil than the teeth. Blood stained one forefoot, a stump of a missing claw. Battle was already joined.
David stared at the teeth, fascinated. He'd seen them in nightmares, seen them even in broad daylight on the mundane dirty streets of Naskeag Falls, his deepest terror. Sometimes he thought he'd seen them for years before he'd met Jo and followed her into dreams. Now he could stretch his hand out and touch them, smelled the reek of rotting flesh on them, and he didn't fear them. Calm settled over him.
{Sing, human. Sing your brief song and die.}
Chapter Twenty
Magic prickled Khe'sha's tongue with a form of Power he hadn't tasted since a different sun warmed his crest. He couldn't tell if it grew from the Tree or the chanted words or the land itself, but the flavor was nothing like an Old One's guile and hidden aims. This tasted clear and sharp and pure on his tongue, waking memories of the long old songs in deep dragon-voices and the Sages weaving words into sudden truth. Pan'gu might have sung like this.
The human stood under Khe'sha's nose and sang of cowardice. The dragon would have laughed, if it would not be such an insult to the song.
Words wove images of love and life-mates and despair, of duty and compulsion, of blood and pain and terror, of fate-forced battle against great odds. Images of Sha'khe's death in courage and beauty and honor. Pale and shaking, reeking of fear-sweat, unarmed, and yet the
