That left Father Oak. She knew where she stood with him. Strength and stability and refuge, firm-rooted and broad-limbed and he didn't fucking care if his worshipers were crazy drunken murderers. He knew how to handle magic.
Her hands still shook. Alcohol withdrawal, she guessed. That would explain the horse-drawn hearse, as well. Her own Freudian permutation on purple elephants or snakes and centipedes.
She wiped sweat from her palms, crunched the car back into gear, and chose a big gap in traffic before pulling back out into the spitting sleet. Maine weather, just as psychotic as she was.
Carlysle Woods, the parking lot, she jolted against a wheel-stop and sat for a moment, shaking, sweating, heart racing, still chilled. Who the hell was she staying sober for? Brian had left her. The forest didn't need her. Jo and David had fucking kicked her out. Mom and Dad were dead. That Bushmills would slide down real smooth right now. No, she didn't have a drinking problem. No trouble at all getting booze inside her belly.
The hazard blinkers still clicked on and off like a metronome. She'd left them running. Well, not a problem for driving slow in a storm. Besides, she was a hazard. Warn the world.
She shut the blinkers off, shut the engine off, listened to the rattle of sleet and the ticking of hot metal cooling. Father Oak waited, calm and strong. She could feel him already. He loaned her the strength to unlatch the sticky door and climb out, the caution to lock the car behind her, the serenity to stand and breathe deep and slow her racing heart. So Father Oak was God?
Well, it wouldn't be a new religion. If He fulfills the basic functional requirements, 'tis enough, 'twill serve. She was a heretic, finding God in everything. Been years since she felt the need to go to church to worship. Not to worship some remote white-bearded patriarch hiding behind Father Donovan and the Pope, accessible only through an intermediary. Her God lived in the soil beneath her feet and the air she breathed and in the heart of every rock and tree. "The Kingdom of God is within you."
The storm had switched to snow again, fat wet flakes like cotton balls. Wait ten minutes, and the sun would come out -- New England weather. She let it settle in her hair and splotch her cheeks with cold, mingling with the streaky tears, remembering that she could make it miss her. For an instant she was a child again, trying to catch snowflakes on her tongue.
The snow fell around her, flakes as big as chickadees, and the chickadees dodged around the flakes and chattered and didn't care. The forest didn't care. Snow was part of life. Death was part of life. Father Oak waited, strong and serene. He'd told her a hundred times, a thousand times, that evils like Daddy or Buddy Johnson held Power over her only because she'd granted it.
She turned her back on the shattered wreck of her nightmares and climbed over a snowbank to the trail. Turned her back on Naskeag Falls. Jo could have the house and whatever dust and cobwebs remained in Daddy's bank account. Maureen wasn't coming back again. That pile of sticks and mud had never been a home. Just like Dougal's castle wasn't home. Dougal and Daddy, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Lex talionis.
"Do onto others as you would have them do onto you."
{Your nightmares taught you how they wished to be treated.}
That was the problem with God, both the Old Testament and New Testament versions. Implacable old bastard, judge and jury and executioner.
Father Oak never used to speak so clearly. He'd been an enigma and an oracle, a sense of strength and guide to her own thoughts. Now he was growing into another of the schizophrenic voices.
She was going mad. Madder.
She walked a trail marked by champagne buckets filled with the winter's snow, chilling France's finest vintages. She blinked and they were gone, vanished back into the labyrinth of her mind. Bottles of Bushmills and Glenmorangie cradled in the crotches of the trees around her, calling out their seductive wiles. Retsina wafted its resinous tang to mix with the perfume of spruce and fir. Just wish and they'd be real.
Her hands shook as she wiped sweat off her brow and out of her eyes. The forest spun around her, trees tilting like the masts of a harbor full of sailboats bobbing in a heavy swell.
One thing stayed firm and vertical -- the power resting at the heart of her forest. Father Oak waited for her. Crazy or not, drunk or not, whether or not blood dripped from her hands and painted her face, Father Oak waited for her. He wouldn't run away from her like Brian. He wasn't afraid of her.
Warmth and strength enfolded her. Rough bark caressed the palms of her hands. The lightning scar reminded her that she could survive.
{The fox needs you to return.}
She felt courage flow into her.
{The forest needs you to return.}
She turned and squatted at the foot of Father Oak, closing her eyes and letting his strength wash over her. Her trembling died. Her breathing slowed bit by bit from the panic she'd been feeling. The fox needed her. The forest needed her. If she didn't have to go back to that damned castle . . .
{The fox knows a cave in the heart of your forest.}
Yeah. Live in a cave, dark and dirty and cold and wet, full of an oozy smell and the ends of worms.
She pulled her old Romanian flute out of her jacket pocket, the only thing she'd really cared to fetch from their apartment. If possessions made you a slave, God knew she was one of the freest people on earth.
She remembered that the fox had asked for the flute, as well. She fingered
