“Help me get this off,” he said, picking at his shirt. I unfastened the only three buttons attached to the placket and sniffed.
Dirt, crushed plant matter and honey? “Where the heck have you been?”
Tanner didn’t acknowledge my question, didn’t seem inclined to answer. He stood, silent and swaying, and fumbled with the button of his once-white, now trashed jeans. I gave him room to unzip, noticed he wasn’t wearing underwear, and tugged the muddied and ripped pants down his legs when he couldn’t seem to manage getting them past his thighs.
“C’mon, big guy, we can do this,” I said, wiggling the waistband to his knees then lower. I grabbed one of his calves and lifted. Tanner wobbled against the edge of the sink and grunted.
I had never seen him fully naked. His entire body—torso, arms, and legs—was marked with scratches of differing depths and widths. His tattoo, a sepia-toned tree which began on the right side of his sacrum and continued down the back of his thigh, knee, and calf, looked intact, as did the seed-shaped nubs scattered throughout the tree’s leaves and branches.
What confused me were the patches of unblemished skin on his shoulders and arms and elsewhere. The patches mirrored one another, as though placed deliberately, like armor a warrior would put on ahead of attack.
And Tanner’s body showed signs of having been attacked.
I blew out a hard breath. He fumbled for a handhold as he entered the tub and lowered himself to sitting.
“What happened to you?” I asked, afraid to touch the raw spots.
He rested his elbows on his knees and cupped his face in his hands. “I found her,” he muttered. “I found her, and she took me.”
“She” was probably the Apple Witch, and if she could travel through trees to speak to me, it wasn’t a big leap to imagine she could take others with her. “She took you where?”
Tanner shook his head, kept his hands on his face. “She took me, Calli.”
Chapter 3
Last night’s anger at the Apple Witch reignited into rage. She’d done something to hurt Tanner, but me threatening her bodily harm was no help to him. I honed in on the flecks of bark and pale lichen scattered through his hair. His breathing wasn’t steady, and every few breaths his entire body shook. Bumps pebbled the surface of the arm closest to me.
“Let me heat this up.” I turned the faucet and used my free hand to stir the incoming hot water around his legs and the backside of his body. “Is that better?”
Tanner slid his fingers from his temples over the back of his skull, squeezed, and murmured a barely audible mm-hmm.
“May I touch you?” I didn’t want to assume anything. I had an idea what he meant when he’d emphasized the Apple Witch had taken him. It seemed only right to ask his permission before continuing.
“Yes. Please.” Tanner began to relax out of his hunched over position. I handed him a washcloth, offering him the option of covering up. He stared then dropped it into the water. The grey-and white-striped square expanded as the cloth became saturated. “It wasn’t as bad as you’re thinking, Calli.” Settling his back against the curved porcelain, he groaned, gripped the edges of the tub, and shifted his head so I couldn’t see much of his face. “You know she and I were lovers.”
“Recently?” I had to focus on his earlobe to keep my gaze from wandering over the front of his body and downward. He let his arms sink below the surface of the water. His hands came to rest between his thighs. I took the floating washcloth and wrang out warm water over each of his knees. Grabbing a couple more cloths from the shelf, I waited as they absorbed the heated water before placing them across his upper chest and shoulders
“Not, not for years. Our paths diverged. I moved to Canada. She went… I don’t know where she went, but when she came back, she was changed, like something in her had twisted. She spent more and more time in her tree form. Even her mother noticed.”
Silence, punctuated by water dripping from the faucet, mingled with steam and rose toward the tongue-and-groove paneling of the tub surround and ceiling. The robin’s egg-blue paint matched the ceiling of my grandparent’s porch in Maine.
“Jessamyne thinks I carry seeds with me,” Tanner said, his gaze and voice woozy. “Seeds that yield trees capable of bearing the Apples of Immortality when cultivated under the right conditions.”
“Is Jessamyne the Apple Witch and…” How to ask this delicately… “You mean seeds as in sperm, your sperm?
“Yes. Jessamyne’s the Apple Witch. And yes, she’s right, I do carry the sacred seeds. But she’s completely misguided about where they’re stored and how to get them out of me.” He rolled his head against the back of the tub and stared at my throat.
My fingers stroked the braided leather thrumming against my collarbones and the back of my neck.
“Now you carry the seeds too.” He lifted his hand and rolled enough that he could run a dripping finger over the cords. “I’ll take the necklace from you once Abi and Cliff are safe. I have to deal with Jessa in the daylight. With my clothes on. Hopefully with help.” Tanner pressed his chin toward his chest and curled forward. Water, streaming off his skin, turned him into a sea creature rising reluctantly from the liquid depths. “Do you see the tree?”
“The one tattooed on your buttock and down your leg? That one?”
“Run your hand over the top of the design.”
The heat of the water had added a red flush to the slightly lighter skin color of his butt. I had been curious about the tiny raised bumps since I’d first seen them. Under the pads of my fingertips, the bumps felt like…
“These are seeds too,” I said. “So how come
