(eng) Nina Kiriki Hoffman - SSC by Permeable Borders

Author:Permeable Borders [Borders, Permeable]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

TREES PERPETUAL OF SLEEP

They were way too far into the woods and away from human-made things for Matt's taste. When choosing for herself, Matt called the whole world home, but she generally stayed in the parts of the world where there were cars and roads and buildings and people, things she could talk to. She wished she had never met Miss Terry Dane, teenage fashion victim and witch.

Cricket noise and stream murmur edged the forest air with sound. Sunlight was just fading from the tops of the trees around the clearing, and the intense blue of midsummer sky was staining slowly into night. Everything smelled green and wet. The marshy ground squished under Matt's army boots.

Terry laid red roses in a ring on the firescarred altar rock in the middle of the clearing and opened her backpack. She whispered words while she pulled all kinds of weird things out of her pack. She set each item carefully on the rock, blessing it and preparing it for use.

Matt wished there were somewhere to sit. If she sat on the grass she would get her jeans soaking wet. Durn Terry and her Midsummer ceremony, anyway.

The whispering tree on the far side of the rock, the only tree in the clearing, had big roots, some of them with knees and knuckles sticking up above the ground. Matt edged around the big gray altar stone and sat on one of the tree's upthrust roots.

Terry opened her big time-nibbled book and set it where she could see it, as though it were a cookbook. She made some passes with her hands and spoke some words. She lit red candles, and then she lit a piece of stick incense which she waved in a pattern, leaving little trails of thin smoke and the scent of a distant country. She stacked wood on the rock in a triangle within the circle of roses, and snapped her fingers. The wood blazed up. It was fairly impressive.

Matt pulled her knees up to her chest and leaned back against the tree's trunk. Its rough bark caught at her crewcut. She didn't know what kind of tree it was, but it sure smelled good, a little like fresh pencils at the start of a school year.

Terry spoke softly, reading from the book and touching the things she had laid on the rock, lifting water, crystal, incense, salt, and a knife. Gripping the knife in her right hand, she stood a moment, her eyes lifted to the darkening sky above, then cut across her left palm and dripped blood into the fire.

“Dedication,” said the tree Matt leaned against.

“Mm,” Matt murmured. She had learned to keep quiet when Terry was in the middle of something; she had talked during a summoning spell Terry was doing once, and the little wind Terry had been calling up got loose and pestered both of them for three days.

“I used to have that. Almost.”

“Shh,” said Matt. Golden-orange light was gathering around Terry's head and hands. She held her hands up to the sky and spoke some more words, and the light brightened around her.

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