Charlaine Harris - An Apple for the Creature

“What is that tree?”

“What?”

“The tree down in the yard.” I pointed to it. “What kind of tree is it?”

Brook blinked. “I don’t know. It’s the dead tree. You can’t get to it now anyway, not with the magic up, because the flower garden is warded. Listen, I’m not proud that I didn’t look for Ashlyn. All I am saying is that maybe I didn’t look for her and I probably should have, but I was busy.”

I bet it was an apple tree. Some apple trees bloomed late, but most of them flowered in April and May. It was June now.

“How long has that tree been dead?”

“As long as I can remember. I’ve been in this school for three years and it was always dead. I don’t know why they don’t cut it down. Are you listening to me?”

“It’s flowering.”

Brook blinked. “What?”

“The tree is blooming. Look.”

Brook looked at the window. “Huh.”

Perfect hundred in botany. Apples in the drawer. Wolf print on the desk. Terrified of a boy who creates heat, because where there is smoke, there is fire. Blooming apple tree that has been dead for years.

It all lined up in my head into a perfect arrow pointing to the tree.

“Can we get down there?”

Brook was staring at the tree. “Yes.”

Two minutes later I marched out of the side door into the inner yard and down the curved stone path. I was fifty feet from the tree when I sensed magic in front of me. I stopped and snapped into the sensate vision. A wall of magic rose in front of me, glowing lightly with pale silver. A ward, a defensive spell designed to keep out intruders. Currents of power coursed through it.

Some wards glowed with translucent color, both a barrier and a warning that the barrier existed, and walking into it would hurt. This one was invisible to someone without my vision. And judging by the intensity of the magic, touching it would hurt you bad enough to leave you writhing in pain for a few minutes or knock you out completely.

I turned and walked along the ward, with Brook following me. The spell followed the curved flower bed.

“What’s the point of the ward?”

“Nobody knows,” Brook said.

“Did you ever ask Gendun?”

“I have, actually. He just smiled.”

Great.

Ahead, a two-foot-wide gap severed the circle of the ward. I stopped by it, looked through, and saw another ward. This was a magic maze, with rings inside rings of wards and in the center of it all was the apple tree.

“She’s watching us,” Brook hissed.

“What?”

“Second-floor window, on the left.”

I looked up and saw Lisa looking at us. Our stares connected. Lisa’s face had this strange mix of emotions, part realization, part fear. She had figured me out. She understood that I saw the ward somehow and I knew about the apple tree, and she was afraid now. It couldn’t be me she was scared of. I wasn’t that scary. Was she scared that I would find Ashlyn?

A bright green glow burst from Lisa’s back. It snapped into the silhouette of an eight-foot-tall wolf. The beast stared at me with eyes of fire.

My heart fluttered in my chest like a scared little bird. Something ancient looked at me through that fire. Something unimaginably old and selfish.

The wolf jerked and vanished. If I had blinked, I would’ve missed it.

“Did you see that?”

“See what?” Brook asked.

So I had seen it with my sensate vision.

Lisa turned away and walked off. My forehead felt iced over. I swiped the cold sheen off my forehead and saw sweat on my hand. Ew.

Things were making more and more sense. I turned to Brook. “Do you have a library?”

She gave me a look like I was stupid. “Really? Do you really need to ask that question?”

“Lead the way!”

Brook headed to the door. Just as she reached for it, the door swung open and Barka blocked the way. “Hey!”

Brook pushed past him and marched down the hall, clenching her teeth, looking like she would mow down whoever got into her way. I followed her.

Barka caught up with me. “Where are we all going so fast?”

“To the library.”

“Is it on fire and they need us to put it out?”

“No.”

Barka must’ve run out of witty things to say, because he shut up and followed us.

The library occupied a vast room. Shelves lined the walls. With magic coming and going like the tide, the e-readers were no longer reliable, but the library stocked them, too. If you needed to find something in a hurry, the e-readers were your best bet. You just had to wait until the magic ebbed and the technology took over again.

Sadly the magic showed no signs of ebbing.

I walked through the library, checking labels on the shelves. Philosophy, psychology . . .

“What are you looking for?” Brook snapped. “I’ll find it faster.”

“Greek and Roman mythology.”

“Two ninety-two.” Brook turned and ducked between the bookshelves. “Here.”

I scanned the titles. Encyclopedia of Greek and Roman Myths. Score!

Brook’s eyes lit up. “Shit! Of course. The apples. It’s so plain, I could slap myself for being so stupid.”

“You got it.” I yanked the book from the shelf and carried it to the nearest desk, flipping the pages to get to the letter E .

“What’s going on?” Barka asked.

“She found Ashlyn. She is in a tree,” Brook told him.

“Why?”

“Because she is an Epimeliad,” I murmured, looking for the right listing.

“She is a what?”

“An apple dryad, you dimwit,” Brook growled.

Barka raised his hand. “Easy! Greek and Roman was three semesters ago.”

“Epimeliads are the dryads of apple trees and guardians of sheep,” I explained.

Barka leaned again the desk. “That’s a bit random.”

“Their name comes from Greek melas , which means both apples and sheep,” Brook said.

“This explains why she’s scared of Yu Fong,” I said. “He’s all about heat and fire. Fire and trees don’t play well together.”

“And someone left a wolf print on her desk. Wolves are the natural enemies of sheep,” Barka said.

“Someone was trying to terrorize her.” Brook dropped into the chair, as if suddenly exhausted. “And none of us ever paid attention long enough to see it.”

“It was Lisa.” I scanned the entry for the dryad. Shy, reclusive, blah-blah-blah . . . No natural enemies. No mention of any mythological wolves.

“How do you know?”

“She has a wolf inside her. I saw it. That’s why her powers are stronger. I think she made a deal with something and I think that something wants Ashlyn.”

They looked at each other.

“Just what kind of magic do you have, exactly?” Barka asked.

“The right kind.” I pulled a chair out and sat down next to Brook. “If Lisa had made a deal with a three-headed demon or some sort of chimera, I could narrow it down, but a wolf, that could be . . .”

“Anything,” Brook finished. “Almost any mythology with a forest has a canid . It could be French or Celtic or English or Russian or anything.”

“Can any of you remember her saying anything about a wolf? Maybe there’s a record of books she checked out?”

“I’ll find out.” Brook got up and made a beeline to the library desk.

I flipped through the book some more. Dryads weren’t too well-known. They were just supposed to be these flighty creatures, easily spooked, pretty. Basically sex objects. I guess Ancient Greeks didn’t really have a lot of access to porn so it must’ve been fun to imagine that every tree hid a meek girl with big boobies.

Somehow I had to untangle Ashlyn, and not just from that apple tree, but from this entire situation. I didn’t know for sure if Lisa had made some sort of deal with the creature. I could be wrong—it could be forcing her. The only thing I knew for sure was that I alone didn’t have the strength to take it on in a fight. My magic wasn’t the combat kind and that thing . . . well, from the intensity of the wolf’s magic, it would give even the Pack’s fighters a pause.