Teresa Aoki leaving the bonsai to her estranged daughter was no surprise, not even the bit in her will where its delivery was to take priority over checking her pulse or contacting her other, less isolated relatives. It had been her most prized possession, and her mother’s, and her great-uncle’s before her.
It wasn’t the most elegant bonsai (a bit too squat, a bit too unkempt – several of its largest branches had sprouted in odd directions centuries before pruning for beauty had been suggested), but it gave whatever home it sat in an air of quiet, pine-scented authority that was most pleasant. Particularly on the southern wall. Teresa’s great-grandfather had raised it from seed himself using a small packet he’d brought with him to America (and then later brought it to Canada), and in the good old days before Mary shaved her head (well, good old days for Teresa; Mary didn’t miss them much), she’d told her daughter long stories about how hard he’d had to work, teaching himself bonsai as he went out of half-memories from his grandmother and careful, nervous application of shears. Mary had enjoyed those stories, and Teresa had enjoyed telling them.
It was just such a pity that she’d gone and died (a quick aneurysm, not at all unpleasant as deaths go, if a bit of a shock) before she’d told her the ones that weren’t lies.
And so it was that on the twenty-third birthday of Mary Aoki, daughter of Teresa Aoki, daughter of so-on-and-so-forth, she received a Fedex box slathered with more DELICATE PARCEL and THIS SIDE UP labels than its surface could support before she was even through putting down the phone from Uncle Jerry’s call wishing her happy birthday oh and your mother, my sister, is dead. Sorry.
Mary opened the box, stared at the heavily-wrapped contents like some people stare at live snakes, tore it open, put it on the table against the north wall of her apartment, and stared at it for five minutes with indecisive and angry eyebrows.
It was then that the bonsai stretched itself and sighed.
Mary was a sensible woman. She checked to see if she’d left a window open for a breeze, and she examined the doors for any trace of a draft. She put her ears to the walls and listened for any hint of her next-door neighbours having inconspicuous, quasi-muffled sex.
The tree interrupted this by coughing politely.
Mary was a sensible woman. She pulled up a chair opposite the table, leaned forwards, counted to ten, and asked: “What the fuck is going on here?”
And so the pine tree, who had a voice that strongly reminded Mary of a stuffy grandmother despite being gender-neutral, began to tell her what her mother hadn’t had a chance to.
“This is not an old story,” said the pine tree. “But it has an old start.”
A man stood near a riverbank one day, watching the very last bits of heat escape a little firepit he’d dug. A short distance from the shack-thing that was his home, there was clay.
There was less of it than there had been five minutes ago.
The man brushed away the cooled ashes from the pit-kiln, stomping briskly on a few dejected coals, and looked at the thing that he’d made. It was just a little bit too big to be a proper bowl for a human, but just right for a spirit of the powerful sort, and he left it in front of the big pine tree where it lived a little ways up the forest trails on the hillside slopes, and said some very respectful things with care.
“A bowl, your wish delivered,” he said. And other pretty things. “Your protection, please grant it,” he said. And other polite things.
The pine sighed in the wind, grudgingly satisfied. It considered its options, then decided. A seed dropped into the bowl.
The man bowed at the pine’s feet, retreated with his gift, and had a long discussion with his wife that night about what he was meant to do with this. She took some dirt, he took some water, and together they planted that seed right where it fell. The next day, a freak wildfire burned down the big pine tree, the forest, and everything else that wasn’t within a perfect circle centered on the seed in its clay-baked bowl, which just barely contained the couple’s hovel.
They took very good care of it after that; and so it grew up, but not far. And then, one year after the fire, it started talking. The words were slow and grinding at first, the struggle of adapting a tree’s perspective to a human’s noises, but it pulled through, and it made its point: I will protect you.
A small tree in a pot was odder than it seemed, in those days, to say nothing of one that could speak. The couple kept it hidden away, and when they died, so did their children. And so did their children. One thousand years later, contemporaries started to appear, and the family could relax and put it on a nice shelf somewhere where it looked pretty. It wasn’t the most elegant bonsai (a bit too squat, a bit too unkempt – several of its largest branches had sprouted in odd directions centuries before pruning for beauty had been suggested), but it gave whatever home it sat in an air of quiet, pine-scented authority that was most pleasant. Particularly on the southern wall.
And of course, there were the adventures…
“I’m sorry,” said Mary at this point, “the what?”
The adventures, said the pine tree, rattling its needles irritably.
For instance, the great-grandchildren of that first couple had been harassed somewhat thoroughly by an ogre. It could smell the delicious spirit-smell in the air around their house, and first it ate their dog, then their home, and finally it was about to eat them before it realized the smell was coming from the pine tree.
Luckily enough, the pine tree had given them some advice after their dog went missing. As it raised the pine tree to its lips, they
“Stabbed it in the back while it was busy?”
No, they
“Why not? It makes sense.”
They were less than peasants. Where would they get a blade sharp enough to kill an ogre?
“A pointy stick would’ve done it – hell, you can kill elephants with pointy sticks if you hit the right spot. Besides, they’d had enough time to hatch a plan, they had enough time to find a pointy stick.”
They didn’t find a pointy stick. They called its mother many insulting names, and when it turned around to kill them the pine tree dropped itself on its skull and killed it.
“That’s weirdly sensible. How did you do that?”
The pine tree was a spirit’s-scion wrapped in a blanket of clay passed down a family line for generations; it had opportunity to soak up plenty of power.
“How vague. If you’re so powerful why do you need me?”
I was getting to that.
Anyways, that sort of thing was always happening to the family, and not always just because the tree was there, either. In the 700s, one of the tree’s possessors
“‘Owners’ would be too touchy?”
One of the tree’s possessors had come into contact with an extremely angry and volatile young warlord in a way that had caused offence, leading to a long journey to retrieve his archenemy’s sword from a locked vault, during which the tree had provided counsel each night as he slept. The theft was successful; accomplished by dint of looking so much like an ordinary peasant that there was no possible chance of anyone suspecting him of burglary of the most secure estate in the land.
And a small, perfectly alert, unnoticeable lookout temporarily embedded in a garden. Though there had been a hairy moment or three when one of the gardeners grew suspicious, and it had to persuade him that he was imagining things from too much drink.
There were many others, of course. The defeat in a duel of an angry dragon in front of a whole city of witnesses, the burning of the most wicked castle in the world to avenge a murdered wife, the flight across the ocean from an angry magician…
“Does a single one of these ‘adventures’ have a basis that isn’t horribly stressful and nerve-wracking? If you’re such a good-luck-charm, I’m not sure why Grandma didn’t just chuck you in a dumpster. She was a practical lady.”
… the destruction of a witch that had been riding ghosts and chaining souls since longer than the span of a man’s life added to all his grandmothers’, the freeing of the lost little boy who lived up in their attic, and the weeding-out of the flood of spirits that had infested their lawn.
“Hang on, was that the time Mom said she used pesticides and the grass smelled like sauerkraut and firecrackers for a month?”
Yes.
“I should’ve known something was up.”
And so down on and down on the line went, without much change, until it reached Teresa Aoki and her daughter; Mary.
Who hadn’t been let in on this, apparently.
“There are so many ways this is stupid that I can’t even begin to count them all,” she said. “I’m going to take you to a greenhouse or a garden care professional or someone else who can prune you into a reasonable shape and not forget to water you, and who can tolerate all the stupid adventures they can handle until their arms get chopped off and eaten by a demon or something.”
“You can not do that,” said the tree.
“Yes I can. Watch.”
“No, I mean you can not. This bowl is a heirloom of your family, and it is filled with two thousand years of memories of being nothing but that. If you give me away in it, it will return to you as sure as your wandering mind does. And I have been in it since the day it was molded; it is mine as much as yours, and will not be parted from my person. I am as much a part of your family as your mother; as it lives, so do I.”
“Shit,” said Mary sullenly. She drummed her fingers on the table in syncopation, thinking various ugly thoughts.
“You should answer that,” said the tree.
“What?” said Mary, then heard the door. Thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk, the constant, incessant rapping of a five-year-old wanting to know if you were home, or a very excitable Jehovah’s Witness.
“Don’t you say a word,” she told the pine as she rattled at the needlessly elaborate lock on her door. “The baldness is enough of a conversation starter; I don’t need anyone talking to my trees too.”
The tree said nothing. Satisfied by this, Mary opened the door and was face to face with someone’s belt buckle. It had a skull on it, she noticed. Then a hand closed gently around her head and lifted her into the air, and she corrected herself: it was a skull. It and its accompanying belt were also the only clothing her visitor was wearing.
The face that invaded her personal space was strange: flat as a board except for a very protruding nose and two extremely large things that were either fangs or tusks or maybe both good lord that was bad breath he (definitely he) smelled like rotting meat and
Crunch.
The thing’s eyes went unfocused and Mary was dropped to the floor, where she immediately rolled out of the way of a quarter-ton of tumbling…
“That is an ogre,” said the pine. It was sitting on the floor from where it had tumbled, from atop the ogre’s skull. Much of which was now a reddened crater.
“Wonderful,” she said. “What did you do?”
“I came back to you.”
“No you didn’t.”
“Near you. It takes quite a lot of effort; I would rather not have to do it again anytime soon or I would not be able to talk for some days. Movement is not natural for a tree.”
“And how did you do that?” The bone that was visible through the ogre’s matted blood and hair looked to be three inches or more thick.
“I am very heavy,” it said mildly.
“Then how did I pick you up and put you on the table?”
“I let you.”
“Why didn’t the bowl break?”
“It is very old magic. The only thing that can break magic is still older magic. This ogre was not very old.”
Mary gave up and slumped in her chair, defeated. The floor was going to be a bastard to clean, she thought.
“It appears we are on another adventure,” said the pine.
“Wonderful,” said Mary. “How do I get off?”
“Ogres are simple creatures, and not at all anxious to seek out fights unless there is obvious gain for themselves,” said the pine. “You find whoever sent the ogre.”
“And ask him to stop?”
“No, you defeat him.”
“How? Call the cops? Stab him and bury him in Nevada?”
“Eternal imprisonment would also do the trick,” said the pine. “I recall an angry typhoon that was sealed in a bottle and buried in a hole in desert.”
“That’s not eternal, that’s one idiot and his shovel shy of a disaster.”
“There are many deserts, and many holes.”
“I don’t know how much TV mom let you watch, but there are many idiots. And many shovels too, probably.” Mary sighed. “So, how do we find this guy?”
“I suggest a walk,” said the pine.
They went on a walk. Well, Mary walked. The pine rode in an old baby-carrier that her mother had fobbed off on her ‘just in case.’
“Take a deep breath,” said the pine, “and let it out.”
Mary took a deep breath, let it out, and rolled her eyes.
“Shake your head three times and roll your eyes twice more.”
Mary shook her head three times and rolled her eyes twice more. And once again, for good measure.
“Now sneeze,” said the pine, and Mary sneezed involuntarily. And yelped, because it felt like someone had stuffed her nose with peppers.
“Too many rollings,” said the pine. “Still, the extra potency is appreciated. Can you smell that?”
Mary could smell that. Although maybe ‘smell’ wasn’t the right word. It was more like hearing with a bit of taste, transmitted through her nose. It made the hair on her spine tingle.
“That is magic,” said the pine. “A broad trail, left by an over-eager amateur at most, I suspect. Follow the spell of the one who sent the ogre.”
Mary hiked through parking lots and up hills and down long, stupid streets with barely any sidewalk and too many idiots driving on them. She walked past fast food that she couldn’t begin to imagine qualify as half its name, and by restaurants where she would’ve had to forfeit her month’s rent to afford an appetizer. She was walking in an underpass when her cellphone rang.
“Hello?” she said. She stopped walking and used the opportunity to adjust the tree’s weight a little; it and the pot were surprisingly light, but their combined bulk stretched the straps of the baby carrier uncomfortably against her.
“Mary Aoki?” said a carefully, professionally calming and neutral voice.
“Yes?” She started walking again.
“This is the Toronto police department.”
Mary glared at her phone. “I told you before, that was self-defense. And I had a witness. And he dared me to do it.”
“It’s not about that. Your sister is missing.”
The rest of the conversation floated by in a haze. Jennifer Aoki (age nineteen), better known as Jenny to her sister, as well as Jenners, Stupid, and Jen-Jenners, was gone. She’d come home, said goodnight to her roommate, gone into her room, and vanished into thin air. No, there were no leads yet, no, no suspects had been determined so far, no, no one else had heard from her, no, no, no, no, no.
If she found any evidence she was to phone and so on.
Click.
Mary stared at an ancient, broken car with an ancient, bitter man in it, who was shouting something profane and inaudible at her past his windshield. At some point she’d stopped walking again, and she noticed that she was in the middle of a road she didn’t recognize.
“Did they get her?” she asked.
“They?”
“Him. Her. Whoever. The ones who sent that thing at me.” She wasn’t ready to start saying the names of these things aloud; that made them too real.
“Probably. Your police are not especially good at magic. They have one man, underpaid, who only half-believes half of the things that he finds. Which he misses half the time.”
“An eighth of a clue,” said Mary. “Should we ask him for help?”
“No. He would slow us down, and probably ask all sorts of questions about me, or try to confiscate me as a dangerous illegal possession.”
“Are you?” asked Mary. The old man was pressing hard on his horn, producing a tremulous, dying wheeze from thousands of his car’s orifices.
“By his laws, yes.”
“Comforting. More or less illegal than my pot?”
“Pot?”
“Marijuana.”
“Ah. Less.”
“Well, then we don’t have anything to worry about,” said Mary. The car was vibrating in place now, practically panting to zip forwards and claim first blood. She pulled out her apartment keys, scraped them slowly and carefully along its hood as she passed, and strolled to the far side of the road.
Suddenly the smell was clean and there, fresh and new.
“He’s here,” she said. Rising up in front of her was a rather elegant condominium. The whole building smelled like roasted habaneros, and her eyes were nearly streaming from it.
The ground floor of the building was saturated with the scent, one big uniform blob with no directions or sense to it at all.
“We should at least narrow it down to a floor,” Mary said as she stood in front of the elevator and vainly tried to tell if any of the buttons was more nostril-clearing than the others.
“It will be four,” said the pine.
“Why?”
“Four is death. To send properly death-dealing foes and vicious curses to you would only be helped by working as closely with four as possible. It will be the forth floor.”
“Hmm,” said Mary. “What was the building number?”
“Four hundred and forty-four.”
She sighed, and noticed she was drumming her fingers again. No pattern this time, just aimless, breathless fluttering. She couldn’t bring herself to stop.
“My sister will be there?”
“I am sure of it.”
“Be more sure.”
The fourth floor was positively incandescent with the smell, and Mary had to plug her nose with a pair of Kleenex walrus-tusks before she could bear to leave the elevator. It left without a sound behind her as she looked around.
“Apartment four?” she asked, thickly. The tree didn’t even bother to answer; the door was making her entire head spin. She took a deep breath and raised her hand to knock.
“Stop.”
“Why?”
“Or you will be set on fire.”
“Why?”
“Because the door is sealed with a vicious curse.”
“Why?”
“Because there is a small, malignant symbol scratched inside just inside the doorframe, above your head.”
“There, was that so hard?” asked Mary. She pulled out her keys, still flaked with the paint of the old car, and swiped them back and forth through the tiny, intricate drawing until all that was left was a wooden pustule.
“It is harder. There is an ogre behind that door. And its two brothers.”
“Shit. Four, right?”
“Of course.”
Mary examined the intimidating one-and-a-half-inch blade of her keys, then pocketed them with a sigh. “Suggestions?”
“They will be extremely wary after feeling the curse dissipate. They will suspect it is either an intruder, or their brother being clumsy with anger as he is returning so much later than planned.”
Mary put one hand into her purse and began to rummage.
“What are you doing?”
“Finding my equalizer.”
“Find it quickly. They are about to open the door.”
“What?” said Mary.
The ogre opened the door.
Standing a few feet away, Mary had a much less confused view of him this time. He was a little over nine feet tall – stooped very low in the doorframe – pot-bellied, rippling with muscles, and not even bothering to wear the skull-belt his brother had, but armed with a big club made from half of a burned tree. His face was different: the squashed-face with its protruding nose were absent in favour of having just one eye planted where his left nostril should’ve been Other than that, he was almost handsome.
The ogre stared at Mary, which gave her the perfect second-and-a-half for her to overcome her shock an instant before him and pull out her can of mace. By the time he was reaching for her, it was too late.
“Up the nose and in the eyes all in one,” she muttered as she ducked away from the flailing body, trying to scream and cough at the same time. “Vicious.”
The next ogre tripped over his flailing brother and inadvertently kicked him, leading to a vicious wrestling match during which each used the other’s burnt club to poke his brother in his eye – which, in the new one’s case, he had three of.
The third grabbed Mary by the head as she was dodging hurtling limbs. He had no eyes whatsoever.
“Not twice,” she said, and grabbed him somewhere important with both hands. Very hard.
“Unusual, but effective,” commented the pine as Mary locked the apartment door behind her. She’d taken the precaution of dropping it on top of the moaning ogre after it doubled over, and it was slowing making a dent in the exquisite floorboards. “Your grandmother would be proud.”
“Nice of you to say so,” said Mary. The magic-scent-charm-thing was wearing off, letting her breath a bit easier but also drawing her attention to the unfortunate smell of the ogres again. It was something between a bull and a wet dog.
“She always feared that her daughter was too kindly to deal with these troubles, and when she was proven wrong there, she worried that you would be raised unprepared, in charitable ignorance.”
“I was. Not that I minded it.”
“It does not appear to have affected your capability.”
“Why thank you oh so much, o fuckin’ wondrous talking ornament,” said Mary. “Now tell me: where is it? Are they. Is he or her. Whatever; where is my sister, damnit?”
“In room four,” said the tree.
A fine door. Maybe even real oak all the way through. Or maple. Or not. Mary wasn’t good with plants, which was what kept sneaking back into her head every time she stopped thinking about finding Jennifer fast.
The pine’s bowl was dripping something black and sticky down the rear of her shirt as it rested in the baby carrier; the ogre’s back had been ground into something that made Mary never want to eat hamburger again.
“Strike boldly,” said the tree as she put her hand on the doorknob. It was warm.
“No ‘be careful’ this time?”
“It has served you very well so far. And I do not think your enemy will have expected you to deal with his ogres so aptly. If at all.”
“Works for me,” said Mary. She twisted the handle (unlocked) and kicked the door so hard that it nearly rebounded into her as she charged through it, nearly tripping over her own feet. Which was a good thing, because it brought her to a stumbling halt before she could run into the sofa that Jennifer was propped up on, fast asleep but not snoring.
That was wrong. Jenny snored louder than backed-up diesel trains; Jenner had driven away three boyfriends one sleepless hour at a time, Jen-Jenners had been teased by Mary for countless hours about it to the point where she’d wondered if she’d been forcing the poor girl into a habit.
In fact, a silent, sleeping Jenny was so otherworldly and bizarre that it completely distracted Mary from the quiet crackling, hissing of the only other person in the room, until it said something, which was “You.”
It was wearing a charcoal-grey suit. That was the most obvious part of its outfit, the bit that really pulled it all together. It had started with that central piece, decided it made a statement, and then repeated it several dozen times over. Its tie was charcoal-grey. Its shirt was charcoal-grey. Its socks, shoes, and buttons were charcoal-grey, and all of this was accentuated nicely by its complexion, which was charcoal-grey with reddish undertones because it was made entirely of still-burning charcoal.
Quite human, though. Apart from the absolute lack of a face. Or a proper head; just a mish-mash lopsided lump like the single shape Mary had ever managed to make at a pottery course.
Mary waited. It didn’t say anything else. She suddenly wasn’t sure whether the awkwardness was heightened or lowered by the fact that one of them wasn’t breathing.
“Yes?” she said.
“A long time,” the charcoal man said. It flickered softly as it spoke, lighting up the walls with beautiful patterns. The shadows made Mary’s eyes cross and teeth hum if she looked at them head-on.
“Never met you before,” she said. “I think I’d remember. Tree, what is this thing?”
The tree didn’t say anything.
Mary heard a hissing, wheezing whistle, so flat and dead that it took her a minute to realize it was coming from the charcoal man; a laugh like a lazy man’s bellows. “Rightfulness,” it said.
“What the hell are you talking about?” said Mary. “And what did you do to Jenny?” Any fear she’d been feeling had been left back at the moment before she’d crushed an ogre’s testicles, and this goddamned thing was too annoying for her to start worrying again. If she hadn’t been wary of burns and confused, she half-thought she’d have started punching it already.
The charcoal man stretched out its hand, a single digit extended towards the pine, and Mary felt warmth spread across her front like a summer bonfire at marshmallow range.
“Spelled the human, in the perfect moment, with no knowing eyes watching, warding. The wise one gone, her daughter gone, nothing left but ignorant you, innocent her. Innocent her: bait for you: bait for it. Its rightful death. Cheater. Coward. Refugee.”
“Life is cheating death, no death is righteous, and all of us are refugees at some time in our lives,” said the pine. “You are in error. And I do not know you.” Its needles were quivering against Mary’s back, and for a moment she had to stifle the urge to giggle.
“Liar,” breathed the charcoal man. “Hider in human shadow. Years promised as mine, years waiting for I to come to burning, scant hours for I to burn and find you gone. Gone to hide in human shadow, human blood. Chased you, haunted you, hounded you, and never you tell them what I am and that you hide. Hide from I.” It laughed again, and Mary felt herself start to sweat.
“What is it talking about, tree?” she asked.
“Nothing. It is a liar.”
“Liar, liar, liar, liarliarliar,” chanted the charcoal man. “You were mine to burn, and caught alone. You knew the rules. I strength against yours, greater. Your fear, strong-smelling, stinking. You demanded human tribute – begged. You hid in man’s vessel, formed from earth, baked with I strength, before I could arise, and stayed shrunken and small. You stole of I infant strength to avoid my doom on you. You dragged I doom with you through centuries, on the backs of men, waiting for I to die. I do not die. Not with you unburned. You are sad. You are stupid. You are the younger magic to I. You are prey. Give I yourself.”
Mary shifted uncomfortably.
“This fucker telling the truth?” she asked the pine.
It didn’t answer.
“That’s an answer,” said Mary. “Mom told me that. Answer me this now: did you piss this thing off into chasing my family for thousands of years just to kill you?”
“yes” said the tree. Very small.
“That’s a better answer,” said Mary grimly. “Not a good one. But better. Some protector.”
“Give I yourself,” repeated the charcoal man. “Give I it.”
Mary thought very hard and very fast and maybe even a bit carefully.
“Sure,” she said. And off came the baby carrier, into her arms with the pot, holding it carefully and with a wary grip. One finger stroked the tree’s base ever-so-slightly and gently.
“Go on,” she said. “Take it.” Her arms strained a little as she held it out.
Charcoal man leaned forwards, hands glowing kiln-hot now for the first time since he was born by a river thousands of years ago. He couldn’t not reach for it. No matter how loud the instincts screamed of a trap, or the mind warned itself of deception, when the reason you exist is right there in front of you, you can’t help but reach for it.
He was quick too. The melting pile of his face was only a few inches away when Mary heaved the bowl into it.
Pottery met charcoal, earth met fire, elder met eld, and the only thing that can break magic… broke magic.
Very loudly.
Shreds of charcoal-grey suit rocketed into Mary’s face in the sudden glare, a quickly blurred image of perfect fabric vaporizing in impossible heat.
When she woke up, it was because Jennifer – Jenners – was snoring again. Very loudly. She sat up, groaning at what felt like the worst sunburn she’d ever had and spitting out a few half-melted threads of silk.
The condo was a wreck. Everything inside it down to the interior walls had burnt down, leaving it a strangely smokeless husk. Not an ounce of colour was left except for the pine; ever she and Jenny were dyed grey by the ashes coating the floor. She considered the very real possibility that she was coated with a small amount of charred ogre, then immediately stopped.
The tree was a sad sight. Its bowl was cracked right down the centre, and every last one of its outermost needles was crisped to a stump, giving it a shrunken, shamed look which it might’ve managed anyways.
“Is it dead?” she asked it.
“Yes.”
“Forever?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“… yes.”
“Good.”
Mary got to her feet and dusted herself off. “First things first,” she said, “we’re getting the fuck out of here. And then we’re getting you a new bowl. One that won’t start some sort of bullshit millennium feud. But we’re waiting ten minutes first so Jenners can get a nap, got it?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Then we’re going home and you’re telling me everything my mother forgot, got it?”
“Yes.”
“Great.” She yawned and sat down next to her sister. “Oh, last thing…”
“…yes?”
“No more adventures?”
The tree thought.
“No more adventures,” it decided.
“Pity. We’ll just have to make our own.”