Schenectady is one of those places: far enough away from things that people escape to it, far enough away from other things that people want to escape from it.
Schenectady is nothing special. A little town at heart, trying to look big. But the parks and trees give it away.
There aren't many spaces in the city. Central Park, maybe. The outskirts - Westchester, the other places? Too manicured.
At least, I think that's why they came. They just liked the trees.
"Excuse me." The police officer looked down, and shone the flashlight into the old woman's eyes.
She blinked, and groaned at the sudden light. "What is it, what is it? Can an old woman not even sleep in peace?"
"Ma'am, I'm sorry, but loitering is against park policy." He frowned at the old woman, in brown quilted coat and one-eyed, earless rabbit slippers.
"Loitering? Who says I am loitering, hm?" She drew herself up to her full height of smallness, and gazed at him with bleary eyes. "This, this is where I choose to stay."
"Ma'am... there's a shelter just a few blocks down. They'll give you some food, a good place to sleep. This bench must be cold. C'mon. I'll take you there." The man sighed.
"A shelter? Shelter? I, young man, have food, have clothes. What more shelter do I need than this, these trees? Tell me that, hm?"
"Ma'am..." his patience was getting short.
"I will not go." She crossed her arms and glared at him.
"You've got to come with me, ma'am. I'm sorry, but that's the policy - " he reached out to take her arm. "Hell!" He drew back, nursing a bleeding finger. He looked at it. Tiny little round things. Like teeth marks, almost. He stuck the finger in his mouth and began to suck at it, then looked suspiciously at the old mangy mink scarf she wore around her neck, complete with yellow staring eyes and head. "What the hell was that?"
"What was what?" She looked around.
"That!" He pointed to the scarf.
"My scarf." She looked at him disapprovingly. "My malenkaya norka." She smiled and began to scratch it behind its ears. Small pieces of fur came off and floated to the ground. "Moya malenkaya norka... ochen horoshaya, very good, da... ti ochen umnaya sharfa, hm, my dear, my minkachka." She smiled.
Oh great, he thought, another old lady off her rocker. He again reached for her hand. "C'mon, ma'am..."
This time, the scarf bit off the tip of his finger. "Fuck!" Tears sprang to his eyes, and he cradled his hand in the crook of his other elbow. The flashlight fell, clattered against the sidewalk, flickered and went out.
The old woman was standing over him. "Horoshaya norka," she crooned to the mink twining around her ankles, watching him with yellow eyes very, very much alive.
"You will think before you disturb an old babushka's rest next time, hm?" She raised one bushy eyebrow. "Boze moi!" She snorted. "Disturbing the old babushkas. What is such a world, in which an old woman cannot sleep?"
She smiled. The man saw that she had pointed teeth.
The flashlight came back on.
The woman in the brown coat and mink scarf shuffled slowly away from him, into the woods, into the darkest pine-trees. "Oldest Baba, even: ochen glupi, stupid... stupid."
/I can't believe I've got myself into this,/ Mel thought. /How in hades I found myself leading groups of yuppies through the gorges I'll never know./
"Hey, Mel?"
She turned, and was startled, but not suprised, to see just how far she'd gotten ahead of her tour group.
"Wait up, will you? Jane's got something to ask you about."
She stood there for a moment until the sunburned, backpack-laden couple caught up to her.
The one, panting somewhat, held out a pink flower. "Gorgeous, huh? Do you know what it's called?" She turned to her husband. "Maybe I can press it in my book."
Mel frowned and plucked the flower out of the hands of the woman. "Yeah. It's a lady's slipper. They're endangered." She glared slightly at the woman. "Remember what I told you? Take only pictures, leave only footprints." She always felt slightly stupid when quoting that particular line from the brochure, as the last part didn't really apply to her, but if it stopped people from carving their names into the trees...
"Oops." The woman looked sutiably embarassed.
Mel turned her attention to the flower, which had been wailing softly into her palm the entire time. Its leaves were already drooping, but after a moment of care it perked up again. /I'll replant it after dinner,/ she thought. /If I make it there, that is,/ she amended, noticing her charges dashing off again.
They hiked, without incident, for the rest of the day, and began to camp when the sun cast low yellow shadows over the trees. They ate. As soon as the other two had gone to their tents, she banked the fire and slipped off into the woods.
It was like a family reunion, she mused, as she quickly stripped and bathed in the small pond she'd noticed earlier. Except that she was the one bringing the annoying uninvited guests along. She frowned as the small fish tickled her toes, and she felt the itch of bark and wood wanting to root in the sandy banks. /Eh,/ she thought, /any effect will be long gone by the time I get back there./ She got out, dried off, and went to go replant the flower.
/Weathered the trip well enough,/ she thought as she placed the flower on a bed of moss and loam and began to hum to it in a low voice. She could feel its roots take back the soil once again, pull in its life, feel the wind through its leaves...
"Hello." His voice was low, but she could see him perfectly, black outline against white tree, not three feet away. He was staring at her. There was no sign of his wife.
"What are you doing out here? What do you want?" She straightened, and felt her heart - such as it was - pounding.
He came closer. "You know what I want. I think you want it too."
/You bastard, you asshole,/ she thought. "I don't know what you're talking about." She backed away.
"Yes, you do. I can tell." He moved closer. She could smell him; he stank of lust and human. "I've been watching you. The way you speak. The way you move. The way your hips sway when you walk, so gently over the ground. It's almost supernatural. And I want it." He suddenly grabbed her by the waist and pulled her to him.
When she screamed, he chuckled. "No one will hear you out here," he said. "Least of all Jane." He attacked her with kisses, then hands, then more. It was too fast for her to do anything, too fast, and she was too scared. When it was done, he lay on top of her, holding her down, combing his fingers through her hair, not meeting her green, tear-stained eyes. "Hey," he lazily said. "You've got a leaf in your hair."
He pulled at it, and she winced. "Stop."
"H'm. It's stuck." He peered at the leaf, and tugged again. Harder. The leaf snapped off, and his fingertips came away bloody. He looked at the blood, then at the slow trickle draggling out of her hair. "Sorry about that, love."
"Meliai is not your love," she hissed.
He stood up, shrugged, and pulled his pants back on. "Whatever. We should get going. Jane will wonder where I've gotten to." He smirked.
/Oh, thank Diana, the bastard's finally off of me.../ was all she thought before she changed.
Then, there was nothing but the sweet wind in her leaves, the dark fine soil, the richness of water and sun running through.
They finally found his body ten years later, bleached to bone, the scarred tree's roots grasping tightly round skeletal neck.
The doorbell rang, and Richard walked to the door. He peered down at the scruffy brown-skinned teenager below, dressed in old jeans and a t-shirt for a band he'd never heard of.
"Hello. Can I help you? If it's for the boy scouts" - he doubted it was - "I've already bought popcorn."
"'Snot." The boy held up a magazine with some kind of underwater city pictured on the cover. "I heard this story. Wrote a letter to Ellison about it. He wrote me back, gave me your address."
Richard looked down at the boy. "Where are you from?"
"City."
"How'd you get here?"
The boy glared at him. "Bus."
"Won't your parents be worried?"
"Don't got none. Not that I know 'bout."
Richard wanted to know how he got bus fare, but thought better of asking. "You read _Omni_?"
The boy nodded, then said, "You gotta problem with that? Listen: I didn't send you no five dollars 'cause I ain't got no mailbox. So I come here. I wanna talk to the muse. You gonna let me in, or not?"
Richard sighed. "Yeah. Come in."
The boy wiped his feet on the mat, then came in.
"You want something to drink? Coke? Sprite?"
"No. I want to see the muse."
Richard showed the boy into his living room, where the teenager perched uncomfortably on an overstuffed chair, looking like he didn't know what to do.
"Plus, I heard you were gonna sell her. Maybe."
Richard frowned. "Ellison told you that?"
The teenager nodded.
Richard rolled his eyes. /Harlan strikes again./ "I am," he said slowly.
"That ain't the kind of thing you put out at no garage sale."
"Why do you want her?"
"I need to write."
"Well, yeah. So do I. Give me a good reason why I should't keep her and keep getting fives every now and again."
"No. I need to." He squirmed, and almost fell off the chair. "I gotta sister. Like I said I ain't got no parents, but I take care of her, you know, try to buy her nice shit, pink shoes and maybe a haircut." He squirmed again.
"How do you get the money?"
"Poems." The teenager's voice was almost inaudible.
"Excuse me?"
"I said, I write poems. Sometimes people like 'em, pay me money." He waved the _Omni_ again. "They took one, once. Ain't printed it yet, though." He looked up at Richard. "You know how freakin' many of these pay on publication? I been waiting months for these editors to get their asses in gear. And my sister ain't got crap. The punks at her school, they shittin' on her 'cause her dresses wearin' out."
"Um." /Hell,/ he thought after a moment. /You've written fourteen novels. You can finish the last one on your own. It'll be a challenge./ "Let me get her," he said.
The boy's face lit up.
"Hey, Callie?" he called up the stairs.
"Yeah?" A pleasant voice floated back to them.
"You've never been to see the city, right?"
"No." She poked her head out of an upstairs door and looked down. "But I'd like to."
"How about a vacation for a while? Say, twenty or thirty years?"
"Sounds good to me. Am I going with this young man?" She came down the stairs, and stopped. For a moment, her piericing blue eyes looked into the teenager's own awed brown ones. Then, she smiled. "Sounds fine to me."
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