2019-09-20 - The Blackened Vine

It's a lovely late afternoon, easing into evening. The sun's just at the edge of the tree tops, so there's plenty of light bathing the cabin and its surrounding forest still. Note perfect for the end of summer. Not the kind of day August expected to do this sort of thing, but here they were.

He's put the geese away so they won't raise hell every time someone shows up. The chickens and ducks are content to quietly mill around, hopping in and out of the kiddy pool, and the goats watch the proceedings with placcid curiosity from their pen.

The hummingbird feeders have all been moved off the aspen tree and are now hanging from various points along the A-frame's balcony, sitting on the edges of the perimeter fence.The bench and other things that used to sit under it have also been moved. The tree no longer looks like a comfortably integrated part of the cabin's environs. It's exposed.

August spent the afternoon putting together a meal for afterwards. He told himself it wasn't for a wake, except it kind of was. Forest grouse, rice pilaf, sweet corn, sourdough bread. He hasn't put on fancy clothes, deeming it much more important to be comfortable: a slate gray, short sleeved, slub t-shirt, some denim jeans, and his work boots. He's sitting on the front deck with a glass of rhubarb soda, waiting. It's not quite time. Not yet.

Eleanor came in early, leaving the coffee shop in the capable hands of her managers. It took a Xanax for the drive, but once she was in the safe environs of the cabin, itself, she relaxed considerably. She is dressed for the occasion in jeans and hiking boots, with a long-sleeved cotton shirt. She cleaned and refilled the feeders as August took them down, and scrubbed out the birdhouses so any birds who choose to winter would have clean spaces to start nests. She's kept busy, because that is the best way to keep her from freaking out about being in the woods.

She also made a good sous chef for the cooking prep, and now she's got a soda as well and is sitting near August, watching the trees with a mix of awe and wariness.

Hyacinth drove. Yes alone. Really if anyone in this town is safe it's the Arch Queen of Nope. Really in a town of Addingtons with flashy sportscars this is not where she's invested her money, instead putting as much into her Tesla that will do what she tells it to, and the rest into sensible matters. Apparently to teh woman that might be misconstrewed as a frivolity elemental efficiency and renewable resource ranks high on her list of concerns. She has an oddly singular ability to be as bitchy about it as she can possibly look but the efforts are there. So when August said he wanted to ask teh tree's permission the woman that was notoriously run thrugh by the family sawmill turned out to be entirely on board with this.

The most awesome road trip mix ever: it is composed of klezmer, zydeco...and Latin pop. August's car is the conveyence for two Physicalists; Itzhak in the driver's seat and Julia on the passenger side. As they drive up, Julia is gesturing emphatically while lip synching to a particularly dramatic ballad in Spanish. But finally they arrive, and once the car is parked, Julia has to take a few moments to take in all this...naturalness.

Who in this town has the perfect blend of zydeco and klezmer and the punk/folk/rock versions of both? That's right, Itzy-bitzy. Add in Julia's Latin pop and heck yeah. Itzhak can almost forget they're on their way to murder a beautiful tree. As they pull up to the A-frame, he's grinning and faking along to the chorus. Yeah, things are going to suck, but that doesn't mean they can't rock on the way.

He swings those long damn legs out of August's borrowed Subaru and gets his fiddle case out of the back seat. Then he just stands there for a minute, to transition from 'road trip' to 'tree murders.' The day is glorious, the cabin is, as he'd called it, a tiny enchanted kingdom, and it just doesn't seem like the right day to do this. On the other hand, wouldn't he like to die on a day like today? Yeah, he would.

August takes Eleanor's hand and squeezes it, smiling a thank you to her as the others arrive. He's been a little short on words as the afternoon progressed. The only positive thing here for him--aside from everyone's support--is that this is going to a good cause: bringing the scourge of Billy the Ghoul to a fucking end.

He drinks the last of his soda and gets up to greet the others, raising a hand. The tree in question is, despite being a quaking aspen, utterly alone; the treeline beyond the clearing is entirely spruce, fir, and pine. It's a bit broad trunked and tall for one of its kind as well. Plenty of material for a casket.

"Thanks for coming," he says, putting his hands in his pockets. His eyes linger on Itzhak's fiddle case. "I made some dinner, if anyone wants any after we," he turns and gestures at the tree. To Hyacinth specifically he says, "I've got one of the trucks to haul the wood back with."

Eleanor returns the hand squeeze and she gets up with August. She hasn't met some of these folks yet. "Hi, I'm Ellie," she introduces herself to Hyacinth and Julia. "Thank you for helping with this."

"Coffee shop lady." Julia smiles at the redhead. "I remember." Hyacinth gets a little nod. "I'm Julia." she says, and approaches the tree, starting to walk around in, occasionally reaching out to touch it.

Hyacinth walks over, sensible flat running shoe on both of her feet. Sunglasses get slid up to the top of her head; the entirety of her being more art project than human being. "Hyacinth. Julia, thank you for joining us." Eleanor is familiar as her dealer...er...barrista. "Gents, Ladies, possible Other shaaaaall we begin?"

Itzhak's fiddle case, black carbon fiber, is battered and well-traveled. It has band stickers on it (Pogues, Golem, Dropkick Murphys) and a fading, flaking chai drawn on it in white paint pen. Easy to recognize it when it's hanging out with other fiddle cases. Itzhak unslings it, not looking at anybody while he gets out his fiddle. "Hey," he greets Ellie and August and Hya, suddenly going over shy or bashful or some other undefinable Itz-emotion. He goes through all the rigamarole with the tuning and the tightening up the beautiful bow of pink ipe and glorious red-orange hair.

August sets a hand in the small of Eleanor's back in a brief show of comfort for her being outside, with that treeline staring her down. He watches Julia touring the tree, asks himself for the hundredth time if this is a good idea. He knows it's not, of course, but it's what he has.

He hears Itzhak tuning his fiddle, and his eyes shift to that bow.

The greater the sacrifice, the more likely it is to work.

He nods at Hyacinth. "Did you wanna play before, or, after?" he asks Itzhak. "Because," a glance at the remaining daylight, which is just now skating the tops of the forest, "I'm ready."

Julia looks over her shoulder at Itzhak and smiles, before looking back to Hyacinth. "I'm a little lost. I understand the tune of open a door, cut down the tree, but who's doing what, and in what order?"

Eleanor leans up to kiss August's bearded cheek. "You are doing a good thing. Something to save people. I couldn't be more proud of, or more heartbroken for you."

Hyacinth points with her sparkly lacquered nail to each in turn, "Well tere's a door, we go over. Itzhak is going to play to teh spirit of the tree or some such. We're going to make nice and ask it for a favor. All goes well we are going to take what is donated to the cause from said tree on our side where we started and then I'll be turning that into a casket for the ghost's funeral to keep everyone in this city from needing one." She blinkas and laces her fingers together, "Super intuitive." Yeah, not in the slightest.

Itzhak glances at August as he rubs rosin (a round little brick of clear amber) into the red-gold-orange hair of the bow. "Huh?" he says, blank, then, "This is how I'm doin' the thing." He's already more than half gone into the music in his head. But he brightens up some and nods to Hya. "Exactly." (So, intuitive to him, anyway.) "Spirit of the tree. He's been a friend while me and Bex been staying here. Feel like the least I can do is sing him down." Preparations with his fiddle made, he walks over to Julia, to join her in looking up at the great tree, fiddle and bow both dangling from one big tattooed hand.

August smiles, sad and brief, at the kiss. He kisses Eleanor's temple in turn, murmurs, "Thanks," against her hair. "We're gonna step over, so if you want to go inside, that's okay." He raises his eyebrows at her in reassurance--he's positive she won't even want to look through--and then he turns to Julia.

"I need you and Itzhak to help me bring it down," he says, wiggles his fingers. "I can only lift a couple hundred pounds with that Gift, and," he nods at the three, "this aspen's a whole lot more than that. But the three of us, we can bring it down together, I think. And...yeah. Feels like it'd be right to ask for permission. So."

And then he gestures for Itzhak to take point with the music.

Ellie nods and she has tears in her eyes. She would go over but...it's hard enough for her to be in the real world woods. The Veil Forest might result in her having a full on panic attack and this ceremony is important. "I'll keep an eye on the food for you all. Good luck." With that she heads inside.

"Not to turn this into a Taylor Swift song," Julia says, looking back at the tree with a furrowed brow, "But I'm not exactly sure what exactly it is you want me to - oh." She flashes a smile at August, grateful. "Okay. Yeah. I can help with that. It might be easier if we strip the branches first, reduce the weight, and then bring down the trunk?"

Hyacinth shakes her head to August with a smile. "I'll wait here and make sure this side is held down." Looking to Eleanor she walks over and finds somplace not covered in too much dirt to plant herself. "We'll catch up." And she's not about to leave someone alone on this said with tomfoolery about. Her green eyes shift over the change in leaf colour and there's jsut an odd sense of comisseration from the woman with no feelings not-fabricated. Elbows go to knees and fingers are laced up to act as a chin rest. "Break a leg."

Itzhak squints up, up, up, eyes hopping from branch to branch. "Yeah," he murmurs, mostly to Julia, "we'll take off those big ones there, ya see?" He points with his bow. "That one, that one...that one too," the tip of the bow flicks as he gestures with it. "Okay." He looks at Julia finally. "Ya ready?"

When she and August are ready, Itzhak nods in serious thanks to Hya. He sets his fiddle under his chin, and taps one boot to set the tempo. "One. Two. One two three four--" As he brings the bow across the strings, he also begins to sing.

"Well Jimmy played harmonica in the pub where I was born
He played it from the night time to the peaceful early morn
He soothed the souls of psychos and the men who had the horn
And they all looked very happy in the morning!

Now Jimmy didn't like his place in this world of ours
Where the elephant man broke strong men's necks
When he'd had too many powers
So sad to see the grieving of the people that he's leaving
And he took the road for God knows in the morning!"

Hyacinth lets the neo-lumberjacks scuttle off into the Beyond. Hyacinth Addington, however, follows Eleanore inside to bring up an entirel zone of NOPE! inside the house assuring all valuables (read: them) are out of the clutches of the poorly life choiced. The coffee will not be safe but the ladies stand an excellent chance.

August gives Eleanor's hand another squeeze as she turns to go. "We'll be right back, hon." He watches her go into the cabin, is quiet a moment once the door shuts.

He nods at Hya, gives her another of those tight, small smiles in thanks for staying with Eleanor. Then a nod to Julia and Itzhak. "I can cut them first. Won't be a problem." He falls quiet for the music, nodding his head with the beat that Itzhak's set.

Almost as soon as that blazing red bowstring touches the fiddle, they can feel the power ripple out from Itzhak. The air before them shudders and twists, flickering, and the Veil gives way, sliding apart as a gently parted membrane. And through the door, which is right in front of the aspen before them, they see...no tree.

There's no reflection of this aspen across the border. Instead, there's an entire grove.

The space cleared for the cabin doesn't exist in the Veil, but there is a small clearing, centered almost perfectly where the aspen tree stands in their world. That spot sits empty amidst a grove of aspen-like trees that stretches for what looks like hundreds of acres. The conifers of the real world are absent; it's just an endless sea of bright white trunks with black marks crowned in silvery green leaves that flicker with light.

August blinks, surprised. And, because he's himself, he walks forward, through the door and into the Veil without a second thought.

The branches might have needed to be caught by more than one person, but Julia somehow manages to distribute the force of her ability just right...and all of the branches shiver in the air, holding still for a moment before slowly lowering down as if they were no more than floating feathers. Julia hums with pleasure and looks over at Itzhak, her brows cinching together as she satin slips a message in the general direction of his brain. You're doing great!

Itzhak's music has a physical presence of its own, shimmering with his strength. As Julia catches branches one after the other, he plays and sings and bolsters her up. When she sends support to him he flashes her a grateful half-grin. As the last of the branches come to a rest on the forest floor, the border between the worlds parts. And August walks into the Veil. Itzhak blurts, "Hey!" interrupting his song. "C'mon, we can't let him go in there alone!" He plunges through the doorway after August.

There are fireflies coming out in the Veil, their lights dancing in the depths of the grove, where the gleaming, pearlescent trunks are darker gray with shadow. There are insect and bird calls, but they're strange and odd, somehow.

August doesn't go far; not more than a couple feet past the door. He's staring at the spot where the aspen should be, or where he'd assumed something would be, but there's nothing there. He slowly starts to look at the grove around them. "It had a grove this whole time," he murmurs. "Right here."

He's quiet a while, just looking. Then, "I wonder if...maybe a thin spot opened, and that one--just that one--grew," he looks back at their world, "there. Or maybe the thin spot sucked up all of these." He starts towards the edge of the treeline.

Julia steps through, delighting briefly as she's surrounded by a swirl of fireflies, letting them get into her hair and directing them gently with her hands for a moment. "If we'r replanting her, she'll need to come up by her roots. Unless the magic over here will let us put her in the ground without worry about that sort of thing. But we can move her over whenever you're ready."

Itzhak's alarm gentles into awe, as he takes in the softly iridescent trees of the grove and the dancing fireflies. "Oh," he says, quietly. Something changes about his bow once it's on the Other Side: the hair has its own subtle shine, and when it moves as he walks, it leaves a barely-visible sheet of fairydust glitter hanging in the air.

He looks at Julia and the way she's lit up by fireflies as she plays with them, and smiles at her, a little bashfully. Then he goes to stand by August's side, looking at what he's looking at. There's nothing he can think of to say, so he simply stands there with the other two, being. Existing.

August runs a hand down the bark of one of the Veil aspen-like trees. He looks askance at Julia, smiles to see the fireflies glimmering around her. Up close they look more metallic than their real world counterparts. "No, that..." His voice fades. He wants to call it 'his' aspen, but he knows that's an unreasonable claim. "We're cutting her down so Hyacinth can make a casket. For Billy the Ghoul. So he'll move on to his final rest."

He stands there next to the two of them, looking into the grove. (His grove.) After a minute of this he steps back from the treeline, looks at that oddly empty place in the Veil dirt and grass. "I assumed there'd be a reflection of it here, or, something, to apologize to." He licks his lips. "I guess this makes more sense. That it's from here. Or the rest of its grove grew here, and it was left behind." A pointless distinction, perhaps.

He sighs, ducks his head. Then he lifts his hands, palms up, eyes staying on the ground. "I'm sorry. If I had something else I could give, I would." He hesitates, then adds, "I'll bring part of her back."

He sends his power out into the grove, running fingers of it through the leaves. An apology for taking away someone they'd lost a long time ago, but who'd been right there the whole time.

"Let me help with that." Julia's hand extends with an almost balletic grace, palm down and then twisting up as she beckons delicately. A few of the limbs, having been laid to the ground on one side of the portal, lift into the air, and smoothly slide though to come to rest on the ground on the more fanciful side of the veil in a solemn procession. The fireflies that have been surrounding her seem to respond to the use of her power, glowing brighter briefly, and swirling more emphatically.

"Sure explains a lot about that tree," Itzhak says, still quiet. "Why I could open a door through him." (He thinks the tree is male, apparently.)

As August gifts power to the grove, and Julia lifts the severed limbs with her power and brings them through to lay them to rest, Itzhak sets his fiddle to his shoulder again, and sings.

"We walked him to the station in the rain
We kissed him as we put him on the train
And we sang him a song of times long gone
Though we knew that we'd be seeing him again.
Sad to say I must be on my way
So buy me beer and whiskey 'cause I'm going far away

I'd like to think of me returning when I can
To the greatest little boozer and to Sally Maclennane..."

The grove churns like an ocean, leaves trembling where August moves them as the branches of its lost companion march through the doorway. The fiddle's music and Itzhak's voice wind throughout the grove, the bowhair fiery and gleaming in the Veil's otherlight.

When Itzhak stops there's a heavy silence. It gradually gives way to a dull roar: the sound of the Veil's other wind rushing back to them through the aspens. It whips at their hair and clothes, picks up the branches Julia has brought in and spins then into a vortex. The vortex tightens, drawing them together and down, and plunging them into the dirt. Where there was once a cluster of branches now stands a single, spindly sucker, right where the aspen should be.

The fireflies around Julia scatter as the vortex swirls and contracts and dissapates. When the air is at rest again, she walks closer to the newly planted tree, gently placing her hand on it. She murmurs a quick, soft prayer in Spanish, and then steps back, her arms foldng across her torso. She looks both humbled and pleased at the same time.

Itzhak isn't going to cry, he isn't--nope, he is. He wipes roughly at his eyes, sniffling. After a moment, when he can talk, he murmurs a swift few lines of Hebrew. Then he hugs August, and then he hugs Julia, and a lot of hugging is happening okay?

August tenses as the wind picks up, doesn't relax until it dies and the aspen sapling is standing before them. It'll be decades in regrowing, but who knows how time works here in the Veil? And it's not like he can't do something about that.

He walks over to the sapling, reaches out to trace a leaf. He pushes a little power into the sapling--it's a tree, he can only make it grow so much--and it lifts another six inches or so, fills out what will be its primary trunk to a proper three inches thick. A good start.

He returns the hug, patting Itzhak firmly on the back, smiles at Julia. "Thank you. Both of you." He's not going to cry, because this feels a good deal better than he thought it was going to, and he could use a little repieve before the coming ugliness.

He release Itzhak, rubs at his eyes. "Okay. Let's go bring her down."

Julia is happy to accept hugs. Though Itzhak also gets a little peck of her lips, right on the tip of his nose, It is, after all, an easy target. "It's my pleasure. This was - an experience. Something good, something meaningful."

Itzhak grins helplessly and blushes brick red equally helplessly. He rubs his nose where Julia kissed him, and eyes her with amused chagrin. "Troublemaker." But he agrees with her, voice quiet, "Yeah. This is what a sacrifice oughta be, I guess. Okay. Back home. Youse guys first. I'll shut the door."

August laughs, soft and quiet, at Itzhak's blushing. He nods at Julia, turns to the door. He steps back through into that balmy night, the light still fading from the sky. Ellie and Hyacinth wait inside; they'll know when the trees come down. That'll be impossible to miss.

Julia seems quite ready to bound back into the 'real' world. Once through the gate, she notes, "You know, this is the first time I've been this far up into the woods? It's beautiful. Thanks for asking me to come, August."

Itzhak seals the door behind them, drawing his hand down the seam in reality. It throws sparks under his palm. When it's done, he sighs, deep and gusty, withdrawn for a moment. Then he turns to Julia and August, coming back to life. "It's great here, ain't it?" He hikes his eyebrows at them, and looks at the tree. "All right. Last time pays for all. Let's bring 'er down." And sets his fiddle to play.

"You're welcome to come hunting or fishing. Or," August nods at the garden, quiet as nighttime approaches, "help with that, in return for some of the goods." He bobs his eyebrows. "There's a few fruit trees at the shop, too."

The newly blossomed levity fades as he turns to follow Itzhak's gaze to the tree. The reality of the next task sets it. As the fiddle music drifts around the clearing, he walks up to the aspen, now missing all but its smallest branches. He sets a hand on the trunk. His eyes half-shut, and he sends out faint mental inquiries to the two of them. The gentlest rap on the mind's door, a sound of the wind in a different forest, not unlike what they heard in the Veil. An offer to hold hands without actually doing it, and (because it's him) see what he's about to see.

The voice of the wind in their minds becomes a river, becomes the smell of wet earth and damp charcoal and a forest just after the rain. There's a shift in how they see the aspen in front of them and the forest beyond. A new layer, overlaid on their own senses, gives the trees a rippling sheen of bioluminescence, a spectral light within that flows in a thousand hair-thin, woven threads. The trees are an ocean, shifting in the distance; the aspen is a brilliant beacon crowned in silvery-green light.

August's voice starts low and soft, grows stronger with conviction as he keeps speaking. "Even in the moment of our earliest kiss, when sighed the straitened bud into the flower, sat the dry seed of most unwelcome this; and that I knew, though not the day and hour." He looks up at the leaves fluttering in the wind. "Too season-wise am I, being country-bred, to tilt at autumn or defy the frost: snuffing the chill even as my fathers did, I say with them, 'What's out tonight is lost.'"

He takes in a breath and lets it out slowly. "I only hoped, with the mild hope of all, who watch the leaf take shape upon the tree, a fairer summer and a later fall, than in these parts a man is apt to see." He swallows, takes a half-step back. "And sunny clusters ripened for the wine."

He closes his eyes. "I tell you this across the blackened vine." His hand pulls away from the tree and forms into a fist, and there's a sharp crack, like a rifleshot. The brilliance of the tree flares, flooding the clearing with light like an ocean wave cascading up from a rock. The light seems to fade at first, but eventually it becomes clear it's not fading, it's draining down the trunk of the tree, across the night black gap which is the cut August made, and down into the ground. It spreads through what must be the tree's roots, lightning shooting under their feet and over the whole clearing in a thousand directions.

The tree begins to list. August reaches out to guide it, silently asks Julia and Itzhak to do the same with the faintest mental nudge. Even with the biggest branches off, it's incredibly heavy, right at the upper edge of their abilities. But there's three of them, and they're only trying to lower it, not lift it.

Julia braces carefully and holds up her hands. When the trunk begins to fall, it only does so for about three inches, and then it stills, and slowly begins to lower. "Itzhak?" she calls out, hands gently rotating and fingers curling with the effort to keep the thing steady.

"Got it," Itzhak calls back. His way of doing these things is odd, but then, all of him is odd: he just plays, utterly absorbed in it, and things happen. In this case, he's twining his power with Julia's, helping her manage the enormous tree. Together they can bring it gently to the ground.

August isn't nearly as strong as Julia or Itzhak, but he helps guide the tree until it's gently laid down. Then he stands up and begins walking the length. Sharp cracking sounds herald the tree snapping in precise segments and shapes as dictated by Hyacinth, the rough pieces she'll properly cut and shape to her desires.

And what was once a proud, tall tree is now a neat pile of lumber, a smooth, flat stump, a memory, and a sapling growing in the Veil.

August sighs, nudges a chunk of the wood with his foot. "Let's eat," he says, and turns to go inside.

Julia looks terribly pleased with herself, and the two men, and the world, really. She strides up to Itzhak and waits for him to put his fiddle away so she can hold out her hand to him. "Sounds good, Ogg." It's said looking over her shoulder, hand still extended to the fiddler. "I've been thinking about that grouse for days."

Itzhak lowers his fiddle, letting it hang from one hand. He lifts his eyebrows at August, silently querying. When Julia extends her hand to him, he accepts. Seems perfectly natural, after bolstering her power with his own. "Yeah. Let's eat."