Shirley Meier’s published works include The Sharpest Edge, The Cage, and Sabre and Shadow (November 1992), all co-written with S.M. Stirling, and two short stories in anthologies: “Trave” in Magic in Ithkar IV and “Peacock Eyes” in Tales Out of the Witch World. Shadow’s Daughter, her first solo novel, and Shadow’s Son, co-written with S. M. Stirling and Karen Wehrstein, appeared in November and December 1991 respectively. Shirley lives in Muskoka, Ontario, but grew up near the quiet village of Lucan. Canadians will recognize Lucan as the scene of the notorious “Black Donnelly” murders of the late 1800s. It is also the haunted landscape that inspired this evocative story.
Near Lucan, Ontario, the land is gently rolling, with bumps and wrinkles pushing up against straight highways and roads as if a disturbed sleeper lay underneath; the quilting of fields changes from season to season, whites and greys or greens and yellows. Long ago the native peoples shunned this place.
In the hollows and folds lie Victorian farmhouses iced with gingerbread, yellowing lace in the windows casting gentle misty shadows across the folded hands of invalids hidden away in the dark back rooms. The land itself absorbs the muffled thunder of frail, drowning hands on a tin bath.
The European settlers found themselves locking doors against the dark and planting rowan trees. In the summer, heat casts a quiet molten glow over field and parched grass and brick, cicadas buzzing.
Whistling, Andrew Hensik walked back in from his mailbox, sorting the bundle in his hands. Hydro-electric bill, phone bill, a Maclean’s, a letter from the town clerk . . . He stopped by his car, looked up, and cursed. “It’s as bad as winter,” he said to himself as he brushed a couple of bunches of bright orange berries off the hood and roof of his vintage Mustang. The tree at the end of his driveway nearest the garage was always dropping them, leaving pulpy red stains on his car. He opened the car, looked up at the masses still hanging on the tree, grimaced and got in. “I’ll have them cut you down yet,” he said, as if the tree could hear him.
He was a slender man with pale blue eyes and short-trimmed wiry blond hair, thinning in front so the sweat beading there showed through.
He hissed as his bare legs hit the vinyl seat, glowing like a tan cookie sheet. The damn tree didn’t even shade the car properly, almost as if it didn’t want to. He shook off the fancy, pulled the towel forward, and tossed the mail into the passenger seat, thinking he’d sort it out later, once he’d picked up the kids from the train station.
In London, the train from Toronto was late, as usual, so he sat in the coffee shop decorated with farm implements and read his magazine, glad of the air conditioning. Since the divorce and his moving here, the kids had come up almost every weekend. His ex-wife would have seen them off early, and it was likely that fifteen-year-old Tina would have been protesting all the way that they were being sent off into the hinterlands of Lucan, away from stores and boys.
Justin was eight, the age at which all girls had cooties and his sister had the worst case. He’d be moaning that he couldn’t bring his guitar on the train.
Andrew smiled to himself. A swimming trip and a movie, one of the student shows at the university, and the Home County Folk Festival would give them all enough to do this week.
He folded his paper as the arrival announcement came. The kids sure made things lively when they were around. Their energy had gotten a lot easier to appreciate since Marlene had them most of the time.
“Shit.”
“What’s the matter, daddy?” Tina looked up, her mouth full of pizza.
“Oh, nothing that you need to be worried about.” He tossed the letter from the town clerk into the clutter on the kitchen table. “I wrote to the township, asking if they could take down that messy old tree near the garage and they just wrote back to say that according to bylaw so-and-so they won’t and not only that, if it’s as sick as I told them it was, I’m supposed to plant a sapling of the same species near it.”
“That’s dumb,” Justin said, and bit into his fourth slice, pulling a strand of cheese out to the full stretch of his arm.
“Daddy, is that the tree with the red berries all over it?”
“When they’re not falling off and damaging my car’s paint job, yes.”
“That’s the one the lady at the Four Corners store calls a witches’ tree.”
“Humph.” Her father shrugged off the comment. “What’s the fuss over this one tree? It’s only one in a row, what looks like every thirty feet or so. The only one on my property and they’re threatening to take me to court if I cut it myself. I should never have asked them to cut it down for me. Damn.”
“Dad, I want to watch TV.”
“Okay, but keep the volume down.”
“Sure.” Justin grabbed the bag of cookies and headed downstairs. The TV blared to life at almost top volume.
“Turn the damn thing down!” Tina shouted.
“Young lady . . .” Andrew said warningly. She opened her mouth, then closed it, sulking.
“Turn the damn TV down!” he shouted down to his son. The sound dropped to a bearable volume.
Andrew picked up the letter and left the table, ruffling Tina’s hair as he went by. “Put the plates in the dishwasher and tidy up some.”
“Daddy!”
“Tomorrow we’re going to rent a chainsaw and take that tree down ourselves.” The township wasn’t going to tell him what not to do. Let them take him to court.
“Will that be all, Tina?” The older woman behind the counter smiled at the girl as the cash register chimed. Tina nodded and started fishing in her coin purse for the twenty her father had given her. The old store was dark, crammed with things that people might want without driving all the way into town, full of the smell of wood and smoked meat and pickles. In the back a window air conditioner strained asthmatically to keep the shop cool.
“Daddy always runs out of something when we come down.”
“Ah, well, he does at that.”
“Mrs. Davis—” Tina fidgeted with the ends of her hair, feeling the breath of the air conditioner drying the sweat on her back. “Remember how you told me about the tree on our property? The witches’ tree?”
“Yes.” Mrs. Davis leaned her arms on the counter. “What about it?”
“Why is it called that? What’s so important about it?”
“It’s an old superstition around here, s’all. Why?”
“My dad wants the township to cut it down.”
“Oh, dear. They won’t do that to one of the old rowans.” Tina looked confused. “The tree. It’s a rowan.”
Tina picked up the bag of milk, a frown creasing her face. “There’s enough of them around here, I guess.”
Mrs. Davis pushed her glasses up her nose. “Well, there’s those who’ll dispute that. The town was so desperate for some peace that they hired a clever man from England to advise them.”
“Some peace?” Tina put the milk down, glad to stay in the cool store.
“Well, there were the Donnelly murders, and stories about a black dog that savaged people, a monster built out of sticks and a bear hide and traps for paws.” She shrugged suddenly. “It was all superstitious.”
“But why spend money on the man from England?”
Mrs. Davis looked away, toward the back of the store, as the air conditioner coughed and hesitated in the heat. “The murders. Mostly the murders that kept happening. The fellow said to plant the rowans in a ring around the town for protection. People did, and the problems stopped.”
“I guess there’s enough peace around here now,” Tina said uncertainly. A car door slammed and a family came in, the baby’s screaming drowning out the bell on the door.
“Excuse me, dear,” Mrs. Davis said, turning to the sandwich counter.
“Sure, bye.”
Tina walked home, feeling the cool milk pressed against her side, the only spot on her skin not sweating in the heat. The sun felt like hot syrup starting at her head, oozing down over her body.
Ahead, up the hill, she could hear the howl of the chainsaw. Daddy always had to do something right away when he decided to. As she came up the lane, she had a sudden notion that the witches’ trees were a wall, shimmering white-grey bark in the sun, catching the heat and something sticky in their branches so it couldn’t get through at the people.
The old tree by the garage was going, bowing out of the circle, falling faster and faster as if something were pushing it over, helping gravity, helping the sun knock it down.
Her father stood there, idling chainsaw in hand, sawdust stuck all over his sweaty arms and face, grinning. As the tree went down the grin twisted for a moment, gloating, and she felt the sweat on her go chill.
That’s stupid, she thought. It’s just the milk making me cold. As she went into the house the chainsaw howled to life, hacking the tree into sticky pieces.
The place where it had stood was a hole in the air through which the heat shimmered.
Andrew fiddled with the thermostat that night. “Damn the air conditioner.”
“Hmm?” Justin had his mouth full of muffin. He washed it down with a gulp of milk. “S’matter now, dad?”
“The air conditioner’s not working.” The heat seemed to be crawling into the house, stinking like the cut wood this afternoon, sitting behind his eyes like a lump of melting suet. He couldn’t breathe.
Justin shrugged. “Tough luck, dad.”
“You watch your mouth, young man.” The reprimand took on an edge. “I don’t like your attitude.”
“Don’t have a cow, dude,” Justin smirked. Andrew slapped him, and the glass of milk shattered as Justin fell. The milk thrust pink fingers along the floor, mixed with blood from a cut, puddling around the muffin crumbs, soaking into Justin’s shirt as he lay on the floor.
“Daddy—” Tina stood in the door, hands over her mouth.
“Oh.” Andrew ran shaking hands through his hair. “Oh, Justin. Oh, shit.” As he stooped to pick up his son, the boy cringed. “I’m sorry, Jus. Here, let me see.” There was blood on Justin’s lip, and on his arm where a shard of glass had cut. “I’ll drive you down to the hospital and we’ll get that stitched.” What had gotten into him?
In the hospital Andrew sat holding Justin’s hand. It was cool enough in here to make him shiver, but the dry air seemed to clear his head somehow. My God, what is going on? I’ve never hit my kids before. I’ve never reacted like that. Only ignorant brutes beat their kids. “You’ll be all right, Jus. You’ll be just fine.”
The doctor looked over, saying, “That’s right. It’s not that bad.”
Andrew turned Justin’s head away from the doctor. He resisted. “I want to see what she’s doing, dad.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea, Jus.”
The boy was still shaking, then he clasped his father’s hand, hard. “S’okay, dad. It’s cool, dude.” Andrew smiled and felt a weight lift from his shoulders.
While they were at the hospital, the house was quiet, ticking in the heat. Wood cracked. Tina jumped, dropping the soaked washcloth in the sink. She leaned on the counter looking at the dark kitchen window. The fluorescent light over it made her skin look greenish, with black shadows for eyes and under her nose. She shivered and snapped the light off but stayed where she was, looking at the dark. It felt cooler. She leaned toward the glass and put her forehead against its coolness.
Daddy had never hit either one of them. Beyond the glass, in the moonlight, it looked like the dark was blowing shreds of black around where the witches’ tree had stood, blowing toward the house. Funny, there’s no wind to blow stuff around. The glass against her forehead was suddenly hot. She was so hot. Sitting on the lawn was a big black dog, tongue lolling as if it were grinning, eyes shining red and green as if catching the headlights of a car. For a moment its outline shimmered like heat. Didn’t Mrs. Davis say something about a dog? She couldn’t remember, it was so hot and humid.
She shook her head, blinking sweat out of her eyes, rubbing away the circle of damp where her forehead had rested. She was so hot. Daddy’s never hit us before. Now he had, Justin at least. And Jus is his favourite, even though I’m older. His favourite. Justin never got stuck putting dishes away, cleaning up kitchens, cleaning up spilled milk. Oh, no. Good old Tina, stuck out here, all alone, left to clean up the mess like a good girl. Sexist pig, that’s what Daddy really was, and he was teaching Jus to be the same. Jus, who was always filling his face, grabbing the biggest piece of cake, the most pizza, the whole bag of cookies and didn’t leave her one, not one. Little pig.
She snapped the light on again, wrung the cloth out viciously, sweating. The whole world is dripping and I’m stuck out here in the back of nowhere, in the dark where stupid old ladies babble. The cicadas shrilled like miniature chainsaws.
“You little shit! You pig, you ate all of my chocolates!”
“Yeah, well, you said I could have some!”
“Did not! You never asked, never, never—”
“I did so and you said uh-huh—”
“You stink! I hope you get gangrene and your arm falls off! Daddy was right to hit you—”
Tina doubled over as Justin punched her in the stomach. She reared back and whacked him on the head. Their father stormed out onto the lawn, pulled them apart, and dragged them back into the house. “Dammit, do you two brats have to scream at each other out where the neighbours can hear you?”
“Daddy—”
“She—”
“Shut up, both of you.” He was shaking them. “You two are staying in this house until you can act like people instead of bears in a pit. No swimming today, no show tomorrow. You hear me?”
Tina wrenched her arm free and fled up to her room, crying. “I hate you. I hate you both.”
Justin stopped pulling and looked up at Andrew, his hair dishevelled, his t-shirt bunched into his father’s fist. “You gonna hit me again?”
Andrew drew a shaking breath, let him go. “No. You are going to go to your room and we are going to talk about this later like sane people.” Justin pulled his t-shirt around and slouched up to his room, stamping his sneakers on the stair treads as hard as he could.
Andrew went out to where the remains of the rowan tree were stacked, and began to attack the logs with the saw. Sweat ran down into his eyes. He’d make the damned saw work. It bucked in his hands, refusing to bite into the wood. Tomorrow he’d start splitting it. What is with everything? The chainsaw wasn’t cutting properly, his kids were forgetting any manners they’d ever had . . . Must be their mother teaching them to be so rude.
Justin lay on his bed, sweating in the dark, looking at the cluster of flies on his window. Since the air conditioner was still broken, the flies had started showing up everywhere, big, fat blue-green manure flies that splashed when you swatted them. He could hear his dad swatting them downstairs. The snap and crack of the flyswatter sounded like a whip.
His forehead wrinkled in the dark. This was the worst vacation they’d ever had with Dad. They usually had a lot of fun. Why was Tina being such a . . . such a girl? They’d never hit each other like that before.
She really wants to hurt me. A dog barked outside, the sound crawling in his window, mixing with the whine of the flies. He pulled his shirt off and wiped his armpits.
Dad never hit her. She was older. She got to do all the interesting stuff. I wish she’d never been born.
He turned over and shoved his pillow off onto the floor. He was baking up here. He wanted to go down and pour himself a glass of milk cold out of the fridge and pick it up all sweaty and cool and drink it straight down, but Dad was sitting in the living room between him and it. Dad was being a shit. It wasn’t fair.
Dad never hit her, never touched her. It’s not fair. She told me I could have a couple of her chocolates. He hadn’t meant to eat the whole box, he’d only had a couple, then gone back for a couple more. Four. That’s all he’d had, he was sure.
Sob, sob, sob when she’d run upstairs. One big show to get Dad’s sympathy. He wished he could hit her again.
Tina sat under one of the other rowans, looking at the house. Near the tree it seemed cooler. It was weird. Daddy and Justin hadn’t gone strange until the tree came down. Maybe Mrs. Davis was right. Everything had gone bad once the row of trees was broken.
But where was she going to get another rowan? She shivered and thought of all the weird things she’d been thinking, especially when it got dark.
“Christina! Get in here,” her father shouted from the house. “I didn’t allow you out.” Daddy had said they weren’t going anywhere till he said so.
She climbed to her feet and dragged into the house. Behind her the heat poured through the break in the ring of rowans, swirling thicker and thicker with the house at its centre.
Andrew sat on the porch, waiting for the air conditioner repairman. He finished his beer and put it on the porch.
“This is CHRW ninety-two point five on your dial. The weather forecast—current temperature is twenty-five degrees Celsius. For today and tomorrow, well, it’s getting hotter. Working up to a great weekend for swimming or lying in the shade . . .”
He opened another beer and it was cold on his fingers. Twenty-five? Like hell it’s only twenty-five. He held the beer to his temples and ears, rubbed it over his forehead. He hadn’t been so irritable in years. He drank again and considered going into the city for the day. Take Tina shopping like she wanted, in a nice cool mall. Maybe hit the video store with Jus; rent a movie . . .
“Oh yeah, Justin, you are being a creep. A—” The children’s squabbling cut into his thoughts, drawing up the hot rage. He couldn’t recall them fighting so much ever before.
His nose was full of the smell of sawdust from the dead tree. Those kids didn’t know how good they had it. The beer in his hands was warm already, almost hot. He couldn’t take such badly behaved children into town. It might seem like a reward, a treat. Besides, one of his colleagues might see them acting like this.
Two more days. Just two more days and he’d tell Marlene to take her brats back to Toronto, that he never wanted to see them again. Then he’d have the weekend before his vacation was over and he’d be back to work in his cool, clean white office in London. The kids . . . rotten, those two, like the heartwood of a tree, black and stinking, making the axe stick instead of splitting cleanly. Filthy tree. First with the fruit, and now it wouldn’t even clean up properly.
He felt a vague flicker of a thought, that he wasn’t like this usually. He shook his head as if a fly were buzzing in his ear. Damn kids. “WILL YOU TWO SHUT UP!”
Tina sat in the kitchen, her shorts and halter sticking to her, trying to read the Star, though the letters were swimming in front of her eyes. She stared at the wall opposite, at the knives hung there, without seeing them, wanting to go home. She scrubbed the ink off her damp fingers onto her shorts. Daddy just didn’t know. He didn’t care. He loved Justin more than he loved her. I should call Mom and Bill. I shouldn’t just sit here. If only it were cooler. If only she weren’t so tired of fighting with Jus. It was so hot, her eyes felt like they were going to fry right in her head. She put her head down on her arms, trying to find a cool spot.
Justin sat in his room listlessly playing air guitar, with the radio turned high as it could go. Andrew walked in and stood looking down at his son. His face was red with heat. Without a word he ripped the cord out of the wall and flung the radio through the open window.
Justin watched his father stomp out. I hate you. Downstairs the back door slammed. He smashed one of the flies against the window sill, looking down at the goo on his fingers.
“Daddy,” Tina said as her father came into the kitchen, her voice muffled by her arms. “Can we please go get a little rowan tree to plant where the old one was?” Her father stared at her as if she’d gone crazy.
“Are you kidding? I’ve just gotten the old tree cut to manageable pieces.” He shook himself. “Tina, do something useful while I’m out splitting the last of the wood. Fix Justin something for lunch.”
She didn’t look up. The back door slammed. In the kitchen the sun turned the white tiles yellow-gold like baking bread, reflecting from the knives hung on the magnetic strip, reflecting into her eyes when she looked up. Justin came slouching in, hands clasped behind his back, a weird grin on his face.
She got up, pushing down on the table. “Jus, let’s just have peanut butter. It’s too hot to cook anything . . .”
“Don’t tell me what to do! I’ll make you shut up!”
She looked up, startled. “What—?” Light flashed in his hand and she staggered back against the counter holding her cheek. He suddenly looked sick, and startled as if he’d woken up, or couldn’t wake up from a nightmare.
He has a penknife, she thought. Her cheek hurt. She pulled her fingers away, and the red on her hand was suddenly the heat and the sweat and fighting and the flies and her father and . . .
“You cut me!” She grabbed for the knives on the wall, sunlight and heat flaring from an edge. “You little shit, you cut me!” Justin turned to run.
Andrew looked up from where he was trying to wrench the axe out of a stubborn knot when Justin started screaming. Something glass fell and broke in the house.
The buzzing in his ears was like distant traffic sound. His head was nearly bursting. Damn them. Unmanageable kids, stubborn as wood. The sun lay warm on his head. Sweat was beading his arms, running into his eyes, turning the world hazy and reddish, stinging. I’ve got to do something about those kids. He started back into the house, forgetting to put the axe down. The door slammed behind him.
A muffled scream that might have been, “Daddy no please no don—”
Heat shimmered, danced black over the stump of the dead rowan, then flowed on down toward the town.