The Woman of the Wood

by A. Merritt

Tolkien is unlikely to have known of “The Woman of the Wood” by A. Merritt, an American writer, but would have sympathized with the impulse behind the story, which tells of how trees might defend themselves. In a letter published in the newspaper Daily Telegraph on 4 July 1972, Tolkien wrote that “in all my works I take the part of trees as against all their enemies.” And Tolkien’s Ents in The Lord of the Rings embody this same desire.

“The Woman of the Wood” was first published in the August 1926 issue of the American pulp magazine Weird Tales.

McKay sat on the balcony of the little inn that squatted like a brown gnome among the pines that clothed the eastern shore of the lake.

It was a small and lonely lake high up on the Vosges; and yet the word “lonely” is not just the one to tag its spirit; rather was it aloof, withdrawn. The mountains came down on every side, making a vast tree-lined bowl that seemed filled, when McKay first saw it, with a still wine of peace.

McKay had worn the wings with honor in the World War. And as a bird loves the trees, so did McKay love them. They were to him not merely trunks and roots, branches and leaves; they were personalities. He was acutely aware of character differences even among the same species—that pine was jolly and benevolent; that one austere, monkish; there stood a swaggering bravo and there a sage wrapped in green meditation; that birch was a wanton; the one beside her virginal, still adream.

The war had sapped McKay, nerve, brain, and soul. Through all the years that had passed the wound had kept open. But now, as he slid his car down the side of the great green bowl, he felt its peace reach out to him, caress and quiet him, promise him healing. He seemed to drift like a falling leaf through the cathedraled woods, to be cradled by the hands of the trees.

McKay had stopped at the little gnome of an inn, and there he had lingered, day after day, week after week.

The trees had nursed him; soft whisperings of the leaves, slow chant of the needled pines, had first deadened, then driven from him the re-echoing clamor of the war and its sorrow. The open wound of his spirit had closed under their healing, had closed and become scars; and then even the scars had been covered and buried, as the scars on Earth’s breast are covered and buried beneath the falling leaves of autumn. The trees had laid healing hands upon his eyes. He had sucked strength from the green breasts of the hills.

As that strength flowed back to him, McKay grew aware that the place was—troubled, that there was ferment of fear within it.

It was as though the trees had waited until he himself had become whole before they made their own unrest known to him. But now they were trying to tell him something; there was a shrillness as of apprehension, of anger, in the whispering of the leaves, the needled chanting of the pines.

And it was this that had kept McKay at the inn—a definite consciousness of appeal. He strained his ears to catch words in the rustling branches, words that trembled on the brink of his human understanding. Never did they cross that brink.

Gradually he had focused himself, so he believed, to the point of the valley’s unease.

On all the shores of the lake there were but two dwellings. One was the inn, and around the inn the trees clustered protectively, confidingly, friendly. It was as though they had not only accepted it, but had made it part of themselves.

Not so was it of the other habitation. Once it had been the hunting lodge of long-dead lords; now it was half ruined, forlorn. It lay across the lake almost exactly opposite the inn and back upon the slope a half mile from the shore. Once there had been fat fields around it and a fair orchard.

The forest had marched down upon fields and lodge. Here and there scattered pines and poplars stood like soldiers guarding some outpost; scouting parties of saplings lurked among the gaunt, broken fruit trees. But the forest had not had its way unchecked; ragged stumps showed where those who dwelt in the old house had cut down the invaders; blackened patches showed where they had fired the woods.

Here was the center of the conflict. Here the green folk of the forest were both menaced and menacing, at war.

The lodge was a fortress beleaguered by the trees, a fortress whose garrison sallied forth with ax and torch to take their toll of their besiegers.

Yet McKay sensed a slow, inexorable pressing on of the forest; he saw it as an army ever filling the gaps in its enclosing ranks, shooting its seeds into the cleared places, sending its roots out to sap them, and armed always with a crushing patience. He had the impression of constant regard, of watchfulness, as though night and day the forest kept myriads of eyes upon the lodge, inexorably, not to be swerved from its purpose. He had spoken of this impression to the innkeeper and his wife, and they had looked at him, oddly.

“Old Polleau does not love the trees, no,” the old man had said, “No, nor do his two sons. They do not love the trees—and very certainly the trees do not love them.”

   

Between the lodge and the shore, marching down to the verge of the lake was a singularly beautiful little coppice of silver birches and firs. This coppice stretched for perhaps a quarter of a mile; it was not more than a hundred feet or two in depth, and not alone the beauty of its trees but also their curious grouping vividly aroused McKay’s interest. At each end were a dozen or more of the glistening, needled firs, not clustered but spread out as though in open marching order; at widely spaced intervals along its other two sides paced single firs. The birches, slender and delicate, grew within the guard of these sturdier trees, yet not so thickly as to crowd one another.

To McKay the silver birches were for all the world like some gay caravan of lovely demoiselles under the protection of debonair knights. With that odd other sense of his he saw the birches as delectable damsels, merry and laughing—the pines as lovers, troubadours in green-needled mail. And when the winds blew and the crests of the trees bent under them, it was as though dainty demoiselles picked up fluttering, leafy skirts, bent leafy hoods, and danced while the knights of the firs drew closer round them, locked arms and danced with them to the roaring horns of the winds. At such times he almost heard sweet laughter from the birches, shoutings from the firs.

Of all the trees in that place McKay loved best this little wood. He had rowed across and rested in its shade, had dreamed there and, dreaming, had heard mysterious whisperings and the sound of dancing feet light as falling leaves, had taken dream draft of that gaiety which was the soul of the little wood.

Two days ago he had seen Polleau and his two sons. McKay had lain dreaming in the coppice all that afternoon. As dusk began to fall he had reluctantly arisen and begun to row back to the inn. When he had been a few hundred feet from shore three men had come out from the trees and had stood watching him—three grim, powerful men taller than the average French peasant.

He had called a friendly greeting to them, but they had not answered it; had stood there, scowling. Then as he bent again to his oars, one of the sons had raised a hatchet and driven it savagely into the trunk of a slim birch. McKay thought he heard a thin, wailing cry from the stricken tree, a sigh from all the little wood.

He had felt as though the keen edge had bitten into his own flesh.

“Stop that!” he had cried. “Stop it, damn you!”

For answer Polleau’s son had struck again, and never had McKay seen hate etched so deep as on his face as he struck. Cursing, a killing rage in his heart, McKay had swung the boat around, raced back to shore. He had heard the hatchet strike again and again and, close now to shore, had heard a crackling and over it once more the thin, high wailing. He had turned to look.

The birch was tottering, was falling. Close beside it grew one of the firs, and, as the smaller tree crashed over, it dropped upon this fir like a fainting maid into the arms of her lover. And as it lay and trembled there, one of the branches of the other tree slipped from under it, whipped out, and smote the hatchet wielder a crushing blow upon the head, sending him to earth.

It had been, of course, only the chance blow of a bough, bent by pressure of the fallen trunk and then released as that had slipped down. Of course—yet there had been such suggestion of conscious action in the branch’s recoil, so much of bitter anger in it, so much, in truth, had it been like a purposeful blow that McKay felt an eerie prickling of his scalp; his heart had missed its beat.

For a moment Polleau and the standing son had stared at the sturdy fir with the silvery birch lying upon its green breast, folded in and shielded by its needled boughs as though—again the swift impression came to McKay—as though it were a wounded maid stretched on breast, in arms, of knightly lover. For a long moment father and son had stared.

Then, still wordless but with that same bitter hatred in both their faces, they had stooped and picked up the other and, with his arms around the neck of each, had borne him limply away.

   

McKay, sitting on the balcony of the inn that morning, went over and over that scene, realized more and more clearly the human aspect of fallen birch and clasping fir, and the conscious deliberateness of the latter’s blow. During the two days that had elapsed since then, he had felt the unease of the trees increase, their whispering appeal become more urgent.

What were they trying to tell him? What did they want him to do?

Troubled, he stared across the lake, trying to pierce the mists that hung over it and hid the opposite shore. And suddenly it seemed that he heard the coppice calling him, felt it pull the point of his attention toward it irresistibly, as the lodestone swings and holds the compass needle.

The coppice called him; it bade him come.

McKay obeyed the command; he arose and walked down to the boat landing; he stepped into his skiff and began to row across the lake. As his oars touched the water his trouble fell from him. In its place flowed peace and a curious exaltation.

The mists were thick upon the lake. There was no breath of wind, yet the mists billowed and drifted, shook and curtained under the touch of unfelt airy hands.

They were alive—the mists; they formed themselves into fantastic palaces past whose opalescent façades he flew; they built themselves into hills and valleys and circled plains whose floors were rippling silk. Tiny rainbows gleamed out among them, and upon the water prismatic patches shone and spread like spilled wine of opals. He had the illusion of vast distances—the hillocks of mist were real mountains, the valleys between them were not illusory. He was a colossus cleaving through some elfin world. A trout broke, and it was like Leviathan leaping from the fathomless deep. Around the arc of the fish’s body rainbows interlaced and then dissolved into rain of softly gleaming gems—diamonds in dance with sapphires, flame-hearted rubies, pearls with shimmering souls of rose. The fish vanished, diving cleanly without sound; the jeweled bows vanished with it; a tiny irised whirlpool swirled for an instant where trout and flashing arcs had been.

Nowhere was there sound. He let his oars drop and leaned forward, drifting. In the silence, before him and around him, he felt opening the gateways of an unknown world.

And suddenly he heard the sound of voices, many voices, faint at first and murmurous. Louder they became, swiftly; women’s voices sweet and lilting, and mingled with them the deeper tones of men; voices that lifted and fell in a wild, gay chanting through whose joyesse ran undertones both of sorrow and of anger—as though faery weavers threaded through silk spun of sunbeams, somber strands dipped in the black of graves, and crimson strands stained in the red of wrathful sunsets.

He drifted on, scarce daring to breathe lest even that faint sound break the elfin song. Closer it rang and clearer, and now he became aware that the speed of his boat was increasing, that it was no longer drifting, as though the little waves on each side were pushing him ahead with soft and noiseless palms. His boat grounded, and as its keel rustled along over the smooth pebbles of the beach the song ceased.

McKay half arose and peered before him. The mists were thicker here, but he could see the outlines of the coppice. It was like looking at it through many curtains of fine gauze, and its trees seemed shifting, ethereal, unreal. And moving among the trees were figures that threaded among the boles and flitted round them in rhythmic measures, like the shadows of leafy boughs swaying to some cadenced wind.

He stepped ashore. The mists dropped behind him, shutting off all sight of the lake, and as they dropped, McKay lost all sense of strangeness, all feeling of having entered some unfamiliar world. Rather it was as though he had returned to one he had once known well and that had been long lost to him.

The rhythmic flitting had ceased; there was now no movement as there was no sound among the trees—yet he felt the little wood full of watchful life. McKay tried to speak; there was a spell of silence on his mouth.

“You called me. I have come to listen to you—to help you if I can.”

The words formed within his mind, but utter them he could not. Over and over he tried, desperately; the words seemed to die on his lips.

A pillar of mist whirled forward and halted, eddying half an arm’s length away. Suddenly out of it peered a woman’s face, eyes level with his own. A woman’s face—yes; but McKay, staring into those strange eyes probing his, knew that, woman’s though it seemed, it was that of no woman of human breed. They were without pupils, the irises deer-large and of the soft green of deep forest dells; within them sparkled tiny star points of light like motes in a moonbeam. The eyes were wide and set far apart beneath a broad, low brow over which was piled braid upon braid of hair of palest gold, braids that seemed spun of shining ashes of gold. The nose was small and straight, the mouth scarlet and exquisite. The face was oval, tapering to a delicately pointed chin.

Beautiful was that face, but its beauty was an alien one, unearthly. For long moments the strange eyes thrust their gaze deep into his. Then out of the mist were thrust two slender white arms, the hands long, the fingers tapering.

The tapering fingers touched his ears.

“He shall hear,” whispered the red lips.

Immediately from all about him a cry arose; in it were the whispering and rustling of the leaves beneath the breath of the winds; the shrilling of the harp strings of the boughs; the laughter of hidden brooks; the shoutings of waters flinging themselves down into deep and rocky pools—the voices of the forest made articulate.

“He shall hear!” they cried.

The long white fingers rested on his lips, and their touch was cool as bark of birch on cheek after some long upward climb through forest, cool and subtly sweet.

“He shall speak,” whispered the scarlet lips of the wood woman.

“He shall speak!” answered the wood voices again, as though in litany.

“He shall see,” whispered the woman, and the cold fingers touched his eyes.

“He shall see!” echoed the wood voices.

The mists that had hidden the coppice from McKay wavered, thinned, and were gone. In their place was a limpid, translucent, palely green aether, faintly luminous, as though he stood within some clear wan emerald. His feet pressed a golden moss spangled with tiny starry bluets. Fully revealed before him was the woman of the strange eyes and the face of unearthly beauty. He dwelt for a moment upon the slender shoulders, the firm, small, tip-tilted breasts, the willow litheness of her body. From neck to knees a smock covered her, sheer and silken and delicate as spun cobwebs; through it her body gleamed as though fire of the young spring moon ran in her veins.

He looked beyond her. There upon the golden moss were other women like her, many of them; they stared at him with the same wide-set green eyes in which danced the sparkling moonbeam motes; like her they were crowned with glistening, pallidly golden hair; like hers, too, were their oval faces with the pointed chins and perilous alien beauty. Only where she stared at him gravely, measuring him, weighing him, there were those of her sisters whose eyes were mocking; and those whose eyes called to him with a weirdly tingling allure, their mouths athirst; those whose eyes looked upon him with curiosity alone; those whose great eyes pleaded with him, prayed to him.

Within that pellucid, greenly luminous aether McKay was abruptly aware that the trees of the coppice still had a place. Only now they were spectral indeed. They were like white shadows cast athwart a glaucous screen; trunk and bough, twig and leaf, they arose around him and they were as though etched in air by phantom craftsmen—thin and unsubstantial; they were ghost trees rooted in another space.

He was aware that there were men among the women; men whose eyes were set wide apart as were theirs, as strange and pupilless as were theirs, but with irises of brown and blue; men with pointed chins and oval faces, broad shouldered and clad in kirtles of darkest green; swarthy-skinned men, muscular and strong, with that same lithe grace of the women—and like them of a beauty that was alien and elfin.

McKay heard a little wailing cry. He turned. Close beside him lay a girl clasped in the arms of one of the swarthy, green-clad men. She lay upon his breast. His eyes were filled with a black flame of wrath, and hers were misted, anguished. For an instant McKay had a glimpse of the birch that old Polleau’s son had sent crashing down into the boughs of the fir. He saw birch and fir as immaterial outlines around this man and this girl. For an instant girl and man and birch and fir seemed to be one and the same.

The scarlet-lipped woman touched his shoulder.

“She withers,” sighed the woman, and in her voice McKay heard a faint rustling as of mournful leaves. “Now is it not pitiful that she withers—our sister who was so young, so slender, and so lovely?”

McKay looked again at the girl. The white skin seemed shrunken; the moon radiance that gleamed through the bodies of the others was still in hers, but dim and pallid; her slim arms hung listlessly; her body drooped. Her mouth was wan and parched, her long and misted green eyes dull. The palely golden hair was lusterless and dry. He looked on a slow death—a withering death.

“May the arm that struck her down wither!” said the green-clad man who held her, and in his voice McKay heard a savage strumming as of winter winds through bleak boughs: “May his heart wither and the sun blast him! May the rain and the waters deny him and the winds scourge him!”

“I thirst,” whispered the girl.

There was a stirring among the watching women. One came forward holding a chalice that was like thin leaves turned to green crystal. She paused beside the trunk of one of the spectral trees, reached up, and drew down to her a branch. A slim girl with half-frightened, half-resentful eyes glided to her side and threw her arms around the ghostly bole. The woman cut the branch deep with what seemed an arrow-shaped flake of jade and held her chalice under it. From the cut a faintly opalescent liquid dripped into the cup. When it was filled, the woman beside McKay stepped forward and pressed her own long hands around the bleeding branch. She stepped away and McKay saw that the stream had ceased to flow. She touched the trembling girl and unclasped her arms.

“It is healed,” said the woman gently. “And it was your turn, little sister. The wound is healed. Soon you will have forgotten.”

The woman with the chalice knelt and set it to the wan, dry lips of her who was—withering. She drank of it, thirstily, to the last drop. The misty eyes cleared, they sparkled; the lips that had been so parched and pale grew red, the white body gleamed as though the waning light within it had been fed with new.

“Sing, sisters,” the girl cried shrilly. “Dance for me, sisters!”

Again burst out that chant McKay had heard as he had floated through the mists upon the lake. Now, as then, despite his open ears, he could distinguish no words, but clearly he understood its mingled themes—the joy of spring’s awakening, rebirth, with green life streaming, singing up through every bough, swelling the buds, burgeoning with tender leaves the branches; the dance of the trees in the scented winds of spring; the drums of the jubilant rain on leafy hoods; passion of summer sun pouring its golden flood down upon the trees; the moon passing with stately steps and slow, and green hands reaching up to her and drawing from her breast milk of silver fire; riot of wild gay winds with their mad pipings and strummings; soft interlacing of boughs; the kiss of amorous leaves—all these and more, much more that McKay could not understand since they dealt with hidden, secret things for which man has no images, were in that chanting.

And all these and more were in the rhythms of the dancing of those strange, green-eyed women and brown-skinned men; something incredibly ancient, yet young as the speeding moment; something of a world before and beyond man.

McKay listened; he watched, lost in wonder, his own world more than half forgotten.

The woman beside him touched his arm. She pointed to the girl.

“Yet she withers,” she said. “And not all our life, if we poured it through her lips, could save her.”

He saw that the red was draining slowly from the girl’s lips, that the luminous life tides were waning. The eyes that had been so bright were misting and growing dull once more. Suddenly a great pity and a great rage shook him. He knelt beside her, took her hands in his.

“Take them away! Take away your hands! They burn me!” she moaned.

“He tries to help you,” whispered the green-clad man, gently. But he reached over and drew McKay’s hands away.

“Not so can you help her or us,” said the woman.

“What can I do?” McKay arose, looked helplessly from one to the other. “What can I do to help you?”

The chanting died, the dance stopped. A silence fell, and he felt upon him the eyes of all these strange people. They were tense, waiting. The woman took his hands. Her touch was cool and sent a strange sweetness sweeping through his veins.

“There are three men yonder,” she said. “They hate us. Soon we shall all be as she is there—withering! They have sworn it, and as they have sworn so will they do. Unless—”

She paused. The moonbeam-dancing motes in her eyes changed to tiny sparklings of red that terrified him.

“Three men?” In his clouded mind was dim memory of Polleau and his two strong sons. “Three men?” he repeated, stupidly. “But what are three men to you who are so many? What could three men do against those stalwart gallants of yours?”

“No,” she shook her head. “No—there is nothing our—men—can do; nothing that we can do. Once, night and day, we were gay. Now we fear—night and day. They mean to destroy us. Our kin have warned us. And our kin cannot help us. Those three are masters of blade and flame. Against blade and flame we are helpless.

“Surely will they destroy us,” murmured the woman. “We shall wither—all of us. Like her there, or burn—unless—”

Suddenly she threw white arms around McKay’s neck. She pressed her body close to him. Her scarlet mouth sought and found his lips and clung to them. Through all McKay’s body ran swift, sweet flames, green fire of desire. His own arms went around her, crushed her to him.

“You shall not die!” he cried. “No—by God, you shall not!”

She drew back her head, looked deep into his eyes.

“They have sworn to destroy us,” she said, “and soon. With blade and flame they will destroy us—those three—unless—”

“Unless?” he asked, fiercely.

“Unless you—slay them first!” she answered.

A cold shock ran through McKay, chilling the fires of his desire. He dropped his arm from around the woman, thrust her from him. For an instant she trembled before him.

“Slay!” he heard her whisper—and she was gone.

   

The spectral trees wavered; their outlines thickened out of immateriality into substance. The green translucence darkened. He had a swift vertiginous moment as though he swung between two worlds. He closed his eyes. The dizziness passed and he opened them, looked around him.

He stood on the lakeward skirts of the little coppice. There were no shadows flitting, no sign of white women nor of swarthy, green-clad men. His feet were on green moss. Gone was the soft golden carpet with its bluets. Birches and firs clustered solidly before him.

At his left was a sturdy fir in whose needled arms a broken birch tree lay withering. It was the birch that Polleau’s son had so wantonly slashed down. For an instant he saw within the fir and birch the immaterial outlines of the green-clad man and the slim girl who withered. For that instant birch and fir and girl and man seemed one and the same. He stepped back, and his hands touched the smooth, cool bark of another birch that rose close at his right.

Upon his hands the touch of that bark was like—was like what? Curiously was it like the touch of the long slim hands of the woman of the scarlet lips!

McKay stood there, staring, wondering, like a man who has but half awakened from dream. And suddenly a little wind stirred the leaves of the rounded birch beside him. The leaves murmured, sighed. The wind grew stronger and the leaves whispered.

“Slay!” he heard them whisper—and again: “Slay! Help us! Slay!”

And the whisper was the voice of the woman of the scarlet lips!

Rage, swift and unreasoning, sprang up in McKay. He began to run up through the coppice, up to where he knew was the old lodge in which dwelt Polleau and his sons. And as he ran the wind blew stronger about him, and louder and louder grew the whispering of the trees.

“Slay!” they whispered. “Slay them! Save us! Slay!”

“I will slay! I will save you!” McKay, panting, hammer pulse beating in his ears, heard himself answering that ever more insistent command. And in his mind was but one desire—to clutch the throats of Polleau and his sons, to crack their necks, to stand by them then and watch them wither—wither like that slim girl in the arms of the green-clad man.

He came to the edge of the coppice and burst from it out into a flood of sunshine. For a hundred feet he ran, and then he was aware that the whispering command was stilled, that he heard no more that maddening rustling of wrathful leaves. A spell seemed to have been loosed from him; it was as though he had broken through some web of sorcery. McKay stopped, dropped upon the ground, buried his face in the grasses.

He lay there marshaling his thoughts into some order of sanity. What had he been about to do? To rush upon those three men who lived in the old lodge and—slay them! And for what? Because that unearthly, scarlet-lipped woman whose kisses he still could feel upon his mouth had bade him! Because the whispering trees of the little wood had maddened him with that same command! For this he had been about to kill three men!

What were that woman and her sister and the green-clad swarthy gallants of theirs? Illusions of some waking dream—phantoms born of the hypnosis of the swirling mists through which he had rowed and floated across the lake? Such things were not uncommon. McKay knew of those who by watching the shifting clouds could create and dwell for a time with wide-open eyes within some similar land of fantasy; knew others who needed but to stare at smoothly falling water to set themselves within a world of waking dreams; there were those who could summon dreams by gazing into a ball of crystal; others who found dream life in saucers of shining ink.

Might not the moving mists have laid those same fingers of hypnosis upon his own mind? And his love for the trees, the sense of appeal that he had felt so long, his memory of the wanton slaughter of the slim birch have all combined to paint upon his drugged consciousness the fantasms he had beheld?

McKay arose to his feet, shakily enough. He looked back at the coppice. There was no wind now; the leaves were silent, motionless. Reason with himself as he might, something deep within him stubbornly asserted the reality of his experience. At any rate, he told himself, the little wood was far too beautiful to be despoiled.

   

The old lodge was about a quarter of a mile away. A path led up to it through the ragged fields. McKay walked up the path, climbed rickety steps, and paused, listening. He heard voices and knocked. The door was flung open and old Polleau stood there, peering at him through half-shut, suspicious eyes. One of the sons stood close behind him. They stared at McKay with grim, hostile faces.

He thought he heard a faint, far-off despairing whisper from the distant wood. And it was as though the pair in the doorway heard it too, for their gaze shifted from him to the coppice, and he saw hatred flicker swiftly across their grim faces. Their gaze swept back to him.

“What do you want?” demanded Polleau, curtly.

“I am a neighbor of yours, stopping at the inn—” began McKay, courteously.

“I know who you are,” Polleau interrupted, brusquely, “but what is it that you want?”

“I find the air of this place good for me.” McKay stifled a rising anger. “I am thinking of staying for a year or more until my health is fully recovered. I would like to buy some of your land and build me a lodge upon it.”

“Yes, M’sieu?” There was acid politeness now in the old man’s voice. “But is it permitted to ask why you do not remain at the inn? Its fare is excellent and you are well-liked there.”

“I have desire to be alone,” replied McKay. “I do not like people too close to me. I would have my own land, and sleep under my own roof.”

“But why come to me,” asked Polleau. “There are many places upon the far side of the lake that you could secure. It is happy there, and this side is not happy, M’sieu. But tell me, what part of my land is it that you desire?”

“That little wood yonder,” answered McKay, and pointed to the coppice.

“Ah! I thought so!” whispered Polleau, and between him and his son passed a look of somber understanding.

“That wood is not for sale, M’sieu,” he said.

“I can afford to pay well for what I want,” said McKay. “Name your price.”

“It is not for sale,” repeated Polleau, stolidly, “at any price.”

“Oh, come,” urged McKay, although his heart sank at the finality in that answer. “You have many acres and what is it but a few trees? I can afford to gratify my fancies. I will give you all the worth of your other land for it.”

“You have asked what that place that you so desire is, and you have answered that it is but a few trees,” said Polleau, slowly, and the tall son behind him laughed, abruptly, maliciously. “But it is more than that, M’sieu—oh, much more than that. And you know it, else why should you pay such a price as you offer? Yes, you know it—since you know also that we are ready to destroy it, and you would save it. And who told you all that, M’sieu?” he snarled.

There was such malignance, such black hatred in the face thrust suddenly close to McKay’s, eyes blazing, teeth bared by uplifted lip, that involuntarily he recoiled.

“Only a few trees!” snarled old Polleau. “Then who told him what we mean to do—eh, Pierre?”

Again the son laughed. And at that laughter McKay felt within him resurgence of his own blind hatred as he had fled through the whispering wood. He mastered himself, turned away; there was nothing he could do—now. Polleau halted him.

“M’sieu,” he said, “enter. There is something I would tell you; something, too, I would show you.”

He stood aside, bowing with a rough courtesy. McKay walked through the doorway. Polleau with his son followed him. He entered a large, dim room whose ceiling was spanned with smoke-blackened beams. From these beams hung onion strings and herbs and smoke-cured meats. On one side was a wide fireplace. Huddled beside it sat Polleau’s other son. He glanced up as they entered, and McKay saw that a bandage covered one side of his head, hiding his left eye. McKay recognized him as the one who had cut down the slim birch. The blow of the fir, he reflected with a certain satisfaction, had been no futile one.

Old Polleau strode over to that son.

“Look, M’sieu,” he said, and lifted the bandage.

McKay saw, with a tremor of horror, a gaping blackened socket, red-rimmed and eyeless.

“Good God, Polleau!” he cried. “But this man needs medical attention. I know something of wounds. Let me go across the lake and bring back my kit. I will attend him.”

Old Polleau shook his head, although his grim face for the first time softened. He drew the bandages back in place.

“It heals,” he said. “We have some skill in such things. You saw what did it. You watched from your boat as the cursed tree struck him. The eye was crushed and lay upon his cheek. I cut it away. Now he heals. We do not need your aid, M’sieu.”

“Yet he ought not have cut the birch,” muttered McKay, more to himself than to be heard.

“Why not?” asked old Polleau, fiercely, “since it hated him.”

McKay stared at him. What did this old peasant know? The words strengthened his stubborn conviction that what he had seen and heard in the coppice had been actuality—no dream. And still more did Polleau’s next words strengthen that conviction.

“M’sieu,” he said, “you come here as ambassador—of a sort. The wood has spoken to you. Well, as ambassador I shall speak to you. Four centuries my people have lived in this place. A century we have owned this land. M’sieu, in all those years there has been no moment that the trees have not hated us—nor we the trees.

“For all those hundred years there have been hatred and battle between us and the forest. My father, M’sieu, was crushed by a tree, my elder brother crippled by another. My father’s father, woodsman that he was, was lost in the forest; he came back to us with mind gone, raving of wood women who had bewitched and mocked him, lured him into swamp and fen and tangled thicket, tormenting him. In every generation the trees have taken their toll of us—women as well as men—maiming or killing us.”

“Accidents,” interrupted McKay. “This is childish, Polleau. You cannot blame the trees.”

“In your heart you do not believe so,” said Polleau. “Listen, the feud is an ancient one. Centuries ago it began when we were serfs, slaves of the nobles. To cook, to keep us warm in winter, they let us pick up the fagots, the dead branches and twigs that dropped from the trees. But if we cut down a tree to keep us warm, to keep our women and our children warm, yes, if we but tore down a branch, they hanged us, or threw us into dungeons to rot, or whipped us till our backs were red lattices.

“They had their broad fields, the nobles, but we must raise our food in the patches where the trees disdained to grow. And if they did thrust themselves into our poor patches, then, M’sieu, we must let them have their way—or be flogged, or be thrown into the dungeons, or be hanged.

“They pressed us in—the trees,” the old man’s voice grew sharp with fanatic hatred. “They stole our fields and they took the food from the mouths of our children; they dropped their fagots to us like dole to beggars; they tempted us to warmth when the cold struck to our bones—and they bore us as fruit aswing at the end of the foresters’ ropes if we yielded to their tempting.

“Yes, M’sieu, we died of cold that they might live! Our children died of hunger that their young might find root space! They despised us—the trees! We died that they might live—and we were men!

“Then, M’sieu, came the Revolution and the freedom. Ah, M’sieu, then we took our toll! Great logs roaring in the winter cold—no more huddling over the alms of fagots. Fields where the trees had been—no more starving of our children that theirs might live. Now the trees were the slaves and we the masters.

“And the trees knew, and they hated us!

“But blow for blow, a hundred of their lives for each life of ours—we have returned their hatred. With ax and torch we have fought them—

“The trees!” shrieked Polleau suddenly, eyes blazing red rage, face writhing, foam at the corners of his mouth, and gray hair clutched in rigid hands. “The cursed trees! Armies of the trees creeping—creeping—closer, ever closer—crushing us in! Stealing our fields as they did of old! Building their dungeon round us as they built of old the dungeons of stone! Creeping—creeping! Armies of trees! Legions of trees! The trees! The cursed trees!”

McKay listened, appalled. Here was crimson heart of hate. Madness! But what was at the root of it? Some deep inherited instinct, coming down from forefathers who had hated the forest as the symbol of their masters—forefathers whose tides of hatred had overflowed to the green life on which the nobles had laid their taboo, as one neglected child will hate the favorite on whom love and gifts are lavished? In such warped minds the crushing fall of a tree, the maiming sweep of a branch, might appear as deliberate; the natural growth of the forest seem the implacable advance of an enemy.

And yet—the blow of the fir as the cut birch fell had been deliberate! And there had been those women of the wood—

“Patience,” the standing son touched the old man’s shoulder. “Patience! Soon we strike our blow.”

Some of the frenzy died out of Polleau’s face.

“Though we cut down a hundred,” he whispered, “by the hundred they return! But one of us, when they strike, he does not return, no! They have numbers and they have—time. We are now but three, and we have little time. They watch us as we go through the forest, alert to trip, to strike, to crush!

“But, M’sieu,” he turned bloodshot eyes to McKay, “we strike our blow, even as Pierre has said. We strike at that coppice that you so desire. We strike there because it is the very heart of the forest. There the secret life of the forest runs at full tide. We know—and you know! Something that, destroyed, will take the heart out of the forest—will make it know us for its masters.”

“The women!” The standing son’s eyes glittered, malignantly. “I have seen the women there! The fair women with the shining skins who invite—and mock and vanish before hands can seize them.”

“The fair women who peer into our windows in the night—and mock us!” muttered the eyeless son.

“They shall mock no more!” shouted old Polleau. “Soon they shall lie, dying! All of them—all of them! They die!”

He caught McKay by the shoulders and shook him like a child.

“Go tell them that!” he shouted. “Say to them that this very day we destroy them. Say to them it is we who will laugh when winter comes and we watch their bodies blaze in this hearth of ours and warm us! Go—tell them that!”

He spun McKay around, pushed him to the door, opened it, and flung him staggering down the steps. He heard the tall son laugh, the door close. Blind with rage he rushed up the steps and hurled himself against the door. Again the tall son laughed. McKay beat at the door with clenched fists, cursing. The three within paid no heed. Despair began to dull his rage. Could the trees help him—counsel him? He turned and walked slowly down the field path to the little wood.

   

Slowly and ever more slowly he went as he neared it. He had failed. He was a messenger bearing a warrant of death. The birches were motionless, their leaves hung listlessly. It was as though they knew he had failed. He paused at the edge of the coppice. He looked at his watch, noted with faint surprise that already it was high noon. Short shrift enough had the little wood. The work of destruction would not be long delayed.

McKay squared his shoulders and passed in between the trees. It was strangely silent in the coppice. And it was mournful. He had a sense of life brooding around him, withdrawn into itself, sorrowing. He passed through the silent, mournful wood until he reached the spot where the rounded, gleaming-barked tree stood close to the fir that held the withering birch. Still there was no sound, no movement. He laid his hands upon the cool bark of the rounded tree.

“Let me see again!” he whispered. “Let me hear! Speak to me!”

There was no answer. Again and again he called. The coppice was silent. He wandered through it, whispering, calling. The slim birches stood, passive, with limbs and leaves adroop like listless arms and hands of captive maids awaiting in dull woe the will of conquerors. The firs seemed to crouch like hopeless men with heads in hands. His heart ached to the woe that filled the little wood, this hopeless submission of the trees.

When, he wondered, would Polleau strike? He looked at his watch again; an hour had gone by. How long would Polleau wait? He dropped to the moss against a smooth bole.

And suddenly it seemed to McKay that he was a madman—as mad as Polleau and his sons. Calmly, he went over the old peasant’s indictment of the forest, recalled the face and eyes filled with fanatic hate. They were all mad. After all, the trees were—only trees. Polleau and his sons—so he reasoned—had transferred to them the bitter hatred their forefathers had felt for those old lords who had enslaved them, had laid upon them too all the bitterness of their own struggle to exist in this high forest land. When they struck at the trees, it was the ghosts of those forefathers striking at the nobles who had oppressed them; it was themselves striking against their own destiny. The trees were but symbols. It was the warped minds of Polleau and his sons that clothed them in false semblance of conscious life, blindly striving to wreak vengeance against the ancient masters and the destiny that had made their lives one hard and unceasing battle against nature. The nobles were long dead, for destiny can be brought to grips by no man. But the trees were here and alive. Clothed in mirage, through them the driving lust for vengeance could be sated. So much for Polleau and his sons.

And he, McKay: was it not his own deep love and sympathy for the trees that similarly had clothed them in that false semblance of conscious life? Had he not built his own mirage? The trees did not really mourn, could not suffer, could not—know. It was his own sorrow that he had transferred to them, only his sorrow that he felt echoing back to him from them. The trees were—only trees.

Instantly, upon the heels of that thought, as though it were an answer, he was aware that the trunk against which he leaned was trembling; that the whole coppice was trembling; that all the little leaves were shaking, tremulously.

McKay, bewildered, leaped to his feet. Reason told him that it was the wind—yet there was no wind!

And as he stood there, a sighing arose as though a mournful breeze were blowing through the trees—and again there was no wind!

Louder grew the sighing and within it now faint wailings.

“They come! They come! Farewell, sisters! Sisters—farewell!”

Clearly he heard the mournful whispers.

   

McKay began to run through the trees to the trail that led out to the fields of the old lodge. And as he ran the wood darkened as though clear shadows gathered in it, as though vast unseen wings hovered over it. The trembling of the coppice increased; bough touched bough, clung to each other; and louder became the sorrowful crying: “Farewell, sister! Sister—farewell!”

McKay burst out into the open. Halfway between him and the lodge were Polleau and his sons. They saw him; they pointed and lifted mockingly to him their bright axes. He crouched, waiting for them to come close, all fine-spun theories gone, and rising within him that same rage which hours before had sent him out to slay.

So crouching, he heard from the forested hills a roaring clamor. From every quarter it came, wrathful, menacing, like the voices of legions of great trees bellowing through the horns of tempest. The clamor maddened McKay, fanned the flame of rage to white heat.

If the three men heard it, they gave no sign. They came on steadily, jeering at him, waving their blades. He ran to meet them.

“Go back!” he shouted. “Go back, Polleau! I warn you!”

“He warns us!” jeered Polleau. “He—Pierre, Jean—he warns us!”

The old peasant’s arm shot out and his hand caught McKay’s shoulder with a grip that pinched to the bone. The arm flexed and hurled him against the unmaimed son. The son caught him, twisted him about, and whirled him headlong a dozen yards, crashing through the brush at the skirt of the wood.

McKay sprang to his feet howling like a wolf. The clamor of the forest had grown stronger.

“Kill!” it roared. “Kill!”

The unmaimed son had raised his ax. He brought it down upon the trunk of a birch, half splitting it with one blow. McKay heard a wail go up from the little wood. Before the ax could be withdrawn he had crashed a fist in the ax wielder’s face. The head of Polleau’s son rocked back; he yelped, and before McKay could strike again had wrapped strong arms around him, crushing breath from him. McKay relaxed, went limp, and the son loosened his grip. Instantly McKay slipped out of it and struck again, springing aside to avoid the rib-breaking clasp. Polleau’s son was quicker than he, the long arm caught him. But as the arms tightened there was the sound of sharp splintering, and the birch into which the ax had bitten toppled. It struck the ground directly behind the wrestling men. Its branches seemed to reach out and clutch at the feet of Polleau’s son.

He tripped and fell backward, McKay upon him. The shock of the fall broke his grip and again McKay writhed free. Again he was upon his feet, and again Polleau’s strong son, quick as he, faced him. Twice McKay’s blows found their mark beneath his heart before once more the long arms trapped him. But the grip was weaker; McKay felt that now their strength was equal.

Round and round they rocked, McKay straining to break away. They fell, and over they rolled and over, arms and legs locked, each striving to free a hand to grip the other’s throat. Around them ran Polleau and the one-eyed son, shouting encouragement to Pierre, yet neither daring to strike at McKay lest the blow miss and be taken by the other.

And all that time McKay heard the little wood shouting. Gone from it now was all mournfulness, all passive resignation. The wood was alive and raging. He saw the trees shake and bend as though torn by a tempest. Dimly he realized that the others could hear none of this, see none of it; as dimly wondered why this should be.

“Kill!” shouted the coppice, and ever over its tumult he was aware of the roar of the great forest. “Kill! Kill!”

He saw two shadowy shapes—shadowy shapes of swarthy green-clad men that pressed close to him as he rolled and fought.

“Kill!” they whispered. “Let his blood flow! Kill!”

He tore a wrist free. Instantly he felt within his hand the hilt of a knife.

“Kill!” whispered the shadowy men.

“Kill!” shrieked the coppice.

“Kill!” roared the forest.

McKay’s arm swept up and plunged the knife into the throat of Polleau’s son! He heard a choking sob; heard Polleau shriek; felt the hot blood spurt in face and over hand; smelt its salt and faintly acrid odor. The encircling arms dropped from him; he reeled to his feet.

As though the blood had been a bridge, the shadowy men leaped into materiality. One threw himself upon the man McKay had stabbed; the other hurled upon old Polleau. The maimed son turned and fled, howling with terror. A white woman sprang out from the shadow, threw herself at his feet, clutched them, and brought him down. Another woman and another dropped upon him. The note of his shrieking changed from fear to agony, then died abruptly into silence.

And now McKay could see none of the trees, neither old Polleau nor his sons, for green-clad men and white women covered them!

He stood stupidly, staring at his red hands. The roar of the forest had changed to a deep triumphal chanting. The coppice was mad with joy. The trees had become thin phantoms etched in emerald translucent air as they had been when first the green sorcery had meshed him. And all around him wove and danced the slim, gleaming women of the wood.

They ringed him, their song bird sweet and shrill, jubilant. Beyond them he saw gliding toward him the woman of the misty pillar whose kisses had poured the sweet green fire into his veins. Her arms were outstretched to him, her strange wide eyes were rapt on his, her white body gleamed with the moon radiance, her red lips were parted and smiling, a scarlet chalice filled with the promise of undreamed ecstasies. The dancing circle, chanting, broke to let her through.

Abruptly, a horror filled McKay—not of this fair woman, not of her jubilant sister, but of himself.

He had killed! And the wound the war had left in his soul, the wound he thought had healed, had opened.

He rushed through the broken circle, thrust the shining woman aside with his bloodstained hands, and ran, weeping, toward the lake shore. The singing ceased. He heard little cries, tender, appealing little cries of pity, soft voices calling on him to stop, to return. Behind him was the sound of little racing feet, light as the fall of leaves upon the moss.

McKay ran on. The coppice lightened, the beach was before him. He heard the fair woman call him, felt the touch of her hand upon his shoulder. He did not heed her. He ran across the narrow strip of beach, thrust his boat out into the water, and wading through the shallows threw himself into it.

He lay there for a moment, sobbing, then drew himself up and caught at the oars. He looked back at the shore now a score of feet away. At the edge of the coppice stood the woman, staring at him with pitying, wise eyes. Behind her clustered the white faces of her sisters, the swarthy faces of the greenclad men.

“Come back!” the woman whispered, and held out to him slender arms.

McKay hesitated, his horror lessening in that clear, wise gaze. He half swung the boat around. But his eyes fell again upon his bloodstained hands and again the hysteria gripped him. One thought only was in his mind now—to get far away from where Polleau’s son lay with his throat ripped open, to put the lake between him and that haunted shore. He dipped his oars deep, flung the boat forward. Once more the woman called to him and once again. He paid no heed. She threw out her arms in a gesture of passionate farewell. Then a mist dropped like a swift curtain between him and her and all the folk of the little wood.

McKay rowed on, desperately. After a while he shipped oars, and leaning over the boat’s side he washed away the red on his hands and arms. His coat was torn and bloodstained, his shirt too. The latter he took off, wrapped it around the stone that was the boat’s rude anchor, and dropped it into the depths. His coat he dipped into the water, rubbing at the accusing marks. When he had lightened them all he could, he took up his oars.

His panic had gone from him. Upon its ebb came a rising tide of regret; clear before his eyes arose the vision of the shining woman, beckoning him, calling him . . . he swung the boat around to return. And instantly as he did so the mists between him and the farther shore thickened; around him they lightened as though they had withdrawn to make of themselves a barrier to him, and something deep within him whispered that it was too late.

He saw that he was close to the landing of the little inn. There was no one about, and none saw him as he fastened the skiff and slipped to his room. He locked the door, started to undress. Sudden sleep swept over him like a wave, drew him helplessly down into ocean depths of sleep.

   

A knocking at his door awakened McKay, and the innkeeper’s voice summoning him to dinner. Sleepily he answered, and as the old man’s footsteps died away he roused himself. His eyes fell upon his coat, dry now, and the ill-erased bloodstains splotching it. Puzzled, he stared at them for a moment; then full memory clicked back into place.

He walked to the window. It was dusk. A wind was blowing and the trees were singing, all the little leaves dancing; the forest hummed its cheerful vespers. Gone was all the unease, all the inarticulate trouble and the fear. The woods were tranquil and happy.

He sought the coppice through the gathering twilight. Its demoiselles were dancing lightly in the wind, leafy hoods dipping, leafy skirts ablow. Beside them marched their green troubadours, carefree, waving their needled arms. Gay was the little wood, gay as when its beauty had first lured him to it.

McKay hid the stained coat in his traveling trunk, bathed and put on a fresh outfit, and sauntered down to dinner. He ate excellently. Wonder now and then crossed his mind that he felt no regret, no sorrow even for the man he had killed. He was half inclined to believe it had all been only a dream—so little of any emotion did he feel. He had even ceased to think of what discovery might mean.

His mind was quiet; he heard the forest chanting to him that there was nothing he need fear; and when he sat for a time that night upon the balcony a peace that was half an ecstasy stole in upon him from the murmuring woods and enfolded him. Cradled by it he slept dreamlessly.

McKay did not go far from the inn that day. The little wood danced gayly and beckoned him, but he paid no heed. Something whispered to wait, to keep the lake between him and it until word came of what lay or had lain there. And the peace still was on him.

Only the old innkeeper seemed to grow uneasy as the hours went by. He went often to the landing, scanning the farther shore.

“It is strange,” he said at last to McKay as the sun was dipping behind the summits. “Polleau was to see me here today. If he could not come he would have sent one of his sons.”

McKay nodded, carelessly.

“There is another thing I do not understand,” went on the old man. “I have seen no smoke from the lodge all day. It is as though they were not there.”

“Where could they be?” asked McKay indifferently.

“I do not know,” the voice was more perturbed. “It all troubles me, M’sieu. Polleau is hard, yes, but he is my neighbor. Perhaps an accident—”

“They would let you know soon enough if there was anything wrong,” McKay said.

“Perhaps, but—” the old man hesitated. “If he does not come tomorrow and again I see no smoke, I will go to him,” he ended.

McKay felt a little shock run through him; tomorrow, then, he would know, definitely, what it was that had happened in the little wood.

“I would if I were you,” he said. “I’d not wait too long, either.”

“Will you go with me, M’sieu?” asked the old man.

“No!” whispered the warning voice within McKay. “No! Do not go!”

“Sorry,” he said, aloud. “But I’ve some writing to do. If you should need me, send back your man; I’ll come.”

And all that night he slept, again dreamlessly, while the crooning forest cradled him.

   

The morning passed without sign from the opposite shore. An hour after noon he watched the old innkeeper and his man row across the lake. And suddenly McKay’s composure was shaken, his serene certainty wavered. He unstrapped his field glasses and kept them on the pair until they had beached the boat and entered the coppice. His heart was beating uncomfortably, his hands felt hot and his lips dry. How long had they been in the wood? It must have been an hour! What were they doing there? What had they found? He looked at his watch, incredulously. Less than five minutes had passed.

Slowly the seconds ticked by. And it was all of an hour indeed before he saw them come out upon the shore and drag their boat into the water. McKay, throat curiously dry, deafening pulse within his ears, steadied himself, forced himself to stroll leisurely down to the landing.

“Everything all right?” he called as they were near. They did not answer, but as the skiff warped against the landing they looked up at him, and on their faces were stamped horror and a great wonder.

“They are dead, M’sieu,” whispered the innkeeper. “Polleau and his two sons—all dead!”

McKay’s heart gave a great leap, a swift faintness took him.

“Dead!” he cried. “What killed them?”

“What but the trees, M’sieu?” answered the old man, and McKay thought that his gaze dwelt upon him strangely. “The trees killed them. See—we went up the little path through the wood, and close to its end we found it blocked by fallen trees. The flies buzzed round those trees, M’sieu, so we searched there. They were under them, Polleau and his sons. A fir had fallen upon Polleau and had crushed in his chest. Another son we found beneath a fir and upturned birches. They had broken his back, and an eye had been torn out—but that was no new wound, the latter.”

He paused.

“It must have been a sudden wind,” said his man. “Yet I never knew of a wind such as that must have been. There were no trees down except those that lay upon them. And of those it was as though they had leaped out of the ground! Yes, as though they had leaped out of the ground upon them. Or it was as though giants had torn them out for clubs. They were not broken—their roots were bare—”

“But the other son—Polleau had two?” Try as he might, McKay could not keep the tremor out of his voice.

“Pierre,” said the old man, and again McKay felt that strange quality in his gaze. “He lay beneath a fir. His throat was torn out!”

“His throat torn out!” whispered McKay. His knife! His knife! The knife that had been slipped into his hand by the shadowy shapes!

“His throat was torn out,” repeated the innkeeper. “And in it still was the broken branch that had done it. A broken branch, M’sieu, pointed like a knife. It must have caught Pierre as the fir fell and, ripping through his throat, been broken off as the tree crashed.”

McKay stood, mind whirling in wild conjecture. “You said—a broken branch?” he asked through lips gone white.

“A broken branch, M’sieu.” The innkeeper’s eyes searched him. “It was very plain—what it was that happened. Jacques,” he turned to his man, “go up to the house.”

He watched until the man shuffled out of sight.

“Yet not all is so plain, M’sieu,” he spoke low to McKay, “since in Pierre’s hand I found—this.”

He reached into a pocket and drew out a button from which hung a strip of cloth. They had once been part of that stained coat which McKay had hidden in his trunk. And as McKay strove to speak, the old man raised his hand. Button and cloth dropped from it, into the water. A wave took it and floated it away; another and another snatched it and passed it on. They watched it, silently, until it had vanished.

“Tell me nothing,” said the keeper of the inn. “Polleau was a hard man, and hard men were his sons. The trees hated them. The trees killed them. The—souvenir—is gone. Only M’sieu would better also—go.”

   

That night McKay packed. When dawn had broken he stood at his window, looking long at the little wood. It too was awakening, stirring sleepily—like drowsy, delicate demoiselles. He thought he could see that one slim birch that was—what? Tree or woman? Or both?

Silently, the old landlord and his wife watched him as he swung out his car—a touch of awe, a half fear, in their eyes. Without a word they let him go.

And as McKay swept up the road that led over the lip of the green bowl, he seemed to hear from all the forest a deep-toned, mournful chanting. It arose around him as he topped the rise in one vast whispering cloud—of farewell—and died.

Never, he knew, would that green door of enchantment be opened to him again. His fear had closed it—forever. Something had been offered to him beyond mortal experience—something that might have raised him to the level of the gods of earth’s youth. He had rejected it. And nevermore, he knew, would he cease to regret.