Page 11 of Hotshot Mogul

“I knew it.”

Deer turds. I should have pretended I didn’t know about fairies and iron.

“Sit down, dear. Let’s drink our tea.”

I sat and sipped the warm brew, unsure of what to say. “You say you aren’t from here,” she said. “I also think that you have been something different from what you are now.”

No lie sprang to mind. So, I smiled and nodded. She was correct, after all.

“I’ll go first,” she said. In between sips, she told me she first saw fairies in the glade, near the trees that Clynes Development wanted to cut down, when she was a child. “When I told my mother, she said I mustn’t speak of it, ever, and never to go there again. But I did go there. I loved the oak tree best.”

Tree spirits sense humans, welcome some to come near them, but do not communicate with those in human form. I dropped my head, longing to go back to my roots and branches. Callie saw what must have been longing in my expression.

“That was your home.” It wasn’t a question.

My story poured out, like the rain had. I couldn’t stop it.

“Yes. It has been, since I last walked the earth. There was a massacre. Bruce, Nigan, wasn’t my mate by French law, or in the eyes of his people. But he was the mate of my heart, body, and soul. Étienne was my legal husband then. He was rash and impulsive.

“He moved us across the ocean to the trading post at St. Joseph. He struck me, often. He liked to see his marks on my skin.” Callie shuddered. I continued, “Nigan was killed, just after I went to him—a senseless slaughter. I held him close while his life force left him. The baby he gave me left my body. The ache in my heart never left.

“I didn’t take food or sleep. There was a missionary priest. I asked for the shaman in Nigan’s tribe. I pleaded with her to hear my petition. She agreed. I begged to be released from my rage and sadness. I awoke as a tree spirit that did not feel sadness or longing for what cannot be. In great joy, I sunk deep into my roots and into my branches and eagerly sprouted my tender, virgin leaves each springtime.”

Callie put her hand over mine. “You poor child. Let me help you. It’s the least I can do. I found such peace beside you in the glade in my own times of sorrow.”

Grenmann said I would need to put my trust in worthy humans in order to stop Clynes Development. Isolde disagreed. “Trust no human!” She’d stressed that repeatedly.

I thought I could trust Callie. And I only had three more days, counting that day. I needed her help. “The gathering of rulers is on my last day,” I said.

The last time I would see Bruce. A treacherous pang of grief bubbled up. No! I would not go through the grief of losing him again. Best that I left without seeing him again. But I knew I would go with him on the sand dunes the next day.

Callie looked alarmed. “Only three days? The commissioners—er, rulers—drag their feet. They may not decide by Tuesday night. They do that all the time.”

I gulped down the rest of my tea. “Then, another must try.”

“So you can’t stay?”

I forced my words past the knot of emotion in my throat. “If I stay, then I won’t be able to go back—I will be human for the rest of the life of this body.”

“Is it so awful, being human?”

“The pain, the carnage humans wreak upon one another…”

Callie looked sad. “You mean man’s inhumanity to man—or woman.”

“Yes.” I rubbed my arms, free of bruises. I thought of Gen. Reposes en paix. Rest in peace, dearest one.

I remembered the dread in my stomach when Étienne would begin to touch me, and my relief as he succumbed to his drink to snore loudly. “Étienne, my French husband, he was bad. I married him quickly after my parents died. I didn’t see his cruelty until…”

I remembered Nigan pulling a stick out of my hair during the first breezes of springtime, after Étienne had left. It was the first time I felt joy in joining with a man. We were deep in the forest. It was the only time in that life I had felt free. “And I was trapped until Nigan….”

The disparities between humans with different amounts of wealth was the same at the trading post as it had been in France, and males seemed to accumulate wealth easier than females did, then and now. “Language and society are still dominated by males.”

Callie stood. “Étienne sounds dreadful. I’m sorry he hurt you. The law now recognizes that men may not beat their wives. The male-dominated part has changed a great deal, even in my lifetime. If you stayed, you could be part of that change and fight for our environment, and pass that on to your children, if you decided to have a family.”

Have a family? Bruce’s child?

“Do women still lose their babies before they are born?”

---