No sooner had she spoken than she was whirled about. She thought for a dizzy moment she might be upside down. But once her inner ear settled, she realized Rubus had simply lifted her off and turned her to face the other direction, straddling his lap, feet once again dangling into empty space.
He had sat up as well; Cassie could feel the heat of him, nearly radiant, against her back, and his breath on her ear. She folded her legs beneath him—there was still nothing there—and arched backwards, tilting her face up to his, reaching to draw him into a kiss. She managed to touch her lips to the bottom of his jaw while he trailed his fingers over her body. One of his hands slid between her legs. The other curled around her neck.
Cassie had a sudden vision of the backyard when she had looked at it from the deck during her father’s funeral; vines coiled about the sundial, spiraling up the poles of the swingset, choking out the other plants. Her pulse leaped.
“I can feel your heart,” Rubus murmured, nuzzling her hair. “Here—” his hand tightened briefly around Cassie’s neck, “and here.” He worked his other hand deeper between her legs.
Thorns prickled delicately at her toes from the fathomless dark. She twisted against him, trying instinctively to flee the torturous tickle, but he tightened his grip and whispered something wordless in her ear. Pinioned at throat and groin, all she could do was tremble while the prickling crept up her legs and across her arms. She could sense the thorns just beyond—the ones not quite touching the soft, exposed arch of her body between Rubus’ hands. But they were there, in the dark.
She couldn’t move, so he moved for her, shifting until he had eased himself within her once more with a dark groan.
Cassie’s arms were still raised, her hands touching his head and neck; she couldn’t lower them now, not without slicing her elbows to ribbons. She dug her fingers into his hair to hold on, working them through the thorns with specimen-handling grace until she reached the safety of his scalp. Rubus shuddered at the touch. The fingers at Cassie’s throat tightened; she could feel every bone in his hand when she swallowed against it.
Pressure began to build again as Rubus continued with hands and stamen and vine. Leaves caressed her tenderly once more, skimming over ribs and stomach, reaching down to brush at her hips and up to graze her collarbone. There was no way she could speak to warn him this time; she was barely getting enough air to breathe as it was. But she didn’t have to. Just as she crested the rise of her second orgasm, spasming against her living fetters, the bower pulsed around her—and Rubus drove himself into her with silent force, again and again. Cassie felt the surge of his seed within her, met and matched by her own convulsions.
She was only dimly aware of the jabs that accompanied his release, from the thorns that slipped from his control as he came. And she was completely unaware of how they made it back to the ground after that. There was a muddle of panting and vertigo, the support of Rubus’ arms around her shoulders and under the backs of her knees, and then he was laying her in the duff.
She did not know how long it took her to recover her senses, but when she was next aware of her surroundings, she was looking up at the roof of the bower. It had thinned to a lucent green, dotting the space with light and shadow that shifted in the breeze. Rubus lay beside her, eyes closed, holding her hand.
Cassie rolled over cautiously and pillowed her head on his shoulder, just at the soft crook of the joint where his arm met his chest. The afternoon peace of the bower remained unbroken. Birds cheeped and rustled. A raven croaked somewhere overhead. Rubus’ chest rose and fell slowly with each breath. She thought he might be asleep.
Did dryads sleep?
He had said he would answer her questions. Now they crowded her mind, clamoring to be asked. As reluctant as she was to break the tranquility, she had to know. She couldn’t stop herself.
“Are you asleep?”
“No.” Rubus’ voice was low and content. Cassie snuggled closer and was rewarded with a closed-eyed smile.
“Do you sleep?”
“In a way. Not as deeply as you seem to.” Cassie thought of the little drawings gifted to her in the night. She had assumed it was a bird carrying them up to the second floor, ferrying paper in its beak instead of worms, but perhaps that wasn’t how it had happened. Blackberries were notoriously proficient climbers, after all. “I sleep more in the winter,” Rubus added.
“Do you dream?”
“Yes.”
“What do you dream about?”
Rubus opened his eyes. “All sorts of things. Memories and impossibilities, all jumbled together. Mostly they make no sense, but they often have a strong feeling.”
“What’s your earliest memory?”
Rubus lay still, thinking. “The sun,” he answered, after a while. “I remember being cold, and a little sad, until I felt the warmth of the sun on me. I thought maybe it would only last for a moment and be gone again, but it stayed. It made me happy.”
“How old were you?”
“I don’t know. Young. I hadn’t grown through the fence yet.”
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Cassie mulled over her next question carefully, and still managed to fumble it. “Did you—do you—have… parents? Or did you just… grow? From a seed?”
“I think,” Rubus replied with significantly more equanimity than Cassie had asked, “I just grew. I have no memory of a parent. Only the sun, and the rain, and the earth.”
“How did you learn to speak?”
“I listened.” Rubus brushed a hand over her hair, solicitously picking out leaves as he found them, and did not offer additional detail.
Cassie took a deep breath before asking her next question, cringing at the appallingly inappropriate post-coital conversation topic but, as a botanist, unable to leave the question unasked: “Blackberry plants are hermaphroditic. They have both male and female biology. Your thicket has borne berries. How is it that you—” Cassie pressed her hand against his chest, indicating his person— “are male?” Exquisitely male, she thought, but kept that part to herself.
When he didn’t answer, Cassie raised herself on one elbow to read his face. He looked utterly flummoxed. “I just am,” he replied quietly. “I’m sorry, I don’t know how to answer that question. I didn’t make a choice. Every time I’ve stepped out, I’ve been a boy. A man. Male.”
“When was the first time you stepped out?”
“When you were a baby.” He smiled faintly at the memory. “Your father was teaching your brothers how to fold and throw paper airplanes in the backyard, and I was watching. You were in a bassinet in the shade with your mother. One of the airplanes got stuck in my bramble. You waved your fists and cooed every time an airplane flew by, but nobody threw any to you, so when nobody was looking, I took the paper airplane and threw it into your bassinet. I needed hands for that.” Rubus reached up and stroked Cassie’s face. “Hands are much better for that sort of thing.”
Cassie took his hand in hers and turned to kiss his palm, then laced her fingers through his. “What determines whether a plant develops a dryad?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said before that not all blackberry bushes have dryads. How is this bush different from those? If I compared samples, would I find any differences?”
“I don’t know,” Rubus replied. “Would you like to take a sample and look?”
“Oh! Yes, please!” Cassie cried. Rubus looked momentarily shocked at her sudden fierce delight, then erupted in a broad smile of his own. “I don’t have my specimen collection supplies with me, but I’m sure I could make do with supplies from the kitchen. Or maybe,” Cassie gabbled, “maybe I could do a run back to the lab to get my field kit? Or, no—I bet I could pop by the store real quick and get something together. The lab’s a long drive, no idea how I’d explain it to Mom, and—oh. Shit.” Cassie’s hands flew to her face. “I have to quit my job.”
“Because of the grant?”
“Yes! Yes.” Cassie sat up. “I should probably wait until the award has been publicly posted, though—give my boss a chance to work out a response rather than putting him on the spot.” Her voice caught on the last word, and she coughed. Between her panting and Rubus’ hold, her throat was a little raw. “Would you like me to get you some water?” she asked politely, and started to cast about for her clothing. It had disappeared, along with the art supplies.
“No thank you, I already have water.”
“You do?” Cassie coughed in surprise.
Rubus sat up as well, thorns disappearing from his hair as he rose, and cupped his hands together. “Would you like some?”
Clear water pooled in the dryad’s hands. Cassie touched it in wonder, then placed her hands around his and brought them to her mouth. She drank greedily, dribbling a little. His hands never seemed to empty. When she was done, she sat back, breathing hard. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He looked pleased with himself, and smudged some droplets from her chest with dry fingers.
The crump of a car door shutting nearby caught Cassie’s attention. She listened for the sound of jingling keys and the front door, but instead, she heard the clatter of the side gate. Somebody was coming directly into the backyard.
Cassie sat transfixed in literal naked horror. She turned scarlet.
Rubus responded more productively. Instantly clothed in black pants and a green t-shirt, he slowly unfurled to his full height, eyes becoming bright as the hollow dimmed. Thorns reemerged in his hair. Vines slithered silently over one another and through the fence, binding the gate shut. The birds fell silent as the air grew thick with the smell of fertile decay. He held that pose for a long moment, staring through the wall of greenery, before relaxing slightly and tilting his head. “It’s Matt,” whispered the wind in the leaves.
“Matt?” Cassie mouthed. She desperately wanted to put her clothing back on, but she didn’t think she could do it without making a noise, so instead she huddled around her knees and attempted to Lady Godiva her hair, with minimal success. There was a soft rustle from the backyard—something was lightly placed upon the bramble—and then silence. Cassie barely breathed. Rubus didn’t move.
An interminable wait later, the side gate rattled open and banged shut again, and a car engine purred to life before fading away. Cassie let out her breath and immediately scrabbled for her clothes as the air lightened. The vines relaxed and unknotted themselves, and as Cassie pulled her head through her shirt, she saw Rubus hold out his hand. There was an undulation in the cane, and then something was placed in his hand: a blackberry circlet, small enough to comfortably rest on the head of a child, brittle and dry and leafless with age but otherwise whole.
Rubus turned it over in his hands. “This is too small for Matt now,” he declared, after evidently concluding his examination. “I will make him a new one. Will you bring it to him?”
Cassie stood with her jaw slack, unable to marshal a single coherent response. Materially confirming Rubus’ existence to Matt could have some pretty wild consequences, even if he didn’t know—didn’t remember, if he had ever known—what Rubus was. And if he did… well. How would that conversation even go? Hey Matt, remember that kid in the bushes? Yeah, he’s a dryad. We’re fucking.
Then again, if Matt had come here—alone, to the best of his knowledge—to return the circlet, there was a good chance he already knew, or at least suspected. And Rubus so earnestly wanted him to have it. “Y-y-yes,” Cassie finally stammered, “Yes, I will.”
Rubus nodded soberly. “Thank you.”
Afraid that another family member would return and find her in the bramble—or else buttonhole her in the kitchen while sap dampened her pants—Cassie finished dressing and pulled Rubus into a swift tiptoe kiss. He immediately encircled her, lifting her off her feet and squeezing so hard Cassie’s back cracked; she smiled against his mouth and wriggled free. “I have to go.”
He set her down again, withdrawing his embrace reluctantly, and stepped back as vines pulled the gate open and the tunnel formed beyond. “When will you return?”
Cassie took a leaf that had been worrying at her hair—unconsciously, she suspected—and kissed it. “The next time I’m alone,” she promised, and slipped through the gate.