"The Dryad´s Song" by Cindy Rosenthal

The Dryad's Song

The dryad's tree stood across the fields from town, on the other side of a low stone wall. It had been many years since people had paid much attention to it, and so it had been many years since the dryad had paid much attention to people. They came and went, sometimes hung things on the branches of the tree, sometimes went running by on their way to hunt in the forest, jumping the wall and brushing past her without any acknowledgement at all. But she was a dryad, a creature of nature, and she didn't understand men and didn't care.

But she was also curious, in the way of the innocent and naive; she knew men posed a threat to her tree, but she had never seen them raise an axe to her or her nearby forest cousins, and she didn't quite believe they were capable of the things she'd heard carried on the wind. Once or twice in springs past, when the sap was running and everything was green and alive, she had conjured clothes out of bark and leaves and had walked among people in town. She learned to dance and she learned the power of a pretty face, but she didn't learn much about men. They were strange to her, and as they left her alone for the most part, she gave them little thought.

And then one bright summer day she was pulled out of an arboreal reverie by birdsong, but not a bird she recognized. It was a simple melody, slow and plaintive and hesitant, and it carried none of the messages she knew birds wove into their songs. The dryad realized it wasn't a bird's song at all, but a man's, and her face appeared high up the tree trunk to get a better look.

A young man sat leaning against the trunk, playing a flute. His clothes were the colors of field and forest, his hair the pale yellow-gold of corn tassels, pulled back in a loose tail. She couldn't see his face; she supposed he was young, but then, all men were young to her. Her spirit took shape emerging from the tree and she stretched out a hand towards his hair, tentatively, wondering what the golden strands would feel like against her woody fingers.

* * * * *

Steven (for that was the young man's name) let the melody wander where it would, his mind only half on what he was playing; he didn't fully know the song, for one thing, and he wasn't well trained on a flute, and he had other things to think about in any case. Namely, his status as apprentice bard, and his desire and his master's unwillingness to consider giving him his journey papers and letting him go out on his own.

He knew--he just knew--there was more to the world than the Six Hills--there was no guild hall for bards anywhere near, for one thing, and his master had to be sending his dues somewhere, and Steven had been coaxing stories out of people since he was tall enough to see over the table and had a vague idea what went on in other parts of the world. He believed everything he heard, because he didn't know any better, but he wanted to see for himself.

There are so many stories out there, he mused, as the flutesong flowed gently in and out of a minor key--the star who fell in love with a girl, and the glass key, and the seven princes and the wolf-king, and the shepherd and the weaver's daughter and the bridge of stars, and the golden harp that made all the bards mute and the boy who found their voices, and the moon-child, and the city beneath the waves, and the eight ghosts of the queen's eight husbands, and the horse-girl, and the troll under the bridge, and the heroes of the dragon army, and the elven archer and the silver arrow, and the god who became a common brewer, and the blacksmith who became a god....

He was half aware that a melody had found his song, and notes sparkled in the air like rain. Someday he would be famous for his songs, and he would play for kings, and lovely noblewomen would shower him with tokens of their affection, and they would weep when he left the court....

Someday, maybe, but not now.

* * * * *

The song faltered, faded; the young man dropped the flute into his lap and stared across the field. The dryad's hand hovered unnoticed over his blond head as something in his song touched her woody heart. She did not feel love as men did, and she did not understand the longing with which he played, but nevertheless something in her was touched--perhaps it was something with which the gods had gifted her kind at the beginning of the world, this ability to be moved by human song. She considered the young man sitting at her roots and wondered why he should affect her so. She was a creature of field and forest, she had all she could desire--sun, rain, good soil, birds and the breeze, her sister dryads--why then should she be drawn to this flutesong? She did not understand this about herself any more than she understood anything about men, and neither did she understand her need to know.

"Please," she whispered, her voice leaves fluttering in the wind, "please play your song again." And perhaps the young man heard her, because he lifted the flute to his lips again and silver notes drifted over the wall like dandelion seed and floated across the fields towards town.