The Pickling

She stretched her limbs, watching the sinew stretch and groan a little. It was now a patterning of dark rich green, and quite long. She could touch leaves above her that she had looked up at with ambition when she was young enough to still have roots.

But not anymore. She lay across the coming-together point of her chosen tree, her limbs splayed almost obscenely across it. It had been almost a year since she had uprooted, but she still couldn’t get used to the freedom. She felt the cold pale sun on her top and unconsciously stretched toward it. Even if it no longer fed her, she still felt it drawing her up, sometimes even craning to reach it, like a little beech sapling. The early sun was especially like that, as there was less of it, and its heat much more precious than the afternoon sun, which even the trees dreaded a little.

Her feet reached the mossy ground long before the rest of her. She sprung back into a standing position, stretching again, admiring the way her vine-y limbs blended almost perfectly with the surrounding tangle. She stretched her body long, close to nine feet now, though she supposed she wouldn’t grow much taller without her roots.

She set off for the morning, humming as she loped through the tangle:

City girls, they have their French bras

Country girls, they have the sa-ame

Mountain girls just let it all hang out

But they get there just the same yee-haw!

She liked to eat breakfast around this time (she found it agreed with her digestion to eat a bit early), but it was unlikely that she could find a meal at this hour.

Every now and then, one of them would venture west into the tangle, for what they called “green therapy.” More often it was not men but children, usually in groups. A troupe of young girls had come tramping through her tangle, all dressed in light tan smocks and dark brown shoes separating their feet from the crunchy brown forest floor. They were led by a stocky woman with a whistle, who would have been breakfast if the children hadn’t been there. They had unknowingly taught her the song, which had become her favorite.

There had been a chorus as well:

All around the mountain charmin' Betsy

All around the mountain Laura Lee

If I ever see her again may the good Lord remember me

Yee-Haw!

There was more. A lot of troupes seemed to like that song, and young girls in light tan smocks seemed to need more green therapy than most. She had accumulated about four verses so far. Her favorite was the last one:

City girls, they have their flush toi-lets

Country girls, they have the sa-ame

Mountain girls just find a friendly bush

But they get there just the same, yee-haw!

She spied one. He wore the grey cloth of the colony to the east, and had likely come from the City of Trees that lay east of her tangle. Those trees were nothing like the one she had rolled out of that morning. They were hollow, gigantic bolted metal cylinders that rose out of miles-thick concrete, connecting to an artificial canopy of panels that rose above the clouds to power the city. Humans, for some reason, couldn’t draw directly from the sun and so harvested all they could get, using its power for their cities and farms, where they grew sorts of little trees, which they consumed. It seemed a roundabout way to basic nutrition, but she supposed they couldn’t help their own nature.

The man in grey hadn’t seen her movements. Indeed, her twisted green body, tall as the endless tangle of trees and vines surrounding her, would have been hard to spot even if she had been moving. She crouched and pressed her long twisted root-like fingers into the earth in front of her, never taking her eyes off the man.

She felt the movement in the ground between her and the man, still unaware of her presence. She saw the soil in front of her raise ever so slightly, snaking along until she saw the man see it. She had to grab him before he got spooked, she had done that before. Her roots extended up his ankles, up his legs and held him tight, placing him a little bit in the air. Even before the sharp point of the root crept up to pierce his heart he had already started screaming.

She grimaced. She had never liked this part. She used to surprise them from behind, sucking the juices straight from the large purple vein that pulsed on their necks. But that had been too close, and she had never cared for the way they struggled. He kept screaming, still making futile efforts to uproot himself. When she could, she preferred to use her vines from afar. She finished draining him (it was the work of a minute) and retracted. She looked up just in time to see him collapse, no longer rooted in place.

She felt the blood before she saw it, coloring her vine a dark purplish-brown, and breathed in as the man’s blood spread through her, better than a summer shower, better than the morning sun, better even than sinking her feet into the damp black soil. This was nourishment, instantaneous and complete, spreading from the tips of her fingers down her legs to her toes and up through her head. She was seized with a feeling of invigoration, and felt for a moment that she lifted off the ground and light shone through her leafy crown.

She breathed out, feeling herself sink into the earth just a little. She released him and he slumped over, white as birch, a stark contrast to the rich wildlife around him. She walked over to where he lay and crouched above him, inspecting his face this time.

A minute is a long time to know that you’re dying.

The trees simply stood by, impassive to most. Only she could feel the disapproval and disgust emanating from them like a smell, hitting her harder the closer she stood. She reveled in it now. They would never know what this felt like, would never lean over a victim and know that you had taken his life from him, the feeling of burning someone else’s energy, to know you had denied him the use of it. She hadn’t known about this part when she had uprooted. How naïve. She had simply wanted to move about, to see places other than her own little corner of the tangle.

A small smile lifted the corner of her mouth. This was so much better.