Dark Trees

Dark Trees
By Synvasti Shymere

In an age not yet mellowed to gold lived two
sisters, shadow-twins. One like fire banked to
embers. One like roots buried very deep. Born
and raised in Dundee, both were as devoted to the

town as anyone I've ever known.

And more so.

Sisters grew into a power of an eldritch nature,
became enchanters fond of shaping doorways out
of light. In those days, crystals were harvested
from rainbows. People would wait for storms to
rise and scatter, and chase the rainbows left in
their wake, ever seeking to find the exact place

where light transmuted into earth and many-
colored crystals sprouted like mushrooms.

The twins only harvested blues. Played
games with the portals, shaping them to fit like

panes of glass into the oddities of their
environment such as sea-smoothed stone arches or
the bending jade tunnels of the canopy or the gap

in the Bos’ pasture fence where a rail had
tumbled down to be buried by meadow sweet and

drowsy summer grasses.

Unlike, oh, pretty much everyone I know,
the sisters were content to remain in their
hometown forever, shaping portals that they
never stepped through for more than a marc.
They had their hobbies and their sweethearts and
their plans for raising wise, wee babies who never

cried.

Some say such plans are suited only for peacetime.

Perhaps.

These women found it so.

When war came, as it so often does, most of
Dundee took up arms and marched to battle.

After battle...

After battle...

Soldiers passed through the town like ghosts
or ghouls, unquiet spirits in ravaged flesh.
Most stayed only long enough to heal and shake
off terror, but some returned broken by the sum of
their days. Others fell and shattered, and were

never seen again.

The sisters refused to leave Dundee. They made
portals from here to there at anyone's behest, but
no pleas or threats would move them to join the
army. “Stay here where we belong. Stay here to

keep her safe,” they'd say. And over time the
villagers began to shun the enchanters. Called
them selfish and disloyal. Called them crueler

names than that.

The sisters moved to the outskirts of the
village. Still shaped portals for soldiers wanting
to return to battle. And still refused to redeem

themselves in the eyes of their people.

No more hobbies.
No more sweethearts.
No more dreams of babies' milk-sweet breath or

sleeping sighs.

Oh, they'd be sad sometimes, these sisters.
And they were close enough to share their tears.
Not too many of them, for the lasses weren't the
self-pitying type. They just bent themselves into
learning about doorways and gathering the blue

required for their magic.

One night, demons were sighted, bristling
through the forest thick as trees. Pouring over
the plains like spilled ink. Those left to Dundee
village were not soldiers. Cloud-crowned elders
and thistledown children. Those unsound in body

or mind.

And the sisters.

I suppose they, in this moment, shone. They
called portals into besieged Dundee, evacuated
all they could. Helped save a lot of lives. Not
all. Blood colored the streets. Flavored the air.

People died and did not rise.

Too soon, each woman found her power
drained. They were now alone. Each took up
scarce-used staff and shield to hunt the source of
demonic menace. Could feel it, each of them, the

tug of two corrupted powers -

...one on the plains
...and one in the forest.

Tedious to detail how the women separated,
but brave the mask of their smiles, bright their
eyes with delayed grief. And bold each one's
journey into night's nest. On the plains – a vast
rent in the fabric of here and now – a portal to a
place of sere, dead dreams. Another in the forest

led to a stony ruin.

Sisters fought in final battles.
Fought in solitude.

No words for what passed in that long night.
‘Rifter rose upon both blistered battlefields.

Demons were slain.
Portals closed.

And of the sisters, not so much as a glimmer of
powder remained to tell that they had ever been.

There is a dark tree that grows upon the plain.
The grass around it is fire-scorched. And the

dark twin in the forest...such distrustful
neighbors. They lean away rather than offer the

solace of their twining branches.
I've seen that tree shiver in sorrow, shed dark

leaves like rain.

Like tears.

Who is to say that when that happens, the tree
on the plain does not also shiver in her grief?