The dryad leaned comfortably against Janet's back step, combing through its hair with slender green-tinged fingers. It heaved a silent sigh as it pulled something alive and wriggling away from its scalp. As Janet watched, it popped the scale beetle into its mouth, eyes closing with satisfaction as it chewed.

Janet squinted at a flash of sparkling purple color on the diminutive creature's otherwise bare toes. That looked like toenail polish, done up to match the dryad's close-fitting leather-and-iron corset. Combined with the capri-cut denims, the little tree-spirit looked like it was wearing an outfit put together by some expensive French designer.

Suddenly aware of her orange butterfly-print muumuu and unshaven legs, Janet marched across the yard toward the Dumpster, trash bags in hand. She tossed the garbage in and slammed the lid, but that did nothing to relieve her irritation.

"So my legs look like someone threw cottage cheese at 'em and it stuck," she muttered to herself. "At least I don't have creepy crawlies in my hair."

She turned back around. The dryad was staring in her direction, big brown eyes vacant in its pointy-chinned little face. Janet glared back, hands on her hips.

"This is my yard." She felt petty as soon as the words were out of her mouth.

The dryad just continued to stare at her, expression blank. Janet sighed. There was no use trying to talk to a presentient mythagos. All it could do was feel.

Janet glanced up as the door to the other half of the duplex opened. She looked back at her step as quickly as she could, but the dryad had disappeared.

"Hey, Janet. How's it going?" Rob grinned at her. His grin faded a little as he saw the expression on her face. "Ah... something the matter?"

Janet pasted a smile onto her face. "Morning, Rob. No, no real problem. I was just looking at your bonsai."

For the thousandth time since the bonsai enthusiast had moved in last summer, she wished that the landlord had found someone else to sign the lease. She gestured toward the trees, sitting atop the metal cube of their shared air conditioner. "I think that ficus of yours might have scale again."

"Not possible. I just finished treating it last week." Rob sounded more tired than certain. He moved toward his trees and picked up the ficus, balancing it on the palm of his hand and peering at it. Wire twisted its branches into aesthetic angles; the purple glaze on the pot shone brightly in the sun.

The corset-clad dryad emerged from the bushes, drawn by all the attention being given to its tree. It stopped after a few steps; it couldn't do two things at once, and scratching was more important than moving. It squatted near Rob's right shoe, lips half-parted as it tended to its scalp.

Janet just shrugged, hands still on her hips as she watched him inspect the tiny tree. "That's a nice pot. Is it one of the ones you brought back from the workshop you went to last weekend?"

"Yeah, Frank said it was imported from Korea." Rob turned over a leaf, exposing the dark crusty beetles to the sunlight. The dryad ducked back into protective cover at his stream of invective. Once he'd wound down a bit, he stared at the tree, then at her. His voice was sharper, now. "You know I don't like anyone touching my trees."

Janet held up her hands, wishing she'd never brought the subject up in the first place. "I didn't."

"Then how'd you know?" He didn't sound mollified.

"Just a hunch." Janet's gaze drifted back to the other trees. Just like all humans, he was blind to all the presentient mythagoi. Otherwise, he would have seen the host of inquisitive faces peering out from within bonsai trunks, little bright eyes screened by leaves. "It looks a little off, that's all. The leaves are droopy."

"The leaves are supposed to be droopy, Jan," Rob said. "That's what this kind of tree is supposed to look like." His grin reasserted itself. She didn't need to be a mind-reader; the slightly smug cant to his grin said it all.

"Well, you'd better take care of it, I guess. Can't that sort of thing spread?" Janet asked, indulging a brief flash of malice mixed with relief. It probably already had spread. Dryads in the preverbal stage were more social than a troupe of baboons.

"Yeah." He sounded glum, as he shook his head from side to side. "Well, there's no help for it now. I'll have to isolate this one, re-treat it, and check the rest to make sure they didn't catch it."

Janet turned, muumuu fluttering around her calves. The capri-clad dryad was scratching at its armpit, making faces of ecstasy. "Uh-huh. Good luck with that."

"Hey, just so you know. That crab-apple in the back yard? Joe said that if it was okay with you, I could trim it up." Rob pointed toward the tree in question, a twisted eight-foot-tall crab apple tree, blossoms a color so subtle that it verged on being white.

Squelching a sudden surge of panic, Janet tried to keep her voice level. "What's wrong with it the way it is?"

"Nothing! Nothing at all," he said, taking a step backward. "It's just…"

"Just what?" She didn't bother trying to keep the hostility from her voice this time.

Rob kicked at the step, looking like a puppy deprived of his favorite chew toy. "I didn't think you'd have a problem with it."

"Well, I do. Don't touch it. I like it the way it is." This was why she hated it when Joe rented the other half of the duplex to some idiot who thought he had a green thumb. Sooner or later, the urge to trim something became uncontrollable, and things in the yard would start changing.

"Well, what if I took over the mowing?" Rob persisted.

"No. Don't push me on this one, Rob. If you're in the mood to clip something, stick to your trees." Janet cast a pointed glance in the appropriate direction before letting the screen door slam shut on Rob's sulky expression.

Two weeks later, Janet was getting up from an afternoon nap when she noticed a smear of makeup on the sofa cushion. She didn't wear makeup, and her head felt lighter than normal. And she'd fallen asleep to the sound of Rob humming tunelessly in the backyard, with the snip-clack sound of clippers for a background. She reached up toward her shoulders, but she couldn't find her ponytail.

She barked her shin on the coffee table in her haste to get to the bathroom. She limped the last few steps to the mirror, and flipped on the light. The face that stared back at her wasn't the one she'd lived behind for the last twenty years. Her cheekbones were higher, her nose was slimmer and slightly more beaky, the shape of her jawline more pointed. Her hair had been a waist-length mass shot through with grey. Now it was auburn, cropped close to her skull in two-inch strands. Between the makeup and the facelift, she'd lost a good thirty years.

Janet took a step back, and her chest bounced with the movement. Sucking in a horrified breath, she stared at the rest of the changes. Her body was slimmer, her rear end smaller, and a Wonderbra thrust her chest upward and outward. At least her jeans and t-shirt hadn't changed, although now they sagged and bagged in different places.

She wanted to scream and slam a fist into the mirror. This was worse than the time that the power company had come through and she'd found herself half-bald. Instead, she closed her eyes. Something sticky on her eyelashes made the motion more gluey than normal.

She headed straight for the back yard. The screen door hissed shut behind her, latch clicking into place. Rob had mowed the grass, evened out the hedges that surrounded the yard, and styled the crab apple tree. Her tree.

Rob had pruned away at least a third of the tree's top, placed supports under the lowest-hanging branches, and clipped away most of the new spring growth. Pale petals carpeted the lawn; the styling had shaken branches bare of their blossoms.

She could sense the tree's confusion. He was dazed, confused and hurting, wondering what had just happened. She took a step toward him, heart aching

Rob's battered Nissan popped into view, rounding the corner. Breath catching in her throat, Janet darted inside and sat down in her kitchen.

The coughing putter of the Nissan's engine ceased, and the sound of a car door creaking shut drifted in through the half-open kitchen window. Rob's sneakers scuffed on the tiny sidewalk leading up to the back of the duplex. He was talking on the phone.

"…had to go, it'd be the crab-apple. I don't think the heartwood is very sound. There're some punky marks on the trunk, and I'm just not happy with the way it looks even after styling. Would you mind if I cut it down?"

Huddled in the kitchen, Janet hugged her legs and rocked back and forth with distress.

After Rob had left and the neighborhood was quiet, Janet walked across the lawn. Grass clippings accumulated between her toes. She slumped down next to the bole of the tree for comfort and pressed her cheek against the greyish bark. Even through the coat of makeup on her face, she felt him quiver in response, as full of questions as sap.

"Oh, honey. What're we going to do? What's he done to us?"

"Turned you from a B-cup to a double-D?" The comment was sarcastic. All she could see over the hedge was the top of a ten-gallon Stetson. The hedge shook as Milt pushed his way through it from his yard to hers, the fringe of his beard split by a very wide grin. "Gotta say, it's an improvement. Both for you and the old b'y, there."

She scowled. "Great. My letch of a neighbor thinks this is an improvement. Forget about my bust size for a minute, will you?

"This is a disaster! My idiot of a neighbor and moron of a landlord want to cut him down! How'm I supposed to keep us safe?"

"Buy the place."

"I can't!" Janet wailed. "You know what real estate prices are like around here! Even if Joe was willing to sell, which he isn't, I don't have a tenth of the cost."

Milt pushed his hat back and scratched at his forehead, cracked fingernails rasping across his skin. "You could always Trade for it."

"The price I paid last time just to arrange to rent this place... and I don't have anything new to offer!" Her shudder was unfeigned; the tree's branches actually creaked with her agitation. "I can't do that again, Milt, I just can't."

"Here." Milt flourished a large red bandanna, and then tossed it into her lap. "When you're done feeling helpless, you'll see it's not that bad." He leered at her, before pushing his way back through the hedge. "Especially not from my point of view."

"But why not? You know the deep places of the earth," Janet argued, later that evening. She waved her hand, trying to describe what she meant without sloshing tea over the side of her cup.

"Jan, I'm a subway maintenance supervisor. That's the farthest into the deep places of the earth that I get these days." Milt scowled at her as he balanced his mug in callused hands. His nose was starting to get red; Janet suspected that he'd made some sort of creative addition to his own drink while bustling about in the kitchen in the name of hospitality.

"But surely you know where there's ...buried treasure, or something. A vein of gold. Or diamonds?"

The kobold shook his head. "I never did work with precious metals or gems. Sorry. I could find you a nice seam of copper. Or gypsum. Or even coal, although most of the surface beds have mostly been played out. You'd just have to put up with me for six or seven months while I did it. Oh, and pay my mortgage, and utility bills, motel bills and-"

"Okay, okay. I get the idea." She sighed, staring into the murky liquid in her cup.

"Honey, I'd help you if I could." The short man grinned again, putting a hand on her knee. "But I've got troubles of my own, trying to make the mortgage and a bit more to live on. It isn't easy surviving in this world for any of us, beautiful."

She slapped his hand away before it could inch any further up her thigh, and then set her cup aside. "You know, Milt, that 'pity the poor mythagos' line of shtick just doesn't work on me."

He chuckled, snorting a fine spray of tea out of one nostril as he eyed her chest. "Yeah, but this time it's easier to be sincere about the 'beautiful' part."

Slapping him again probably wouldn't make him stop, she supposed. "So you can't help me."

"Like I said, I would if I could." Milt said. "You're going to have to Trade for it and hope that He or She doesn't want too much."

She sighed. The thought of bargaining with any of Them made her head hurt. The thought of bargaining with the same One who she'd traded with twenty-five years ago made her actively nauseous. "I thought I had a couple more years to work out a solution."

Milt grimaced. "No offense, Jan, but that was just plain stupid. You never know when something like this is going to happen. Or your house is going to burn down, or some idiot human figures out what you are and you have to ask for a quick intervention."

"You're right. You're right," Janet said. "Truth is, I'm squeamish. It's like buying a kitten, raising it, and then handing it over for someone to eviscerate before it could become a cat."

Milt leaned forward. "Better a kitten than you, sweetheart. Squeamish is as squeamish does. You like paying with your own pain instead of something else's?"

The smell of the tea made her want to gag, and she set it aside. Mitch, watching, offered a sardonic little half-smile. "I take it that's a no. Is there anything else you could offer?"

"I guess I could offer one of Rob's little bonsai-dryads."

"Those little dolls? They might be interested in that. I'd be interested, if they were about three and a half feet taller." Milt rubbed his hands together.

She lacked the patience to deal with the kobold's oversized libido tonight; rather than answering aloud, she stood up and squared her shoulders. "Thanks for the tea."

"Hello?" The dark-haired woman scowled as she opened the door. Her bathrobe was a purple satin printed with large pink pansies, and her hair was dripping wet. There was no recognition in her face as she stared straight at Janet. "If you're a Jehovah's Witness, save your breath. I've heard it before. And if you're selling something? Unless it's chocolate, don't bother."

Janet managed to wedge a toe in the door before it was slammed in her face. "Signy! Sig! It's me, Janet."

"Janet?" The door eased open, relieving the painful pressure on her toes. Signy peered out in a myopic fashion. "You don't look... oh, dear. Come on inside."

"It's okay. I know you're working nights at the newborn nursery this month. I just couldn't find your phone number." Janet shoved her hands deep into her pockets. "Look, I need to make a Trade. And I don't want to go to the same One that I Traded with last time. Who'd you use, and what'd He or She ask for?"

It was hard to tell in the dim illumination from the porch light, but Janet thought that Signy went a few shades paler. Sudden motion stirred the nurse's bathrobe, sending ripples back and forth through the bottom half of the fabric as her cow-tail flopped with agitation. "He. And He wanted... well, what do you think He wanted, Jan?"

She'd guessed as much, when Signy came to her door thirty years ago, bleeding from multiple bite-marks, bruises livid on her body in unmistakable patterns. That was why she'd sought out One who was female for her Trade. Afterward, she'd thought that Signy's price was far cheaper than what she'd paid. "Sig, I'm sorry. I'm sorry to bring it up. I just... well, you can see. Would you... would you mind telling me His name?"

The strain-lines around the huldre's eyes deepened, as she shrugged. "I wouldn't, if He was still around. But the One I used got chased out of town about a year ago. You know Them and Their territory games-- well, there's only One left in the area."

"So who is it?" Janet's hands bunched into fists within her pockets. She felt a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach as the huldre opened her mouth to answer. "Don't tell me."

Signy nodded fractionally as Janet said, "Yasmin."

Janet drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as she slowed down further, switching lanes to avoid a beer truck parked half-off the curb in front of a downtown bar. Thank goodness her voice hadn't been changed; she'd been able to call in sick to work without anyone asking too many questions.

The parking garage loomed on her left. With a quick yank of the steering wheel, she sent her Honda across two lanes of traffic and into the entry ramp. "Oh ye gods and goddesses..."

Her heart was beating erratically as she slid the car into the first empty parking spot she found. This was too far away from her tree for comfort's sake. At least her passenger, its ficus tree strapped into the back seat, had its tree to cling to. After the first thirty minutes of the drive, it had stopped kicking at the sides of the box. The last time she'd checked, it had hunkered down miserably with its arms wrapped about the tree trunk.

The lobby of the Hinkman Building was full of cool black marble, discreet fountains, and expensive looking floral arrangements. Three men in dark uniforms sat at the long sweep of the front desk.

Her high heels clicked across the polished surfaces as she moved toward the security guards. One of the three was staring openly at her chest as she moved; the other two were either more surreptitious or more professional.

She cleared her throat, then smiled apologetically. "Excuse me. I have an appointment with Yasmin Al'Haimus for eight-thirty this morning."

The elevator doors opened onto an immaculately appointed office, furnished in black and off-white with chrome accents. Light slanted in through the huge windows against the far wall, but there wasn't so much as a potted plant anywhere within sight to take advantage of the southern exposure. Jan looked around and blinked, feeling adrift and off-balance.

"Not what you'd expected?" The voice sounded at her shoulder, familiar enough to tie her stomach into knots even before its owner appeared from thin air.

Yasmin in her current incarnation was slender where before she'd had a figure that was earth-mother generous. Reddish-brown eyes glittered with anticipation, and her black hair had grown, tumbling loose to her knees. Some things hadn't changed; Janet had to suppress the urge to shuffle backward at the way that the air bent the light around her, as if the woman was putting off incredible amounts of heat.

Janet cleared her throat. "Not... not exactly."

Fortunately, Yasmin didn't seem irritated. "You thought... what? Peacocks and fountains and oriental rugs, pillows everywhere and tapestries, maybe?" The black-haired woman tapped a finger against the side of her nose, where a faint pucker-mark attested to the former presence of a nose-ring. "In general, birds and expensive carpets don't mix well."

She managed to take a half step backward, away from the ifrit. The proximity of a mythagos so closely related to Fire made her uneasy; at home, her tree's branches were probably groaning from the stress of it. "No. I didn't expect birds."

Yasmin threw her head back and laughed, the sound echoing through the room with crackling undertones. With quick steps, she led the way to a formal grouping of tubular black chairs, sinking into one and waving an inviting hand at the other. "Oh, my dear. Truth at last, after months of dealing with lies and humans. How refreshing. You were expecting carpets and tapestries, weren't you?"

Janet sat down warily; the seat was uncomfortable in a deliberately-designed way. Her host, however, seemed perfectly at ease in her chair. "Well, yes." The decor had been much more traditional, the last time she'd thrown herself on Yasmin's mercy. "But that's not why I came here."

"You could go to a perfectly good carpet store to see those," finished Yasmin, that hungry anticipation still in her eyes. "Well. At the risk of being very Western, let me offer coffee and then ask why you did come here. I have another appointment across town in thirty minutes."

"...and that's the whole story. I need a new identity and documents to support it, preferably related to my old identity, and enough in the way of resources to buy the property and pay the real estate taxes. Plus, my current landlord has to be persuaded to sell." Janet hunched her shoulders under the ifrit's level gaze.

Yasmin steepled her fingers together. "I warned you the last time you came to me for aid that my price would be higher than a mere handful of heartwood next time."

"I know." Janet knew that the ifrit-turned-businesswoman was simply being polite, calling her 'little sister'. It held no significance. The hair on the back of her neck tried to stand up straight as she remembered their last bargain. Yasmin had fed cheerfully on their pain, casting the wood into a slow-burning fire, gathering strength and substance as Janet was diminished. She had taken a half-step closer to becoming a goddess, while Janet slid a half-step further down the road to extinction.

There was still a fist-sized hole in the center of Janet's tree, charred and smooth around the edges, encased in living wood.

Yasmin's black hair shifted, flowing over a silk-suited shoulder. Her fire-washed gaze was focused on Janet's face as she leaned forward. "What have you got to offer me in return?"

Janet opened her mouth, ready to describe the tiny dryad locked in her car. The words caught in her throat.

Under the weight of the ifrit's gaze, she shut her mouth. Her gaze traveled the room as she searched for inspiration.

Her gaze landed on a stoppered glass bottle filled with some bright red liquid, and inspiration descended. She licked suddenly dry lips, and opened her mouth again. Approaching this subject would be like trying to herd a lame cow through a minefield.

"You've done well by yourself here," she said finally. "But don't you ever worry that some human with a touch of our blood will see you for what you are?"

The ifrit's fingers tightened slightly, as they gripped the armrests of her chair. The heat-shimmer around her roiled, suddenly becoming much more distinct. "Are you threatening me?"

"No, no!" Janet looked horrified at that thought. Trust the major mythagoi to think first of threats and blackmail. "But consider the possibility. One human with open eyes, who believes the old stories. Just one, and you could end up a slave again, at the beck and call of whatever human laid a hand on your bottle."

Yasmin frowned, a crackling edge back in her voice. "Explain yourself."

"I can help you hide your bottle, in a place where no one would ever look for it. And if I hid it in this place, I would have to protect it as if it were my own life."

"How... interesting." The heat-shimmer around the ifrit subsided; Yasmin leaned back in her seat. "Do tell me more."

The ifrit no longer looked irritable or amused. She looked fascinated. Janet took a deep breath, and commenced to explain.

Janet knelt beside her tree, one hand resting against his familiar bark. A small bronze bottle gleamed in her other hand. The late afternoon sun felt warm against her back as she reached in, then out again. It was just as she'd thought; the scarred cavity created by her last Trade was just the right size for the bottle.

Not that anyone would ever find it, located deep within the heart of the tree, without fissure or crack to betray its presence, or that of the bottle. The tree whispered a question, letting a bug-eaten leaf drift toward the ground.

"It's all right, dearest. It won't hurt you. Us. It's a secret we have to keep, that's all. So keep it safe, hm?" Janet felt the tree's alarm and curiosity subside with her quiet reassurances.

She dusted off her hands, grinning crookedly. No one could reach it except for her. Only a dryad could move through wood like it was air, and then only the wood of her own tree. In the end, that had been the argument that had swayed Yasmin the most.

"We're safe now," she repeated, glancing toward Rob's bonsai collection, where the ficus sat in its usual place of honor.

"You're safe too," she told the little dryads, with a grimace. They stared back at her blankly from their various positions on the lawn as they soaked up the sun.

She turned just in time to see Rob's battered Nissan pull into the driveway. He was out of the car almost before it had stopped. She got up, and headed toward him. "You must be Auntie Janet's neighbor."

He looked nonplussed, mouth half-agape. Just like most of the other men she'd seen today, he was staring at her chest instead of listening. Well and good; if that was what it took to keep him distracted...

She grinned more widely and continued, "I'm Jennifer Brooks, her niece. I bet she forgot to tell you that I was going to house-sit while she was gone. She told me you'd fixed up the yard. I like what you've done with it."

The End

Bio

S. Evans is a pediatric intern at the University of Minnesota, whose themesong is "Who Needs Sleep?"