Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #79: "The Dryad Grove."

“The Dryad Grove” came as a result of a call for erotica. As I write about myth quite a bit, the idea of supernatural creatures who are sensual and ready to dally with humans who are interested in them naturally suggested itself. Examples of this abound in ancient literature. Zeus was always out chasing young women and changing himself into a swan, a golden shower of light, a cow in order to get them. Gods and the lesser deities of ancient Greece went after mortals they thought a lot of, often having children with mortals (Achilles had a mother who was a local sea goddess and a human father). But what about modern times? Are there still supernatural being from ancient mythologies kicking around?

Dryads were tree spirits. They lived in trees but could also take on human form. Trees naturally suggest our modern concerns with ecology. I remember the line by Joni Mitchell, They cut down all the trees and put them in a tree museum. / And they charged the people a dollar and a half just to see ‘em. Soon the outline of a story began to take shape, vague and foggy but distinct enough that I could begin writing.

Sylvia

Barry Phipps is a lawyer. His firm is working to block development of land with old-growth trees on it. I live in Michigan, which was a big logging state in the 1800s. We are a wooded state, but most of the trees are second-growth (a lot of the old-growth timber was cut down to build Detroit as it grew and to rebuild Chicago after the Chicago fire destroyed so many homes). But there are a few areas that were bought by lumber companies and never exploited. It is amazing to go to those sites and see pine trees 200 feet tall and other massive examples of forestry. Phipps’ law firm is up against a development company that wants the land. The State of Michigan is in debt and tempted to sell the protected land, which is near a proposed walking trail. The case has developed some drama and some notoriety.

He is also attracted to the representative for a group that is attempting to save the grove from development. Her name is Sylvia Collins and she is quite beautiful. She has a degree in ecological management and says she has lived in Michigan all her life. After a meeting at his downtown law firm, he sees her walking, stops, and finds out she is going to location three miles away. “I like to walk,” she explains. He offers her a ride. When he stops before her house, a ranch-style place in a suburban neighborhood, they fall into a romantic and sexual episode there in the car. Phipps feels so overcome he ignores the danger and the possible end of his career if they are seen and arrested.

Sylvia as a Dryad

When the passionate episode ends, he goes home, wondering what caused him to take such a risk. At a bar that night, he meets a girl he has dated on and off, Kristi Deronda. Kristi has met Sylvia as well and felt “something” for her:  She presented their case to a community group this morning. I got picked to represent our school. She’s persuasive and . . . well, I don’t know how to say it. She is pretty. She seems to send out an aura of sexiness, life, energy—it overwhelms you. I sat there and thought, Damn, I’m getting the hots for a woman. But it wasn’t that, exactly. She exudes life . . . vitality . . . I don’t know how to say what she does.”

When he meets Sylvia in a park, another passionate interlude occurs. Once more, Phipps’ better judgment tells him sex in a public park is not a good idea, but he can’t resist her. She tells him she will show him her “true form” and turns into a tree. She also tells him she is pregnant.

The next day he persuades Betsy Lane, a woman with whom he is a regular relationship, whose father is also a senior member of the firm, to take a trip out to the site with him. He has wanted to do this for time, but Betsy and her father have been reticent to make the trip. Somehow she changes her mind. Phipps wonders if the two large queen’s umbrella plants that flank her desk have anything to do with her change of heart. Sylvia channeling her influence through them? He has no way to know.

Once the group gets there, the others, including Betsy and her father, are overwhelmed. Betsy sees a birch tree and comment that she has never a birch that big. Phipps has; in fact, he has met the tree in its more mobile form. He also notices a small sapling near it. Gestation, he thought, must be a lot shorter for dryads than it is for mortal humans.

Her father resolves to win the case so that the grove will not be cut down. He also has he has some political connections in the state legislature and with the governor. He will use these to influence the process. Phipps can see that the grove will survive. Just then, Sylvia shows up and is pleased with what the others tell her. When Phipps gets back to his office, he has a text:  Good You saw yr child I will come to u again Sylvia. He sits back and marvels at Sylvia the Dryad’s beauty and at her power.

“The Dryad’s Grove” appeared in a journal called Oysters and Chocolate, no longer published. You can get the tale, along with several other stories, in the journal Erotique, which published an edition made up entirely of my erotica tales. Get a paperback copy here. The book contains six stories, all explorations of intimacy in many of its forms. 

For more titles, check out my Writer's Page.

I would love to hear your comments.

And coming soon, from Transmundane Press, After Happily Ever After,which includes my story, "Morgianna and the Coffee-Hating Governor."The trickster slave girl Morgianna helped Ali Baba overcome and capture the forty thieves. They are married and live happily ever after--until a new fundamentalist governor takes control of the city and begins to restrict freedoms. Because Morgianna falls into his classification of people unfit to wield power or influence, he begins to harass her and her husband. He also thinks the new drink coffee is "the blood of the Devil." But Morgianna is equal to the task of thwarting his schemes.