* "I'm a Stranger Here," traditional folk song

Sailormoon Expanded: Tales from Other Worlds

The Trees They Do Grow High

written by Rebecca Malsin

Chapter One: "Running With The Brat Pack"

"I saw Rhiannon last night," Jimmy said, as he held the plate up to see if it was totally dry.

"Right," Eileen scoffed as she waved a wet dishrag at him. "Next it'll be dragons in the vegetable garden."

Jimmy shook his head, "I really did see her. I was riding home past the cemetery and I saw her sitting under a tree with a book, like she did back when we were younger."

His twin shrugged. "A cemetery is a pretty darn good place to see a ghost." Especially an imaginary one, she mentally added.

"That's just it, she wasn't a ghost. She was a bit paler than usual, but she wasn't transparent. She didn't look much older than when we saw her last, but she looked alive." Jimmy tugged on a lock of his short black hair, fidgiting like usual.

Eileen rolled her eyes, Idiot. "Don't you think that if she were still alive she would have been found before a year and a half went by?"

Jimmy sighed, "I suppose the only way I can make you believe me is to show you. After we're done with this, we can ride down there together."

"I have homework, dimwit!"

"'Leen, this is much more important than homework."

"There is no way you are going to convince me to go ghost-hunting with you."

One can tell quite a lot about a person by their name (the lost child once mentioned in a journal). All names have meanings, whether from common usage or association. A child's name is chosen for her by her parents in order to vocalize their hopes for their young child. Is it any wonder that quite often people fit their names?

Picture a girl, fiery red braid flowing down her back, bullying her way around a boy as short as her. Stubborn as the proverbial porcine fauna, arguing her way through any and everything. A bright child, though skeptical. Called by a nominative from Eire meaning "light."

Picture a boy, small, dark, and distracted. Often flustered, quite scared of many other children. A boy who locks himself away in a room to listen to music and read tales of vampires and werewolves. A boy whose name is a cultural reference. A child with the Hebrew name of "one who follows."

Last picture a pale, aloof child, strange and spooky. A child who walks alone, talks to few, and is always staring out into space. A child who'll sing complicated songs in a lilting high voice when she thinks she's alone, or will give you cryptic answers in hisses and trills. A child named for an old, old rock song. What else could this girl be called besides the Welsh name of "witch?"

No way, huh? Eileen thought. Why do I let him get me into these things? Jim's a wimp and a half and yet he still can twist me around his little finger. Thank God he is a wimp or I'd have to beat him up.

She was currently pedaling her ten-speeder, trying vainly to keep up with her damnable brother. Stupid boy. She wouldn't mind all his wild goose chases so much if he didn't always try to drag her along.

They passed the museum, a new fire smoldering in the shed. How many times had the museum barely escaped becoming a pyre? There was one time it hadn't, but the times it had grew too many to count.

The Paine looked as foreboding as it always did during twilight. It was late April and the proceeding winter had been hard. The Midwestern town had only begun to thaw this month. Here and there one could see small flowers try to push through the earth but in too many place it was still desolate.

They sped across Algoma Blvd, Eileen thinking dark thoughts, her brother pleasantly unaware of her growing wrath. Jimmy was happily dreaming of showing his sister that, for once in his life, his query was real. That way she'd never laughed at him again.

When the dragons had come, she hadn't believed how he saw them fly over their house. When a guy who looked like some sort of Viking was hanging around Menominee Park, she scoffed at Jimmy's theories of the stranger being the Norse god, Loki.

Heck, they had both watched the werewolf quarrel with that crazy Christian Fundamentalist last October, just before whatshername had killed one of her flock. (Eileen claimed the lycanthrope was just a guy who needed to shave.) But this time she'd believe him. He was sure. Even positive. At least he thought so . . .

Down the curving neighborhood of fancy new houses by the river, onto the bike trail passing the cemetery they road, finally screeching to a halt. Eileen swore under her breath, something about attempting sexual intercourse with waterfowl. Jimmy, however was laughing in a way that disturbed his sister even more. Not only had he actually been right about one of those shadows he chased, but he sounded unsettlingly like some mad scientist in a bad movie. Still, Eileen had to burst out grinning after a few moments of reflection.

For there, across the tombstones and trees, sat Rhiannon.

Once upon a time (Rhiannon told them later), a thousand years ago, there was a princess that lived on the moon . . . actually, the true faerie tale involved the princess's grandmother. So we begin anew.

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, a witch with pale eyes and hair lived on the earth. She was pretty darn good, as witches went, and one day bore daughters and a son. The son in turn married the heir to the throne of another kingdom and gave his wife a daughter and sons before getting caught in an enchantment and exiled from the normal flow of time.

One day, when her granddaughter was nearly grown, her eldest daughter, herself queen of their nation, sought a pact with a demoness. With one thing or another the daughter got into a war with her sister-in-law and it spread to include the whole of humanity. In the end, nearly everyone in the warring nations died and the witch and her fellows joined again the cycle of reincarnation. So it goes.

Once upon a time, not too long ago, the witch reborn found herself in a land strange to her. Her son was there and he blamed her for what had befallen him. With her were many of her friends from her previous life, in new reincarnations like hers. She became enamored with one of them, which chilled her as he was the reincarnation of her grandson.

One day it came that they had to finally confront her son and that was a day long remembered by them. It was a day when she tried self-sacrifice to keep her grandchildren alive and in the end they saved her. Her actions, however, did kill her son and that weighed on her soul. The witch felt she needed to find her way home and tried to do that in a very literal sense . . .

She was singing, Rhiannon was.

"The trees they do grow high and the leaves they do grow green, But the time has gone and passed, my love, that you and I have seen. It's a cold winter's night, my love, and I must abide alone.

My bonnie boy was young, but a-growing."

Then, quite as suddenly as she had started, Rhiannon stopped and peered at the children and she gave one of her rare, fleeting smiles and called over to them. "Don't worry, I'm not a ghost. Please come, I was waiting for you."

Brother looked at sister, and back again, then they loped off toward the tree. They didn't quite know why or how their friend had returned, but the important thing was she was there, alive. The quibbles they had in their mind since they had first caught sight of her seemed meaningless.

When at last they reached her the smile was gone, replaced by a wry, amused look on her face and a sadness in her nearsighted grey eyes. Her pale hair was braided, like Eileen's, and, in sharp contrast to the twin's tee-shirts and jeans, she wore a long black dress.

"Hello Eileen, Jimmy Kirk." The latter blushed. He hadn't really asked for his father to be a Trekkie (Trekker, he reminded himself mentally) with a sense of humor. If their patronymic had been McCoy, he would have been burdened with the nickname of Bones. As it was, the "Beam me up, Scotty" jokes were enough to drive him to madness.

Eileen decided to bite the bullet, "We thought you were dead."

"Touch me." She held out her hand and clasped each of theirs in turn. They were warm. "I said I wasn't a ghost and I haven't been dead for months."

"But the plane . . . it was lost over the ocean . . ."

"The operative word, my friends, is lost. It got lost and I got lost with it." She added something under her breathe about it being the last time she'd ever go on a plane flown by someone with the name Hibiki, which left the two nonplussed.

"Where did you get lost?" Jimmy asked, curious.

Rhiannon gave a little laugh, "I got lost in a faerie tale. You know, fighting an evil enchanter, helping crown a queen, marrying a prince, that sort of thing."

"A prince?" Jimmy inwardly sighed, slightly jealous of that prince.

"He was out of the line of succession and in disguise, anyway. Don't look so glum, he's a nice boy." She looked around furtively, "Want to go to the woods?"

By "the woods" she meant the ones the bike trail passed. Since the only bikes around were the twin's, they resigned themselves to having one of them ride her on the handlebars.

Home (she once wrote down as a series of observations).

"There's no place like home . . ."

H.O.M.E.: a mnemonic device for the names of the Great Lakes.

Huron, Ontario, Michigan, and Erie.

"Honey, I'm home!"

It's where the heart is, not to mention where you hang your hat.

Perhaps Stevenson expressed it best in his "Requiem" . . .

"Home in the sailor home from the sea,

And the hunter home from the hill."

Sometimes, of course, people can't go home. Perhaps home is no longer there, that place where they spent childhood days, gone forever, although they only left for a short time. If they have no family that they can go back to, no friends that would still recognize them,-- if they are forever changed they cannot come home. It is up to them to create a new home and many have not the ability. Once upon a time there was a girl who could not come home . . .

After a close shave on the initial ride into the trees when Jimmy let his bike get out of control, they made it to a rocky area near the lake. Near the edge, stolen and smashed tombstones stuck out of the water, slowly beginning the process of becoming normal rocks.

They parked their bikes there, and sat down on the rocks. Rhiannon asked about how things had been since she had been gone, and the twin regaled her with tales of their high school. How the principal had set himself on fire, how their government teacher used a hand puppet to lecture her class. High school, as all three of them knew, was a horror equaling middle school, but between Jimmy and Eileen they made it sound interesting, at least.

She listen with rapt attention, then asked them a question, "Was the funeral nice?"

Neither Jimmy nor Eileen were sure what she meant for quite a few moments. Then the lightning struck and the light bulb flashed on. "They gave you a beautiful funeral, Rhiannon," Jimmy reassured her. "Father Jeff played his guitar during the hymns and everything."

"And my parents?"

Eileen fielded that question, "They're recovering and your sister too. Don't look at me that way, she does care about you even if she used to wish you were dead. Will you go and talk to them?"

Their old friend shook her head. "It would only make it worse."

There was an uncomfortable silence, then Jimmy's curiosity couldn't control itself, "And that song you were singing when we met you?"

"The time has gone and past that I have seen with you two. I realize that more and more every minute. A fitting song, don't you think?"

Eileen looked at the other girl puzzledly, "Perhaps, but your song doesn't always make sense."

Rhiannon looked into their eyes, grey meeting green, then finally answered, "Nothing does. I suppose I better go. Thank you for meeting with me."

"Stay awhile, please," Jimmy begged. "It's been so long!" He blushed a little out of embarrassment from his begging.

Rhiannon turned her head to him, "I suppose I can for just a little while."

The world is full of wonders (she had written in a letter to them three years ago), much more than anyone now alive believes. I do not doubt you think our small town mundane. In one way that is true. We are only a Midwestern college town and not the most cultured of college towns, though better than can be expected.

But, my dear Jimmy! my dear Eileen! thing are more interesting when you look behind the surface. Our school friends perhaps think me mad, though they accept me well enough. I know the reason why they do: it is this mania of mine that causes me to try to look beyond the normality.

I have a liking for mysticism, as you two may have observed. That is why I am always in the woods. That is why you might have to literally drag me to the movies or to sporting events. My heart belongs where no man, no woman dwells.

Jimmy tells me he has seen dragons. Eileen tells me she has seen fractals. Both mock the other's discovery. In my eyes, however, dragons are fractals and fractals are dragons. Math and magic are two halves of the same coin to me, though I profess a fondness for the great worms.

I believe this town has a secret in this earth waiting for me to find it out. If not this town, somewhere in the world there is something unseen. I can not believe in a world without marvels. I know you two can, although some times you make an effort to believe in magic.

I swear, when I do find the magic I will come back and show it to you.

They walked down the bike trail, watching the moon. Tsuki no usagi, Rhiannon called it. Of all the many languages she loved, and thus studied, she had made the most progress with Japanese. Wasn't that where she was headed on the unfortunate plane?

Rhiannon told them a faerie tale, about a woman whose grandchild was a princess on the moon. That was her märchen, she said. Even Jimmy, believer though he was, furrowed his brow over that one. Eileen chalked it up as some sort of allegory.

Rhiannon was always like that with them, never admitting straight out what happened but cloaking it all up in some muddled fantasy of hers. It really irritated Eileen that her old friend hid behind such childish things.

Rhiannon, of course, claimed to believe her own story. Which was how they got into an argument about her calling herself a witch.

"You are not a witch," Eileen told her. "Granted, you aren't a ghost like little Captain Kirk-"

"I really hate it when you call me that," Jimmy interrupted. "Ahem, like my stupid brother said you were but-" "Actually, 'Leen, you were the one that said she was a ghost." "Shut up! I'm trying to fight with Rhiannon, not you!"

That teenager laughed at the two and they were startled. Rhiannon, as a general principle, smiled little and laughed less.

After clearing her throat, she finally asked, "So, you want proof?

Got a broom?" Then she giggled again.

Eileen frowned, "Yes, I want proof and don't smart off to me. Why won't you take things seriously?"

Rhiannon looked away from her, to the water, "I am."

Jimmy tugged on her sleeve, "Please, if there is anything you can show us, then let us see it. You can trust us. We won't even tell anyone you came. Just show us some of the magic you say you've found, then we'll let you go away from here forever."

It was early April and the nights were still chilly. Besides that, they also were lonely. Even with cars jostling around the streets and intersections, even with streetlights glowing a couple hundred feet away, near midnight was bleak. It made Eileen and Jimmy ache for their warm beds, waiting for them to sneak back into, via an open window.

Extremes of temperatures did nothing to phase their friend. Although she did not smile again, Rhiannon's grey eyes were warm, "I promised you I would, didn't I?"

Once upon a time (she told her children years from then), there was a girl who wanted magic. She cried out for faerie tales, for märchen, when she was small and when she grew older she set out to look for the magic herself.

Magic proved hard to find. She would catch glimpses of it when she wandered in the woods, but it constantly eluded her. Even when the dragons came, like they did when she was ten, all she got was one small glimpse of them flying overhead.

Her search for the magic made her grow apart from the other children her age. Gradually, they all rejected her, save a group of perhaps eight. Of those eight, two were especially dear to her, a brother and a sister.

Once upon a time, that girl, who by then was an enigma to even her friends, left to go on short trip, one of her first without parents. The flying machine was lost and where it finally landed baffled her.

For the girl had found herself where magic worked. She and the others who were with her were welcomed by the people who lived there. In fact, it was thought that the girl was one of their famed witches reborn. She agreed, since it explained the odd dreams she had all her life.

It has been told already how the young girl helped save the kingdom and married a prince. Since it has been told so many times, why should unnecessary details be included? Because it is known, it needs no refreshing.

Once upon a time the young girl came back for one brief visit to the land of her birth. She met her dearest friends that day, and although she loved them, they reminded her of what she had left behind. So, after that one last meeting, she never came back again.

She led them back to the woods, to the water on the edge of it, to where they had been sitting before. She motioned them to sit down and the two did. Rhiannon surveyed the water of Lake Butte de Mort, then, when there were a minimum of cars whizzing over the bridge, began to chant a series of hissing, trilling words.

Oddly enough, the water began to glow. Out of curiosity, the twins crept from their seats to the edge where Rhiannon was standing. Tears were trickling down her cheeks as she watched the water. The two looked down at it as well.

They saw Rhiannon, braid whipping in the wind, gaze over ice and snow, weeping softly like she was now. They saw Jimmy, stomach down in the grassy area across from the museum, making notes on something only he could see. And they saw Eileen, punching the air angrily, as she thought about some bully who had made her life hell that day.

In short, exactly what they all had been doing two months ago.

The picture in the lake raced full speed from that point on.

Rhiannon fought a shadowed man and almost died. Jimmy and Eileen battled the hell of high school similarly. Their two pictures merged frequently, but Rhiannon's stayed apart from theirs, except for one small instant. Then it was apart as always.

Jimmy saw himself grow old, scribbling about his quests in a notebook, one day submitting that notebook to be published. Eileen saw herself following in their late mother's footsteps, working happily in a laboratory. All too soon, they aged and finally died.

Rhiannon saw herself and her prince sleep what might have been centuries in an ivory tower. She saw herself awake and flee her faerie tale with him for yet another land. The new land still wasn't home, but their multitude of children called it that. The self-described witch-girl smiled sadly as she saw herself die too, this time for real.

The light blinked out and they looked at each other. Rhiannon might not have been making up a story this time. Christ in a mobile-suit, that meant that probably all the faerie tales she had told them weren't allegories but truth. It was a thought Eileen didn't want to dwell upon.

The twins stared, their green eyes the only identical feature of theirs, at Rhiannon, the stark black dress emphasizing her otherworldliness. Words, for the three, were a lost commodity.

Eileen had her proof, Jimmy his magic, and Rhiannon was free to leave them. It was as simple as that. There was a long silence that Eileen finally broke.

"Can we give you a ride?" the Kirk daughter asked.

"I'll find my own way back. Maybe I'll fly. I'm a witch, aren't I?"

Rhiannon laughed again, self-depreciatingly, as she brushed her skirt off.

The were still tears in her eyes, however, and they knew itwas only a front.

"Where will you go?" Jimmy wondered, although he already knew. All of them knew, they had seen it in the water and the horrible part was they couldn't see how to change anything they had witnessed. In one way the magic was a gift, in another way, a burden.

"Back to my faerie tale, first. After that, I don't really know. Maybe I'll find myself a home, maybe not. I'll miss you two, but I can't stay here." Without another word she started down one of the paths in the woods and was quickly out of sight. Jimmy wanted to run after her, but his feet refused to move.

He looked at his sister, "Time for us to go home?"

Eileen nodded, "I guess it is."

They remounted their bikes and headed out of the woods into the starry night.

"Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night Wouldn't you love to love her?

Takes to the sky like a bird in flight And who will be her lover?

"All your life you've never seen a woman taken by the wind What would you say if she promised to you heaven? Would you ever win?

"She is like a cat in the dark

Some say she is the darkness

She rules her life like a fine skylark

When the sky is starless

"All your life you've never seen a woman taken by the wind What would you say if she promised to you heaven? Would you ever win?

Say, would you ever win?

"Dreams unwind, love's a state of mind."

* "Rhiannon," Fleetwood Mac

"And they all lived happily ever after . . ."

* Standard faerie tale ending

Author's Note:

Well, here it it is: an entire story finished, short though it is. Hmmm, I wonder if that means I won my bet with Sam . . . err, sorry. I made a bet with Sam Ashley, another SME author, a little bit ago whichg basically concerned who would actually finish one of their stories first.

Anywho, this isn't exactly a SME story, but it isn't exactly not an SME story either. I decided to post it mainly because I thought that the six people who read "Rhi and Ti's Excellent Adventures" might like to read more about Rhiannon McIntyre. If you don't, I'm sorry and your wasted time will be refunded.

Couple interesting notes: first, this story takes place in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, a tiny midwestern city most noted for children's overalls. I live there and I placed Rhiannon and the Kirk twins there because I know the geography well enough not to worry if I get it wrong or not.

Second, "The Trees They Do Grow High" was originally written for the North High Sophomore Short Story Contest, this annual competition at my school. Happily, it placed fourth in the school and I recieved the hefty sum of twenty bucks. I also get my name on a plaque. *shrug* Hey, I think it's cool.

Third, in case the font doesn't handle umlats well, what Rhiannon was calling her tales was "marchen" (umlat over the "a"). It's a German word refering to the kind of story one might find in the Brothers Grim and is a much more accurate term that "fairy tale" (or "faerie tale" as I like to spell it) because many of these tales do not contain the Good Folk.

Thanks for reading this,

Becky

March 8th, 1999