Tag: arboreal

My new short story about a tree, the nature spirits who inhabit it and death.

Arboreal

Before I died I spent most of my days with the oak tree. It was in a park by a river, which I could walk to most days when my illness allowed. Obviously, the seasons modulated the experience. In winter I huddled at the trunk until freezing rain drove me away, in spring I still huddled but warmed myself at the sight of crocuses and bluebells emerging beneath the boughs and leafing branches, in summer I luxuriated in the dappled heat while pretending to read a book, and in autumn… in autumn my mind always turned towards death amidst the mouldering leaves.

After a couple of years I’d got to know the tree. It was old and seemed to tell me things I couldn’t know. It whispered them through its bark, infiltrating me as I sat with my back to the trunk. I began to talk to it and to see the shapes of its being in the gnarled trunk — faces and bodies; humanoid in quality, but arboreal in nature. Pareidolia I supposed, but they changed with the shifting light and sometimes when I stood up too quickly they would morph before my eyes until the head-rush subsided. It was a kind tree, of that I was sure. It stood removed from its compatriots and its apparent loneliness touched me. I was lonely, and ill, whereas its solitary disposition seemed to give it strength and vitality. I would always sense it attempting to pass this on to me, and when I left after spending time with it I would be stronger and less afraid of what was coming. I began to love the oak tree, as I had never loved anyone or anything before. I told it so, and it returned the love in a deep patterned resonance that I have only truly understood since my passing.

One warm late-August day, I put on a summer dress and took my walk to the park. Some boys on bikes stopped to mock me — my heavy limp and awkward gait were always exaggerated when I wore a dress — and I reached the park agitated and shaking. My tree comforted me but I was disorientated and teary. I asked the tree to help me, to take me away from all brutality and wretchedness, to show me something meaningful and beautiful. It answered with a lulling as the heat of the day melded me to the trunk and sleep came quickly and decisively, and a dream turned the past into the present. 

I move to the trunk and hug it. They swarm over me and and change my ideas; they go through and through me, like wine through water, and alter the colour of my mind.

‘Who are you?’

‘We are this tree. We are its life. We care for it and it cares for us. We have watched you and waited. Now you are with us. You are important to us. We have come to love you. We feed from your own love. Others do not love us as you do. We will suffer when you leave us. But this is as it should be. We must suffer to free our pain.’

‘How? Why?’

But there is no answer. I feel myself meld into the trunk and hold my arms out to mimic the branches of the tree, as lifeforms immeasurably different to me probe my memories and bring them to the fore. The pain, regret, joy, grief, dullness, hope, betrayal, realisation… all manifested in a singular moment. I am overwhelmed and fall to the ground. One of the beings comes to me and sidles up. His mossy hand touches my face and wipes away the tears. And voices from the deep abyss reveal a marvel and a secret. Be it so.

I awoke and the present became the past. I walked home and ruminated for days on the dream. My tree was alive, in ways I had never imagined, and had spoken to me via its intermediaries through my dream consciousness. The arboreals had tried to talk to me but I was not able to understand the cosmic import of the message. However, I did know it was a message of death. A transcendence was imminent. I accepted this, even though at the time it scared me to the core. 

The last time I visited the park was a grey November day, with drizzling rain marking the onset of another dismal winter. Since my dream I had often attempted to fall asleep at the tree to reproduce the numinous experience, but was always unable to do so. The arboreals were close to me though, making contact in subtle, subdued ways. They used bird song, wind, the rustle of the oak leaves and even the distant voices of humans to speak to me, and in the ever-changing contours of the gnarled bark I could see what they might be, as if they wanted to show themselves again but were unable. On that final November day I touched my face to the wet trunk and breathed in the benign mustiness. It was the tree’s smell and theirs. I began to cry. I watched the tears drop to the ground and dissolve into the ground with the rain, feeding the oak’s roots and leaving a part of me with the very essence of its being underground, where all its secrets were kept. I knew this was an ending. I took off my necklace with a small Apophyllite crystal that my mother had given me as a child and buried it in the soil at the base of the oak. Then I kissed the tree, turned and walked away, never once looking back. I still sobbed, and in an echo of stillness I heard the sobs returned to me from the tree as if in apology and in consolation.

*

The park-keeper had become aware of the girl a few years previous, watching from his lodge-house at the entrance to the park. She always sat with the old oak tree, in a secluded part of the park, but out of respect he had never disturbed her or talked to her once, not even to say hello. Before she came the tree was ailing, and he suspected it was near the end of its life. But after she came it rallied — the canopy freshened and its tired limbs seemed invigorated. He’d always held the oak in reverence and was delighted to witness its new spurt of life. He was a practical man, but he became sure that she had brought some magic to bear. 

But she came no more since the previous November. He watched for her but she was gone. And from that time the tree, once again, began to fail. Its autumn leaves were riddled with fungi, the bark became cankerous and bled sap. Some boughs weakened and fell during the winter storms. When spring came it was evidently dead. Its gaunt boughs and leafless branches contrasted with the teeming greenery that had transformed the rest of the park. By summer it had been deemed a safety risk, and in November it was felled on the very day the park-keeper had last seen the girl the year before. He kept some of the wood and carved it into faerie-like characters, which he installed outside the lodge-house, to the delight of children visiting the park.

On Christmas Eve the park-keeper walked down to the oak stump at dusk as he always had since it was felled. Glistening in the reflected light from the lodge-house lantern he found a crystal necklace on the stump. Something moved in the air beside him — a whispered breeze, a voice without words. It was a presence that was there but not there… dead but dreaming. Be it so.

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The cover image is ‘The Mighty Oak Tree’ by noshiahmad.

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Dead but Dreaming the novel is available now…