The tree held the boy for the first moment he saw it.
Locals called it a fairy tree.
They had lots of reasons why, from legends that newborn babies were
buried beneath its roots if they died before baptism to the story that it was
given its mythical status because a cunning woman was hanged there by the
magistrate over a century ago.
It stood singular and proud in the flat of the commonage, a good
distance and around the corner from the estate.
It was in the centre, aloof from the other trees that skirted and
scowled the edges of the green field. It
was too big to be a goal post, the trunk was too thick to climb and the
branches too high to tie a rope or tyre.
It remained untouched, filling its own space, the owner of the shadow it
cast.
It was the colour of tomb-gray and copper, though its foliage told
it was healthy and vibrant. Sometimes it
offered shelter in rain, its inter-knit of leaves and twining twigs close enough
to be an effective shield until, clogged with water, the trickle through them became
as persistent as the rain itself. One of
its roots offended the weaker grass and broke through in a thick buttress, curling
back into the ground like a sea serpent, powerful and raw with life. The rest of it was buried, sucking moisture
and nourishment from deep.
He saw it from the back seat window of the car. It stopped his muffled, disgruntled sobbing
and distracted him from the dull pain of two fillings, manhandling and rough
poking by sterile and gloved hands. His
mouth was still stale with off-mint wash.
He wanted to stop and meet the tree, but he did not want to talk to his
father, who had promised ice-cream and not delivered in another in a long
litany of broken promises working late like those times he couldn’t see his new
picture or read his new story and the boy was asleep when he came home and
barely awake when he rushed away during breakfast.
The tree was close to his house, but he hadn’t met it before as his
mother made him stay in sight. He revelled
in a rebellious surge and held it selfishly close to himself. He would visit the tree tomorrow. It was Saturday and he would go Out of Sight and investigate this
tree. He might even take a rubbing of
the bark and pull a leaf off, if he could jump that high.
He was sullen when he went to sleep and sore when the rose in the
morning to eat yoghurt and mashed-up bananas.
He went out to play and remembered the tree. He stayed his rebellion and said, “I am just
going to play with the other boys around the corner”. His mother said to stay in sight and he
harrumphed and said he was only going to be "over there". His mother waved him away from behind her
coffee and said to come back if she called him.
He buffed his chest and thought that if he did, he would return when he
was ready and not on her first call, so there.
His pride was tinged with sadness that his mother did not know that the
other boys never played with him.
It was spring.
He stood a distance from the living tree wondering what it felt, what
it thought, if it could see him and what it would say if it talked. After a silent time of wondering, he touched
the trunk. It felt solid, but some bark
crumbled in his hands. The grass around
it was downy and a little wet, the wood hard and strong, the outer skin moist
and peeling, but not brittle. There was
an undeniable sense of life, primordial and original. Hand still on the sun-warmed bark, his gaze
turned to the mottled pattern of sun through the trees, like a mosaic with
lemon yellow, watery blue and a dash of marshmallow white. The pattern twisted and whispered and moved
like glitter and the boy was showered alternately in sunshine and shadow, heat
and cool. He closed his eyes and
marvelled at the red blaze when the sun shone through against the black of his
lids and then in the afterimage when the leaves waved a shade over him. He spun slowly, strangely aware of his
breath.
He sat with his back against the tree and wriggled to find comfort. The grass was damp, but not enough to cause
discomfort and the tickling blades felt nice between his fingers. He could feel the life of insects beneath the
bark, servicing the tree and living off it in return, but only rarely did he
see anything move or crawl and, when he did, they were so small that he was not
sure whether he actually saw it or whether it was a sleight-of-the-hand by the
leaves playing with the sunlight.
Here was life. The tree held
him close. He felt embraced. He had found a place in the world for him and
now he would come here to read or to think or to play with the friends in his
head or just to sit and watch the leaves paint the sunlight and clouds into
kaleidoscope fantasy.
Autumn came.
The tree yawned and rusted, golden yellow and curling brown droplets
falling with each kiss of breeze and soon the tree's base was covered with
their moist and rotting carcasses. The
branches were spiny knuckle-bones and scraped the sky it once decorated. It looked harsh, somehow, as gnarled as the
wicked witches of the fairy tales the boy had read when he was younger, but
decided abruptly that he was too old for such silliness and wanted to read real
books about war and monsters and cool things that the other boys in his school
seemed to like. Not that they talked
much to him, but he listened.
He stood there looking upward, shielding his eyes from the garish
autumn sun with mittens that he hated and mocked him silently. It was worse that the grey wool matched his
bobbled hat and made him feel more childish than he felt was right.
The tree did not speak to him.
It wasn't so much silent as dead.
He felt betrayed. He had thought
the tree a friend, but now it, too, had abandoned him, betrayed him, taken his
trust that had blossomed and shone in its bloom and buried in under a carpet of
browning sludge.
The boy was sad, but felt himself harden to his sadness. He set his jaw and suppressed a sigh,
swallowed it and felt it pushed behind the knot in his stomach. He looked at the tree once more, taking it
all in, his eyes a brief surge of hope that somehow it might burst with leaves
and flowers and life and embrace him once more.
But it didn't.
Resigned, but somehow feeling tougher, the boy walked home heavy and
with downcast eyes.
He saw the tree again the following spring, in full bloom, calling
him to play once more. But it was a
different tree and he was a different boy.
