A while back, RTE (Ireland’s equivalent to the BBC) were holding a short story competition. Being the intrepid author that I am, I came up with a cracking little story and sent it in with the highest of hopes. This would eventually become a harsh, but necessary lesson.
Suffice it to say, my little story wasn’t recognised, but below it rests in all of its glory; titled On The Wind Was Wisdom.
“Come to gloat, have you?” the old Oak says to me in its familiar, creaking tone. I wait for its leaves to finish tittering before even thinking of my reply. “No, no, not gloat,” it continues before I can finish. “You’ve come to tell me about the Willows at the waterfall’s steamy pool: How they’ve grown tall and wide, how their strangling roots have spread deep, how their glowing leaves flourish in the dusk and how the moss grows thick on their onyx trunks. Mhmph,” it grunts, “this I know.”
I adjust myself carefully. “I’m only visiting…” The rock I’d chosen to rest on is far too cold for my liking.
“Mhmph, a visit the vixen says…” It ponders on my intentions briefly. “Your absence in this swathe of land has been noted; noted by all Oaks, all Pines, all flowers few and far between. This, I know. I know this.” The bark around its gnarled knot of a face stretches and groans into motion. “Why is this?”
“My visit or my absence?” I ask offhandedly, watching intermittent rays break through the forest’s dense roof and the grey clouds higher still. A butterfly dances between two of these rays; uncaring of the leaden weight on my mind. “My absence, I suppose.”
“I remember,” it starts, “I remember when you would come every day and every night. I remember when you would fall asleep in the leafy bed I had shed for you. I remember much, young vixen. I have got the rings to prove it. This, I know. I know this.”
“And I pray that I may never see them.”
“Mhmph…” its leaves sway with uncertainty despite the absence of any breeze, any wind, any gust to cause it. “Why then have you come?”
My paw grazes a sprouting of green, green grass; darker under the shade of the old Oak before me. “Why do you ask if I’ve come to gloat?”
“You, your kind, nearly all of our denizens; you are moving. You are all looking for a new forest to call home and I cannot fathom the reason why. We Oaks, we Ashes, we Elms, we Pines, we Willows, even we Willows; we have sheltered your like for eons. This, we know. We know this well.”
“Jealousy does not wear you well, old friend,” I bark in a sly tone.
Its gentle, creaking movements now resemble cackling. “And sadness wears you none the better.”
“It is true, we are leaving,” I grumble. “We cannot call here our home any longer.” Its leaves rattle furiously, forcing birds to fly stranded from their favourite branches. “I’ve come to say farewell.” The furious rattle subsides leaving a gap for muted nature to fill.
“I would ask why, why must you leave?”
I lower my head in defeat. “It is not a choice we were given to make.”
“Mhmph, there is always a choice to make,” it says in a croaky drawl. “Not choosing is a choice all the same. A sapling may not choose where it grows, but it must choose to grow, lest it become rotten and spoiled; sustenance for those with the will to thrive, to survive.”
A single Magpie swoops through the space between us. “We cannot survive any longer, not here.”
The forest seems to sigh as one; a sigh filled with anxiety. “You dance around the why, mhmph. You should know better than to keep secrets from an old Oak like me.”
I stand with a flip-flop of my feet and swipe an itch from my ear. “I don’t know what to call it, for I have never seen the like of it before. None have.”
“Mhmph, use your words, vixen. Paint a picture with your breaths. Tell me of what you have seen.”
I glance behind me, unsure if I’m being watched by something other. “To the North where the Daffodils flower in Spring,” I whisper, “where the Pines run sparse and your breed find no roots… I have seen trunks bleeding with sap, Pines with no branches, mountains of leaves turned brown and frail. Noises too; rumblings on ill-winds…” I brush its trunk with my paws, feeling the thick moss along its face. “The forest is shrinking.”
“Shrinking!” its booming call stands every one of its leaves upright. “A forest cannot shrink, my dear girl, mhmph. No forest can shrink. A forest can only grow! This we know. We all know this.” A chorus of chattering blades drown the forest’s ordinary disquiet.
“I have seen different, I have heard different,” I return to my uncomfortable stone. The first trickles of rain begin to seep down from the crowns above. “I have felt different. I have felt those trunks, I know the pain they have suffered.”
I sense it lean forward in an effort to shelter me. “What could have felled them?”
The beats and splashes of drops grow louder, small puddles gather in dips and troughs and the moss on its face becomes damp and darkened. “Sweating men, wiping their foreheads as they walk through the graveyards they have filled.”
“Men? Men did this? Whatever for?”
“They burn the dead for heat. They use their corpses to shelter their seed. They, they make trinkets and symbols from saplings yo-”
“MHMPH! MHMPH,” it cries in rage causing a deluge of rain, fallen from its fluttering limbs, to drench me. “MEN, MEN HAVE NO BUSINESS, NO BUSINESS IN A FOREST.” ‘This we know, we know, we know,’ whisper its kin, an ethereal thing reserved only for those who have found their first roots.
I shake, wringing my fur out. “That is why we are leaving.”
“Leaving,” it scoffs, still reeling from what I had told it. “Leaving in the face of adversity? Mhmph, no. This is not something we know. The trunk does not bend to the wind. The bark does not let water pass through. The roots do not care for the stone, mhmph.”
“My old friend,” I plead, “these men are not the wind, they are not the water, they are not the stone. They are iron and steel, they are fire and cinders, they are the eternal Moon that will never let the Sun shine again. Nothing, nothing will survive them.”
“We will, we will survive. This we know. We know this because we always have.”
“Do not let arrogance cloud your thoughts.”
“Arrogance?” it asks, confused. “Arrogance… My girl, arrogance is all we have. We are not free to flit about like you and the birds. We are not able to rise on our roots and run to the hills. We are not made to adapt to change, we are made to weather it; weather it like storms, like hail, like seasons of unending snow. This, this will be no different.”
I move from my rock, eyeing a mirror-like pool of gathered rainwater. It shatters as I dip my snout in and take a gulp before flicking the excess off my nose. “I am sorry, old friend.”
Another sigh of wind through its limbs and leaves fills the uneasy silence. “Do not pity us, girl. Mhmph, we trees, we flowers, we petals in the light, we are bound to our home and our home is bound to us. We will survive.”
“You would keep telling me this, but I do not know how! How will you do this? How?” I move from the pool and pace. “Against tools of cutting and chopping, against fires that burn in hues of blackened war and red-eyed hatred, against men who know not their boundaries? How, old friend?”
“By doing what we have always done.”
“Which is?” I stop pacing and ask, dumfounded.
“Waiting.” If the entire forest had sighed with anxiety earlier, it now let out a breath of tense air; relaxing every branch across its acres. “Waiting is what we do best. This we know.” ‘This we know,’ twitches the points of my ears, tickling every hair on its way to the back of my neck. “Man is fragile. Their tools will blunt. Their fires will rage until they can rage no more. Their homes, built with our dead, will rot and fall. Man is fragile.”
I digest its ramblings for a time, thinking if it could be right, if there is hope. A cold answer brews in my head and heart, the one thing I know to be true. “Man can adapt; I have seen this myself.”
I sense a laugh within its usual creaking; a small one, a mocking one. “And like the tree that learned to bend to the wind’s will, it eventually snaps. Man was not made to last like you or I…” it says, putting me in mind of a confident chicken clucking outside my den. “There will come a time when Man has exhausted itself to the point of being unable to catch its breath, where all the forests have been stripped, piled and burned, where Man has grown so far and so wide that it cannot sustain itself any longer. That, is when we will rise again. Rising and thriving from the ashes of a spent world.”
“And if you are wrong?”
“Then I say let Man chop us all down, let Man burn through the glades, let Man hunt and eat every last stag and doe.” The resolution in its voice could almost be seen in the air; a shimmering mist of defiance. “This old Oak knows that Man needs us far more than we need Man. Is it Man that shines on us? No. Is it Man that gives food for my roots to eat? No. Is it Man that shelters the birds that go on to plant our young? No. Man is not something we have ever needed.”
“So, you’ve made the choice to not make a choice?”
“No, young girl,” the glow of a smile shines throughout the forest. “It is no choice. It is what will happen no matter our involvement. Whether we act in whatever way we can, or remain as we have always been; Man will meet his eventual end and an end fashioned by his own calloused hands. I may be felled, this forest I’ve called home for so long may be burned, even the Willows at the waterfall’s edge may end up as firewood,” it chuckles, “but one thing is certain, mhmph.”
“And what is that?” I think aloud.
As a streak of golden Sun pierces cloud and crown alike, the Oak takes a breath and stands as tall as it can; its bark shining with a lustre akin to that of clear dawn on a lake’s still surface. “We were here first and we will be here last.” The Sun fades, the clouds regroup and the crowns shuffle closer to one another. Only shadows, searching rays of light and my awestruck expression remain. Then, a whisper on the tip of a languid breeze reaches me and me alone: “This we know and we know this well.”
Auf Wiedersehen.
AJ Carney 