The White Oak

by Kim White

  As the Simurgh sacrifices herself, the tree’s grip my legs lets go, and the other Simurgh wrestles me free. He gives a piercing cry as he watches his mate disappear into the trunk. His scream ends in a whimper. I stare at the tree’s trunk with him, feeling his sorrow and thinking of Lucas. After a few moments of silence, he flaps his powerful wings and soars upward, holding me by the shoulders. He sets me on the high branch.

  From up here I can see everything: the mysterious river that brought me here, the barren plain of Asphodel, and the black river Tartarus—wide as an ocean, with a giant leaden sphere, the size of a small planet, rotating in its oily waters.

  Minotaur hovers like a silver hummingbird next to a woman who must be Sybil. “I am,” Sybil says, as though reading my thoughts. At first glance, she looks about my mother’s age, but as I stare, I become less certain—she is both youthful and ancient at the same time. She wears a gray linen tunic over narrow linen pants. Around her neck is a silver flask encrusted with precious stones. It hangs from a thin leather string. Her salt-and-pepper gray hair is twisted and piled on her head in a messy chignon secured by a golden twig. “Cora,” she says. “I’ve been expecting you. Welcome.” Reaching into the bark, she turns a handle and opens a door in the side of the tree. “Please come in,” she says. Minotaur immediately flies in through the open door, but I hesitate. “Don’t worry,” Sybil says. “The tree is carnivorous only near the base. Up here, it’s perfectly safe.”

  I watch as Sybil steps inside. She turns and looks at me in a reassuring way, sweeping her arm toward the interior to indicate that I should come in. Her face is striking, not because it is beautiful but because it is eerily familiar. It’s an elegant face, with a thin, aquiline nose that stands out against her regal features like a sharp crease in a clean sheet of paper. Her skin is clear and luminous, with crow’s-feet forming at the edges of her eyes and laugh lines deepening next to her wide, generous mouth. The eyebrows are perfect arcs drawn like calligraphy over serene velvet gray eyes. “Come in,” she insists, and I step cautiously over the threshold into her home.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” she says, gesturing toward a chair by a fireplace. Her movements are graceful, and her bare arms are lean and sinuous, like a dancer’s. I walk over to the fireplace and stand with my back to it, enjoying the warmth but taking care not to overheat the seeds embedded in the fabric of my bodice. The thin dress dries quickly as I take in my surroundings. Sybil’s home is an enormous library with large leather chairs, a plush Persian rug, and a big stone fireplace. The curved walls are lined with shelves packed with books. The ceiling rises as high as the tree itself, disappearing into the darkness above.

  “There must be a million books in this library,” I whisper.

  “More than that,” Sybil replies.

  I stare into what seems to be an infinite space and wonder at how she could have accumulated so many books in this empty wasteland. Where did they come from, and what are they about? Minotaur is flying from shelf to shelf, looking for something.

  “What’s he looking for?” I say out loud.

  Sybil watches the silver light dart from the shelves to her desk, where it buzzes around the open books. She shakes her head and comes toward me; I can see laughter in her eyes—she’s laughing at Minotaur. “He’s looking for this,” she says, handing me a book she has taken from her enormous, ancient-looking desk, which is the size of a church door and cluttered with works in progress. Some of the volumes are open, and I can see the handwritten text on the pages. Dozens more are piled on and around the desk in pillars taller than I am.

  I look down at the book in my hands. It’s beautiful. The cover feels like old leather softened by use, but it’s made of bark from this very tree, tanned and bound as though it were skin. A keystone pattern is tooled along the edges. The book’s title, Cora Alexander, is inscribed in gold leaf on the cover. I run my fingers over the raised letters, wondering how Sybil even knows my name, let alone anything about me.

  “Did you write this?” I ask.

  Sybil smiles and gestures toward the surrounding stacks. “I wrote them all,” she says.

  I stare up at her prolific body of work and gasp in disbelief. Reading is easy, but writing has always been a struggle for me. Jotting down a few sentences in my journal makes me uncomfortable, and writing papers for school is pure torture. I write and rewrite, but I can’t get what’s in my head onto the paper. It takes me forever to finish even the shortest piece, so I can’t imagine writing a whole book, let alone thousands. “How is that possible?” I mumble.

  Sybil smiles gently, the way one would smile at a child who has just begun to learn something. Her superiority shouldn’t annoy me, but it does. I hate not knowing things.

  “Go ahead and read it,” she says, nodding toward my book.

  I hesitate for a moment, not sure I want to read what this stranger has written about me, but curiosity gets the better of me and I open the book. The moment I do, the wail of a baby’s cry fills the room and I’m overcome with feelings of joy and melancholy. A three-dimensional image springs off the page and hovers above it like a hologram. It’s a newborn, still covered in blood. The image turns slowly in midair, floating above the book, which I hold as far away from my body as I can. The book itself whispers the story of my birth, as the baby turns slowly, suspended in midair. The narrator’s voice sounds familiar. I listen closely and recognize it from the caves. The voice. My heart skips a beat and I can feel the adrenaline pulsing through me. Does Sybil know who it is? How did she get him in the book? Or did she create him? I open my mouth to ask, but before I can get the words out, a thousand spidery threads burst out of the baby’s tiny body. They extend in every direction to connect with the books on the shelves—some even stream out the front door. The child’s body is open in the center, radiating light. I’m so startled by the disturbing image that I drop the book. When it hits the floor, it slams shut and the baby disappears.

  “What was that?” I ask, completely forgetting the voice for a moment. I stare at the book that lies at my feet.

  “Your story,” Sybil replies. “Your Book of Life. It’s a record of everything that has happened, and it helps me figure out what should happen next.”

  “What do you mean it helps you figure out what should happen next?” I ask, angered by the suggestion that anyone else has a say over my fate.

  “You make the decisions,” she reassures me, “but I mold the story—the larger story.” She gestures up toward the stacks of books. “Of course, it changes when something unexpected happens, like your fall through a sinkhole into the underworld.” She smiles and shakes her head at the improbability of my adventure. She pulls two library ladders, fitted into runners along the wall, to where I’m standing.

  “Each destiny makes up a separate book,” she explains, “but the stories are interwoven. When I started, I meant to write only one book, but I quickly discovered that if I wanted to be absolutely truthful—.” She pauses, looking past me to reach into her memories. “If I wanted to tell even one person’s life story with complete accuracy, I would have to consider the lives of everyone who had influenced her, and the lives of those who had influenced them, and so on. I had to go all the way back to the beginning, and the project became epic.”

  She pushes the ladders next to each other. “I’ll show you what I mean,” she says, starting to climb.

  I wince in pain as I try to follow her lead. The pressure of the rungs on my injured feet is excruciating. I have to take a deep breath before each step. Some of my wounds crack open, and blood and pus ooze out. I distract myself by examining the books as I climb. They are packed three or four deep on the shelves. Their covers are made from the same soft, velvety bark that mine was. Along each spine a different name is etched. I notice cobwebs connecting the volumes to each other. Some of the webs stretch across the room. I swipe at the air to clear away the strands, but the webs are made of light, not spider’s silk. The gossamer light passes through
me as I stand there trying to understand what is happening.

  Sybil is several feet above me. She reaches for a book with an extraordinary number of threads connected to it. “This is an ancestor of yours,” she says, holding the ancient book and waiting for me to catch up with her. “An important one, I don’t think you know about him.” Sybil smiles in a friendly way. “But then, you don’t know much about your family.” She pauses, considering me with her soft gray eyes, and says, “They weren’t all bad; you should know that.” A shiny thread emerges from the book, reaches toward me, and plunges into my sternum. I draw a sharp breath as it pierces me. Reflexively, I grab the thread and try to pull it out, but my hand passes through it like a shadow.

  “Look behind you,” Sybil says. When I turn to look, I see the thread coming out of my back and stretching downward to connect with my own book. Minotaur is hovering next to the fireplace, watching as the beam touches the gilded name on the cover. Then suddenly, he snatches up my book and makes for the door.

  “Stop!” Sybil commands as she slides down the ladder. She pulls the golden twig from her hair—it’s a pen, and she brandishes it like a magic wand. “This is what you are really after,” she says. Minotaur pauses when he sees the pen. When he moves toward her to grab it, Sybil lunges for the book. I scramble down the ladder.

  Minotaur and Sybil have a tug-of-war over my book that ends when Sybil loses her grip, sending Minotaur tumbling backward. He hits the stone fireplace and the book flies into the fire. I feel my skin tingle and burn. Racing the rest of the way down the ladder, I run to the hearth and try to save the book. Minotaur is dragging it out of the fireplace, and Sybil is standing over her desk, writing furiously with her golden pen. Minotaur pulls the book onto the hearthstones, where it continues to burn as we search for a way to extinguish the flames.

  “Get the blanket over there,” I yell to him, but on his way to fetch it, he disappears.

  “He’ll be waiting for you at the ferry,” Sybil says calmly. “We don’t have to worry about him anymore. I’ve arranged it so that he can’t come back here.”

  “My book is burning!” I scream, furious at her for seeming so uncaring. She walks slowly, gracefully to one of the leather chairs, takes the wool blanket draped over it, and smothers the flames. When she is finished, we look at what’s left of my book. All the pages are burned, and when I nudge them with the poker, they crumble like dry leaves. Bits of ash float on the air like the broken wings of a gray moth. The cover is still smoldering, orange embers creeping toward the center, where only a few letters of my name remain. I feel a pain in my chest as I crush the cinders against the hearthstones and examine what’s left of the cover, just a bit about the size of my palm.

  “Am I going to be okay?” I ask, feeling short of breath. I don’t know what the destruction of my book means.

  Sybil places a hand, reassuringly, on my shoulder. “Come sit down,” she says. “I’ll make us some tea.”

  Writing My Own Destiny

  Sybil fills a massive cast-iron teapot with water and drops in a handful of leaves and bark. She hangs the pot on a hook over the flames. I stare at the last scrap of my book. Only one letter of my name remains legible, an o. The cover is blackened, but the gold leaf is still shining.

  “Give it to me,” Sybil says, holding out her hand. I close my fist around it and shake my head. My heart is fluttering and I am shivering slightly. The loss of my book feels more suffocating than my fall through the earth. I push my feet into the floor and try to breathe deeply. If it wasn’t for the life force flowing into my injured feet from the tree itself, I think I would be dead.

  “Am I going to be okay?” I ask again, hating how meek I sound.

  “We will manage this,” Sybil replies, smiling reassuringly, still holding out her hand. I give her the last of my book and she slips it into her pocket. “Are you hungry?” she asks.

  She doesn’t wait for my answer, and I don’t offer one. I stare into the fire, feeling empty and overwhelmed. Sybil opens her pantry and takes out a loaf of bread with crust the texture of tree bark. She tears off a few pieces. Inside, the bread is snow white and soft as cake. She cuts a red apple in half, revealing its black seeds, and slices cheese from a huge yellow wheel. She arranges everything on a plate made of wood and places it on the table between us. She sets two cups next to the plate and fills them with steaming tea. Next to my feet, she places a shallow pan and fills it with the remainder of the tea from that enormous pot.

  “When it cools, you will use it to wash your feet,” she says.

  My entire body heaves a comfortable sigh at the thought of clean feet. I test the water with my toe, but it’s still burning hot.

  “Have something to eat first,” Sybil says. “You look hungry.” Then she walks over to her desk, takes the golden twig from behind her ear, and touches the end of it with the tip of her tongue. A pen nib emerges, and Sybil holds the pen vertically, touches the nib to the paper, and lets go. The pen stands upright and begins to write on its own.

  I watch the magical pen as I bite into the bread. It’s the most delicious bread I’ve ever had—soft, yeasty, and slightly sweet. I take a sip of the tea and feel instantly calm. It tastes like soil and bark. As I drink it, a sensation of well-being seeps into me, and the anxiety over the destruction of my book melts away.

  “When you finish eating, you will feel different,” Sybil says.

  “I already do,” I reply, and even my voice sounds different, clearer and steadier. When I take a bite of the apple and look up at the shelves, the threads connecting each book suddenly have meaning. They are attached to the golden pen, which has divided itself into a dozen identical pens. They dance like knitting needles as they work on the different books.

  “I am writing them,” Sybil explains, tapping her forehead to indicate that the ideas are somehow coming from her mind. “They transcribe my thoughts as I work through the stories in my head.”

  It’s a weird feeling, watching other people’s lives being written. Something about it bothers me. “Don’t we decide for ourselves what happens in our lives?” I ask.

  “Yes,” Sybil says, “but every time you make a decision, you set a series of consequences in motion, and those things have to be accounted for. The story has to be revised—the larger story, I mean.”

  Suddenly, one of the pens stops writing and flies up to the shelves, burrowing into a finished book to edit a passage.

  “I thought the finished books belonged to dead souls?” I say. Sybil nods. “But the pens are revising them,” I say. “How can they do that? Once life is over, you can’t go back and change it.”

  “That’s true,” Sybil replies, “but it’s only half true. The dead can’t decide to change, but the living can. Transform yourself, and the lives connected to yours will shift in ways you cannot predict.”

  I take a bite of apple and consider this. It makes sense. I can see how a life in progress can be changed by someone else’s actions. If my father had learned to control his temper, if my mother had stood up for my brother and me, my life would be different. I would be different. The seeds of resentment that were planted every time Redd hurt me, or Mom turned her back, would be unearthed. But Sybil is suggesting that if I change, then my dead father will change. “How can a finished life be changed?” I ask skeptically.

  “A life is never really finished,” Sybil answers. “Nothing is ever finished. That’s the great misunderstanding—that’s where everyone gets it wrong. There are no beginnings or endings, only cycles.” She sits down next to me and picks a black seed out of an apple wedge. “We think of the seed as the beginning,” she says, holding it up for me to consider, “but it’s just a thread that connects one iteration of a tree to the next. The seed is not young; it’s ancient. It is the last chapter in the life of an apple tree. The seed is buried, and if the tree is fortunate, it will grow, rising from its grave, to produce flower, fruit, and seed—another cycle. You could just as easily call the fruit the beg
inning, or the sapling, or the fully grown tree. Or you could call those same things the end. Beginnings and endings are illusions, but we cling to the illusions.”

  I think about the seeds in my dress, and about plants, and life. I realize that I know this already—that I’ve always known it, but I’ve never heard anyone tell this truth so plainly. It’s exhilarating.

  “So why do we prefer the illusions?” I ask, taking another bite of apple. It tastes sweeter than candy.

  “For the same reason you like stories,” Sybil answers, waving her arm like a conductor. When she does, the pens all pause and wait for her next movement. She points to one group and waves her hand at another. The pens respond to the gestures, some quickening their pace, others slowing down. “Stories are structured as we wish our lives were, with a beginning, a middle, and an end; with meaning and purpose; with a transformation from darkness to understanding. When we read a book, we look forward to the end—we race toward it. We want to know what happens, and we want all the loose threads tied up so that we can feel reassured that there is a grand design, because our real lives often feel random and meaningless.”

  We are both silent for a while, watching the threads of light move and change, extending to other books, to the pens, to Sybil, and to me. Some disappear suddenly; others spontaneously emerge from the books on Sybil’s desk. The shimmering web is constantly breaking, changing, weaving itself anew.

  “Are you saying that real life has no design or meaning?”

  “No,” Sybil corrects, taking the silver flask from around her neck, unscrewing its tiny cap, and pouring a single drop of silver liquid into the pan of tea water by my feet. It has cooled enough for bathing. “I’m saying that the design is too complicated to know except in bursts of insight, and as for meaning . . . well, meaning is all we really have.” She lifts my feet and places them in the warm water. As the black dust of Asphodel and the sticky tar from the riverbank loosen and dissolve, warmth and tranquility seep into my feet, travel up my legs and torso, and blossom in my heart and lungs.