I followed the roots all the way to the massive trunk of an oak tree, enormously taller than the maples around it, it seemed to go up into the sky forever, more like the trees of the redwood forest I had seen in California than the trees of the wooded kingdom of my most precious memories. It took me a moment to realize, as I took in the large unfamiliarity of it, that it was in exactly the space I had plated it all those years before.
I couldn’t make sense of a tree growing so large, so quickly, but knew without a doubt that it hadn’t been there before. Silas had died on the only oak tree that had invaded the army of small maple trees in our kingdom, and afterwards his father had broken it down with the force of his tractor, that still sat in the woods rusted and forgotten right beyond where the trunk of the untrustworthy trunk lay in its space across the creek, which I had just passed over. I had planted a new one, mixed with Silas’s ashes and a white bag of generic potting soil, in the moonlight, cloaked in the darkness of the trees that surrounded me. There was no question, this had to be the same tree. I stepped away from it in quick fevered movements as I took in the vast view of its towering branches.
Silas’s mother, though she hadn’t been down to creek since the night she secretly watched me mix his remains into the earth, had seen it too. It towered over the other trees around it, pushing up to the sky, where its reaching branches could be seen from the top of the sloping hill that their house sat atop of. She had watched, from the view of her frosty bedroom windows, as it had grown into view, blocking the hills that spread out behind it in the distance, seemingly reaching out towards her. She had known too, without needing to see its place on the earth, where a desolate shallow black hole had once been. Her wild adventurous little boy, who had been stolen at only the tender age of thirteen, by the hollow branch of a tree he climbed, had now become a tree himself, just as he had wished. She believed it with every molecule in her body, smiling in the direction of the reaching branches when she would wake, as if to say a silent good morning to her son, who no longer felt so far away.
My mind, which in my absence from the comfort of the woods, had become intoxicated with realities, forced to stop seeing the magic around me, to think as a bitter and cold adult and not an imaginative child as I had been when I left, reached out to grasp every possible scientific conclusion. I stood staring up at the branches of the looming oak before me in disbelieve, racking my brain for an explanation that did not include the magic I no longer wanted to believe in.
I couldn’t find one.
So, I let the magic wash over me, filling the voids that had been left eerily hollow as my belief in it had been skewed and emptied in my time away from its touch. I floated towards the thick intimidating trunk, the magic of the woods that flowed through me once again propelling me forward without effort. I laid my palm against its rough texture, caressing its jagged lines.
“Silas.”
I breathed his name, the sound emitting from my throat without consciously vocalizing it, the simple statement holding a million questions in its small contents.
I could feel the trunk emitting warmth out of it as if it were projecting the sun that it gathered at it towering tops, the same way the warm tan flesh of Silas’s body had done. The feeling was a familiar comfort, it enveloped me in its warmth as I reached my arms around its broad trunk, hugging it to my body as tightly as I could, as If it were a long-lost friend, as if Silas were really within its core.
“I’ve missed you.” I whispered into the moss speckled bark, burying my face into its rough edges.
Though no gust of wind had blown over as I spoke, the tree began to shake, its branches waving as if in a strong wind, all the other trees around it still as a boulder frozen forever in ice. Soft golden leaves showered from its balconies, creating a ring that protected me and the trunk from the rest of the woods and world around us. I did not unclench my grasp on the rough trunk, only leaned by head back, looking up towards its branches above, the same way I had tilted my head up for Silas to kiss me on the last afternoon I had seen him alive.
I had meant to tilt my head far back, to see the leaves as they fell from the branches around me, to take in the undefinable beauty of the moment, but wrapped in my tight embrace around the tree, surrounded by Silas’s familiar scent that seemed to permeate from the leaves as they swayed to the ground, lost in memories of a budding love beneath endless blue skies, I had looked up to the space where my face would have found his.
There, within the bark of the massive oaks trunk, directly above my up tilted face, were the deep warm hazel eyes that I had longed to see again every moment of my existence for the past five long years since they had been forever shut.
Chapter Eight
Greif, I have learned, can make you see things that are not really there, to imagine things in abstract ways that only make sense because you are grieving, and would not otherwise.
On the dark lonely nights I had spent in the woods in the wake of Silas’s death, I often thought I could hear his voice in the rustle of the branches, could smell him in the leaves that covered the ground, could feel the warmth of his body still radiating out of the spot where he had always laid. I used to believe he was simply hiding in the trees, watching me, the ashes I had mixed into the earth that of a forgotten bonfire and not really his flesh and bones. Only once I was forced away from our kingdom in the woods, had I realized that it had all been my imagination. I began to accept the reality I could not when I was under the canopy of yellow branches, that though Silas’s light had burned bright and fierce, it had also, tragically burned out. He was a shooting star, burning bright as it soared through my life, disappearing without a trace, gone too soon to catch. In the white walls of Aunt Molly’s house, it had been easy to forget things like magic and miracles and accept a dull and dim reality.
In habit of forcing myself to not imagine things that did not really exist, things that I now believed were just a side effect of coming back to a place that had so drastically altered my life, something I had anticipated, my mind passed off the eyes as a hallucination, my imagination playing tricks on me.
Blink, stumble, step, scream.
It was not my imagination. Or if it was, then my imagination had suddenly become a lot more realistic in the last thirty seconds, because there, still clearly seen within the rough bark of the tree trunk were two hazel eyes that I would have recognized anywhere.
I thought of running away, of screaming until someone came and took me to a shrink, since it had become inherently obvious as the eyes of a dead boy blinked back at me from within a tree that I needed immediate mental help. I couldn’t move, could not run or scream or even breath, all I could do was stare back into the eyes from where I had fallen on the ground a few feet below.
I closed my own eyes when Id decided that the ones within the tree were definitely not going to disappear. It didn’t help though, seeing into their depths, even if it were just an imagination, had sparked all that I had worked all these years to hide deep away. The memories of magical spring afternoons came crashing over me like the waves of the sea, relentless, earth shattering.
I could see Silas on the edge of the water, lounging heavily against the rotten stump while he cut paper thin apple slices with his small knife. I could see him plunging out of the creek, slashing water in flying waves, shaking his hair out messily. I could see him climbing the tall trunks of the trees above me, hanging from their balconies, precariously teasing a death he never believed could be real. I could see the light freckles that lined his face and ran across his sun kissed nose, I could hear his laughter, wild and ferocious. All at once, I could remember every whisper Silas Jackson had ever breathed to me.
So intricately entwined in the deep pools of those long-lost spring days was I, that I hadn’t noticed the bark of the tree beginning to crack, or the rustle of leaves that had begun to sing a soft melody all around me. Only when the bark finally began to break away, causing a loud popping sound enough for me to hear within the
woods of my memories, did I finally reopen my eyes and take in what was now unignorably unfolding in front of me.
The bark fell away in small chunks and splinters, as if an unstoppable force were pushing it out from within the trees dense trunk. The eyes still stared out, un-flickering, but now I could view a sense of urgency from their gaze that I had not noticed before. As the bark broke away above them, a thick layer of moss revealed itself, showing that it had been separating from the massive trunk long before I had arrived. Larger and heavier pieces of the bark began to fall, with nothing to hold on to now that the small pieces connecting them into one had splintered away.
The last of the thick rugged bark fell to the ground with large audible thumps, revealing a sight within that defied everything I knew about trees. Neon lime green moss covered the inside, dirt and wood chips sticking out from its foamy texture invasively. Miniscule dew drops of sap specked the interior, casting small rainbows all around as the sun hit its mossy surface, making it difficult to look at directly. Looking inside the base of the tree where the broken bark had exposed the green depths hidden within, I could swear that the moss was moving, the small rainbows cast from the dew drops moving from the ground to the bark of the smaller maples that bordered it.
I stood still for a long time simply staring at it, admiring the beauty that it had hidden within the rough trunk. My mind raced through the various whys and how’s, but they simply did not seem so important as I stared into the rainbow trimmed depths of the magical little oak I had planted so long ago.
The light was already beginning to fade behind the tree tops when I finally began to tiptoe towards the tree, which now in the dim light of dusk, looked as if it were glowing. It was as if it was calling to me, willing my body towards it against my will. I’m not sure how long it took me to get to the place where I could reach out and touch the tree itself, it could have been seconds or hours for all I knew. The magic of the woods had paused the world again, it had stolen me into its warm embrace as it had stolen me so many years ago. I obliged, melting into it, releasing all logical thought and giving myself over to the memories and reminiscences.
I held my palms in front of me defensively, raising them to hover just above the foamy green contents the tree had just revealed to me. I could see now that I was closer to it that within the spongy green tendrils and dewy sap, an entire galaxy was hidden away. It didn’t so much resemble the galaxy that was beyond the sky above me, but the galaxy that I had imagined within my dreams, the one where Silas’s soul roamed free, waiting for me. This galaxy soared on forever in a soft blue light stolen directly from the skies of sunny spring days, interrupted briefly by swirls of soft pink and green lights that floated through its surface, creating an astoundingly whimsical swamp of colors. In place of stars were deep purple glittering flecks that shot across the colorful swamp, they shimmered translucently, gone as soon as they caught my glance. It was the brush cleaning cup of the water color artist who used only the most magically beautiful colors in the universe, speckled in the glitter of fairies who perched on its clear rim. It was the image that matched the magic of the purity of young love, of lives that had the anatomy of shooting stars, the image we would all feel in life, but would never picture clearly in our minds. Viewing its sweet serenity brought tears to my eyes, the heat from it glow warming them off my face before they had the chance to fall to the earth below me.
I wanted so badly to reach into the galaxy whose beauty made the sunset behind me, a hot smoothie of orange and pink skies, look pitifully ugly in comparison. I rested my hands, as gently as a butterfly resting on the loose leaf of a long dead tree, onto the mossy surface that was now only inches from my face, having drawn me in with its mystical sight. The sticky dew drops of sap clung to the surface of my palms, binding me with the lush green moss. When I attempted to pull back gently, the moss pulled away with me, covering my palms, only to reveal another thick layer of moss below. I rubbed the sticky green sprigs off my palms onto the thin sides of my cut off jean shorts and placed them back into the warm sea of green, repeating what I had done before, each time only revealing another layer of neon green denser than the last.
As I reached deeper, my elbows now rubbing the rough edge of the trunk where the bark had cracked off, the moss grew warmer. I pulled out clumps, clawing my fingers into the spongy heaps, which steamed slightly as I pulled them out into the cold of the dark night that had enveloped the woods around me. A soft pinkish light glowed around me as I reached within the warm trunk, reflecting the universe it hid beneath the seemingly endless green surface into the night. It moved in a light swirl of pastels, the reflection of moonlight onto a moving stream, colored in gently by the light crayoned scrawl of a small child. I could feel it pulsate around my hands as I dived into its depths, as if it had a heartbeat that was gradually growing stronger.
I could no longer see the eyes, but as I dug I could feel them watching me, willing me to continue, to push harder. The heat was burning the flesh of my palms raw, causing my skin to steam even after I had wiped the sticky green contents off that now seemed to be melting away as I pulled them into the cold air. Although it felt as if I were reaching into the hot blue flames of a summer bonfire, I couldn’t stop, I needed to unveil the universe that lay hidden within.
I plunged my hands in furiously, every inch of me burning in excruciating agony, until I finally felt my finger poke through the last of the mossy barrier. The surface that grazed my fingertips felt like lava looked. I pulled away from the sensation, falling backwards to the ground from the force of extracting my arms. A glittering, pink speckled blue galaxy of lava began to erupt from the trees base, vibrating the ground on which I laid as it dangerously poured over the lip of the broken bark and onto the earth in front of me. I inched away from it, terrified of its tremendous fiery force, only stopping when the ebbing water of the cold creek grazed my back. I Immersed myself in the creeks icy safety, the top of the water lapping my chin as I watched the swirl of colors pour from the tree, a hazy purple steam erupting around it as it singed the cold forested ground devouringly.
I pulled myself back out of the water and onto my side of the wooded kingdom as the colorful lava inched closer to the creeks edge, creating a barrier of minuscule icy waves between it and myself. I watched in amazement as it poured over the grassy edge of the creek and into the waters gurgling depths. A thick pungent steam rose up in powerful clouds as the heat of the colorful lava mixed in with the icy water below, only one thought permeated my mind as its scent engulfed me. Silas, on fire.
It was impossible to see through the hazy rainbow of steam that hung beneath the canopy of trees, like unworldly thick fog on a stormy beach. Just as it began to finally clear, I spotted the last tailings of the swirling blue lava disappear in the water, under the tree that had taken the life of the boy who I could now smell the burning flesh of all around me.
I stayed frozen on the edge of the creek, staring at the spot the colors had vanished into as the steam disappeared around me, cloaking me in darkness, taking with it seemingly even the soft light of the moon.
I don’t know when I finally drifted off to sleep, still precariously perched in the darkness on the waters soft edge. I only know that when I awoke, it was to my mother’s desperate voice yelling for me from the woods above, the cracklings of her unfamiliar step breaking through the silence of the night. No evidence of the glowing universe of lava remained around me. All I could see and feel was the dark damp of the woods, and so I retreated, back into the safety of my mother’s arms, the arms whom had never quite forgotten the feeling of the cold stiff body of a thirteen-year-old boy whom had never made it out of the woods.
Chapter Nine
I awoke before the sun, feeling like a foreign stranger in this bed that had gone unslept in even in the last year I spent in this house before going away. It felt like years had passed since I’d left California, yet it in reality it had been less than twenty-four hours ago that I’d boarded the plane
in San Francisco, and judging by the dim light of dawns approach, only a few hours since I had watched the lava in the woods.
Had it all been a dream? A mental break caused by returning to the place all the bad memories I’d left behind were born? I moved my hands against the soft purple sheets on my bed, they burned furiously. If the burns on my fingertips were real than I really had been digging into another universe within the trunk of a tree that apparently had grown over a hundred feet in the five years since I’d planted it, defying the laws of nature. The lava like substance had really disappeared into the shallow depths of the creek. I pinched the musky dirt lined t-shirt that I was still wearing, too exhausted from the insanity of the experience to change before fading into a quick slumber, it still smelled deeply of Silas, which was really just the smell of the woods, but I sensed something in the smell, and it propelled me out of bed, my heart pounding haphazardly in my chest.
I ran as quietly as I could out of the house, not bothering to put on shoes. I sprinted down the familiar track off the small purple porch, through the rough dusty gravel, and over the thin strip of now dead and yellow grass, back into the woods barefoot and free as I had done so many times before.
The years had taken a toll on my familiarity with the woods, despite my denial of anything significantly changing. I stumbled and tripped as I precariously ran down the hillside, stubbing my bare toes and cutting my face on sharp bending branches. It was as if the entire wooded kingdom was trying to keep me from reaching what now resided on the bridge in the center.
I could hear him before I could see him, the same way it had been the first time. I approached the sound of low laughter that lay just beyond the manzanita bushes that had grown back into a thick impenetrable forcefield. Though the thicket I could see glimpses of caramel highlighted wavy brown hair, bare sun kissed flesh, a glimmer of warm hazel irises.
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