by Tom Crockett
Every so often he would stop and have her put her hands on different trees. Sometimes they were young trees with smooth bark, sometimes they were older, with rough scaly bark. Sometimes he’d have her touch one of the great old trees like the giants in which he’d made his home. He told her to keep her heart open as it had been when she touched the trees before.
She wasn’t sure how to do this, but she did try to empty her mind. She practiced breathing the way the Turtle Woman had taught her—deep and slow from her belly. And she did feel something.
The more trees she touched, the more convinced she became that the something she experienced was real. The young trees seemed to hum and buzz. The sensation she drew was that of oscillation, like a wave pattern. The older trees were sometimes silent or vibrated with a steady low-pitched rumble that reminded her, for some reason, of snoring.
The giants were always unique. Some were quiet, some were loud, but all expressed themselves with distinct patterns of energy. Téves asked her what she felt at each tree, but refused to confirm or explain any of Marina’s experiences.
Sometimes he would stop and ask her to simply describe what she saw. Though he didn’t ask her to do this, Marina understood, that in some way, she was really to describe what she felt. She always began with the light. The light was the first thing she experienced each time he asked her to describe something. She also began to notice different things about the light.
As a photographer, it had been her business and her passion to understand light. She knew how to capture and record light as well as anyone she knew, but now it seemed to her that light was so much more. It seemed to be telling her things—suggesting more than just superficial patterns painted on the landscape. She could see the light now, not as simply casting patterns in shadow and light, but as illuminating underlying patterns, fundamental distributions of energy. It was as if the light was not just giving her clues to what might be, but was mapping the structure of the only thing that was truly essential.
Again Téves said little as she tried to put these new discoveries into words. He just smiled or nodded his head, answering each of her questions with another request for her to touch some tree or describe some space. She began to wonder as she walked behind him if she could capture this new understanding of light on film. She felt this was more than just an imagined perception, but she wondered if she could render or manifest it. She also realized that she was thinking about things she might do if she were still alive or could be alive again somehow.
She caught herself wanting it.
Téves had moved ahead of her in her reverie and when she caught up with him he was kneeling before a fallen tree. The tree was old and decayed. None of its branches bore green leaves. It looked as if it had toppled over in a storm some weeks past. Téves had both hands on the tree and seemed to be whispering to it. Marina stood back. Some instinct for ritual kept her from questioning Téves.
He turned and gestured to her to join him. She knelt next to him and placed her hands on the fallen tree. At first she felt nothing. Then the faintest hint of what she had come to expect from touching the trees with her heart open like this washed over her. It was soft and faint, like the echo of a song just before it fades away.
“This is Carolis,” Téves said quietly. “She’s been here since the time before I was caretaker. She was a singer of bright songs, a mother to four daughters, and the great love of two men.”
“Do you mean that this tree stands for her?” Marina was struggling to make sense of what Téves was saying. She knew from her own touch that somehow everything he said was true, but her logical mind could not grasp it. “Is it a symbol? I mean, was it planted in her honor?”
“No. This is Carolis. She came through these woods once just as you have. She was lost, hungry, looking for a place to rest. She chose to stay.”
Marina stood up and backed away from the tree. She stepped backward a few more paces, then turned and walked a little ways into the woods. She looked around at the strange trees and for the first time saw them for what they were—bodies frozen and modeled of wood. It was true that they had reminded her of human forms when she first saw them, but she’d thought then that it was only her imagination playing with her. It had been a game to see them as people, like seeing dragons in clouds. Now she saw them as actual bodies grown to wood.
They were rooted in the ground with arms outstretched in a tangle of what must have once been fingers. On some she saw curving breasts and flaring hips, on others she saw broad strong legs and barrel chests. Legs sometimes grew together, fusing into one trunk. New branches sprouted higher up on the older trees, and on some she could almost see faces hidden by the heavy cowl of enfolding bark. Some seemed to watch her. She was certain that if she turned at just the right moment, she might see an eye blink or a mouth form a soundless word.
It was at once beautiful and terrifying. She knew there was incredible peace here. These spirits were not trapped or bound by the trees around them. They were living urns, vessels for the spirits that had come here to rest. She also knew this was not the place or time for her spirit. Does Téves have the power to lock me to the ground, to make a tree of my lost and wandering spirit?
“You needn’t fear me. All are free to choose here. Come or go as you wish.” Téves had slipped up behind her but kept a respectful distance so as not to frighten her. “Every spirit in Adytum Wood has chosen to rest here. It is not a prison.”
“I’m sorry. It’s beautiful, really. It’s just not for me.”
“Of course not, you are Marina—of the sea. When your spirit is ready to rest it will find water.”
Many things flashed through Marina’s mind at once. Her name did mean “of the sea.” She’d chosen for her spirit to rest in the sea. She hadn’t thought about it consciously at the time, but suicide by drowning, especially in the vast deep ocean, was the only way of taking her life that felt even remotely right to her. She also thought about her spirit coming to rest, and she knew she had crossed some threshold. Her spirit was not ready to rest. She had things she still needed to do, wanted to do. If she could go back to the world of the living, she wanted to.
“I’m sorry.” She said it again for no other reason than that she couldn’t think of what else to say. She had not meant to insult Téves or his beliefs. He seemed a caring and gentle soul. “I—”
“Come,” he interrupted, “help me find the heartwood.” He held out his hand and she took it. He led her back to the fallen tree and placed her hands on the trunk. “Move your hands along the trunk and tell me where her heart is.”
Without really knowing what she was feeling for, Marina opened her heart and listened. In some places the faint song she had heard was stronger. She went back and forth several times until she had isolated a single section where the tingle and vibration was strongest. “Here,” she said.
Téves nodded and smiled at her. He picked up his long saw and cut into the tree. It took time, but his saw was sharp and eventually he cut through the trunk. It creaked and fell apart just a little, and Téves began sawing again, cutting a four-inch thick slab of wood from the tree. This he rolled out and laid on the ground.
“See,” he gestured to the slab and Marina approached. She could see a dark blue shadow in the center of the tree. “This is all that’s left of her. Her spirit’s shrunk back, condensed, ready for new life.” he turned the slab slightly and all at once the blue shadow became a recognizable form. It looked like the silhouette of a woman’s body wrapped in a long blue gown.
“What will you do with it?”
“Set it free.” Téves slipped the heavy slab into his knapsack and shouldered it. “It is part of my duty here, part of my vows.”
They walked back in silence. Marina was surprised to see that the sun was beginning to set. The day had not seemed long. Téves had once again moved out ahead of her. Even with his heavy pack and tools, he moved with grace and speed through the forest.
Marina found herself preocc
upied with thoughts of living again. Up to now living again had seemed an abstract possibility. Now she began to make it concrete. There were things she wanted to share with people. There was work she wanted to do. She owed her family more than she’d once thought. She had reasons to be alive.
Alive.
The woods around her were alive.
She had stopped walking without realizing it. She was standing in a little open space between some of the biggest and oldest trees she had seen all day. Light fell around her, almost palpable. If the rainbow light of spinning crystals could become almost solid, she thought, like snowflakes that might melt before hitting the ground, that would come close to what this light is like.
She was intensely aware of the energy around her. She was not touching anything, but it came up through the soles of her bare feet. It misted and danced about her with the light. She could smell it and taste it. It sang to her like silvery wind chimes and breathy flutes. She crumpled to the ground and wept.
It was some time before she realized that Téves was cradling her. He held her like a little baby and rocked her in his arms. She felt drained from her crying, weak and tired. Too tired to even apologize.
“It’s all right,” he said softly. “You are so open now that the energy can overwhelm you. This is a sacred place even within a sacred place.”
“Is that what I feel here? Energy?”
“It’s one of the pulse points. There is energy all around us, but in some places that energy is concentrated through time, or will, or intention. These places can recharge us if we know how to find them.”
“I don’t feel recharged. I feel drained.”
“When you step into the flow, it cleanses you. It pulls away the undergrowth that’s sapping your strength. The first time that happens it can be disorienting. Stay here awhile longer, then come to me. Jeremiah and Sybil are not far away. Listen for them and you’ll find your way.”
With that Téves gently untangled himself and stood up. Marina straightened her jacket and drew her legs up in a cross-legged posture. She watched Téves walk off until he disappeared. Then she stilled her breathing as the Turtle Woman had taught her and waited. There was something about this experience that called to her. She was learning something important, something she had to learn. Atana had said something about sanctuary. She had to learn about sanctuary. She had thought sanctuary meant some church or temple, some religious or spiritual monument. But wasn’t this simple grove a kind of sanctuary?
She thought about what she knew of sanctuary. Monasteries had once provided sanctuary against the concerns of daily life. Churches offered sanctuary against the abuse of temporal power. The Sanctuary Movement among certain progressive churches in North America had provided safe haven for refugees of political violence and instability. But sanctuary seemed to have a deeper, even more relevant meaning. It was more than just a place of physical safety. It was a place to rest, to heal, to renew and recharge.
We are not meant to live in sanctuary, she thought, but we don’t seem to be designed to live without it. We need places that revitalize us. If we can’t find energetically rich and active places with our own senses, we must trust to tradition. Perhaps this is why so many people make pilgrimages to holy sites. Her mind was racing now. It seems like the more chaos and upheaval is in our lives, the more frequent our need for sanctuary. This need can’t be met by the traditional sanctuaries. They are too few and too far between. We need new senses. We need to find the little . . . what was it Téves had called them? Pulse points? Places like this. Places where . . .
Marina felt a new kind of energy rising up within her. She felt it between her thighs, deep within her belly, passing through her solar plexus, into her heart like an arrow of light, up through her throat, tingling at her forehead and erupting from the crown of her head. It lifted her up and she was standing. Then she was spinning, dancing, and spinning again like a Sufi dervish, caressing trees as she passed them, taking and giving energy with each step. The child in her laughed out loud and sang a song she did not know that she remembered.
All at once she was at the foot of the great tree Téves had called Sybil, the staircase tree. She was out of breath, but she turned and bowed formally to the trees around her. “Thank you. Thank you.” She bowed again, blowing kisses like a diva to her adoring audience. Then she turned and climbed the stairs, still laughing, still happy.
Night seemed to fall as she climbed, though it could not have taken her that long to ascend the rickety steps. When she reached the platform, Téves had a little fire in the brazier and a meal laid out for them both.
They ate again in silence—bread, a thick vegetable soup redolent with herbs, and deep red berries wrapped in a pastry shell. She was glad for the silence, the chance to taste the wonderful flavors in the food, but it was hard not to say the things that crossed her mind.
“It’s like I’ve had blinders over my eyes,” Marina said after helping to clear their simple dinner dishes. She felt giddy with enthusiasm, like a child discovering some new fact about the way the world works.
Téves poured some of the honey wine for each of them and they went to sit in the chairs that overlooked the night forest.
“I don’t understand how I could have not seen all of this energy around me. Will I always be able to see it,” she hesitated, “even if I go back to my own world?”
“I don’t know your world, but I have to believe that the life force, the energy, is there. I see it in you, and you are a product of your world.”
“What if I can’t find it back there? Knowing it’s there but being unable to feel it would drive me crazy.”
“Not everyone senses the energy patterns in the same way. Some people hear them stronger than they feel them. Other people feel them but can’t see them. There are Brothers and Sisters of the Greening who can sense the energy in plants, but not in water, or in stone, not in the air. You seem to see it in the light.”
“Yes, the light. There is something wonderful about the way I am seeing the light now. It’s like what some people call an aura, but it’s so much richer than I imagined.”
“Then that will be your way back in. If you ever lose your ability—your awareness of the patterns—look for the light.”
“But I’ve always paid attention to the light. It’s what I know better than almost anything.”
“I cannot see the energy fields in the light the way you seem to, but I’ve known people who could. When I feel the energy, it’s as if I have to feel for what is there and what’s not at the same time.”
“The shadow and the light.” Marina said it softly, almost to herself.
“Yes, perhaps that is the way of it for you. If you soften your eyes, your focus, it may come easier.” Marina tried this—blurring her vision slightly and looking slightly away from the object of her attention. It did seem to make it easier to see the glow of light around things.
“But what does the aura mean? I mean, what’s it telling me?”
“You will have to find that out for yourself. There is no easy interpretation for the patterns. So much of it is connected to your way of seeing them.”
“Then what does the Greening have to do with sensing this energy in things?”
Téves did not answer immediately. He poured them each some more of the honey wine. Marina felt warm and safe, tired, but not yet sleepy. The fire and Téves’s voice cast a kind of spell over her. “There is a story I learned as a boy about the first Greening. It is only one people’s version of the Greening, but I think it a good one. Perhaps you would like to hear it.”
“Yes. Tell it. Please.” Marina could hardly imagine anything she wanted more than to sip the sweet wine, to sit by the fire, and to hear a story told.
“This is the story of Oriolis, who some call the Green King. It was first told by the Bandu people of the Upper Vrali about a child lost from a caravan. This child was called Oriolis. His mother, Sara, was the first daughter of a great trading family who traveled
the desert caravan routes. It is said that his father was the mad poet, Leotis. As a boy, Oriolis was troubled by dreams of his father’s madness and dark dreams of the desert. Some say he shared a touch of his father’s madness. But his mother cared for him, and when he woke in the night crying from his desert dreams, she would sing him to sleep with songs of cool oases.
“The caravans of the great trading families crossed the Assouh Desert with cargoes of oil and spices, aromatic woods, fine cloth, and precious stones. The great lumbering Gimba beasts carried sacks and casks and the belongings of the families. By day the children walked alongside, but when crossing the fiercest tracks of the Assouh by night, they rode in hammocks strapped to the sides of the furry creatures.
“It was on one such night that Oriolis slipped from his hammock to the soft sand and was left behind in the desert. For many days he wandered in the desert, surviving on such skills as all desert-going children learn: conserving energy during daylight hours, finding water in the root of the tak-tak plant, and navigating by the stars at night. Though his family searched for him, he had wandered far from the caravan route, and eventually they lost hope of finding him. They said prayers for his spirit and returned to the Upper Vrali.
“Oriolis traveled until his strength and skill failed him. One evening after having sought shelter in the shade of a boulder all day, Oriolis decided he could travel no more. He was at the limit of his strength and the story of Oriolis might have ended there were it not for the Blue Bakoo.
“The Blue Bakoo were elusive creatures who lived around the remote oases of the Assouh. Their intelligence was legendary, as was their gentle nature and good humor. The Blue Bakoo were actually white, but a shade of silver-blue ran through their fur, which made them look distinctly blue by the light of the moon. Sadly, the Bakoo are no more, but they once lived where no man could ever long survive.
“They found Oriolis near death, but they took him in and nursed him back to health. For many years Oriolis lived among the Bakoo. He learned of their culture and their reverence for the land. He learned how they cared for the plants around the oases and how they never took more from the land than the land could give.