by Minkman, Jen
This was unreal. It was crazy. She had never heard a more bizarre story in her life, and yet, Julia knew he wasn’t lying. She could sense it.
“What… how…” she stuttered, then stopped. She didn’t know what to ask.
Michael gently caressed her face. “You have always sensed that trees have a certain life force,” he continued his remarkable tale. “You felt they could feel. That you could feel them. And you can. Trees are souls – very quiet, peaceful souls that peek up from the soil like sprigs, grow into green twigs and then, even bigger. Their life seems eternal. And a tree soul is never alone – it is always connected with the other souls around it. And when a tree has lived out many hundreds of years and its time is almost up, it falls into a slumber. It sleeps, losing its individual awareness, merging with the consciousness of the woods once more, to be reborn as a young shoot.”
Michael leaned against the oak, running a hand through his hair. His voice dropped. “But sometimes, it’s different. Sometimes, a tree connects with a human being at the end of its life. A human who often visits the tree, for example. And this connection jolts it awake, so to speak. This means the tree soul won’t dissolve into the forest consciousness – it pulls loose and is reborn as a human, usually as a child or other family member of the person who released it from its tree existence. This is how our souls evolve, from species to species. Sometimes from tree to animal, sometimes to human.”
“And you… you had a connection like that with me,” Julia said in a wavering voice, staring at Michael wide-eyed. Except it wasn’t Michael. And in a way, she had always known.
The boy in front of her nodded. “Yes, I did. But my bond with you was different from what the other trees had always taught me. I didn’t want to be born as your child or grandchild. I wanted to be with you… as an equal.” He smiled shyly. “It was only when I ended up in this body that I realized I was in love with you. As a tree, I didn’t have enough understanding of what it was I was feeling, but as a boy, I did.”
“This body.” She touched his shoulder with some trepidation, then his head, his cheek. “What did you do to it? Did you steal this from Michael?”
He shook his head. “No, of course not. He came tearing through the woods on his motorcycle and his wheel caught on a protruding root by the side of the road. The road was slippery with rain, and his bike overturned, throwing him off. His head hit a stone, and he was gone.” He put a hand on hers reassuringly. “He died on impact. He didn’t suffer.”
Julia couldn’t help but well up at his words.
“I saw his soul floating away, reuniting with the source. He looked… peaceful. It was then that I made the swift decision to leap from my old body to this new one. On Midsummer Night, when the force of lightning connects the powers of heaven and earth, above and below – that’s when this becomes possible.”
Her knees buckled. Michael supported her as she sagged down against the oak. “This is impossible,” she mumbled. “This can’t be real.”
“And yet, you know it is,” he calmly said. “I think you’ve always felt it, but you couldn’t explain it.”
She shot him a suspicious look. “Hmm. Can you read my thoughts?”
He smiled, looking roguish all of a sudden. “Sometimes. As a tree I could always hear your thoughts, but now it happens in flashes.”
“So did you pick… him… on purpose?”
“No, because I had nothing to do with his accident. I didn’t even know who he was until I entered his body and my… or actually, his… memories returned. It’s a striking coincidence I ended up in the body of the boy you were in love with yourself. Or maybe not – I don’t really know if there is such a thing as coincidence. It’s a typically human word. In the forest, all are connected and everything happens for a reason.”
Julia’s head spun. Now she finally understood why he seemed to just know so many things, and how he’d been able to find Anne. How he had known about her taste in books and her love for music, and how he had recognized her own song. He was her oak – a soul supporting and consoling her whenever times were tough. And in return, she had touched him, woken him up from slumber, offering him a chance at a new and different life.
“Why are you telling me all this now?” she asked in a choked voice. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
His ensuing silence frightened her. He exhaled, then said: “Because I thought I wouldn’t need to.”
Her heart turned cold. “But now you do?”
“Yes. Now I do.” He looked at her, a lone tear rolling down his cheek. “Because you see, I can’t stay.”
She gaped at him uncomprehendingly. Actually, she didn’t want to comprehend.
“This is not how it’s supposed to go,” he continued reluctantly. “I no longer feel at home in this body. I get sick more and more often. The forest is calling me, forcing me to die the natural way. To come back later. To really be reborn as a human. That’s the way it has always been, and that is the way it must be now.”
Slowly but surely, his words sank in.
“No.” Julia grabbed his hand, looking at him helplessly, flinging her arms around his body, not his body. If only she could do more. If only she could embrace his soul, hold on to him until they would both rise above and come back to this world much later. “You can’t do this. Don’t go. Please, please don’t leave me.”
“I have to,” he mumbled into her hair, a stifled sob in his voice. “I have to leave. And now you know why.”
He stepped out of her embrace and looked at her in silence. Then, he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her. He kissed her softly, his lips landing everywhere on her nose, her cheeks, her mouth, her eyelids when she closed them and started to cry.
“I love you more than I have ever loved anyone in this world,” he whispered.
They stood there for a long time, under the moonlight, their gaze locked on each other, their fingers intertwined. And Julia couldn’t believe this would be the last time. It wasn’t fair. It was too soon.
She wiped the tears from her eyes with a trembling hand. “How long?” she wanted to know.
“I don’t know. I can feel my strength decline.” His thumb caressed her other hand resting in his. Once again, she pressed herself against him with a soft cry.
“Do you have a name?” she asked. “I want to know your real name.”
He shook his head. “It’s not a name like humans have. I don’t know if you’ll be able to understand if I open your mind to hear it.”
“Please try,” she urged him. “Please. I want to know who I am in love with.”
She remained in the circle of his arms, feeling him pressing his forehead against hers. For just a second, it was like something squeezed the insides of her skull, and then the doors of her mind flew wide open. She closed her eyes and gasped as she heard an indescribably beautiful sound. It was the whisper of the wind playing in the trees of the woods, a tinkling of little bells, the turning of the earth as it spun silently in space, the rustling of flowers budding in a rush as if caught on fast-motion camera. It was the life force coursing through everything, compressed into a single syllable.
He let go of her and lifted her face. “That’s my name,” he mumbled. “But to you, I will always be Michael.”
“It sounded splendid,” she whispered in awe. “You are splendid. I love you so much.”
Once more, he kissed her – the ghost of the oak who had fallen in love with her, the boy from the woods who had reached out to her as Michael. She clung to him tightly. She didn’t want to let go.
But then a tremor shook the forest floor. Julia looked around in panic. What was this… an earthquake? What was happening?
She cried out in fear when she was swept off her feet and tumbled backward, Michael’s hands slipping from hers. Her back hit the floor, her hands grasping desperately at the carpet under her fingers.
Julia blinked her eyes and froze.
She wasn’t in the forest at all. She was sitting on
the floor of her bedroom wearing sweaty pajamas. Outside, the sun was shining, but her curtains were still closed. Her comforter had slipped off the bed with her.
In a daze, she rubbed her face. Unbelievable. “A dream,” she muttered hoarsely, just to hear her own voice and make sure she was awake this time. “I dreamed it all.”
Julia got up on wobbly legs. It hadn’t really happened . She hadn’t gone into the forest and she hadn’t talked to Michael, but it had all felt so real that she was still in a complete stupor. She stumbled into the hallway to use the bathroom and freshen up. Absently, she got dressed in a summer dress and her ballerina flats.
Her cell showed the time: nine-thirty. Good. That meant Michael was probably awake as well by now. With a frown, she scrolled through her list of contacts and called his number. Apparently, his phone was switched off, because it went straight to voicemail. Oh well – she’d just show up unannounced. He wouldn’t mind. He was only doing the afternoon shift today, and she really needed to see him right now. She had to get that awful dream out of her system ASAP, and holding him in her arms and telling him about her strange dream would definitely help a lot. And yet, her plan felt wrong. Everything about this morning felt wrong.
“I’m going to see Michael!” she hollered through the kitchen window when she saw her mom sitting in the back yard with a cup of coffee and toast.
“Have fun,” her mom called back. “What time will you be back? Your father is coming here this afternoon to return Anne.”
“I’ll be home for lunch,” Julia promised, her voice quavering with false cheer. Whistling shrilly, she left the house and quickly walked to the bus stop. Pretending to be more upbeat than she really was would help chase away the shadows of her nightmare before arriving at Michael’s house. In order to distract herself from her dark thoughts, Julia pulled out her player and flipped through the playlist until she got to her favorite Chopin tracks.
After a twenty-minute ride, she got off at the corner of Michael’s street. As Julia put away her MP3 player, she started to walk faster to get to his house as soon as she could. An inexplicable feeling of dread was mounting in the pit of her stomach, and she wanted to get rid of right now.
And then her heart stopped. The blue flashing lights of an ambulance reflected off the front of his big, luxurious mansion. A group of people were huddled together on the drive.
“Julia.” She felt a hand on her shoulder. Axel stood next to her.
“What’s going on?” she asked anxiously.
Axel’s face was ashen. “I got here five minutes ago. We were supposed to swap some London photos. His mother…” His voice cracked. “She was standing on the drive in front of his house, crying, clutching her cell. ‘Not again’, she kept saying.”
Julia swallowed. “Not again what?”
“Jules... he’s gone,” Axel whispered. “He’s dead. He died in his sleep.”
It was as if someone hit her on the temple with a heavy club, sucking away all the light and love from her body and soul. Julia couldn’t breathe. The next thing she knew, she was on the cold tiles of the drive, staring up at the blue sky above. The back of her head hurt terribly. People were gathered around her, and someone was holding her hand. How had she ended up here?
“Where’s Axel?” she croaked.
The person holding her hand squeezed her fingers. “I’m right here. You fainted, okay? Just stay put, someone’s getting you some water.”
She wanted to lie down forever. In fact, she never wanted to get up again. Just like he was never going to get up again. Michael was gone – he had been taken away from her. Only now did it fully sink in.
“How can he be dead?” she squeaked despondently, turning her head to look at her cousin.
Axel looked at her with doleful eyes. “I heard those paramedics tell his parents that he had brain damage. They asked his mom and dad whether he’d suffered from strange behavioral changes lately. Apparently he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage.”
Julia was lost for words, her brain whirring, thoughts racing through her mind about last night’s dream and what it could mean. She’d talked to him, and he had told her he had to leave, and why. Was it all true? Was that how he had chosen to tell her the truth?
She would never find out now – there was no way to ask him anymore. He would never again hold her in his arms like he had done after yesterday’s picnic, under a starry sky. He would never kiss her in the moonlight of her dreams anymore.
Desperate, howling sobs started to climb up through her body, escaping from her throat. Julia managed to sit up and swatted away the glass of water someone was holding in front of her.
“Please take me home,” she begged Axel. He nodded and quietly helped her getting to her feet. Julia looked around, her gaze landing on Michael’s parents, their faces drained of color. They looked broken and lost, standing next to the ambulance containing the body of their only son. She looked up at Axel and he supported her as she stumbled toward them.
“He’s dead,” Michael’s mother said blankly, her red-rimmed eyes full of sorrow. She extended her arms and pulled Julia in a tight embrace that took her breath away. Michael’s father stroked her shoulder. Julia couldn’t look at the gurney inside the ambulance – it was just a body, a lifeless shell. Nothing to say goodbye to. He was somewhere else, she was sure of that.
“He loved you,” Michael’s father told her quietly, handing her the photo frame from Michael’s nightstand with a trembling hand. The picture of the two of them hugging had always been next to his bed. “Here, you should have this.”
His parents kept talking to her, but the words slipped past her. Julia hoped Axel was paying attention, because she wouldn’t be able to remember what Mr. and Mrs. Kolbe told her – about the funeral, whether she wanted to play something on the piano during the ceremony, because Michael had loved to hear her play.
“I will call you later,” she managed to choke out. “I’m going home now. Sorry.”
Axel took her to his car parked on the curb. Silently, he drove to Birkensiedlung, Julia sitting next to him like a statue.
“I called Gaby, by the way,” he finally broke the silence. “She’ll come to your place as soon as possible.”
“Thanks.” She stared out the window unseeingly, only coming back to the waking world when Axel turned into her street. She had to do so many things. Everyone had to know – she should call her other friends, as well as tell her mom, her grandmother, and Anne…
“Why don’t you sit outside?” Axel suggested when he saw her clutching her phone in despair as she got out of the car. “I’ll take care of things. Talk to your mom. Make some phone calls.”
With a shaky breath, Julia sat down in the lawn chair her mom had used to relax in with a cup of coffee this very morning. She closed her eyes and heard Axel crunch past her on the gravel drive. Through the open window of the living room, she caught fragments of phone conversations that she couldn’t quite follow.
“Hey… what the hell happened to you?” A familiar voice caused her to open her eyes. She blinked up at Thorsten’s anxious face. As he squatted down next to her chair, he took her hands in his. “I saw Axel taking you home in his car. You sick or something?”
Julia shook her head. “He died,” she said, her voice sounding way too loud in her own ears. The more she said the words, the truer they’d become. If she remained still, maybe he would come back. Maybe her silence would undo his death. But she knew she couldn’t keep quiet. She wanted to talk about him – tell everybody why he had stolen her heart. Say his name.
“Michael,” she added, when Thorsten gazed at her uncomprehendingly.
“Michael?” His voice shot up. “What the.... what are you talking about? You can’t be serious. Did he have an accident, or...?”
“No.” Her throat felt raw. “They said he had brain damage. He died last night. Instantly. He didn’t suffer.” Michael’s words in her dream.
Thorsten was lost for words. “Jesus,” he
finally stammered, sinking down on the lawn with crossed legs. “How is this… did he know? Was he aware that he was terminal?”
“He never mentioned it to me.” But she knew better – he had mentioned it. In Hyde Park, two days ago, he had told her he didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want to disappear into the dark woods, like the man in Daniil Charms’s poem.
“I can’t believe this,” Thorsten said, obviously shaken. “You know, he actually talked to me last night, and…”
Julia sighed. “Yes, I know,” she interjected. “And I’m sorry. He was just jealous, that’s why he wanted you to stay away from me.”
Thorsten frowned, shaking his head. “No, he didn’t.”
Julia blinked in confusion, mentally going over the conversation she’d listened in on, hiding behind the shed last night. “I don’t get it. So what did he tell you?”
Thorsten cleared his throat. “He asked me,” he replied wearily, “to take… care of you once he was gone.”
“Take care of me?” Julia swallowed.
“Yes. And I told him he was a blind idiot for asking me, of all people, to watch over you like an older brother. I mean, it’s pretty obvious that I like you as more than just a little-sister-slash-girl-next-door.”
Only now did the meaning of the words she’d overheard start to make sense. Michael hadn’t asked Thorsten to stay away from her - he’d asked Thorsten to be there for her once he was gone. Fresh tears welled up in her eyes.
“I had no idea,” Thorsten mumbled vacantly. “I thought he was talking about him leaving for Graz. But he… he must have been talking about this. He knew – just like he always knew stuff.”
Julia closed her eyes. In her mind, she could hear the wind sing, the flowers grow, the earth turn around its axis. He couldn’t be gone. She couldn’t deal with this.
“I have to be in the woods,” she suddenly said, getting up in a rush.
“Jules, don’t go. Just stay put.” Thorsten tried to grab her hands, but she took a step backward.
“I’m going. Tell Axel where I went. I just need to be alone for a while.”