by Mandy Olina
old, rusty harp. At first only a mere alternation of faded high notes sounded. But it grew, slowly and gently, until it became a melody that vaguely vibrated with the breath of the entire forest. That moment, that simple suspended instant when the sounds became music, eventually changed everything.
THE MAGICAL MELODY FROM THE VILLAGE OF TREES
PPart II
The melody changed with the passing of each day and night. It grew with the forest, from it and around it, as if it were the sound of living itself.
It seemed to be constantly adding instruments. At first, there was just the harp. Then came the flute, right before the first violin. And following that violin came countless others, in numerous voices and tones, like different species of birds all singing together. An orchestra was coming into being with the grace and discretion of the morning breeze.
The depth of the song heightened and all the noise and clutter was peeled from it as it learned the ways of being above ground. But through the ages, no one had yet listened to it or cared for it or understood it in a way not sewn into the fabric of nature. Until that fateful day, when a speck appeared on the horizon, soon to become a line, and eventually a vaguely outlined silhouette. Of a man. In old age.
He slowly walked towards the forest. It seemed it would take him an eternity to arrive from the end of the horizon to the tall village of green roofs and grey bark. His back was slightly hunched, but his steps were firm, and in his right hand he carried a tall wooden staff, engraved with leaves and birds and flames. For just a moment, when the light of the sun fell upon the contour of a flame, the wind stopped and the light froze and ripples erupted all around him. They hit the village walls and the forest elders, shaking their arms and leaves and knees, understood that the visitor held both their life and death in his hands.
He could smell the still alarm he had started in the dew of the morning and he knew from the rattling of the leaves that the forest held council. He proceeded to advance with measured steps. Had anyone been there to bear witness, they might have seen that the soles of his feet left no footprints on the grass, for where he stepped the blades appeared as if never touched.
As he drew nearer, the rattling faded and the village of trees remained completely still. The spirits of the forest were silent, waiting to find some sign of his intentions. He made his way to the foothills of the mountain, in between the rocky slope and the village, and there he turned his back to the forest and stared at the dark tip of the mountain.
He raised both his hands above his head, with his staff in his right, and in an instant he delivered a blow that echoed throughout the forest. The sound leapt through the trees, eating away at the silence from every hollow and crack. The mountain quivered with the strength of the stroke and it seemed like the world itself was shaking. So the leaves began to rustle.
Their rustling grew louder and stronger than the sound of the hit, and under the arched rooftop of the forest it climbed. As the sun rose over the edge of the trees and shone through it, it turned into the loudest melody the forest had ever played. It erupted through the roof and trees and swept everything in its path, heading towards the place where the mountain had taken the blow.
THE MAGICAL MELODY FROM THE VILLAGE OF TREES
PPart III
As the melody flooded each and every grain of space, the mountain started to vibrate. Cliffs renounced their stillness and trembled as if frozen to the bone. With thundering crashes, enormous shards of rock tumbled down the lifeless walls and smashed into the dark canyons that laid untouched for ages. The entire mountain seemed to be falling apart bit by bit. Out of the clouds surrounding its peak, giant spear shaped boulders continued to rain down on the plateaus below.
The old man stood watching, with the gnarled staff in his right hand barely touching the lower leaves of an oak. As the blades brushed past the coarse, dry wood, thin threads of white light rose from its veins and crept up the thin branch to the almost rotten trunk that barely held life enough to save its own leaves until the fall. The tree was dying. But the light slowly tiptoed through every crack, like a pure and shallow river that ran upwards, and where it touched the bark and the crumbled vessels the cells of the wood healed and came together, and the whole of the body of the tree was slowly returning to being, new and alive once more.
He didn’t even care to notice what good he was doing as he modestly stood staring at the ravished mountain. The song of the forest grew louder and louder, until the tremor turned into a powerful earthquake, causing the ground of the desolate mountain and the village of trees above it to shake and shiver and pulsate with anguish. Everything appeared to be preparing for an imminent end, while barely a hair off his white head had moved in the midst of all the rattling of the world.
And with the simple, resounding crack of a whip, just before everything was ready to collapse, the mountain split in two and a mile-wide stream of clear water shot up to the sky, eager and hungry to escape the bowels of the earth that had been keeping it trapped for so long.
Upon reaching the sky, it pierced the veil of clouds and millions of rays and reflections fell with it back to the ground, as the first inhabitants of a new era. But no one could have foreseen that the thirst of the song would be quenched as the rain of water and light fell down upon the earth, and that the music would start to quiet down with the quake.
The old man raised a hand to his forehead. The shadow of the staff cast a dark stripe on his old, grey clothes. He turned around and as slowly as he had arrived, he paced back towards the line of the horizon, while every leaf of grass remained untouched behind him.
THE MOUNTAIN THAT BUILT A WORLD
PPart I
‘Mmm… morning again! Wow, how blue the sky is today. The clouds are tickling my back more than usual, too. Feels like a good day. Maybe today is the day.
‘Sky! Can you hear me up there? Hello? Sky? Come on, I know you’re out there! You’ve got to be out there just like I am here. Don’t pretend you can’t hear me, I know you must hear something. Sky! Please answer! Please! I’m really grateful for you sending the clouds my way every morning. I don’t especially like it when they rain on my toes, but their general fluffiness makes me feel better. Sky! Please say something! I’m so… alone. Sheesh…
‘Well, maybe today is not the day. What day is it anyway? I don’t know. How long has it been since I’ve last seen anybody? I know I saw a bird a few million years ago. Strange creature she was… looked more like a dolphin with wings to me. I can’t even remember what year I’m in. 153 million plus something extra. I wonder if that’s a lot in bird years. Probably depends on the bird.
‘I wish I could meet somebody new. I’d love having someone to talk to. Maybe one day the sky will answer. Or the sun. I’m going to try him again tomorrow. What if I’m just obnoxious and they don’t want to talk to me? But how would they know? By talking to other mountains? So there’d be other mountains in the world. I think I should see them, though. I am pretty tall, after all.
‘Oh, how lonely I feel. I wish I had a friend. Just any friend. I would take care of my friend and we could spend time together. All the time. I wonder if time passes differently when you’re with someone. Could it? Where does time go when it passes, anyway? Where are those 152 million years that were once here? Do they go around the world so that other beings can have time? Or do they just disappear? Is time present everywhere at once or just in certain places? If it passes differently when you’re with someone then it should not be the same time all around. I’m confused, though. I have no idea how I know about time anyway. Seems like a strange thing to know about. Just like friends.
‘How do I know I’m supposed to have a friend? Have I ever had a friend? Maybe I did. Maybe Sky and I were once friends. Made of the same stuff. The sky and I and the sun and his little sister. Sounds like a fun gang.
‘Oh, the sun’s setting already. That’s a lovely shade of red, right there. I should grow something green to go with that red. I could get like a soft, green
cover. Yes, that’s just what I’m going to do!
‘But how? I could sprout it! I think that once, when I was little I sprouted this little poofy green thing, like a ball of twigs covered in layers of green scales. I will definitely try that again!’
So the mountain tried and tried but he could not sprout a tree. ‘Hmm… maybe I’m missing something. I remember that back then the water from the clouds all dripped into one place, like a terribly long wave.
‘Clouds! Clouds! Please come here! I need some rain for my toes, please. Could you please all concentrate on wetting the same spot? Thank you! That brown one over there is good. Seems to be softer than all the gray parts. Oh, that actually feels good. Now here goes!’
So the mountain tried to make something grow again and with the soil moist enough, grass appeared in no time.
‘How lovely! A bit lighter than the shade I was looking for, but it’s a start. Now how do I grow that? I need more earth, seems it won’t grow on rock.
‘Oh, I know! This is going to be fun!’
THE MOUNTAIN THAT BUILT A WORLD
PPart II
‘Oh, it’s night already! No matter, the sun will just set again tomorrow. I might as well get everything ready until then. More ground is what I need. So here goes