Yeah, since I'm waiting for more reviews on my Vicissitudes stories (in the Romantic Fiction section), I decided to post this. A rather...interesting...piece that I wrote during a lockdown drill in school, and my sister helped edit. I had half a mind of submitting this to Teen Ink, but I don't know...
Enjoy!
A Place to Return
I come, I fly, I run, I seek, I return. Forever and always, I return.
I return to the place where I always have returned. An enormous oak tree , a firm and ancient sentinel, casting mottled green and shady light on the forest floor. It is the true king of the forest. I return as I always do, flying on wings, or borne by wind, or carried by my own feet. It depends. But I do return.
******
Charlene always thought the oak was strange and out of place in her suburban front yard. She lived in a neighborhood called “Aspen Place”, but the name was a lie; there were no aspens in “Aspen Place”. There was the oak tree, however—a tall and ancient tree, its bark rough and gnarled with age. From her earliest days, Charlene had taken refuge in the tree’s enormous, solid branches, and found joy in clambering high above her house. There, she could revel in the cool air whispering past her face, and feed crumbs to the singing birds that made the oak their home. No other house had an oak like hers. Her neighbors bought their trees from nurseries and it showed—the trees stuck out like toothpicks protruding from artificially green lawns. Only Charlene’s oak felt natural, as if it belonged there and always had.
******
I seek, I return, as I always have. I ignore the squirrels chattering and shimmying up and down my oak’s trunk; I ignore the shrieking birds building their nests in its regal green crown. I care only about the oak, the tree, the ruler of the forest, alive and pulsing with love. It is mine. It always has been. I shall always return to it.
******
At times Charlene’s parents expressed consternation about the oak. Charlene’s father was a small man with large dreams, and his specific dream involved a square lawn exactly like his neighbors’ and toothpick orange trees that looked pretty but bore fruit on the far side of edible. Charlene’s mother, meanwhile, focused her attention on an outpouring of flowers—rhododendrons, hyacinths, roses, orchids, bluebells, violets, azaleas; a raucous chorus of color. Sometimes the parents spoke of cutting the oak down, of removing the obstacle currently dominating their front yard and replacing it with either total order or complete chaos.
Charlene didn’t mind, though. Let her parents fret. She would enjoy her oak forever. How could it disappear? It was too solid, too real, the only truth in her neighborhood of lies. It would always be there.
******
This summer I follow the river, clear as crystal and ripe with salmon, to my oak. I return.
But I discover things are different now. Others have moved into the forest, strange others, loud others, others wearing fake and colorful skins over their flabby forms. Their language is crude and rough, bellowed through tangles of thick hair on their faces, and—
No! This cannot be! But it is…they are, these others, these strangers, they are attacking—strange tools of metal, rough shouts, the resounding crash of a tree on the forest floor—felled!
“Timber!” the strangers roar in jubilation, and move on to their next victim. I can only watch in transfixed horror. How—how—these creatures—these monsters—
All around me, trees crash down, like the foundations of a beautiful green cathedral collapsing. I scream, I weep, I mourn, I curse—and I can only pray my oak will be left alone…
******
The day before her family moved, Charlene paid one last visit to the oak.
She’d known it was coming, known it for weeks. Her parents spoke often of their new job with bright voices, gushing about the “opportunities” it would present, about the booming software industry in Utah…
All Charlene could hear was “Utah”. Utah. The word echoed in her ears, speaking of desolation, of deserts, of dust and silence. And most horrifyingly, of a land where there were no trees.
She had done her crying long ago, and now stood before the tree. Her tree. The oak loomed tall and majestic above her, its leafy arms striving for heaven, its trunk solid and anchored firmly to the earth. It had seen Charlene through years—ever since she could climb, she’d eagerly explored its branches, and even before that she’d crawled through the detritus of fallen leaves and acorns at its base. Now, she could never do any of those things again.
Wiping her eyes, Charlene turned silently away from her majestic oak. There was nothing she could do now, nothing but return to the cool white sterility of her house. Just before she went back inside, though, she cast one final glance at the tree—and took a step back, shocked.
In that instance, she could have sworn that someone was staring back at her, with eyes heavy and sad and ancient and kind and sympathetic—
The beating of her heart slowly subsided, and her breathing became steady again. Now calm, Charlene continued to stare at the tree, but she saw no one, just her familiar staunch and solid oak. The presence that had been watching her was gone. Shaking her head, bemused, yet feeling strangely satisfied, Charlene started for her house again. She did not look back.
******
Must stop them—I return, I return, boiling in rage, I RETURN TO MY—
My oak! No—they are surrounding it, the hairy-faces, the bright-skins, the two-legs with their saws—like ants, ants swarming around my tree, rough voices whistling in appreciation. Appreciation not of the tree, but of the wood it could yield—they do not care—I must…
STOP!
I surround them and scream, unleashing a screech that rings through the forest, a thunderbolt in their startled ears. They lower their saws, glancing around wildly but finding nothing; I don’t care, I scream and fly, around and around—my TREE—they must not—rage flashing fire burning I return to my oak—
The two-legged monsters cry out in horror, drop their saws, and run as fast as their bulky legs can carry them. Their false bravado is gone. To ensure they know their place, I follow them, roaring a demon’s roar, my bellow shaking their bones they scream they run they run.
And they are gone. My fire quelled, I return to the tree and rest in its branches, allowing the rough familiar warmth of the bark to caress me. I am satisfied. The oak is still here, its presence whispery, cool, green. Safe. I have returned. I always will return, as long as I have a place to return to.
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Yeah, so. I'm thinking the first person narrator is a kind of forest sprite, but I didn't want to make it obvious. I also don't know if I tied together the Charlene and the first-person parts well enough...
Anyway, I'll leave you to decide. Leave a critique!
