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The trees surrounding your village were like a second family.
The meadow was your playground as much as the marketplace; boulders and ferns taking the place of carts and barrels. Under your feet the dirtroad changed into grassy paths winding through the forest, crossing a small river before the gentle rise and fall of the eastern hills made the earth dip and spring up.
You spend so much time here, hiding from your mother and father whenever they argued, whenever they laid out chores for you and your siblings. Whenever you had to get away from the houses of wood and stone and mud, whenever people became overwhelming.
“They call you little wayward spirit.” Your mother whispers as she tucks you in one night, gently slapping your leg as she discovers your feet dark with soil once more. You beam up at her.
“I’d love to be! No more cleaning the house!”
She tuts and shakes her head, blowing out the candle on the bedside table, standing in between your bed and that of your younger sibling.
“Hush you, sleep now little spirit. Bring us good fortune the next time you visit your friends in the woods.”
She closes the door and you turn to your side to be able to see out of the window, into the evening sky and the rooftops surrounding the hut of your family.
Birds call, announcing the arriving night, and even though the air is still warm from the scalding heat of the sun during the day, there is the coldness preceding the rain.
You try to lie awake until the clouds move in, until the droplets begin falling and transforming the dusty village, but sleep takes hold of you soon.
-
The tips of your fingers prick and hurt every time you move them; hours spent sitting bend over and stitching, stitching, stitching before carrying heavy log after log around.
The small stream hidden in the lush, deep green of the trees, soothes your pain.
The cool water plays around your hands, washes away the sawdust and the remains of fabrics clinging underneath your nails.
There’s blisters blooming on your palms from swinging the axe and chopping wood.
The wind catches in the trees, makes the leaves whisper.
You whisper back, greetings and good wishes, and when you don’t strain your ears too much it almost sounds like they are murmuring to you.
One of your neighbour friends had once asked what they were saying, and you had tried to understand, translate it.
But it was more of a feeling, a subtle knowledge streaming through you than something you could grasp in words.
Jeno had looked at you with wide eyes full of awe, and quietly said he’d like to hear them, too.
You didn’t know how to teach him, to show him how to understand - you didn’t remember when you had first heard the winds play in the leaves. But Jeno tried.
-
Strange people came through the village, with colourful clothes and juggling fire. They performed a show on the marketplace, there were tents all throughout and around the streets, and an air of wonder and excitement was about.
You watched over your younger siblings, three of them by now, and shepherded them back towards your house after the last performance had ended, deep in the night.
A girl, only called Chuu, from three houses over, appeared out of the tent that you had heard belonged to the fortune teller. She clutched a tiny string of shimmering fabric, held her head down and yet you could see the happiness she carried within.
A figure appeared in the opened flap of the tent after Chuu had gone her ways.
The spices and saturated air that spread from the tent all the way over the street to where you held two of your sibling’s hands made you slightly light-headed.
A pair of dark, glimmering eyes over a thin veil caught your gaze. A hand stacked with golden rings on all fingers waved at you, but caught between fear of the unknown and the need to bring your siblings safely home, you averted your eyes and passed.
After three days the spectacle was over. The artists packed their bags, fell their tents and loaded their carts.
A basket on your hip, filled with the herbs and roots you’d collected during the early morning hours, was almost forgotten as you looked at Jeno with wide eyes.
The once innocent boy had grown taller than you by now. Gone were the eyes wide in wonder and the soft spoken words of his, and yet he remained the gentle soul he’d ever been.
The bag over his shoulder, holding everything he owned, looked like he had filled it in haste.
“Will you be back?” You asked quietly, sadness spreading in your heart at the prospect of losing your friend.
His hand found your shoulder.
“Of course I will be. Every time we come through the valley, I will make sure to visit you, I promise.”
He held your gaze until the cart he’d hopped on rolled around the first tree of where the forest reached out, around the village.
You could see him a while longer, perched on the edge of the cart, curious face turned towards the new, the far away.
Part of you envied him.
Part of you knew your little siblings needed you, your parents needed you. Jeno had left all that behind just like that, not looking back.
He’s braver than me, you thought. But that was okay. There were different kinds of bravery.
A year passed and as soon as the weather grew warmer you waited for the illusionists to come back, to fill the village with laughter and joy once more.
The winter had taken many lives, the sickness having left holes in families so deep they were beyond repair.
Your own parent’s parents hadn’t lived to see another spring.
Jeno didn’t come back.
The next year you were still looking for the caravan of horse pulled carriages; in the year after that you still hoped, but didn’t dare wish.
Your parents, aged with worry about their children and you, now that you had come of age to be married, weren’t faring too well.
Your older brothers had all found partners, moved out of the house to build their own. Your younger siblings sometimes cried at night, missing them, but you, now being the oldest, had had to take on making sure everything worked out.
The goods to trade, the food to cook, to teach the little ones and keep them out of trouble was no easy feat.
At the end of the day, when the sun was kissing the horizon already, you’d sometimes wander the forest, relish the cool air between the trees. You’d never make it past the small stream anymore. Too far away it’d lead you, too tempting it was to stay among your taller friends.
The wind moved their branches, and their leaves would glide over your shoulders, over your back, taking some of the weight you bore daily.
Their bark under your palms was warm and dry, sturdy. They comforted you without words, and you felt more at ease every time you returned home.
Until you pushed open the door to find strange people sitting in the company of your parents; four older ones and one young, of similar age to you.
The leer they send your way chilled you to the bone. The shaking in your hands would not go away, even after you joined them with quickly prepared drinks.
The fear had stolen into your home and heart that night, and no matter how much your little siblings wailed, hugged and clung to you could sway your parents.
Two days later the agreement was sealed with a handshake, cold water flowing around your insides solidifying to ice.
The strangers had come from the other side of the hills to the south, a full day’s ride away. As you lay in bed, staring into the darkening evening sky outside, the sudden knowledge of not being able to walk your forest, to hear your trees anymore, made your heart heavy.
The preparations for your departure kept you away from the forest in the next days, the strangers still like a thorn in the carefully kept household of your family.
Whispers rose in the village, about them who had come to take their little forest dweller, them who sook to tame the spirit.
Heeding the rumours no mind you kept on going about your day, doing this and that whatever your mother told you to. Rolled your blanket, made a bundle of your belongings, kissed your little siblings, held them close.
Didn’t let anyone see the tears you wept into your pillow at night.
Hours before the strangers - they bore no name to you, not after the days they had spend in your house, your home. Hours before you were to leave for south of the hills you came back from the forest, having stolen away after breakfast.
The greenery had welcomed you with open branches, the leaves of the willow trees by the little stream caressing your hair, touching your back.
As your feet carried you through the quiet streets, home on a path you’d known since toddler’s age, gasps and muffled protest made your ears perk up.
The dirt swallowed your footsteps sound as you crept closer, peered around the corner of a house newly deserted.
In the lot were who was supposed to be you future partner in marriage, clearly them. They had their back to you, but there was another person present, whom had let the small sounds of discomfort slip. Quick movement and the person from behind your betrothed almost came into view. The dash of a hand and the sound of skin hitting skin chilled you to the bone.
Angry words and a hand, reaching high to strike down again, and the fear dug claws into your soft heart. There was a stick nearby, left over of the last occupant of the house. It was gnarly grown but sturdy, so sturdy in your hands as you inched forward.
It did not break as it bore down on the skull of the abuser but there was a hefty crack.
Tears streamed over the face of the person, hidden before, and the dirt it had been rubbed in obscured if it was girl or boy. Wide eyes stared at you, mouth falling open, until finally a scream ripped out their throat.
Already there were footsteps running, drawing close, there was no time.
The mother of the stranger who’d come to marry you appeared before you, her tiny, evil gaze catching on her child to your feet, the scared, helpless figure behind you. The walking stick in your hand.
“Murderer!” She yelled, her short, crooked finger pointed at you. “Murderer!”
The husband of hers arrived next, took one look at the scene and charged without warning.
You dropped the stick and ran.
You had seen many expressions on men’s faces. Smiles so warm and safe like a fire in the middle of the kitchen hearth, love crinkling the skin around his eyes.
The hard lines etched into the area around the mouth when there was a decision to be made, a sacrifice to be drawn.
The empty look of the soul having left the body, chased away by blind rage, would haunt you forever.
You didn’t dare reach out with your hands but felt the rush of wind in the leaves, how the forest called to you, how it begged you into its shade.
And you ran.
Ran for your life.
The branches of shrubbery brushed past you, the endless green greeting you with whispers and calls ringing forth from the barks of the trees you’d spent your whole life cherishing.
You fell near the stream, behind a large boulder. The sand and loose pebbles of the riverbed were at your feet, the soil rich with moisture.
Throat parched with deep intakes of air you leaned forward, scooped up the clear water of the stream to soothe pain.
Some small stones stole into your palms, got swallowed in the haste. They scratched a bit as they went down, halting your movements for a breath or two.
Your ears opened and the forest’s sounds rang out much clearer.
Planted something inside you.
With both hands you dug in, into the ground between your feet and the stream, swallowed palm after palm of the little stones and the sand, even though it made you gag at first.
Swallowed it down, as much as you could.
The forest calmed, the silence a warning. The heavy breaths of the father whose child you’d never wed had come, the trees couldn’t protect you. Not here. Not like this.
Your stomach was heavy with the weight you’d swallowed down, your feet splashing loudly in the water.
After you’d crossed the stream the forest grew wilder, deeper, denser.
Relentlessly the father pursued you, but his breathing got quieter. Moved into the background of the sounds surrounding you, until at last you held still for a while, catching your breath that was like knives in your side.
Your vision swam, the green was everywhere around you. In search of finding something to hold on to, to see, to find air to breathe, you turned your face skywards.
Endless blue greeted your eyes. You wanted the blue, wanted to touch the little tufts of white fleeing through it - reached out with both arms, as high as you could.
The sky bend down to greet you. Or were you growing taller?
Your bare toes dug into the ground, deeper than the first layer of moss, deeper than the leaves of the last autumn, deeper - until they were surrounded by nothing but darkness.
You felt the wind in between your fingers, felt the skin rippling and fluttering until you couldn’t tell where one finger began and the other ended. The world grew lighter around you, more vague, your eyes couldn’t focus anymore. Couldn’t see clearly.
Exhaustion spread throughout your whole being. The soil in your stomach lay heavy in it, making you sleepy, sluggish.
The wind brushed past your hair, stuck to your neck, didn’t move a single strand. The trees around you whispered, still, but now you didn’t hear it anymore. You could feel it through the earth.
Even as footsteps, heavy with purpose, drew near, it didn’t shake your dazed state.
A man came into the clearing, grizzled and with lines on his face that almost looked like the bark of the tree next to you. But you didn’t know what he wanted here.
A squirrel jumped through the branches of your arms, keckering and dropping a little stone.
The shadows seemed very long between the bodies of the others, solemn witnesses around you.
The man hit his fist against a neighbouring tree, which mumbled in response.
The last breath left your lips and you fell asleep.
-
The forest didn’t change.
Not at first.
The days blurred together into one long intake of sunlight and warmth, before fluffy snow coated the naked branches, the forest floor, and little critters fell asleep in the tiny hole that had opened after a storm had torn off part of your crown.
Had it been last year?
The stream and its wetness, provided more below the surface than above, dried up.
The grass around you grew lighter, the badgers and foxes retreated deeper into the woods.
People came and with great effort fell one tree after the other.
The company you dwelled in for so long thinned out, too many suncycles to count after you’d joined them.
And yet you were dozing, only occasionally waking from your slumber, to stretch your arms some more, to settle deeper, more comfortably into the earth.
The houses crept over the edge of your vision, until a lot of grey replaced the green. A white fence, clean cut and pristine, was drawn over land that knew no borders.
There was noise filling the air nowadays, so much noise.
Birds that were no birds crossed the skies, higher than the clouds.
There were little humans, with skin so soft and hands so curious, running around you in circles, deeper into the forest and back out.
Sometimes they were small, then they grew, but they could never match your height and they all seemed the same.
The days grew warmer.
-
There was a boy - almost a man, already, that came to visit.
He’d sit in between the thick roots that broke up he grass around them, with his back leaned against your shins, and he’d quietly read.
You didn’t know what he read, didn’t know the object in his hands. But whenever he laughed you felt like some of the sleepiness fell away, like the sound woke you up.
You liked it when he laughed.
The young man - almost still a boy, stood beneath your branches one evening in autumn. Your leaves were yellowing each day, you could feel the chill of winter already, but you fought against the exhaustion inviting you to sleep the dark time away.
You wanted to reach out to the human, wanted to tell him it was okay, that his tears over his pet passing away would dry eventually.
The wind came whispering through the garden and in a rare moment a thin branch of yours swept over his head, carded through the silken locks, ran down his shoulder.
The young man looked up from between his hands, eyes wide and mouth agape.
His lips quivered in unspoken questions, his eyes trained on your bark.
Then he dropped to the ground, in the nook he always sat in, between two roots, pressed himself against them and rested his head against the space above them.
For a moment his tears continued to fall, landed hot on your roots.
He sniffed.
“You know… I really miss them. It’s dumb, because they were just a pet, and not even a very smart one at that, but…”
His voice cut off and more tears rolled down his cheeks.
But you were there, listened. Aware of your surroundings like you hadn’t been in years.
“Jungwoo, what are you doing.” He sighed and ran a finger over an irregular growth. “Talking to a tree…”
Jungwoo.
Was that his name?
“C’mon buddy, wake up. You have to move on, now.”
And yet he stayed put, inbetween your roots, and you wanted nothing more than to reach down and hug your-
You had had arms, at one point, you remembered. Arms like his, with fingers, nimble and quick.
Jungwoo.
You clung to the name like a lifeline.
Jungwoo.
Every time he came out to visit, to sit in your shade and read or do nothing but be there, you repeated the name like a mantra, refusing to forget it.
He began talking to you- or at least in general.
His pleasant voice brought you tales of his everyday life, what he did to pass the time, which people he met.
His tongue shaped words you didn’t know he meaning of, but in the repetition together with other words you did know, you began to think you could know what it meant.
You began to think.
Long was the time since you had taken root here, but short it seemed in comparison to the time in which Jungwoo had come to you. No longer did you watch the sky or the other trees that had long since fallen silent, no longer did you turn away from the outside world and slumbered deep within yourself.
You began to remember bits and pieces of what Jungwoo talked about, about the world surrounding you.
You began to miss him when he wouldn’t come, and feel happy when he did.
The stones and soil you had long since swallowed weight down in your intestines, and there were times in which you would have loved to escape their heaviness, climb into your own branches and then jump down into the grass.
Whenever you’d recognize his figure appearing in the garden you’d try and reach out to him, to greet him.
Sometimes the wind would aid you and thin branches and soft leaves would caress his face and neck, hair or shoulders, and then he’d smile and touch his hand to the leaves and gently stroke them, saying how he was here now and how he missed you, too.
One time he brought someone else, another human, unlike him with long hair and smaller features.
The girl stopped some steps before the pair could reach you, and even though Jungwoo tugged on their joined hands, she would not move.
“It’s watching me.” She’d say, “It’s like it’s alive. I don’t like it.”
For a while Jungwoo wouldn’t come.
But then he did, but oh, how he did.
There was anger in his steps and a hopelessness, frustration, that made your heart sink.
In silence you heard him rant about the girl who’d broken his heart, just because she claimed he loved a tree more than her. How unfair it was; how he didn’t love a tree more than her, how he truly loved her, but it was no use.
She had left, and left him with his feelings behind.
His fist hit the bark close to your heart and your crown of little green leaves quivered in the still evening air.
At once he seemed to wake from the daze he’d been caught in, clutching his wounded hand to his chest and staring between it and you in front of him.
There was no pain you felt but the one in your heart; for you knew of the troubles that haunted him, made his own heart heavy.
“I’m so sorry.” He choked out, almost falling over his feet to hug his arms around your middle. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have hit you I’m- Jeez, I really am crazy, aren’t I? Talking to a tree like that.”
You wanted to move, to move your arms and hold him, but they were wooden, wouldn’t move.
You strained with all your might, wanted to tell him it was okay, noone got hurt, it was alright, but your lips were sealed and your body, caught in the wood, unmoving.
The wind was generous, helped you touch a thin branch to Jungwoo’s back, the closest thing to a comforting touch you could muster.
He sniffed, but smiled.
-
Every time he visited you, the wish to hold him grew.
The need to move burned within you, after years and years of being confined to the same spot.
You fought against the wood, fought against the unmoving branches, could have screamed in anger at the passiveness of that which surrounded you.
But you wouldn’t give up.
Every time Jungwoo would come to you you were reminded what you were fighting for, and every time he had to leave you your resolve hardened.
Maybe he was like you had once been, you thought one summer evening, with Jungwoo dozing in his favourite spot.
Maybe Jungwoo could hear the forest, like you had once heard it.
His young face was free of worry so deep in sleep, and you’d have liked to bend down to take a better look at it.
The warm summer air was silent around you safe the bugs still chiming their relentless hymn of the middle of the year that would only fall silent towards the end of the season again.
The words came easy to you, the song old, taught to you by your grandmother, so very long ago.
A lullaby for deep sleep, dreams of the far away, of wondrous animals and undiscovered shadows.
Twice you sang the tale, before you fell silent, reminiscent of the old days.
Jungwoo’s voice broke through the comfortable silence.
“I knew you were alive.”
With surprise you noticed he was lying awake, eyes blinking up through your leafs.
An endearing smile graced his lips.
“I knew you were more than a tree.” His clear voice muddled by sleep turned to a whisper. “I can hear your song.”
He heard you.
He was like you.
He could hear you.
Joy filled every fibre of your being, brandet over you until the last shockwaves reached the smallest leaves, shaking them.
He could hear you.
-
You’d sing more often, now that you knew Jungwoo was listening. When he wouldn’t come out of his house you’d sing, loud, let the wind carry your voice until he came running, grinning, saying how he had had to do work.
Work outside. You’d whisper, and he’d need a moment to understand before laughing out loud at your boldness.
-
The full moon hung in the sky, towards the end of summer, when Jungwoo lay between the roots and told about how he’d have to go away in fall.
He said he had to, for school, to learn, but even the anticipation and glee at the prospect of the unknown couldn’t hide the fact he carried sadness in him.
You whispered you’d wait for him, would always wait for him, but instead of saying something he sat up, broke the connection between you.
Then he turned around.
“Come with me.” He said, simply, flatly. Almost pleading. “You could come with me, and we could go together.”
You kept quiet, wait. Wait, if he’d explain how you could come with him, but he didn’t.
-
The summer ends hot.
For weeks there is no rain.
The gardens are kept green at first, until the hoses don’t spew out water anymore. Then the grass goes dry and brown under the sun, the earth breaks open here and there.
You feel your leaves hanging in the heat.
The summer is long, longer than it should be, but the heat won’t go away.
A strong wind is blowing hot air here, Jungwoo explains, his voice worried.
He says there have been wildfires breaking out, and how they have to save water and not sprinkle their gardens anymore. You’re not worried, not too much. There have been dry years before.
-
The day was long, and hot. The sun is scorching, and by now even you feel dry and brittle. Some of your leaves have fallen early. Every plant is thirsty for the rain, awaits the thunderstorms that promise water, water, gracing from above.
The evening brings a stale breeze and the calm before disaster strikes.
In the middle of the night the sky is lit orange, the dust of the past weeks in the air tinted red.
Fire scream the birds that flee the area, fire, fire yell the mice and rats scurrying past you. Fire, heavy clouds paint in the darkened sky, and for the first time in years, you are afraid.
Heat rolls over the hills, different than the one from the day. This one is pressing, it steals your breath out of your lungs and dries tears before they’re cried. It flattens grass and makes it easy for the burning orange flames to lick across the earth.
The fear strikes deep, once it’s past your thick skin, and all you can think of is Jungwoo. Jungwoo in his house of brick and mortar which’s edges are brushed in stark black against the nearing blaze, which’s windows are dark and reflecting the night’s sky.
“Jungwoo,” You shout, reach out, desperate to rouse him, to save him. “Jungwoo, fire.”
If he hears you in his slumber, you do not know.
You do not know, not until the flames come racing up the hill, fleeing the black, darkened soil behind them, ever hungry reaching for the unconsumed grass before them.
You see the house come alive, see the metal carriage Jungwoo described, named “Car”, drive off.
Something in your midst settles.
He is save. Your friend, Jungwoo, who hears the trees, who is like you, is save.
Until the backdoor bursts open and he comes running out, the fire on his heels. He comes running for the back of the garden, to you, you realize, and then he’s on one height with you already, stretching out a hand and yelling “Come with me! No time, come! Come!”
His hand takes hold of one of the lowest branches, pulls, pulls, but it reaches deeper that the wood.
It pulls, it pulls on you, you inside the wooden fibres, and you can’t breathe, are being pulled out of a hundred year old trap, like two barrels flattened you between them and Jungwoo is pulling, pulling, pulling you out. Painfully slow your arms slip out of their branches, slow are your knees to wedge out of the wood.
The bark cracks and breaks behind you as the fire comes eating it away, after Jungwoo has passed it and you’re stumbling, running along with him.
He doesn’t look back, only tightens his hold on your hand, and you don’t know where you’re going, have never been this deep in what used to be the forest, can only blindly follow him.
The hill rises, gently, and then a little more, before it suddenly breaks away into a steep slope that ends in a lake.
Jungwoo leads you there, doesn’t break his pace, and he can’t, for you feel the heat of the fire biting your necks.
Your heartbeat is droning in your ears, the heat becomes almost unbearable, and then your feet hit the water, your feverish run turns into a wade, and then there’s Jungwoo’s strong arm plunging you both down below the surface.
The inferno rolls over you with all its might.
Your left hand is clinging into the thin material of Jungwoo’s sleepshirt, your cheeks are hollowed out to store more air, and there’s a weird, blueish green shimmer underwater.
You can’t see too far, but when you turn your head - and the motion feels foreign - you lock eyes with him.
He blinks, once, twice, just staring. His lips part, as if to speak, but he loses his air in silver bubbles racing to the surface.
His eyes fly skywards and he slowly goes up.
The fire is still sweltering in the dry bushes little ways further away from the lake, but the wetness of the shrubs lining the water’s edge kept them from burning like dry timber.
The smell of smoke lies in the air, heavy, but both of you are alive, standing in water so deep it almost reaches your chests, and looking at each other.
“Jungwoo.” You say, and the feeling that floods your chest at the experience of saying, really saying his name, is incredible.
Jungwoo doesn’t say anything, only gapes, before taking a tentative step forward to touch one of his hands to your face.
“You’re real.” He mumbles, out of breath, eyes wide. “You’re… you’re human.”
Heavy raindrops begin to fall, the sky weeping, finally. Finally.
For a while longer you let him look, take in your appearance, before his posture slumps down a little, he blinks again.
“Thank you. For saving me.”
There are so many, many words waiting to tumble out of your mouth, but for now you only say those five.
And then you close the gap between your bodies, to close your arms around his shoulders, and finally, finally hold him like you wanted to for so, so long.
He hugs back, letting out a soft, shuddering breath, and his hands are warm, careful in the way they place on the soaked undergarment hanging from your form.
His arms are stronger than expected when he pulls you two flush together, drops his head on your shoulder and squeezes you closer, holds you so close as if his life depends on it.
“Jungwoo. We’re safe.”
In the distance, thunder rolls, but the rain keeps on coming down, flooding the parched earth.
“I know. I, I just. Feels so good to be able to hold you.”
And you can’t deny it feels great to be held, after more than two lifetimes of not feeling anything.