Chapter Text
There was once a man that was very, very lonely. He was lonely, despite living in a cosy, old house by the sea with his teenage daughter, his strict, but well- meaning aunt, and her (definitionless) Darius. The loneliness could be felt in his bones, like an ache, even on days where he otherwise was happy. He would play board games with his daughter, help aunt Elinor with her garden (which was in truth, Darius' garden, because Elinor was an infamous plant- killer and could not keep a cactus alive if her life depended on it), and go on long walks with Darius to discuss volumes of old poetry, all while feeling that his soul was a dull grey.
It was not that he did not feel the joys of life. He still loved hearing his daughter laugh, Elinor rant about long dead authors, loved feeling the sounds of the sea as he strolled with Darius, yet it all felt different. It was like there was a switch called living inside of him, that someone had tuned down till all his feelings were on a low buzz, a distant memory of what they once had been.
He asked Darius if he could walk alone. Darius looked worried, realigned his glasses to his nose ridge, probably wanted to ask why. Nevertheless, Darius was not made of confrontational material. All he said was:
“When you get home, I will prepare some scones. You can eat them alone, if you prefer, but please come fetch some.”
This was Darius' way of saying: I love you.
So the man made his way to the sea. This evening a wind was picking up speed along the coastline, creating white- topped waves splashing against the trail the man was walking on. Some droplets of the salt sea hit his body, wetting his clothes. He looked up at the darkening sky as he walked, and the more the wind pulled at him, the fiercer the sea roared, the more alive he felt.
At its end, the trail went uphill into a small forest. White birch trees all over the hilltop, bent in every direction because of the sea gust. Right where the path ended stood a large one.
Generally, birches do not grow very tall, yet this one stood with its crown of leaves to the sky. Black marks spotted its trunk in an irregular pattern. Wasn't it possible to comprehend a face in the pattern looking back at him?
The man slid down the trunk. With his back to it he closed his eyes. The entire world was wind, sea and leaves. I wish I could life like this forever , the man thought. After that his mind slipped away and he fell into a dream.
The world was a blur. There was nothing but shapes and colours melting into new forms. His arms reached out to find anything, but there was nothing to support him. In his heart, he felt that the blurriness would persist forever.
Out of the nothingness stepped a figure. No characteristics were perceivable, yet the presence was overwhelming. When the figure placed a hand on the man's shoulder, he burst into tears. Something that had been buried within him, long thought dead, was reawakened. Relief tore at his chest.
“You will wait for me,” a voice sounded. It was like a man's voice, not particularly deep nor high- toned. The voice painted a picture inside the man's head of a red fox. Clever, mischievous.
“Who are you?” he asked. His hands stretched out to the figure, begging. A warm embrace took him in.
“I'm yours, Mo.”
The dream began to fade. The embrace went cold and without substance. Mo stumbled.
“No, please. Please, don't leave me. Please don't leave me like this.”
But the love was already gone.
It was Darius who found him. Mo's skin burned as they went home under a dark stormy sky. Elinor tried to help as soon as she saw the pair come in, but her help consisted of being upset (loudly) and scolding her son-in-law.
When Darius placed the tall, weary man into his bed, Mo looked at him and saw something he hadn't for a time.
“You.. are very good at this.”
Darius, in the middle of tucking him in, reddened.
“Believe it or not, there was a period in my life where I worked as a nurse. But there is so much misery among mankind, and you can't leave a person telling you a sad story like you can a book.”
Darius turned and raised his eyebrows in surprise to see Elinor in the bed room. She was handling her necklace, waited a bit before she came nearer.
“Good to see you into tucked in, dimwit that you are. There is a bloody storm outside if you didn't notice. I was starting to wonder if we would have to raise your daughter alone with your body swept away by the waves somewhere-”
“Elinor!” Darius exclaimed, which just caused Elinor to talk even faster. Doing that, she secretly, or not to secretly, wiped off a tear when she thought they didn't see.
“- the news have been talking for hours about missing cats and dogs as the rain started to pour and there was a group of hikers taking shelter in a cave nearby, I was sure you were going to be with them, half drowned, that's actually the same cave that the privateers from the 15th century-”
“You can tell me all about the horrible events and pirates that used to frequent this sea tomorrow. For now, I think I must sleep,” said Mo.
The sun had been warming up the room for half a day already when Mo awoke. He squinted at his surroundings, felt the heat from sunbeams touching his skin. The storm had passed, he realised, and tried to get up. But as he did, he saw that there was another person lying in his bed. Her long blonde hair was spread out across the pillow, her brow furrowed in thoughts. Her expression brightened when she realised her dad was awake.
“Mo!”
“I am alive,” he joked and instantly regretted it after seeing his daughter's face. She looked solemnly at him. It was odd look for someone who had just recently passed their 13th birthday.
“It's not funny. You slept for, like, fourteen hours straight. I was really worried.”
She sat up in the bed.
“Elinor sat up all night reading about fever medicines. I think she passed out around daybreak.” His daughter looked at him sternly.
“Why were you sleeping outside anyway?” she asked.
That was just it!
Mo got up in such a hurry, he dragged the bed sheets (and Meggie on top of them) with him.
The dream! The presence! Just thinking about the feeling it had inspired in him got his chest warm. He was half was across the bedroom already, trying to put on a pair of trousers over his PJs.
“Come!” he urged her. “What are you waiting for? We have to-” He fell head first with a foot inside the trouser leg.
Meggie ran over to help. She looked a little worried for his mental health.
“Where are we going? Did you get the part where you've basically just woken up from a coma?”
Something just occurred to Mo (it was not that you can't wear two pair of trousers at the same time).
“Wait. Why aren't you at school?”
Meggie's face flushed up to her ears. At once she became very supportive.
“What did you need help with again?”
The forest had a pretty different atmosphere in the sunlight. Meggie didn't really seem relieved when they approached the end of the trail and even less when her dad pulled out an electric saw from his backpack. There wasn't a whole lot to say in his defence, so he simply explained:
“I need to do this. The fever told me so.”
The cutting of the tree itself didn't take that long. After that Mo was careful with its descent. It fell peacefully and without a struggle. What was really troublesome, was that Mo insisted on bringing with the root. Meggie had been on several adventures with her dad over the years, but this had to be the oddest.
“This is so weird!” she said. “What if someone sees us? You haven't even told me why we are doing this!”
Mo was digging up the roots, or at least the main part of it. It was strenuous work that reminded him that he was no longer a youth.
“Just keep up the good work, I will be finished in a jiffy.”
Three hours later the pair of them were heading home, Mo with a significantly heavier and more oddly- shaped backpack.
These sort of jobs usually got reserved for basements, but seeing as Darius was using Elinor's basement for his photography hobby (the old- fashioned developing kind), Mo took his work to the old atelier. It was an old, dusty room in the top floor, suspiciously free of books.
Meggie eyed the place with clear discomfort when they entered. A sad frown grew on her when she saw the only furniture- an old iron bed with a moth- ridden quilt covering it.
Mo pushed the curtains aside and it sent a beam of sunlight onto the creaky old floor boards.
“You know Elinor's mom died in here, right?” the teenager remarked.
They looked at each other for a long time. For once, Mo didn't know the right parental response. It took a while for the words to find their way through his throat.
“She would have been glad to see the room be used again. And I am going to create something good here, just wait and see.”
His daughter seemed uncertain of that. Her eyes lingered of the bed, as if the dead were going to rise from the dust.
“Why don't you go downstairs and ask your aunt to show you photographs of them both?”
Meggie went, but the look she sent him pierced his heart.
How does one create life? Nobody teaches this in any school class. Nobody creates formulas for the cookbook of life. There are no guidelines, no safety lessons, no maps to follow. Of course, Mo had partaken in creating his daughter's life almost fourteen years before, but this was something quite else. What he was aiming for here was not instinctual, could never be done by accident, and far messier.
Since he didn't really know how to begin, he just begun somewhere.
The roots of the tree, he figured, was also the tree's heart. This was human logic. The heart was the inner most organ in his work. The rest would go from there.
The other members of the household viewed the project with various degrees of interest and worry. The sun set and rose while they stopped by. At first they had tried talking to him, but it was clear he couldn't (or wouldn't) hear them.
Elinor visited one evening, even though her breath was hollow and her steps moved with uncertainty. Despite that she spent some time with him, just watched while he worked without uttering a word, which was unusual for her. If he had had the mind to, he would have worried.
At the end of the hour, she spoke. Her voice was hoarse.
“Mortimer. I understand... No, I can't say I do. But I obviously care for you and I understand that whatever wretched thing you are working on that absorbs your mind, is essential for you. I get that. These last years haven't been easy for you. I get that too. Nevertheless, your daughter also needs a father. I can't let her see you like this any more. Mortimer? Do you hear me? This is really hurting her. So Darius and I are taking her off school for a week and visiting Darius' sister. And – and, when we come back, you will be done with this behaviour and talk to us. Or see a doctor. A week, you hear me?”
For the first time in forever, Mo actually raised his head from his work and spoke.
“Yes, I hear you.”
But there was nobody there anymore.
In the empty house, in the atelier, a man worked his wood day and night. He had no knowledge of woodworking, so the labour was slow and erroneous. His hands had never been rough, but they became so now. Full of blisters and scars.
That didn't really upset him though, because he was already upset. All he cared about was finishing, and it called to him like en lifebuoy in the ocean does to a drowning man. He sawed, polished and nailed till he collapsed. Then he woke up at random, like a madman without any connection to the world and its workings. He forgot what words were, what his name was, but he never forgot the figure that he had seen in his dream.
Even though Mo was what people sometimes called a frappucino gay that never had worked anything more complicated than Ikea- furniture, he knew bookbinding. And he knew people. Maybe those were more closely related than he had previously thought. For example, both furniture and books had bodies.
The creation of anything, Mo learned, came down to simplicities. Structure and intent. The structure he was forming had bigger and smaller pieces and also in-between sized pieces. His intent was a prayer, which is also an action. It was with this he formed an outline. Soon it was apparent it was a human outline.
As with bookbinding (and clearly also Frankensteinish endeavours), it's the details that nag. There are surfaces and then there's things underneath. What nerves connect to which? How should he make the limbs intersect? And in the back of his mind- what will all his minuscule decisions feel like to the thing he was creating?
At the third day, Mo's hands began to shake. They wouldn't stop.
He had been thinking about a pair of alluring eyes when his fingers had slipped the little knife he was holding. When he bent down to pick it up his body wouldn't respond. Stricken with fear, he let himself fall, and crumbled together like an infant on the floor.
“Am I wrong?” he whispered. For the first time he could hear the silence around him. It was choking him.
The stranger was standing by the window sill. Everything around him was fuzzy, whereas he was clear as glass. Strangely, even though he was wearing a faded overcoat, an ill- fitting vest underneath, and jeans, it was like the clothes were wearing him and not the other way around. He was smiling a weird, knowing smile that sent a thrill down Mo's spine. Like an idiot, he blurted out:
“You are so beautiful.”
Because the stranger was. Sunlight fell on his face and set his ginger hair on fire. Red stubble was visible on his chin, over the lips as well. Everything about him was inviting- although maybe a little bit taunting as well, like a playful word on the tip of your tongue you can't fully catch. Yet he felt so right. And he was not a stranger at all.
“You really should treat yourself better, bookbinder.”
His voice was beautiful too. When their eyes met, Mo felt himself lose composure. He broke.
Sobs made their way up his throat, shook his body and mind. At some point, a hand was placed on his shoulder. He held on to it with his own as he cried. And he cried.
Gradually, the other sat down beside him. For a while they sat silently. After that, the person beside him spoke.
“Sometimes people create without caring for the consequences. People start families, forgetting children are a lot of work and fundamentally uncontrollable. You never know what you are going to get when you make a new person, you know? And some people can't deal with that. They resent what they've made. But it's not just them. There's also children who beg for little puppies and bore of them when they realise a dog has its demands too. In general, people sometimes try new things without succeeding, which is fair, I guess.
One of my tree siblings was once cut down to be used as a love bench at the stretch of beach you love so much, but nobody ever took care of it, so it fell into ruin and once again returned to the earth. Mo, I want you to know, that you creating me is nothing like that. I want to be here. I want to be alive.”
His face was so perfect and sincere as he said that, that Mo forgot to breathe. The other leaned forward and their lips met.
From the moment Mo woke up on the hard floor, there was a sense of rejuvenation. So for the first time in heavens knew how long, Mo took a shower. On purpose, he turned the water cold, so it felt like standing outside a rainy evening. That cleansed his mind and when he stepped outside the shower onto the linoleum, he was acutely aware that he was a person. That is a special feeling, reserved only to those who have been without it for a time.
Outside the trees in Elinor's garden were alive with breeze. He watched them as he ate breakfast by the kitchen window. The clock on the wall declared the time to be close to 4. Upon closer inspection the long clock hand had stopped moving.
After changing into clean clothes, he re-entered the atelier. The air was dull and heavy. He opened the only window there was and let the outside sweep in. After that he cleaned in a rough kinda way, picking up dirty dishes and cutlery, trash, and tore of the old bed sheets.
When he again sat down to work, he eyes the instruments before him, displayed on a table. He had no idea if this was the proper way, but then again, who knew what the right way was? As soon as he picked on of them up, he felt a strange comfort set in. It had been a while since he had held his bookbinding tools. Still. It seemed right for the last step in his feat.
Maybe it was the longing for the dead. Maybe it was for the living. Whatever it was, an old habit stumbled its way out from the darkness and he began to speak. He painted lips onto the wood and rambled about everything he could think of. In his memories, little Meggie was standing by his side. She stood barely higher than his working table, her eyes following with a fond and alert expression. "Silly Mo," she would sometimes say when he talked to himself. She had never called him dad. Maybe she would have if Resa had lived. Maybe.
Even after all these years he knew Resa so well the hurt ran like a knife's edge across his chest. He could see her like a phantom behind him, knew how her feet moved across the floor, how the hem of her summer dress moved as she walked. There was a single lock of blonde hair that always fell across her forehead, no matter how many times she swept it away.
He tried to connect the images. His daughter by his side. His wife. But it just hurt. And the images broke.
A thing comes alive in a series of events. For the first time and slowly, there are feelings. A beetle feels the formation of a leaf under it. A lion cub its mother's tongue licking its head and the grass underneath them both. The Creation felt the tip of the paintbrush and cold paint. There was a smell too, flat and heavy. It intensified every time the brush made a stroke. That was the paint.
There was sounds too. At first, there had been talking. The Creation had been absorbing Mo's words with undiscriminating love. But somewhere along the hours, the speech had turned to sobs, and the Creation didn't know what it should feel about that. It had feelings? It? And about something else?
This puzzled it and while Mo continued to paint and polish and undo and redo, a sense of self was beginning to form. If there was someone else and the Creation was not this someone else too, well then... It had to be someone else. A me and you. After all, it could not feel whatever the other felt, but it did feel sorrow at the sound of the other crying.
Just like that the Creation became aware that it existed.
A while after darkness crept upon them, Mo fell asleep again. His head rested on his hands which rested on the work table.
Unbeknownst to Mo, a heartbeat had started. It started gradually, then somewhat confusedly, before it settled into a steady, warm thumping.
The Creation moved. There was a sound of swishing leaves.
At first it stumbled. This business of placing one foot in front of the other wasn't as easy as it had thought.
The Creation slowly neared its creator. Looking at him was like looking at the sun. His black hair was a mess. There skin around the eyes and nose were red from tears, yet he was exceptional. Looking at him gave the Creation an ache for love that almost burst his newly formed heart. It was the same happy ache mothers have when they first hold their babies or when good friends reunite after a long time apart.
Instinctively he reached out a hand and placed on the sleeping person's cheek.
Picture this. You fell asleep alone. Your family has left you. What you have is your hope and you aren't even certain of what you hope for. Then it turns out you're not alone. You really are capable of doing something good. Of creating something. And that something loves you.
Mo mumbled in his sleep. Eventually he stirred. What then saw was this.
There was a network of branches intertwining, mimicking bones and muscles. A shell was wrapped around the inner network, serving the purpose of skin. I could tell you how this looked, the details of plantlife becoming manlife, but it's irrelevant and your imagination is as good as mine.
Instead of telling you this, I will share something else about the Creation: it had a kind face. And, if you looked really closely, as Mo did, you could sense a layer of sadness and caution behind the kindness.
“Am I dreaming?” Mo asked.
He rubbed his eyes, but the vision before him didn't fade. Nor did the warm hand touching him.
“No. I am quite real,” was the reply.
The Creation lifted its hand and buried it into Mo's hair.
“It's so soft,” it whispered, but Mo didn't really catch it. He was going asunder.
“I- I? Did something good?”
He looked at what he had made in complete disbelief. His face had gone pale, his mouth quivering on the edge of both relief and insanity. A single tear hung onto his lower lash line, struggling to free itself.
He broke, as a twig snaps. The Creature silently comforted him.
For a day, all they did was keep each other company. Well, that was not all .
The Creation followed Mo around like a shadow, and Mo taught and explained him the basics: fundamental human needs and the tree machinery creations they make (“Sunlight, water and love for you, my friend.”)
However, sunlight, water and love weren't the only things the Creation needed to live.
They stood in the kitchen together. Mo was trimming Darius' tomato plant. Dull and dead leaves fell to the floor as he chopped them off the plant.
“There is more to me, isn't there?” the Creation asked. His eyes were on the tomato plant.
Mo looked up, confused at first. Then he nodded.
“Most things need fixing sometimes,” he explained. His fingers searched along the plant stem, finding leaves and chopping, sometimes over- or underdoing it, but always trying his best.
“It can be hard work. Well, in fact pretty awful sometimes. I know all about it. Still. We have to do it anyway. I wanted you to be genuine. To be like myself. So you are. And you will need to be cared now and then, for as long as you exist. And you will also have to care for yourself. Even when things are rough. Even when you don’t feel like it.”
“Just like a person.”
“Just like a person,” Mo agreed.
At night, the Creation became restless. It shifted in bed, under the blankets Mo had put over it. It looked with wide eyes at its creator, who was ready to leave the room.
Something in those eyes, begging. Mo halted.
He turned his back on the door and sat on the bedside. The eyes of his creation were still following him.
Mo didn't know what to say, so he just said something .
“I will be sleeping in the room just below. You can bang on the floor if you need anything.”
The Creation twisted again. It hardly managed to speak.
“There is a tightening in my chest.”
It went silent for a while.
“It is threatening to swallow me whole.”
Mo didn't know what to do. He stood uselessly for a minute and contemplated.
“It won't. For what it's worth.”
He stood some more, then bid the other a good night.
When he himself tried to sleep, there was none to be found. He lay awake for hours, feeling oddly empty. A quarter past 2, a shadow opened his door. Half a minute later, Mo felt the weight of another being pressing down on the other side of the mattress. The emptiness inside of him eased and went away, replaced by a warm, fuzzy feeling.
It was odd. Maybe he should have been more upset after having created another living being. But as Mo awoke with his creation curled around him, nothing about it seemed unnatural. It was a comfortable feeling, like he was finally home again after a long time away.
The Creation's breath was hot on his neck. At some point one or both of them had kicked the covers off and there was nothing separating their bodies now.
When he turned, Mo discovered that the other was already awake. It looked at him with attentive eyes, following his movements closely. Waiting.
“Good morning,” Mo wished him. The Creation said nothing.
“Is it terribly weird being alive?”
The Creation nodded. He searched for words. He is so pretty , Mo thought.
“I... feel so much. Does it every stop?”
“I'm afraid not,” Mo answered honestly.
When he got up, the other one followed.
On the way out of the bedroom there hung a mirror on the wall. The Creation passed it and there it stopped. It didn't see the wholeness of itself. Instead it saw the bits which made up the whole and bits, of course, can be chipped and uneven on their own.
The Creation dragged a finger over its cheek. Two truths co- exist here.
Mo had carved him with love. Mo had carved him with love and by accident he had cracked part of the wood while working on it. Three long lines were forever a part of the Creation's face, effectively splitting it in three.
The Creation lamented at the sight.
“Why didn't you make me perfect?” he asked. He was on the verge of crying and his voice was thick with sorrow and pain.
Mo came behind him. A hand on the shoulder.
“You are perfect.”