Tree of Life Book III

Part II - Chapter 04

TREE OF LIFE BOOK III – PART II

CHAPTER 04

After she left, I left too.

And I must have wandered for ages, trudging up and down the river for weeks and weeks and weeks. Every time the sound of anyone remotely approaching me from the distance, I would head off in a different direction to avoid meeting up with them. People…all people…disgusted me. I didn't want to be with them, anywhere near them. I didn't want to help them anymore. Why should I? What did it get me in the end? It was because of them that things were like this…wasn't it?

After a time, I came to a mountain. I hadn't come to it on purpose, but there I was. I craned my neck back and stared up onto its peak, way up there in the clouds.

I climbed it. Halfway up one of its faces, there was a crack in the rock that led to a cave, deep inside. A small stream ran through it in a vein. Perfect. I settled in. I tried to sleep. I tried not to think, not about anything at all.

I don't know how long I stayed in there. I didn’t keep track. But by the time I dragged myself out again to have a look around, the snow had all gone. The warm weather had come.

And then, I left that place too.

The warm weather was indeed here. It was all around me, as I paced along. By the foot of the mountain when I got to it, the temperature was even milder. And with the warmth and the sun, there was new growth, new life, everywhere that I went.

I surveyed the area for a bit, and then I picked out a good spot near the edge of a river, a sunny spot. The ground was nearly level here. It was covered in soft, downy grass, with a large oak tree standing guard on one side. I decided it would make a fine corner post to what I had in mind. I stepped over and put my back to it. Facing out, I waved my hand toward the grassy area beyond.

Small trees emerged from the earth. They grew and grew quickly. In a heartbeat, they were tall trunks, every one of them twenty feet high and a whole batch of them. I made the trunks sprout upward one next to another, straight and true like arrows, without gaps in between, so they formed an edge and then a wall as they grew. Four of these walls I made and the corners where they met, I made them right angles, so now I had a square room, about thirty feet to a side, with my original oak tree off in one corner.

I smiled and nodded to myself.

All that afternoon, I picked my way from one spot to the next in my new house, shaping a few branches here for a shelf, calling up a bush there for a chair. Overhead, I stitched vines together to form a roof. I kept going and going and I didn't stop until the whole thing became a practical, usable home that was big and comfortable enough for two. These could busy themselves with work outside by day and then by night, they could return here and sit, snuggle up by the fire to share a meal, to share a story, and then when the night sneaked up on them gently, they could close their eyes and pretend to sleep for a few moments as if they actually needed it.

It was evening. The night was come.

I set myself down into a chair by my oak tree and gazed out into the room I had made.

I smiled and shook my head. I hadn't realized it until then.

Somehow, without thinking about it, I had turned my little abode into the exact same one—same layout, same furniture, same size—the exact same house that we had shared for all those many years before…before everything. Before everything had changed…forever. Well, except for my oak tree.

I reached up and lay my hand on it. I rubbed its surface and thought I could feel its heart beating. Or perhaps it was only because of what it was keeping for me inside.