The World is Flat
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(This is one of my favorite older stories. It's another of my long-edit styles and it's actually one of my first short stories.)
Short Prose
The Little Tree, Green River, and Quirdly
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The river’s eyes had seen as much as the wind, since once each of its droplets swept through the sky, poured over the earth and inundated the soil. They had washed through blood, carried tadpoles to oasis, and nourished jackals and their prey in the parched desert lands. The river bore its knowledge without pride, always trickling modestly and cautiously, using its susurrus babbling whispers and cool touch to teach those who had the patience. The river’s source lay beyond the eastern mountains were the sun slept and flowed far to the sea, a snaking journey across rocky slopes, pouring through hard-packed ditches, gliding through low valleys and veering, forking into streams and brooks. On its back it carried leaves and twigs, small insects with wings and others with nimble skimmer legs. It ferried wooden rafts which were paddled by the human creatures. It guided barrels and bottles. It massaged weary rocks after millennia boiling in the center of the earth. There were many things which it would commune with, always learning.
At a salient bend where a crop of grassy rock shouldered into the river there stood a small tree. It was a birch, adorned in white bark, with the intricate pattern of black growth scars distinguishing it from the other birches in the wood. It was more delicate than the broad pines, lither than the oaks and the maples and the beeches, and when it swayed in the breeze it fancied itself dancing free from its roots and taking flight, leafy boughs for wings. A tuft of swamp grass arose at the tree’s feet over its roots, which were buried firmly in the saturated, fertile soil. The tree was young, growing swiftly with each year, making the older trees nostalgic. From its perch by the river, the little tree contentedly observed the changes wrought by the seasons.
In the winter the snow fell in dusting flakes that sheathed the shadowed recesses. The river would slow its flow, nuzzling its head into its own depths, and become a frosted, closed door, silent in slumber until the spring. Strands of icicles hung in spikes from the flues in the tree’s bark, dangled from the drooping ends of little branches, and at once he felt fearsome and stiff, proud of the jewelry but bearing the pain of the cold. Winters were gentler in the valley where the little tree grew, the river would say, whispering. It knew harsh winters, winters that stopped the currents of its waters to the very depths of its road, barricaded in solid ice; it was time for reflection and contemplation.
Spring was always announced first by the birds awakening with dawn, chirruping exuberantly, a litany of celebration carrying throughout the forest, sweeping, declaring indisputably the time had come to be born anew. The river’s icy face unsealed and it flowed once again, its water joined by the community of thawing snow from the slopes and rises. Glacial cold, it was a savored treat to drink for the elk and wolves and rabbits, and also the tree, who was always relieved with his friend’s soft touch.
The little tree would bloom erupting in tender green, effervescently greeting the sun. Its roots wiggled, grasping the river’s tendrils, and held firmly, loyally. To the saturnine rocks, winter always seemed oppressive just before it came to an end, splitting them asunder mercilessly, but when it passed on it always seemed to have come too quickly, life moving on ever so fast.
Like dawn spring brought new light. The birds and the river and the little tree would be joined by other forms of life reaching out, yawning from sleep, rubbing their eyes, combing their flattened hair, and sipping the morning coffee of the thaw. The prettiest ones dazzled all with their eruption of pink blossoms, thousands upon thousands enough to litter the valleys and sail like swarms of birds with the spring winds. The river became pink in the spring. It would be full of glittering scarlet salmon, gathering to spawn, who jumped and swam mightily as bears. They would from time to time blend secretively amongst the lacquered, mossy pebbled in the river’s depths, but the grizzly bears and the black bears and the brown bears always found them. When they came wondering, thumping, lolloping from north and south and east and west, even if the birds cried that winter had come, it was spring without a doubt. The little tree had watched the antics of bears for years, and it seemed that as it grew taller so the bears had taken more notice of it. What gave the tree a great disgust was when they scratched their round furry rumps on him, and their shaggy limbs, and rose their ebony claws to sharpen them by grating the little tree’s jacket of white bark. He did not scream at them but he moaned within, for the pain was like flaming needles driven into every nerve point. Its spindly twigs as prodders, the tree had learned where the bears were sensitive; and pocked them in their ears. The middle-aged ones grumbled, the little ones scampered, while the elderly ones who had lost most of their senses only chuckled at the tickle. But the elderly ones were nicer, and the tree liked to hear them share their long rambling stories of war and scavenging and adventurous cubs and famines and utopias.
Eventually summer had to come, heralded by the departure of the salmon, the bears moving farther west and also north in pursuit, bound to detour to scavenge for berries when the salmon became too few and far between. In the north the berries, the river said, were a menagerie of colors more beautiful than the song birds, and grew in such copius sizes and quantities as to delight any bear. It was an arduous duty, fattening themselves up for the winter – one which bears gave their all, eagerly. The great gorge was a disease spoken of amongst the bears with reverence, half in fear and half in awe of its power to render an otherwise sane bear obsessed with feasting, able to dig through mountains, fjord raging rivers and – the little tree made a gasp when he heard – lacerate trees to shreds.
Near summer’s end, the clouds would douse the sky heavily as the chilling shouts of fall arrived from the west. Storms would bath the tree, or winds would bend him – as challenges to overcome, the tree was resolved to face them each season, always learning how to better handle them. There had not yet come an affront so great as to best the tree’s strength and courage.
With the celebratory eruption of fall foliage preparing for the descent once again into the bowels of winter, the tree would be enjoying hints of cider and cinnamon and nutmeg in the river, spilt by the humans far upstream in distant towns. The tree would stand there by the river, watching colorful leaves float by; and would fall asleep many a time in the coming coolness tiptoeing from the mountains. He loved the fall, the little tree did. He loved to drink from the cold, he loved to bask in the dying heat, the sweet relief of winter’s approach. Autumn was the season he favorably nicknamed ‘sigh,’ when his leaves sighed in bold and vivid colors and he unclenched them. The release was a most joyous action, like seeing off a promising young adult for the last time, tampered with great sadness at the parting, but full of optimism. The years tarnish was disposed of, and the little tree would stand alone, clean, unburdened. Stored within him there would be all the energy necessary for surviving winter, and for spurring new growth next spring.
It was no secret amongst the creatures who knew them that the little tree and the river would close friends. Ever did the talk, even in the winter when all was silent and sleeping. They would discuss matters of life and death, happiness and suffering, long through the days, and in the nights as the moon would send its silver rays of light down in keen thoughtful bars. The river would shimmer like precious stone, and become in his speech and demeanor even more wise and philosophical.
A frequent subject of the friends was the affairs of the humans, or as they sometimes called them the two legs. The two legs, the tree had learned, were carvers of fate. They would chop trees or damn rivers, and while beavers did so, the two-legs did it the worst. The little tree did indeed fear them, but he knew from the river’s stories that the two-legs were also capable of kindness. They had been seen roaving the barren plains planting trees, they would tend to shoots that grew – and some would help rivers by sailing gently on them, or digging new channels for them. They would usher streams through their own grooves in the earth to take water to trees and other plants, bringing life, saturating dry soils. To this end the river and the little tree were very excited. They wanted to meet one of the two-legs and speak with him – or, for there were two kinds: her – to learn of how they performed such great works.
One day, with a late-summer’s wind at work in a clump of reeds at a bend down the river, a duck family sought respite from hours swimming amid the humming insects. The little tree thought it felt that scent of the two-legs. The saltiness and warmth of their blood.
The river, in his sleek voice, suddenly said: “I think someone is coming.” The two friends waited and listened to the trembles of the earth. A small bramble limb snapped, a tuft of leaves and thorns snagged and were ripped from their holsters. The little tree thought these noises were so quiescent that they could not be a two-leg’s footfalls.
“A badger, by the feel of him,” he said.
“Aye,” said the river.
The little tree had years of seeing badgers to interpret their coming, the way their light lumbering gait made the earth giggle. There bursting through foliage came he, indeed a badger. You might mistake him for a bush of brambles or some ragged homeless creature the way he had tattooed himself with the forest.
“Howdy, blokes!” he sung, moving confidently at the friends as if he hadn’t a concern in the world, swaggering, shaking himself free of thorns and leaves. “Rightly strippt’ed oi am beneath all this gunk,” he explain. He was a little bloke, but with a fairly matured coat. As he came upon the tree he found he was received in stunned silence, such that it seemed to depress him.
“Now don’t start tinkin’ I bisn’t an agreeable creature!” he said.
“Quirdly, is that you?” asked the river.
“Bet your pebbles oi am, river ol’ friend! But hush now, don’t get all excitorial – er… er whatever the word.”
The little tree was bemused, leaning forward to study the little creature. He meant no impoliteness by it, though he had to ask, “Who are you – and what brings you to us?”
“Quirdly’s the name, as I’ve just heard said. But we can do the formalities later, right? Okay, anyway, be quiet.”
“Quiet?” asked the river. Through the earth there seemed to come a hum, an irregular rhythm, and by their silent bond the river exchanged this information with the little tree.
“Just do this,” said Quirdly, and put his furry paw to his mouth.
The little tree bent a tiny twig around to touch his trunk… not that this did much good, for the little tree could speak from any part of his body, for he possessed neither mouth nor vocal cords. He instead possessed a natural voice that swept through the being, emanating from bark and root shoots, shimmering in the air invisible and unintelligible, but comprehensible still.
There came presently a gasp, the tense whistle and the gap of silence as of a stone being flung off a mountain into thin air. Whether one of the creatures present gave the sound, or not, may never be known. Mark you, dear reader, the reason for the exclamation shall be shortly unraveled.
“Hurrawwl!” The cry came from the woods, and with it charged a figure tall and spindly, who shook the earth as a matador against a bull. It was a two-leg and he came brandished with a heavy club. This he carried in his right hand, which was stretched away from his body. The man was clothed in furs, and wore vast leather boots, the likes which the river saw worn by the nomadic barbarians of the northlands. He seemed to run, kicking up dirt and stones; but it was not a run of grace, even in the little tree’s eyes. He was falling, and he fell with his head right at the base of the little tree. There were sticks in the man’s back, three of them, and from their points of injection bubbled forth a dark red substance.
The little badger sat curled up, shaking, very near where the man’s club had smashed into the earth. Before the little badger could pull himself together, another sound interrupted the air. Bushes were being thrust aside, trees scrapped against, dirt flung places… and there could be heard the sound of metal clinking, which the little tree had never known before.
Again from the forest came a man… he towered high like a bear on its rear legs. The little tree looked at him in absolute fear and in awe. Such a stranger… so fast… So thought the little tree. The newcomer looked first at the fallen man in the fur-coat, then to the little badger curled by the club, then glanced across the glassy green surface of the river, and finally upon the little tree.
“This place is magical…” he spoke at a whisper. He rolled his right shoulder, which was covered in various plates of metal. He blinked his eyes, shadowed by a raised helmet-visor. He shifted his feet in the dirt, the metal of his boots scraping with the rocks. Then he lowered his left arm, to which was fixed a magnificent piece. A cross-bow, as it is known.
“Damn fine bastard,” he said, and spit at the fallen man. “You should not have run.”
Meanwhile the little badger had uncurled from his fit of fear, and scurried over to the little tree, climbed up his trunk, and sat cross-legged on one of the higher branches. The poor little tree was bent under the weight of even such a small creature.
A rush… a flash, a clang of metal…. Some other man had sprung from the woods, and there he lay near the fur-clothed man, blood sprouting from his severed neck as though flowers were growing there. The man in the armor wiped the blood from his blade on the little tree’s trunk, then sheathed it in the back of the fur-clothed man.
“Fools!” he roared, “Fools the lot of you to pursue me, you here?! Another one of you lays dead, fallen where I slew him with my neat blade. And know that it will not be so neat the next time it goes hunting. Thus I give my command… stay back!” His voice echoed around the mountains in the east, carried through the earth like a plague, vibrated it, and the little tree with the blood wiped on him felt sick.
Suddenly the armored man fell to his knees on the corpses, and then he slumped his back against the little tree. His head looked up toward the sky, and his eyes closed peacefully.
“I am so sorry, little one,” the man muttered. He wrapped his arms backwards, around the tree, and hugged it with great strength. Suddenly he jerked, and that was when the blood seeped from his lips. It flew quickly out like a spray from a waterfall, at first… then, as time went by, it became a small trickle. Yet all the while it came out, the man muttered things to the tree, like ‘I am sorry, little one.’ A few times he even yelled out, to that invisible foe that he had called to before. Ah, but when he did this, he seemed to go white and more blood would pour out for a moment. But he kept it up… he kept his insane activity until his time passed, until he lay as a near skeleton in the armor.
No one came. No sound in the forest could be heard. The river sung sadly, bathing the fear.
