The Name of the Tree

Last year, I dropped a free to read story on here for Halloween. I have decided to do the same again. This one is brand new, written from scratch and never before published. It is also the first fiction I have written that way in over a year for many and various depressing reasons. However, it's October, it's (almost) Halloween, that's a reason to be cheerful I think?

Just to say, please don't export, publish or otherwise reproduce this anywhere else without my specific permission, it is copyright material. You wouldn't do that anyway would you? Anyway, I have to say it, you know, just in case.

So here it is, enjoy...

The Name of the Tree

The spider, plump and tiger striped, crouched at the heart of the web like a curled fist. Heavy dew glittered across the strands like rhinestones in the old gold light of a clear, crisp October morning.

Amber smiled at her.

‘Good morning, Marge,’ she said, stepping off the decking and onto the damp grass around the little shrub that “Marge” called home. Amber Morgan had a habit of naming things, indeed, she rather felt it was a super power of hers. One look at a thing, anything from a toaster, through plush toys, to her little runabout and Amber could instantly christen it. It was more than that, everyone agreed that the names that she chose were just “right” somehow.

She drew in a long breath, inhaling the rich aroma of the steaming mug of coffee cupped in her cold hands. “proper” coffee, not instant, it was a morning ritual for her. This little walk into her back garden had become something of a ritual too. God bless working from home, she thought. Later, there would be emails and idiots, Zoom spats and pointless meetings about having meetings but that was later. For now, it was a chill, bright Monday, still and calm. She was wrapped in a cardigan that could easily have doubled for a quilt and she had her coffee.

Startled, a thrush burst into the air ahead of her in a flurry of wings, a little wriggling prize dangling from its beak. Stella, your name’s Stella Amber thought. The departing thrush set the crows in her neighbour’s tall, old trees to cawing loudly. There were too many for Amber to name them all but she did, collectively, call them “the Greek Chorus.”

‘Woe, woe and thrice woe, thanks for your opinion ladies and gentleman,” she said, toasting them with her mug. ‘Today’s not going to be that bad, is it?’

The walk always terminated in the same spot, near the weary little apple tree, that looked like it had lived longer than a tree ever ought to live. How long it had actually lived was debatable, it came with the house and indeed was one of the reasons she had bought it. It somehow just ‘spoke’ to her. The venerable tree still managed to flower and even produced the odd apple upon occasion.

‘How are you today, Aubrey?’ she asked the tree. “Aubrey” of course did not reply, anymore than “Marge,” “Stella,” or the “Greek Chorus” had. There was though, something different about the tree today. Amber leaned in for a closer look. She frowned. What is that? she wondered.

There seemed to be a series of dark smudges on the bark, about head height from the lawn.

Amber stared at them intently. It’s some sort of fungus I think… Oh, mate, is your time nearly up? Am I going to lose you?

She turned away and as she did so, a chill little breeze seemed to pirouette around her, tracing a line in the grass. As quickly as it came, it was gone. Where did that come from? Amber thought in surprise, as the day resumed its former golden calm.

The dancing foot that had trailed across the lawn was of course, quite invisible to her.

***

On Tuesday, Amber had taken a picture of the tree on her phone, intending to put it on Facebook for opinions. Strangely though, the blurry, markings didn’t photograph. It was, she had decided, because the light was so bright, they had “washed out.”

Wednesday dawned and the light was a little hazier. Amber stood on her back step, phone in hand, coffee steaming on the counter behind her, ready to try again.

There was an insistent rapping from the garden. A pause… then it came again, then a sharp crack, like a glass breaking in the washing up bowl.

She stepped outside, the decking was dull and damp, it had rained in the night. Stella looked up at her from the edge of the boards, the gory, gooey remains of a snail in her sharp beak, scraps of the shattered shell at her feet.

‘Stella, you’re a monster,’ she said. The bird took flight.

Amber greeted Marge, as she passed the bush, with its fast-reddening leaves. The spider was restless this morning, patrolling her web like the strangest of tiny tigers.

Amber, leaving a silvery wake behind her in the wet grass, arrived at the tree. The markings were clearer than ever, arranged in a rough oval, they were almost like a face. There was a very good reason for that but not one that Amber would have been prepared to believe, even if she was aware of it.

Pareidolia, Amber said to herself firmly, in the sort of tone you might use on a child, to stop their imagination from running away with them.

Amber looked at the tree and the tree looked back. At least, the person hiding in the tree did. He slipped out from within its trunk and moved closer to her, a fact of which she was completely unaware.

She took a picture, then another and another and another. Amber’s face screwed up with an expression of perplexity, she “popped” her lips in puzzlement, then shrugged. Not one of the pictures showed any trace of the marks whatsoever.

Alberon slipped invisibly closer to her, with a balletic grace and the jerky speed of a hunting lizard. He tilted his head to one side and peered intently into Amber’s pale green eyes. Then he circled her, almost but not quite touching her tangle of fiery red hair. His chin traced the line of Amber’s cat-like cheek bones, just a hairs breadth above her porcelain skin. Alberon’s delicate nostrils twitched as he gently breathed in her scent. His tongue flicked out to touch his lips and he smiled. It was not the kind of smile that Amber would have appreciated, if she could have seen it.

The sun came out, burning through the haze.

Amber remembered her coffee, cooling in the kitchen. I will go and look at the pics again indoors, zoom in, in low light, see if I can see them that way, she thought.

Alberon, watched her go, admiring the way she moved, smiling still. Up in the dark trees, half bare of leaves, the crows called and called, trying their hoarse, harsh, best to give a warning.

***

On Thursday, Amber wore a jacket. The weather man said the temperatures were just the same but as soon as she opened the back door, she felt a chill. With a little shudder she slipped the jacket off its peg and gratefully slid her arms into it.

She did not know her discomfort was nothing to do with the weather but was, rather, because Alberon was sitting cross legged outside the door, in his long frock coat of iridescent blue butterfly scales, just waiting for her. He had a strangely adoring look on his narrow, pale but oddly handsome, even beautiful, face. He glided after her soundlessly, as she walked the length of her garden to a tale of woe from the Greek Chorus. Marge and Stella were nowhere in evidence this morning.

Alberon liked the little quilted jacket, he found it much more becoming than the shapeless cardigan, noting the way it nipped at Amber’s slim waist and accentuated the curve of her hips.

Amber wiggled her neck and shoulders uncomfortably, mistaking his gaze for a cold breeze.

Alberon slipped into the tree and looked out.

Amber opened her large eyes even wider, as she stared at the tree’s trunk.

‘Aubrey,’ she said, ‘Is that you?’

Indeed, the marks in the bark were now very clearly a face, just as if some fresco artist had sketched them there in chalk, prior to painting them.

She tentatively reached out a hand… Alberon tensed… Then she snatched it back.

This is too weird, she thought, is someone winding me up? After a moment she had a darker thought. Is someone getting into the garden at night and doing this? Mentally she swore, twice, then shuddered. She stepped back from “Aubrey” then took several more pictures. Not a sign of the “face” on any of them.

Worriedly, Amber turned quickly and after scanning all around the garden nervously, walked rapidly back to the open door. Alberon followed her, skipping, dancing, turning, twisting, long, ash blonde hair flowing in the breeze. He chuckled.

Amber’s head jerked around. To say that she heard the chuckle would be an exaggeration but she heard… something, something that wasn’t the crows…

She slammed the door shut, leaving Alberon, hands cupped against the glass, peering in for one last glimpse of her.

Amber phoned in sick.

***

Amber’s sleep was restless, full of wheeling, flurrying crows, blue/black and fluttering. A feathered storm cloud on a dark horizon. She woke slowly and clung to the bedcovers like a lifebelt, feeling as if she had been drinking heavily the night before.

I need coffee… I need coffee like a vampire needs blood, she thought.

Her phone lit up and pinged. She glanced at the screen and sighed. It was a text from her mother.

Their relationship had always been strained. She had been well cared for and not really lacked for anything but there was always a certain distance, the feeling that her mother was acting more from duty than affection. The nail in the coffin came, when a loose lipped aunt had let slip to a teenage Amber, that her mother initially rejected her at birth, being convinced that Amber ‘wasn’t hers.’ Aunt Vi had meant well, she was trying to stop Amber from blaming herself for her father leaving them. It had affected Amber deeply and coloured all of her relationships, perhaps explaining why she currently lived alone. More than one man had called Amber “intimidating,” which was odd, because asked to describe herself, Amber would have begun with the word, “fun.”

‘R U OK?’ said the glowing screen. Amber frowned. Why do you use “text speak” you silly woman, do you think it makes you seem young and trendy? She thought. Then immediately felt remorse for her uncharitable observation.

She threw one leg out of bed, then after a moment or two, the other one. She sat on the edge of the bed head drooping for several minutes.

‘Later Mum… I can’t just now…’ she muttered, snatching up her phone and swiping the message away. The phone pinged again.

‘I had a dream. Horrible dream. Text me back and break the dream.’ and a worried face emoji.

Amber looked at the message apprehensively. It was not the sort of message her mother would normally send, not like any message she had ever had from her. She stood and slipped into her dressing gown. Amber pursed her lips pensively. OK Mum but coffee first, she thought, sliding the phone into her pocket.

Rain trickled down the kitchen window in mournful, teardrop trails, the good weather had broken. She stared into the coffee as if it were a crystal ball, as if she would somehow scry all the answers in its deep brown depths but all she saw was the reflection of the kitchen spotlights.

Squeezing the mug tightly in her hands, she peered into the crepuscular blue rectangle of the window. Leaves flurried off the shivering trees like tawny snow and the crows were silent.

Then she saw the strangest thing.

Aubrey the apple tree was illuminated by a single shaft of bright sunlight, just as if it sat in a spotlight. Bizarrely, there did not seem to be any break in the Prussian blue clouds but it was unmistakeably sunlight none the less.

She put the coffee down. Then, with every sensible atom left in her troubled mind saying, no, screaming Don’t Go! Are you mad! Don’t go! She quickly shrugged into her jacket, pulled up the hood, roughly pushing her hair inside, grabbed her phone from the kitchen counter and threw open the back door.

Stopping intermittently to take photos, she hurried across the bending, whispering grass, through a whirl of dead, brown leaves, rain pattering on her hood and trickling down her face.

She stopped in front of the impossible tree.

She knew full well, that there was nothing behind the tree but a peeling, unloved fence that she should really have painted in the Summer. Now though, Spring was behind the tree. She looked beyond the tree into a wide, colourful meadow of bright, nodding wild flowers. Great puffy clouds sailed through a cerulean sky like racing yachts at sea and the air was full of bird song that came to her as if from a great distance.

Fascinated, she stepped closer, stepped willingly and of her own accord, into the pool of astonishing sunlight.

Abruptly, two glittering emerald eyes sharp as glass were looking into hers. She opened her mouth in shock but no sound came out. Slender, pale fingers closed over her forearms in a grip like an eagle snatching up a rabbit.

‘Amber, my love, my heart… welcome home,’ said a voice, a voice that an oboe might have, if the instrument could talk. She was folded into Alberon’s arms, as if they were about to waltz, indeed, he pressed his pale, cool cheek to hers as he spun them out of the rain and into the golden meadow.

Amber and Alberon vanished. The light vanished.

Amber’s phone dropped into the wet grass with a dull thud. Rain drops gathered on the glossy screen, obscuring dark images in which the apple tree could just about be seen in the murk. No golden light here… The screen timed out and went black, reflecting the lowering clouds.

Then, the Greek Chorus erupted from the tall, swaying trees into the swirling rain in a screeching cloud…


text and image copyright Robin Tompkins 2023 all rights reserved