Bare Trees

10. We must take care our robes are always one breadth from the floor.

17. We are always the first to greet a crowd when entering a room.

19. We never shout from one room to another. 

26. When someone says ‘thank you,’ we may say ‘you are welcome’ or ‘it was no problem,’ but we do not say ‘it was nothing.’ 

27. We apologize once and, if forgiven, let the unpleasant matter end there. 

The monks of the Order of Honor were a family. They had survived the tumultuous rise and crushing defeat of their city like it was just another stormy winter: they emerged closer than ever, and with a few new cheery songs on their lips. Now in the springtime of their Order, the monks had a rule for each and every icy situation that might cause their progress to slip. 

Turemon was for the progress, of course. A towering, soft-spoken, lifelong monk, he was for whatever his family was for. He thought it was an excellent idea to build a new monastery at the center of the city; he thought it was wonderful that they had new rules to tell them when to speak and when to be spoken to and what to call all these new foreigners streaming into their streets; and he thought it very judicious that the leading monks had decided, for the first time in the Order’s history, to let female monks join the ranks. After all, the saving grace and final end to the War had been a woman, hadn’t she? And Turemon had very personal feelings about the War, because -- though it hadn’t succeeded in taking his Order -- it had taken his garden from him.

“You miss it still, don’t you?”

Devinik was not for the progress. Or as he put it, he was for progress, but not for the new rules; for Honor, but not for the new Order it had become. Few of Honor’s monks had survived the War, and now nearly half of them had left, like Devinik, shedding their monkly habits and titles to become scholars and new government officials. 

“We hope to build a new one,” Turemon replied quietly. He had agreed to come to this park to meet Devinik, despite the fact that he could get in trouble for straying so far from the Order, because once they had been family.

5. We never turn down an invitation without a suitable excuse.

“So they’re still saying that,” Devinik snorted. His breath made a white cloud as huffy as his disdain. “Has Enemon finally made time to look at your plans for a new garden, at least?”

Turemon’s voice was even smaller, so small it hardly made it through the icy air down to his companion. “Enemon has been busy. You know how they have been doing training for the monks.”

“Retraining,” Devinik corrected. 

At this Turemon shifted on the park bench, and looked down at Devinik instead of longingly at the bare trees around them. “It can be hard to get along. It is good that we are learning new ways. If you came back to the classes--”

“Come back? To hear about honoring new initiates who know nothing and how I ought to manage my anger? No thank you,” spat Devinik. This vehemence was something Turemon didn’t understand. Turemon had been to the same classes, and he had learned a lot about people, and emotions, and hatred. It all felt distant, and therefore interesting. 

But for Devinik it was not distant at all. He continued, “What they don’t realize is that sometimes you have to use your anger. It gets you places. Where would we have been in the War without it? Dead. Where would we be now if we pretend it never happened? Why, just look at you!”

“At me?” Turemon was surprised: he’d never hated anyone, to his knowledge. 

2. We never act in hatred.

“You,” said Devinik. “You don’t even know. You don’t even realize how they are manipulating you. They’ve made you like it. Meanwhile they don’t care at all about your dreams or what’s important to you or the fact that they’ve made you hide your anger so deep down it’s eating you from the inside! Nothing matters to them as long as it looks like they’re acting for the best!”

“Made me . . . hide . . .” Turemon shifted on the bench. He looked around, hoping no strangers in the park could hear them. Fortunately it was midday, and most everyone was busy somewhere else. “It’s not that I’m hiding anything, Devinik. It’s just that some thoughts are not fitting--”

“Not fitting! Exactly! You don’t fit their rules, so they punish you and make you feel wrong.”

“That’s not--”

“How many thoughts have you had that don’t fit their rules, Turemon?”

“I don’t--”

“How do you feel about your garden, Turemon? About the fact that they’re never going to rebuild it because it isn’t important and you aren’t important and it doesn’t further their goals?”

“I don’t -- I -- it hurts,” admitted Turemon. His posture slipped, he leant on his knees. “It hurts every day to think of it burning.”

7. We do not dwell in the past.

“It hurts because I can’t make them see what I mean.”

14. We always speak clearly.

“It hurts because I didn’t make it important enough for them and I have nowhere to go now where I am not a burden and I can’t do anything else.”

24. We do not let anyone tell us we are not important.

“Exactly,” said Devinik. “Exactly. Why let them hold you back any longer, Turemon? You don’t need them. You can be independent. You can make your own garden.”

“But they have put up with me and my troubles for so long. I am not good at things, Devinik, you know this. I -- I can’t figure out what to do. My head gets clouded, and there is something wrong with me.”

“No, Turemon, don’t you see? They only told you that because you aren’t going along with their plan. You have to--”

But Turemon wasn’t listening. 

24. We do not let anyone tell us we are not important.

Turemon lifted his head and stared very intently at the peeling bark of the tree across from him. No one at the monastery had ever told him he wasn’t going along with their plan, or that he was wrong. In fact, everyone there was very kind -- even if they were a little more busy or concerned with appearance than they should be. 

11. We do not chase every latest fad at the expense of the classics.

Actually, Turemon realized, all his thoughts about not being able to say things or do things or mean something to someone -- those were coming from inside himself. Turemon did hate someone: he hated the little boy who hadn’t been able to make anyone in his family happy, who had been cast out into the woods because he wasn’t good enough. Turemon watched the tree sway in front of him. He hated himself. 

“Turemon? Are you listening to me?”

Suddenly the classes at the monastery made sense. Turemon had wanted to soak them all up, not because he was unsettled by the female monks or by the rebuilt city, but because there was this strange unrelenting pain inside him, a cold and colorless core obscured by so many leaves. 

Devinik had grown frustrated. “What’s wrong with you, Turemon, is that you can’t concentrate on anything long enough to realize what’s going on!”

12. We never respond to an offense with another offense. We simply leave the offensive company. 

But maybe, thought Turemon, his gaze pinned to waving branches, maybe there isn’t anything wrong with me. Maybe everyone has feelings like this. Maybe I wanted there to be something wrong with me because I hated myself. So that I could hate myself.

Maybe everything I couldn’t do was because the hate was holding me back.

“I understand,” said Turemon, abruptly standing. He looked down at Devinik, who with his open mouth looked like an iced fish. 

5. We never tell someone exactly what they look like, if that image happens to be unflattering.

Turemon smiled. The rules didn’t have to tell him when to speak or when to be silent; he knew the truth, and the truth was that in time even someone like him could own the rules. 

Devinik snapped his mouth shut and leapt to his feet as well, though it did him no good -- he still only came as high as Turemon’s chest. “What I’ve been trying to say, Turemon, is that I could use your help around the office, you know.”

“I see.”

“You wouldn’t have to wear those robes or bother about classes anymore. You’d have friends -- there’s a whole group of us, and we’d be happy to have you. You’d be free to do whatever you liked.”

“I know.” Turemon bowed to Devinik, and hesitated. He wasn’t sure how to say that the robes didn’t bother him, that he thought he’d give the garden plans one more try, that he’d looked at leafless trees and realized that maybe the ugliest parts of him weren’t so scary, that the real freedom was the possibility that maybe the voice in his head which hated his every move was wrong. That Honor lay in knowing, and forgiving, oneself. 

27. We apologize once and, if forgiven, let the unpleasant matter end there. 

“It was good to see you,” said Turemon instead. He waved to his friend, and started on the path back to the monastery.  Maybe, he thought with a smile, I can ask them to do a class just on the anger people have inside themselves. 

And maybe one day we could hold it in a new garden.