Lost

Can you find what you’re looking for if you don’t know what you lost?

Ewan pondered this and many other questions as he walked among the ash trees.

Sometimes, he felt lost in a sea of non-reflective mirrors because every tree seemed the same, each bare of leaves, their gray limbs upheld in a silent dance as they viewed his progress or lack of it. 

Because they did watch him. He was as sure of that as if he caught the glisten of eyes.

That was ridiculous, of course. Sometimes he wondered about his mental capacity to make sense of his situation or whether his own mind had invented all this to protect him from worse places. He sometimes tried to figure out what his actual circumstances might be. This tended to lead to gloomy considerations, such as being in a coma or no longer having a physical body to go back to anymore, so he tried not to dwell on the awful possibilities.

Despite being completely lost within this endless forest of ash trees, as far as he knew, he could still think. Maybe he was the last person alive, the only survivor and these trees all that remained of the complex interwoven ecosystems of earth.

Only this wasn’t an ecosystem as such, just the ash trees. No birds, so the silence could weigh on him if he noticed it too much. No squirrels, gray or red. No other creatures. He found a gap in his knowledge there, so probably was not generally prone to wander in forests.

He had heard about ash groves, almost recalled a very sad song which began with an ash grove, but having an ash forest seemed a bit extreme. He wasn’t sure such a thing existed.

The tune itself came so easily that he wondered whether he might be a musician. Harpist maybe because the melody of this song mostly presented itself to him with harp music.

And the words, the problem with bringing the words to the surface of his mind was that they were flavoured in two languages. More like two songs instead of just one.

Ewan definitely knew a little about this, understood how things got lost in translation. Perhaps he was a linguist, though, so far, only two languages had made themselves known to him.

He tried to figure out whether he was actually thinking in Welsh or in English, but being on the inside of his mind, it was difficult to tell.

His first name, he could remember, but nothing else useful along those lines. No recent history beyond everyday vagueness: eating and drinking, travelling on a train, nothing that would indicate some dangerous hazard that could have resulted in him occupying a hospital bed in a coma.

When he thought about his mind roaming the forest like a mouse exploring a maze, the idea repelled him, so he was most probably not a scientist. Although he could be a different sort of scientist that did not exploit harmless animals to try and prove his theories about human beings.

A man was not a mouse, no more than a mouse could be a man. Or a woman for that matter.

Thinking about no particular woman, just women in general, he tried to figure out if this, indeed, mattered to him. Did he have a lover or a sister or a mother somewhere who worried about him? Was the point of wandering among the ash trees to find his way back to her? Or possibly to a man who was father or brother or, yes, lover to him?

Yes or no, his brain remained neutral on such questions.

Sometimes, needing a rest from overthinking things, he simply walked among the ash trees.

When he paused to rest, sitting with his back against the trunk of an ash, he studied two of the trees and decided, not for the first time, that they were not exactly identical. Rather, they had a sameness about them like a group of people belonging to the same family.

Not family. Tribe.

His attention perked up. This was new, not one of the repetitive cycles of thought that came and went. So, was he wandering within a tribe of ash trees?

Yes.

Not an answer so much as a resonant recognition of truth.

Well. Hello Tribe.

His lips pressed together as he considered whether to speak out loud. He discarded the idea as talking to a bunch of trees, okay a tribe of ash trees, felt absolutely ludicrous.

And he must have fallen asleep at that point because he woke up laying on his back, opening his eyes to the mapwork of gray branches above him which held a crescent moon tangled among them. 

Seeing the moon in daylight did not strike him as odd, so this must be a phenomenon that he had witnessed before. Understanding how it happened was not something he knew about or, possibly, simply one more thing that wasn’t accessible in his current frame of mind. He tucked his palms under the back of his head.

“The ash grove, how graceful, how plainly ‘tis speaking. . .”

The singing words, so very clear, faded before he got very far into the song. 

The leafless branches indicated it must be winter, but he never felt cold. No sign of snow or any weather for that matter. So perhaps he was not the last survivor on earth. Maybe he was somewhere else. Somewhere Else with capital letters.

He sighed and closed his eyes again, nourishing the hope that if he slept deeply enough, he would wake up somewhere not surrounded by a tribe of ash trees.

Ewan was awakened by an unfamiliar sound, a creaking that turned out to be branches being stirred by a strong wind. He pressed both hands against the earth to lever himself up and shivered, convinced for an instant that invisible fingers had caressed his face. But it must be just the cold breeze and the after effects of unremembered dreams.

Watching the restless movements of the ash trees, he could imagine them dancing. He lacked the grace and ease to join them, but they might well still invite him to be part of their tribe.

Feeling a cold chill, he wondered if he was losing his mind or perhaps had a brain fever of some kind. He placed the back of his hand against his forehead but sensed no difference in temperature. 

Working in that nursing home, he had done his best for the elderly residents who had symptoms of dementia and other mental illnesses, but always preferred helping those only challenged by various physical setbacks. If he had his choice, he wanted to be lucid until the very moment of death. Even being blind would be better than losing his mind.

So why was he wandering in a forest of ash trees?

He tried to remember if a virus could cause mental aberration. If he was infected, hopefully this was temporary, something he could recover from thanks to modern medicine.

“You have not misplaced your wits—you lost your way.”

The spoken words startled Ewan who got to his feet, looking in every direction, but could not see anyone nearby. Only the endless ash trees which were too slender for anyone to hide behind.

“You strayed off the path,” the voice continued, “lost sight of your purpose. Dead obvious.”

“Who are you?” Ewan demanded, hands clenching into fists. When no answer came, he added, “Where are you?”

“Dead obvious,” the voice repeated, “but mortals never look up.”

Immediately gazing upwards, he had to turn around before discovering the huge black crow sitting in the branches of an ash tree. 

The great size of the carrion bird made him think it was a lot closer than it actually was. For a moment, the sleek feathered head seemed all too close. He blinked to get perspective.

“Pwy dych chi?” Ewan asked because Welsh seemed a better choice for conversing with a crow who might be a wizard if the stories his Tadcu used to tell him when he was a child had some basis in this other reality.  

The abrupt answer mixed cawing with mocking laughter. “I am only the messenger.”

“So, what is the message?” Ewan asked, trying to brace himself for a response he dreaded.

One dark eye regarded him, then the crow turned its head to view him with the other.

A smoother, almost melodious voice issued from the black-feathered form. “Steal the heart from the wounded tree and I will set you free.”

Wounded tree? Ewan turned around, looking at all the ash trees nearby. They all looked the same, like any ash tree would.

With a loud, echoing caw, the crow launched itself and winged toward him.

He folded his arms over his head and ducked to protect himself.

As it flew over, wings brushing his arms, the crow emitted a warbling neigh unlike any sound he had ever heard any crow make before now.

Ewan watched as it flew away, soon vanishing from sight among the ash trees. He felt more alone than ever, listening to a distant cawing that soon faded.

“This is worse than finding a needle in a haystack,” he muttered, then pressed his hand over his mouth. It felt wrong to speak out loud with nobody to hear.

Although the ash trees might be listening.

Yes, and watching him too and still with that potential of somehow becoming dancers.

He looked down at the grey ground which, in every direction, was bare of the grass that previously grew there. Or had he only seen grass because he expected it? He liked this forest much less since meeting the crow.

A black feather lay against the grey. He started to bend and reach for it, wanting this memento of the strange encounter so he could prove to himself it was not a dream.

Pausing to study the position, he noticed how it resembled a compass needle. He oriented himself in the direction the feather seemed to point before picking it up. Possibly random since he had no reason to believe the crow favoured him, but as good a place to start as any.

After tucking the black feather carefully in a pocket, Ewan began to march through the forest of ash trees, searching every trunk for any evidence of a wound. That must be where a heart was located, surely. Aimless wanderer no more, he didn’t neglect the branches, remembering the crow’s comment that mortals never look up.

After a while, mouth parched dry, he knelt by the thin thread of a brook and was about to drink when he remembered his grandfather’s stern warning against eating or drinking anything if he ever found himself in a strange place.

Reluctantly, he got up and, as he did so, the clear water shifted to the colour of watery blood as if this was some artery in the grey skin of this place. Feeling sick, he turned away, abandoning his other idea of splashing through the flowing liquid in order to keep going in the same direction.

A short distance away from the sound and sight of the brook, he gazed upwards, trying to see where the sun lay so he could determine east and west. The dull sky, though cloudless, held no particular brightness. The more alien this place felt, the more determined he was to accomplish his quest and escape.

Still parched, he hoped that he hadn’t knelt for a drink from that awful brook some other time. Then, continuing his search, he wondered how long he had been here and why he never felt hunger. Perhaps this was all a long, drawn-out nightmare, but if it was, he could not summon any notion of where he might wake up. Had night fallen here? If so, he couldn’t remember any darkness.

He pulled his attention back to the vital search, tried to shrug off the idea that the ash trees watched him with hostility, not the acceptance they seemed to show before.

Feeling uncomfortably that he was heading the wrong way, he took the black feather out of his pocket, held it high and again took the direction it pointed as a portent and pocketed the shiny dark talisman. After all, the crow had said something about straying off his path.

Concentrate. It doesn’t matter how boring this is. Focus. Every ash tree looked the same as every other. He tried to open his eyes more widely as he walked and stop distracting himself with thoughts.

Ewan almost ignored the discoloration mottling a trunk, but, moving closer to study it, he discovered the shadow of a little hole in the bark of the ash tree. Smaller than expected, but then he had been thinking it would be larger than a clenched fist.

His nerves tingled as if the entire tribe of ash trees were silently screaming at him.

With careful fingers, he pried inside the hole and managed to capture a small squidgy morsel. On closer inspection, it seemed to be made of interwoven layers of damp moss, grey mingled with a sandy colour and an unpleasant green. 

Though he wanted very much to restore the disagreeable lump to the crevice in the tree, he cupped his other hand over it as if, belatedly, to conceal his treasure from the watching eyes of the ash trees.

A flurry of black wings in the corner of his vision became the crow perched on a high branch, dark head tilting as it gazed at him with one liquid eye and then the other.

He raised his palm to display the unappealing heart, on his guard and quite prepared to snatch it back toward himself if the crow flew down to steal his prize.

When the figure appeared a short distance from him, he no longer cared about the possible theft.

A breeze played with the black tendrils of her hair, the edges of her silver cloak, fretting the hem of her pearlescent gown above her bare feet. 

Not daring to look into her face, Ewan studied the grey ground where nothing grew.

Her melodious voice said, “Ewan ap Meredith ap Gwilym. . .” and continued beyond the few ancestors he knew about until the sounds blurred together, perhaps spoken in the Brythonic language that preceded Welsh a very long time ago.

Gwilym. Tadcu. A small, generous man with skilled hands. Most of all, a storyteller. Ewan felt his throat tighten with the longing to see his grandfather again.

The crow cawed loudly, interrupting his vision of the old man. Be careful what you wish for. One of the many cautions Tadcu impressed on him during childhood. Had Gwilym ap Twmas foreseen that his grandson would someday wander outside the boundaries of normal reality?

“Give that morsel to my messenger,” the appealing yet perturbing voice suggested.

The huge black bird flew down to a nearby branch.

Remembering Tadcu’s lessons, Ewan prompted, “And you will set me free. That was the agreement.”

Her silence oppressed him, made him worry that he had offended her.

Then a shimmering laughter cascaded to which the crow added its own harsher counterpoint.

“Yes, I agree,” she told him.

Ewan had to lean on the ash tree and stretch high to offer the mossy lump to the carrion bird whose beak closed on it with surprising delicacy.

“Be free,” she said.

“Stay with us!” the tribe of ash trees roared. “Aros gyda ni!” The cacophony pummelling him in many languages became a howl which revealed them as grey, elongated humans with overly large, tormented faces, their feet stuck fast in mud, their branch arms waving wildly.

The turmoil blurred together into the blare of a train horn then a wall of metal interspersed with glass windows rushed by within touching distance. 

Ewan stepped back from the edge of the platform before the last train carriage passed.

His head turned as he watched the train disappear down the track.

He looked around the deserted platform and walked over to sit down on a bench as memories of his life began to flood his mind. 

Close call. He should have specified being set free in a safe place.

Never trust any of them. He could almost hear Tadcu’s voice.

Well, he would have to be more careful next time, for he felt sure there would be a next time.