Shay and Azure

Shay stabbed Azure's shovel into the ground with grim determination, but it was difficult to make any real progress with the rain beating down relentlessly, causing mud to slide back into the hole almost as quickly as she dug it.

"This is ridiculous," muttered Azure, fighting with the second shovel. His second-best shovel, as he was at pains to point out. "All for a fucking tree..."

"You have a better idea?" snapped Shay. There was still a heavy sadness sitting on her heart, but ever since their adventure in the forest, it had eased, improving with each passing moment and leaving room for annoyance. "Why are you such an asshole?"

Azure retreated into angry mutterings and Shay sighed heavily.

Here they were again, Shay and Azure, Beleaguered Mayor and Unwilling Man of the People, reluctant partners in...what, exactly? Nobody thought that their pairing was a good idea, least of all them, and yet, time after time, they found themselves in ridiculous situations trying to keep the village from self-destructing.

Sometimes Shay thought that she and Azure might actually have something in common. She shuddered at the thought.

"How deep?" Azure demanded.

"You're the gardening expert," Shay retorted. "You tell me!"

She glanced at the tree lying next to where they dug, its strange, pure white branches that never sprouted anything at all, ringed with the dark black lines that marked it as other.

If any of the other villagers saw the tree they'd lose their goddamn minds.

"It's not the trees' fault," she said, softly.

"What?" yelled Azure over the storm.

"Nothing!" she yelled back.

Azure hadn't touched them. Azure didn't understand.

***********************************

"It's getting worse," sobbed the farmer's wife, barely able to stand in her grief. "So, so much worse. . ."

"I'm sorry," Shay said, awkwardly. She wasn't a fan of emotions. She knew they were important, she just wished that they weren't. "Many have been affected and. . ."

"So, what are you going to do?" wailed the woman, hands clenched. "He just lies there, he won't eat, drink, nothing!"

Shay stifled a sigh. She was the mayor, which meant that everything was her fault. Just like every mayor before her since the dawn of time, she had not wanted the job, and just like those self-same mayors, she hadn't had a choice when her name was chosen.

The problem was that people thought being chosen as mayor magically made you good at the job. It was one of the MANY examples of magical thinking in her 'peers' that drove Shay crazy.

As the famer's wife cried, she wondered, as she'd done many times before, if Azure had been the one to add her name to the draw in the first place. Some sort of payback, perhaps?

"I actually do have a plan," said Shay. It was true. It just wasn't a particularly good one. "It might kill me," she added, and the woman visibly cheered.

Everyone liked a mayor who was willing to put on a show.

She ushered the famer's wife out of her tiny, sparsely furnished mayor's hut and slammed the door behind her, but not before she hung the Do not Disturb placard on the wooden door.

The sun had barely risen in the sky, and she had already been accosted by seven angry villagers. Seven!

Of course, she understood where they were coming from. It was a difficult time.

Of course.

But why did she have to deal with it?

"Because you're the fucking mayor," she muttered, slumping into her only chair, a rickety affair that would be more stable if she simply chopped one of it's four legs off. She dropped her head onto her table in despair. It creaked ominously beneath her slight weight.

"Shut up," she told the table.

With her eyes tightly shut and her arms hanging loosely at her side, Shay rested her forehead on the hard table, her thick black hair creating a comforting canopy over her face. Dolefully, she contemplated her 'plan.'

It had all started a week ago. The forest had shivered. The trees, the white and black striped ones that grew taller than any of the others, had visibly trembled.

Then, it had come.

No one knew what it was. It acted like the wind, sweeping through the village, being felt rather than seen. Like the wind, it could be a gentle breeze or a violent hurricane.

But instead of sweeping across your skin, it swept straight through your heart.

All who found themselves in it's path were struck immediately by a sense of profound sadness. It came from nowhere, was unrelated to anything the person had experienced, and left them in a state of such deep despair that they couldn't function.

At first, when the 'breeze' was gentle, the feeling had passed swiftly, leaving the person with a lingering spark of grief, but allowing them to move forward. But as the week grew longer, the force became stronger.

Now it seemed that some were not recovering at all.

The only thing that the villagers agreed on was that the forest was to blame. Every time the force struck them, they were filled with images of the forest, the alien striped trees at its center.

It had taken all of Shay's negotiation skills to keep them from setting the entire forest on fire.

The striped trees were bad enough--they were unusual, and therefore a source of great suspicion and superstition. No one could say how, exactly, the trees were 'bad,' just that they were. Obviously. Why would they look like that otherwise?

It was generally accepted that the trees were to be avoided, to the point that the new road that went through the forest when miles off course to avoid running through the area where they grew, adding hours to an otherwise straightforward journey.

And now, on top of all that, the forest was making them feel sad? It simply couldn't be tolerated.

"But you can't burn it down!" Shay had insisted. "We need the wood! We need the wildlife that lives there! And not to mention the fact that there's nothing stopping the fire from taking us with it!"

They'd listened, but Shay worried that they weren't convinced. There was something so evocative and final about setting the whole thing alight, and she lived in constant fear that someone would just do it anyway.

"We have to go into the forest," said Shay, her head still on the table.

"Yes," said Azure. Even without looking up, she could tell he was leaning against the doorframe, one leg crossed against the other, arms folded, the ever-present look of grim disgust on his face.

Azure didn't care about Do Not Disturb signs.

Shay had heard him enter, of course. In some ways, she'd been expecting it. Azure was from an old family, one who had lived in the village ever since there had been a village. There was a reason his line had survived while others had died out. Even if Shay was loathe to admit it, Azure had a good head on his shoulders, a sensible man who would never carry a lighted torch into the forest.

Probably.

"If we leave out the backdoor, no one will notice," said Azure.

Shay sighed and pulled herself to her feet. It was true. The mayor's hut was on the outskirts so people could pretend it wasn't there. Behind it were only the scraggly beginnings of the forest.

"It might not survive the attempt," said Shay, pushing the rotting door open carefully, holding it in the special way she'd developed to keep it from crashing down on her head.

"You should have someone fix that," noted Azure.

"Sure," said Shay. Azure was the person who fixed things. Azure was the person who did and had all the useful things.

But she would let a family of wolves batter the door down with their howls before she asked Azure for help.

Shay and Azure never asked each other for help. It was just that, when a thing needed doing, they were the only two who ever showed up.

Without speaking, they both made directly for the center of the forest where the striped trees grew, their twisting, turning tendrils snaking towards the sky and through the other foliage. The closer they got to the trees, the harder their path became as the abandoned part of the forest grew close around them.

"We could cut through," said Azure.

"No!" snapped Shay. "Cutting feels like burning and--" She broke off, unsure of how to continue.

"And burning doesn't feel right," said Azure.

Shay nodded terse agreement as she fought her way over a fallen tree. It annoyed her, but she had to admit that this adventure was about feelings.

And then the white and black trees were before them, towering high, their narrow trunks closely packed with barely enough room to squeeze between them.

"There are more of them," said Azure in surprise.

Shay smiled to herself. "So you snuck into the woods as a child too?" she said. It was a pretty safe bet. The trees looked about the same to her, maybe a handful more, but her childhood had been a lot more recent than Azure's.

Azure muttered something that sounded like, "I didn't have to sneak," but Shay ignored him.

When she'd been a child, all children had visited the trees. It was what you did to prove you were brave.

The bravest children of all were those who touched them.

These days, children were threatened, punished, rebuked, and shamed for even thinking about the trees. The same adults who had snuck giggling through the woods were now so terrified that they would lock their own children away rather than risk them entering the forest.

"Did you touch them, Azure?" she asked.

"No!" said Azure, and then immediately regretted the admission. It might have been Shay's open, non-combative tone of voice that caught him off guard. He was so used to her treating his every move with suspicion.

"I did..." whispered Shay.

The white and black trees started to shake.

"Look out!" said Azure, but what could either of them do to avoid the force?

This close to the trees, the force was almost visible, creating a ripple effect in the air as it pulsed outwards.

The pulse hit Shay in the stomach and she collapsed with a cry.

Sadness filled her mind, terrible, uncontrollable sadness. It wrapped itself around her heart and squeezed until she thought she would scream from the agony of the pure, unadulterated despair. Next to her, Azure fell with a soft groan, tears spilling from his eyes and coursing down his face.

Then, the images which Shay had only heard about secondhand up until that moment, filled her mind.

Glimpses of forest, green, verdant, luscious, but so sad, why was it so sad? The white and black striped trees reaching up reaching out, never finding. . .what? What weren't they finding? Why were they sad?

Perhaps it was because she was so close to the trees, or perhaps it was because she had the sort of mind that always asked why, but Shay's sadness looked different to those of the other villagers. She sought relief, yes, but most of all she sought answers, a solution, the way to make it stop.

So, she did what she'd last been brave enough to do when she was a young child of no more than eight. She stumbled to her feet, took a staggering step forward, and placed her hand on one of the white and black trees.

The pulse of raw sadness stopped abruptly and now Shay felt something else, layered atop her grief: confusion.

"I'm feeling as you feel, aren't I?" she gasped.

A tiny, almost unnoticeable spark of hope joined the mix. With it, images.

Happy children, running, laughing, playing, hugging the trees, touching the trees, talking to the trees, many years before Shay was born. Then fewer children, now only visiting in the dark or when the grownups were otherwise occupied. Then, most recently, no one at all.

"You're sad because you miss us," said Shay, speaking quietly but knowing, from her fluctuating emotions, that all the white and black trees heard her. "We've abandoned you because we don't understand. . ."

Azure, on his feet now that the sadness was cut with something more palatable, was watching her, mouth agape. If her emotions had still been her own in that moment, Shay would have felt amused.

She wrapped her arms around the tree, stretching her arms as far as they would go. "They need us," she whispered.

Slowly, the sadness decreased. It didn't vanish, but it faded enough for other thoughts.

Shay hoped that the afflicted in the village were feeling the same effects.

She took a step back so as to better address the trees.

"I know what to do," she said. "If one of you will come with us, then I think we can make more people, more children, come to you."

Above them, sudden thunder rumbled in the darkening sky. Beneath them, the ground shook. The tree Shay had hugged uprooted itself, an action so quick that Shay and Azure didn't have time to move before it fell to the ground between them.

"Now what?" whispered Azure out of the corner of his mouth.

"Now you pick the fucking thing up," muttered Shay, grabbing a branch.

It was impossible. The tree was too long, too heavy, and Shay was about to give up when--

"What are they doing?" hissed Azure.

"Just relax, it's fine," said Shay, having no idea at all if she was right.

The striped trees moved, growing extra branches, extra roots. Moments later, they had grown towards their fallen comrade, lifting it off the ground.

Then, they grew outwards.

"This is going to be impossible to explain!" said Azure as the trees surged towards the village.

"Just shut up and run!" yelled Shay, dashing to keep up.

Above them, the sky split, dark from clouds that covered the crescent moon that had risen in the time that Azure and Shay had been in forest.

Shay didn't think that anyone would see them.

***********************************

"Now what?" demanded Azure, yelling to be heard over the storm. The tree had been wrestled into the hole they'd dug, helping where it could. The hole was barely adequate, but the tree didn't see this as a problem. It plunged it's roots into the earth, settling with a creak that would have been heard throughout the village if not for the thunderous storm.

"A magic tree appeared! Overnight!" yelled Shay. "Right here at the edge of the village!"

"So?" said Azure. He understood that they were tricking the others, but he didn't understand how, not yet.

The rain faded, now just an irritating drizzle that ran unrelentingly down the back of Shay's neck.

"A magic tree that appears from nowhere and provides all sorts of supplies and produce can't be bad, right? Maybe it's worth visiting it's friends in the forest, yes?"

"But--" Azure's eyes cleared. "Now, look here--"

"I'm not suggesting, of course, that anyone present at this sodden meeting has a secret supply of grain and herbs and meat, not to mention the excess produce he failed to properly surrender to the town council. I'm just saying that, if this tree was assumed to have provided those exact supplies, the villagers might look at all of them differently."

There was a pause as they stared at each other, each hoping the other would look away first.

Eventually Azure lowered his eyes and gave an almost imperceptible nod.

"So, I'm going to bed," said Shay. "Hopefully, the 'tree' will find all that wonderful food from somewhere."

She turned, trusting, fully and completely, that Azure would play his part.

"Wait," he called.

She turned around.

"What if this doesn't work?"

Shay shrugged.

"Then we'll try something else. Whether we like it or not, it's what we do."

Azure nodded. "It's what we do."

Shay gave her closest enemy a little wave and headed gratefully for her bed.