Progress, Always and Forever

Every color of the rainbow fell from the sky. Except for red – red was the hardest one to cut down. The multi-colored rain fell down through the canopy, leaving behind their crimson residue and splashing down amongst the rest of the mud. They’d cut down the other six types of trees – the orange ones were stubborn too – but all that remained in his way were the reds. Nature would no longer conquer him.

Axes swung into the large trunks of the red-leaved trees. Gareth hired only the strongest of the locals who would be worth his dime. He walked among them, an umbrella shielding him and his white shirt from the dyes from the sky. He scouted for slackers and underperformers, anything that his money wasn’t worth further investment. He came across one such case. One of the smaller ones was bent down, his axe was on the ground. He rubbed his hands together and blew upon them.

“Is there an issue,” Gareth leaned down towards him.

He looked up towards him, “Mr. Gareth, my hands are freezing up.”

“Well, I bet a few more swings will warm them right up,” Gareth swung us arm in hook, encouraging him.

“Mr. Gareth,” A voice from behind him said. Gareth turned to the voice. The hulking man with a face like a pan flattened it.

“Tayam has had it rough, can’t you give him a break?” the flat faced man said.

“He certainly will get a break,” Gareth had to look up to the man, as he often had to. Gareth held his arms out wide, “All of you will, I am not so cruel as to deny your lunch.”

Gareth pointed his finger in the hulking man’s face, “But one minute longer and don’t bother coming back.”

Neither of them flinched or blinked. The chimes of the church bells rang over the area, twelve in all. Each one of them dropped their axes and wordlessly trekked down the hill back to town.

“Worthless lot,” Gareth grumbled to himself. He wasn’t going to let their lack of enthusiasm take his drive down. He took out his compass and walked towards the edge of the clearing site. Surveying for problem areas like rivers or hills, anything that might need to be cleared or circumvented. The straighter the cheaper.

On the side of his compass were the words he engraved himself.

Progress, Always and Forever.

His compass perfectly exemplified this, never wavering in purpose no matter how much you shook it. On its back was a collection of embedded rocks, the three gemstones representing himself, his wife and his son. He travelled all the way out here for a better life with them in a better world. This was all for them and the world, after all.

Gareth reached the edge of their clearing site and stepped under the thick canopy of the trees. The leaves blocked most of the water from coming down, filtering it and drinking it themselves before they got a chance. This would change. New water filters will be more than enough to filter out all of the colors from the rain, water would never be more accessible. The trees no longer have their purpose. He looked through this entire forest, and what he saw was untapped beauty. A wide open clearing, the wood funding a small town, perhaps a plaque showing the man responsible for this great feat. Beautiful.

He came to the edge of the clearing, down over the edge was a drop. He leaned over the edge. There wasn’t any chance of a train ascending that. It would be a difficult dig for certain, but there’s nothing a little bit of elbow grease and blasting powder couldn’t solve. He pushed himself back up.

The ground gave away underneath his foot. His heart dropped in his chest as he dropped down the side of the hill. He clawed at the wall of dirt he slid through, his fingers raking helplessly as he plummeted.

He reached the bottom, rolling head over ass and the base of the hill. The mud cushioned the blow. He stood up and brushed off some of the mud on his clothes.

“Best not to dwell on the setbacks,” Gareth said to himself. After all, Progress, Always and Forever.

He scanned the area for a way back up to the ledge. It was quite a drop, but he couldn’t see how to get back up. It was quite narrow where he was, stuck between the large hill and a thicket of thorn bushes. He needs to return to the clearing site to get his bearings to avoid getting lost.

He heard a soft growl from beside him. His heart dropped. He’s heard this sound before. The landslide had startled him, but this sound frightened him. He turned to his side to see a brown bear cub growling at him. He backed away slowly. The only thoughts in his head weren’t about getting back…sure enough, as Gareth feared, the cub’s Mama came out from behind the bushes. She noticed him and growled.

Gareth backed up slowly again, hoping she wouldn’t rush him. She rushed towards him. Gareth sprung to a sprint behind him. Even if he was in his younger years he couldn’t hope to outrun a brown bear, but at least he wouldn’t keel over. That wasn’t his style. Then, as quickly as the bear started up, it stopped. Its head turned off to the side away from him, attention dragged to something else.

Gareth felt it. Or heard it? Both. The ground thumped rhythmically beneath him. The bear turned tail and ran back towards its cub. Thump, thump, thump on the ground, he saw it approach him. He could barely believe his eyes. Lumbering towards him was a walking tree, feet like stumps, twisted wood making his torso and no head or face to speak of. It was as if a tree came to life. His legs still were in pain but he could still run. Although, where would he go? Towards the bears? Down a steeper hill of thorn bushes?

He backed away from it, trying to climb up the hill from his fall, but to know avail. It was a tree, was it even harmful? The bear feared it, then he should too, right? But he had nowhere to run. The layers of adrenaline were getting his mind twisted in knots. Then, all of a sudden, the thumping stopped. Its stump legs no longer stomped the ground, rather calm steps, and it passed him by harmlessly.

Gareth let out a long deep breath. A lucky break, as he so often had. But he had to return back, work was to be done. He reached for the compass in his pocket. Nothing. He reached and grabbed and clasped for it from that pocket, but it wasn't there.

He gasped. No compass, no sense of direction, no way out. In the chromatic forest filled with every predator he could imagine and more. He did have one lifeline he could follow, and it was slowly walking out of view.

Gareth caught up to the tree with a brief jog, “I suppose you’ll want thanks for the help." The walking tree did not respond.

“Of course, I’m talking to a tree,” Gareth said. “Then again, I didn’t think they could walk either.” It appeared to have saved him from that bear, but as to why was still a mystery. Maybe it didn’t like that bear. Perhaps it was opposed to violence in general. Maybe he knew he wasn’t from around here. In any case, it saved him, so he followed.

He got a little closer to it, walking beside it, “You have a name or something?” It didn’t acknowledge his question or presence. It looked l, although there was one unique part to him that seemed out of place.

“What’s this?” Gareth pointed towards a rather detailed carving of an owl. The tree clenched its fist, from long branches dragging across the ground to a creaking mass of wood. Gareth took his finger away from the carving, and its hand relaxed.

“No further questions,” Gareth said. For now, all he hoped was the direction they walked in was the way home.

***

His knees ached from the fall, his feet throbbed from the walk, but the tree finally stopped. Gareth looked over its shoulder. He had returned to the worksite. The church bells rang through the clearing. They rang twice. And his workers weren’t here. Being merry on his dime, no doubt.

“If the rain bothered them that much, how’s a few days in the snow,” Gareth grumbled.

The tree stepped forward, digging its fingers deep into the ground and tilled through the dig site, tilling the ground as it walked.

“Hey you!” Gareth stepped out into the rain out in front of him. It didn’t stop. Gareth backed up quickly to keep pace with it.

“Look,” he didn’t know where to scold him, so he directed it towards the owl carving.

“There isn’t a single tree in my way, and I’m not going to have you undo it all!”

Gareth tripped backward over a large root. It was one of the more stubborn red trees. The walking tree ran its long fingers over the axe striking divot they were working on, the thin and deep gash in. It placed its large branches over the trunk of the tree. The red tree’s trunk coiled and bunched up into a different form, resembling the same thing that stood before it, however it was much larger, towering over the already tall and commanding walking tree

The red tree began to walk, tilling the ground as it did. A few footsteps in, its foot snapped and it fell to the ground on its side. The cut was clean and like the axe marks in that tree. It managed to reattach it, wood branches snaking around it and reinforcing it.

The tree with the owl carving held its hand out. Something was wrapped around a twig branch. His compass. Progress, Always and Forever. All of that progress being undone before him. Was giving him back his prized possession a way to mock him?

Gareth gritted his teeth and snatched the compass from the tree. Then, the tree continued along, each other tree it visited being animated by its touch and tilling the ground with their hands.

Gareth felt his blood boil. He shot his arm pointing towards the horizon, “I’ll carve a path straight to the other side of the world. I’ll chop all of you down myself if I have to!” Gareth stormed down the hill towards the town. It wasn’t hard to figure out where his workers would be, the sounds of merriment and slacking could be heard from half a block away. Gareth pushed through the doors of the Rainy Hill Pub and through the putrid wall of cheap ale. All of the patrons looked at him. The laughter died as he entered.

“Sir, you weren’t there, Mr. Gareth,” Tayam tried to make excuses. “We thought you’d dismissed us and-”

“Chop chop,” Gareth bellowed in between deep breaths.

***

No one believed him when he said the trees walked. Yes, more trees were there, and yes, they weren’t where they remembered them, but maybe they remembered wrong. They definitely remembered wrong they had said, the trees absolutely could not walk. Gareth didn’t need them to believe him. He just needed them to chop.

***

It had been days since he’d fallen down that hill. He’s hired twice the workforce, but those trees grew quicker than they could cut them down. When he’d first run into the owl-faced treewalker, they only had the red ones to finish up, but now the next layer of orange ones sprouted, and some yellow ones started to appear.

Gareth stalked between each of the workers – twice the workers, twice his effort for scouting for slackers. One of the trees caught his eye. Nothing of note about it aside from the familiar image of an owl carved into its bark. Something bubbled up in him.

Gareth placed his hand on the shoulder of the worker on that tree.

“Hand me that,” Gareth said. The man looked confused, but handed the axe over

anyways.

Gareth swung the axe into the divot near the base. It slammed into it with a dull thud. He hoped it hurt. Could the tree even hurt? He swung again and again into the divot. It felt good.

The owl-carving was staring back at him, seemingly unaffected. He lifted the axe and swung it hard into the side of the tree, straight into the carving of the owl. It didn’t leave much of a dent, so he swung again. He screamed as he swung again, and again, and again. He swung until his arms ached, and then he kept swinging.

He finally stopped when his breath felt like fire. The owl carving was littered with dents along with two good strikes deep in the wood. Panting, a smile curled at the edges of Gareth’s mouth. He dropped the axe to the ground. The worker stared back at him, bewildered. Gareth became aware of all the sets of eyes on him from each other worker.

“Did I say you could stop?” Gareth shouted. Each of them returned to duties, pretending nothing had just occurred.

Soon enough, the clock tower bell rang five times. Everyone dropped everything and left for the hill. He felt his own exhaustion, the bags hung heavy around his eyes. He couldn’t sleep recently. How could he sleep knowing all his progress was being undone as he slept? They never walked amongst the others, only to him. He had an idea, one last idea.

“No,” Gareth grabbed the shirt of the nearest workers. “You’ll stay.” Gareth pointed to some stragglers walking away. “You lot, you stay. We’ll make sure these trees don’t move.”

***

The booming sound of the ground shaking broke Gareth’s sleep. He laid on his back in the mud. He couldn’t remember when he had passed out. None of the others were here. Even with the promise of triple pay, no one was able to last the whole night aside from him, and his presence was pointless; they would walk regardless. The trees tilled the ground with their branches, prepping up the freshly sprouting trees with support, undoing all of his hard work. Gareth sunk his head into the dirt behind him, staring up at the fresh blues scattered amongst the other colors across the canopy. It didn’t take long for Gareth to register, he had no idea what else to do, he was completely and utterly lost.

Looming over him was one of the treewalkers, beneath a littering of chips and divots was the remains of a carving of an owl. The carving that haunted his dreams for weeks.

“Come to gloat?” Gareth called up to him from the dirt. “Come to brag about your victory?”

It pointed at its hand. Gareth crawled off of the ground and brushed the purples off of himself. It still pointed at its hand. It meant the compass. He humored it and pulled out his compass. Those engravings burned his mind, Progress, Always and Forever.

“So you have come to gloat,” Gareth looked back at the tree. “I’m learning a lot about trees now.”

Its long branch swirled in a circle. Gareth He flipped the compass over. Those gemstones embedded in the back of the compass. The owl treewalker straightened up and left him. Gareth frowned. What was he trying to say?

“Hey, wait,” Gareth ran out to him. It held its hand out, stopping his run. The two large eyes of the owl still poked through all the scrapes, and now more than ever looked like it was staring at him.

It pointed towards its hand, and then poked Gareth in the chest. Then it held its hands out to the rest of the trees, then pointed towards itself. Gareth didn’t respond. The tree moved on with its tilling.

Gareth rubbed his fingers over those gemstones. How long has it been since he’d seen them? He counted the winters on his fingers. He counted a few times, he’d lost track on his way to his answer, and was mostly confident in it. Even if he was off by one or two, that was still too many. No, he was here to make their lives better. This was for the good of them and the world. The good of them and the world.

Them…and the world. It was always ‘and the world’, not just them. Light caught the smallest gemstone and shined in his eye. His little boy was just learning to walk when he left for here. Was he a little boy still? Surely not by now, too many winters. Too many winters that he wasn’t there. Would he even recognize his daddy? Would Gareth recognize him?

“Are you alright, Mr. Gareth,” Tayam asked. Gareth stumbled back, startled. He hadn’t even registered that everyone else had shown up. They were all normal trees once again, the one closest to him displayed that chopped up owl carving.

“Mr. Gareth? You look blue,” Tayam said. “Did you actually stay out all night?”

“Just,” Gareth rubbed some feeling back into his face. He sighed. “Go home, Tayam. All of you, you go home. We’re done here.”

“Sir?” Tayam asked. “What about the work?”

“You’re keen to work?” Gareth tossed his coin purse towards him. “Keep your pub busy. That should cover you all for the rest of the week. Spend the rest on that tab you’ve racked up.”

Tayam thumbed through the small fortune he held in his hands, “Uh, thank you sir, but what about you?”

Gareth looked over the newly regenerated canopy of trees, “I’ve got somewhere to be. I’ll take the long way around this time.”