The Trees Remembered

That morning, Olive set out with only a rolling suitcase, the dusky rose one with the coffee stain and the squeaky wheel, and a simple black brass urn. She arrived at the train station before sunrise. Overhead, the full moon shone bright, casting the silent benches and worn concrete in a silvery glow. Sleepy-eyed strangers milled about her, clutching coffee cups in vice-like grips, barely looking where they walked, like automatons following their daily programming. How is it that the world does not grind to a halt in moments like this?

Olive had always liked the train. The rhythmic rumble of the wheels rotating endlessly carried her far away from the cloud of grief gathering overhead. The world seemed so small from inside the train car, as though she was the only person that existed in that moment, sitting on the hideously patterned fabric bench, watching the landscapes whiz by. Dreamscapes, more like. Portals to other worlds she had yet to visit, worlds with troubles that couldn’t touch her. She was moving too fast for them.

The fare was cheap so early in the morning, and the train was heading deep into the countryside, the opposite direction of most commuters on a weekday morning. Usually, she would be heading to work with them, but the heavy urn in her arms demanded she chart a different course. She would not be able to rest until her mother did. She sat, nursing a burnt coffee, trying to ignore the harsh, bitter taste permanently seared onto her tongue. The train car was mercifully empty, leaving her alone with her thoughts.

Behind her, her old life was already disappearing, fading into the mist rolling off the foothills like a thick blanket. She pictures them all sitting there back at home, dressed in black and holding tissues to their faces, eyes hungry, ready to sink their teeth into her tragedy. They veritably glowed with the pleasure of the pitying and coddling and whispering “what a shame” when she turned her back. To them, feeling the depths of despair was to feel alive.

It had all gotten too big for Olive. Around her, the world was changing and dragging her along with it, kicking and screaming, digging her heels in. Her mother’s death had been sudden. One moment, she was laughing and talking. The next, her heart had simply stopped, sputtered and shorted, like a light-bulb whose fuse had given up. How could anyone expect Olive to go on after that, move forward, accept a new life when the one person she loved more than anyone was back there, trapped in memory, unable to come with her?

So Olive was going back with her mother instead. All the way back to the small town where her mother had grown up. Back to the abandoned country house that she had often visited as a small child. There, she would bury her mother in the old burial clearing in the family woods, deep amongst the trees. Maybe Olive would stay there too, fix up the old house, and walk the woods every day in the hopes of running into her mother again.

It was still dark outside, and Olive fidgeted nervously in her seat. The urn felt heavy in her arms, but she could not bring herself to set it down. There was a soft rustle from the front of the car. The ticket-taker was making her way up the aisle, her wide hips brushing against the sides of the empty benches. In the weak, fluorescent light, her skin took on a yellowish sort of hue, inhuman in its pallor. Her eyes were too big for her face, apathetic, reminding Olive of an insect. The ticket-puncher clacked like pinchers. The woman wielded the puncher so deftly that it seemed to be an extension of her hand, as though it sprouted straight from her bone.

When she stopped in front of Olive, the ticket-taker’s insect eyes took in a young woman, dirty blonde hair in two poorly done braids, wearing an oversized green crewneck and ripped jeans. She held out the puncher, clicking it menacingly. If she noticed the urn, Olive couldn’t tell. The woman’s expression did not change. Perhaps everyone on the train was used to misery, used to seeing red-eyed, sleep-deprived strangers in some stage of desolation.

But no matter how despairing one was, one still had to present a ticket. Olive held hers out, and the insect woman punched it grimly before swishing along to the other cars, shutting the dividing door behind her with a soft thud. Once again, the only sound was the metronomic click of the wheels and the periodic mournful shriek of the train whistle. Olive stared out the window, watching the trees blur into a smudge of grey and green as the sun rose, clutching her mother tightly to her chest.

When she awoke, the sun was fully risen. The train began to slow, and an automated voice called out, announcing the next stop. Her stop. As the train approached its destination, she felt a quickening of her pulse, a chill rippling over her, raising the hairs on the back of her arms until they stood poker straight. The mist was still lingering around her, partially obscuring her surroundings. But she felt it all the same. She had travelled back in time.

When she stepped off the train, Olive looked around. The train stop was barely a stop. A metal bench stood nearby, shaded by a rusting tin roof and bars, covered with graffiti and desiccated pieces of chewing gum in all colors of the rainbow. There was a decidedly rotten smell wafting from the old trash can leaning precariously against the signpost, its sides plastered with bleached advertisements and political stickers.

She chose to ignore this sorry sight. Instead, she yanked up her suitcase handles and began walking forward. Large clumps of gorse and heather surrounded her on all sides, the yellow and purple blooms thick and buzzing with bees and flies, giving off their wild, honeyed scent, luring the droning insects closer. Olive breathed in deeply. It smelled like her mother’s floral perfume. She was getting closer.

The walk to the family country house was uneventful. The late morning sun drove the mists away. It now sat high in the sky, beating down on Olive’s head and making her regret not having brought something to drink. Already, she had shed her crewneck, sporting only her pale blue tank top. The autumn breeze that occasionally blew past her sent a shiver over her, but the heat of the sun and her brisk pace had her breaking out in sweat by the time she reached the house.

Nothing could have prepared her for the sight of it. Olive let go of her suitcase, and it fell to the ground with a dull thud. Large swaths of ivy covered the sandy stone sides of the small home, the myriad of roots steadily boring into the stone. The remaining roof shingles were faded, many hanging precariously at strange angles, looking as though they would drop off at any moment. Everything was either peeling or fading or rotting. The wooden door was cracked ajar, and from it Olive could smell stale air and moist earth. The house was dead.

Around it stretched the woods. Her mother’s woods. The woods in which the oldest members of Olive’s family lie in eternal rest. As a child, she had wandered without fear through the trees, using only a small plastic compass and a child’s intuition to guide her home. Many a day was full of catching toads and lizards, bringing them home in jars. Her mother had shouted and scolded, and Olive retreated to the forest’s edge, releasing her captives back into its dappled interior.

Now, the forest looked thicker, wilder, creeping ever closer to the house as though it was moving into the abandoned space once more. Olive stared at the forest. It was glowing with a preternatural warmth, the leaves turning golden in the sun. The breeze whispered through the branches, and they waved and bowed and brushed against each other, as though they were dear friends sharing dark secrets. Olive wished she knew what they were saying, wished the branches would greet her like an old friend, sharing their ancient memories.

She left her suitcase where it fell and walked towards the tree line, cradling her mother’s urn on her hip like a woman carries a child. Before her, there was a gap in the stately tree-trunks, a path that seemed hewn by Mother Nature herself. Olive had never seen it before, and she knew every small trail that wound its way amongst the trees. This one was different. It was as though it had appeared just for her, so perfectly did the trunks bend out of the way to let her pass. Mossy stones and fallen leaves line the path, red and orange, like a carpet crunching under her step. Occasionally, clusters of mushrooms rose from the dirt, their caps gleaming with moisture and red as lifeblood.

She followed the path without fear. All around her, the forest continued to whisper to itself, branches swaying, dipping down so low that the golden leaves brushed against her head in a gentle caress. She remembered walking here as a child, collecting fallen leaves and acorns, the caps becoming cups, and the fallen leaves becoming fairy wings. Time and age had not dispelled the magic that hung in the air, collecting on the trees and twigs like dew.

On either side, spiderwebs stretched from branch to branch, glinting when the sun hit their threads just right. In their centers, their creators hung, vibrant spindly bodies swaying gently in the breeze, large as crabapples. She found they no longer frightened her as they once would’ve. Instead, she watched, fascinated, as they hung suspended between earth and sky, dancing on gossamer threads, spinning endlessly until the end of time, the Fates of myth. She felt a wild laughter bubbling up in her throat, one full not of mirth, but of a desperate burst of life that couldn’t be contained. She let it out, and the forest swallowed it up.

The path ended in a small clearing. It was small, nondescript, a nothing place really. But the trees surrounding it grew thick and gnarled and bent, leftover from a primitive age, bearing the weight of centuries on their boughs. The moss grew thick and lush under her feet, creeping out over every fallen log, every stone, every clump of ruddy clay. Far off, she could hear the sound of trickling water. It was tinkling like laughter, like a voice speaking in a language long forgotten but innate.

In the center of this forgotten place lay four moldering tombstones, their shapes worn down by time and water. They were illegible, but Olive knew them. Her ancestors, people who had never set foot outside of this land. Those who were born and died here. Would they think her a stranger? Would they accept her mother as one of them? Would they accept her?

She set to work. She had no shovel, but the soft earth gave way easily under her fingers, soft as goose down and cold. When she could no longer use her hands, she used a stick, a stone, until her mother’s urn settled gently into the space. It looked so forlorn there, lying against the dark earth. The soil was so cold. Gently, she scooped the dirt on top of the urn, watching it disappear slowly, until there was only a small mound to show where it had been. She placed a smooth, pale stone on top.

In that moment, with the whispering trees all around her and the verdant smell of undergrowth a heady vapor swirling about her head, Olive wanted nothing more than to lie down on the earth next to the mound, to feel herself sink into the reddish dirt. It would stain her skin the color of blood, but she didn’t care. She lay down anyway, relishing its cool touch. The smell of bruised, dying leaves and rain was the sweetest fragrance.

She looked up and saw nothing but a sea of green and gold, the leaves shifting and swirling in her vision, like vivid ballet dancers seen from the furthest seat. Dappled sunlight and shade flitted across her face, and she felt warm and secret and hidden. No more bright spotlights, no more pointed phone calls, no more penetrating pitying stares. She was alone, transported back to the beginning of it all. Olive lay next to her mother, and the soil covered them both.

And she finally slept.