The Wishing Pyre

The development of one’s lifetime personality and behaviour is predominantly shaped in their childhood through events largely out of their control- the core belief of Freud’s theory of psychosexual development. 

The towering sycamore was awoken at first light, this day as all others since before it could remember. As for what it could remember, it recalled the learning that a morn’s new light meant a new day. It summoned the crowing of the cockerels and the stirring of the animals and automatons from their slumbers. The sycamore could not recall its age, some several centuries at the very least. It wondered how many of those days it had let pass it by, how many it had been mentally dormant for; sleeping while awake. But now, the sycamore awoke at first light rumbling with new purpose and desire. Desire that burned beneath its new skin and threatened to erupt from within.

Soon after the sycamore’s wake, the automatons rise each morning in a semi-consistent order, emerging from their houses into the foggy streets of this village nestled in nowhere. The sycamore wondered if the village had grown recently, or if it was just the renewed awareness of the repetition of time that made it feel so.

Regardless of whether it had or had not grown- the village remained small, some hundreds living in their sectioned homes. The village had one cramped road that streaked from around one hill and up over another, leading to the same foggy horizon whichever direction the sycamore looked. The road did have some few side roads, but they all ended at woodland or looped back to the main road or, better yet, woodland paths that looped back to another road. The sycamore wondered if the village would look like a big tree itself when seen from above, but the sycamore did not know; it was tall, but not that tall. Only the birds that nested under the shade of its broad branches knew that secret, and so a secret it would stay; the sycamore did not understand birdsong.

 The villagers that lived there were as cogs, constant in their daily doings and anchored in their habitat: this quiet village hidden amongst hills. It was this habit of mechanical repetition that earned them their nickname of automatons from the sycamore. Their skin was a strangled shade of dark blue and as coarse as stone, similar in rigid formation too as if melted over their skeleton. Their eyes were lustreless, as if sat in their sockets merely because they had nowhere else to go. The young are often a different picture, with a shine in their eyes and a hearty glow radiating through the cracks in their stone skin akin to the glow of fire. But, in varying time, their eyes lose their shine and their radiance is subdued back below the skin.

They were the only company the sycamore had ever known aside from the farm animals and local birds. They displayed higher thought and, unlike the birdsong, the sycamore could understand their language. The passing conversations of acquainted automatons and strangers rustled through its branches each day. It was these interactions that taught the sycamore of the village, of the world beyond the hills, the recent large and small happenings, and of the automatons themselves. They would speak of their joyous breakthroughs and their spiteful gossip, not always in equal measure. As the tree aged, the sycamore found it less valuable to listen to small conversation. From the self-contained automatons, the sycamore learned the value of reservation and took on a quiet nature. Not that it could communicate back with the automatons anyway.

The sycamore wondered if all people beyond the hills were like them too.

The sycamore recalled a pair of children, boy and girl, who used to sit under its shade and read books of varying topics and interests. The boy would trade stories of heroes and knights with the girl’s stories of endless oceans and glowing concrete jungles spanning horizons. The sycamore recalled a time, decades ago at least probably, of the children reading a historic chronicle the girl had found about the surrounding moorlands and settlements. Perhaps this reading was the origin of the interest the sycamore now felt towards the world beyond its hills, though it didn’t feel the same at the time, it reflected.

The girl spoke excitedly to her companion as she skimmed through the pages pertaining to the known and hidden woodland paths, past the pages dedicated to the historic attractions and milestones. She knew what she was looking for: The history of the village she lived in. The boy listened as to appease her, but he was a shade more interested in the songbirds nested high above him. The sycamore never had eyes like them to see the world beyond its bark, but saw it did. The automatons never spoke of the sycamore, nor in any nature to indicate that it was like them. But even still, even then, the sycamore couldn’t help but wonder if that boy was looking beyond the birds and the bark; looking at the sycamore’s self.

Once the girl did find the singular page chronicling the history of her village, she hurried the boy to her side, eager to tell him the tales of their home. Like a novice student of drama, she began to speak loftily, announcing how the records of the village’s beginnings and early culture had been lost to pre-history. As her child mind began to break down and understand what she was reading, her enthusiasm slowly drained. She spoke of how the first remaining records were written by foreign conquistadors who accidentally happened upon the hamlet. They did not know who the territory belonged to, only that the huts were indeed there, and that their fields were indeed razed.

By now, the girl’s enthusiasm had been weighed back down into her by disappointment and difficult words- the glow beneath her skin waning slightly. She reached the end of the page, where the unknown writer recorded that now- whenever that was- the village was receding back into the hillside landscape so quietly it was almost unnoticeable. The page ended stating that now nothing moved within the village other than the ripples upon the pond from deer lapping water. An illustration covered the bottom half of the page; there was great little to be said of this place.

The sycamore had recalled a term from another passing conversation long ago that it felt applied itself to this writing… yes, romanticised. The image of deer freely moving around the village, drinking from water shared with the villagers; it was an alluring visage no doubt. Still, the sycamore felt the words were not without their bite. The sycamore learned that, and kept it to memory.

The boy gave a genuine yet imperfect attempt of heartening the now disappointed girl, to uncertain success. The two left the sycamore’s sight together, likely bound for the playground.

The sycamore suddenly stopped seeing the girl after some point in time. The boy, now markedly older, would sometimes come alone to nostalgically bask in the sycamore’s shade, for a time. Eventually, the sycamore stopped seeing him too. The sycamore assumed they had managed to journey beyond this village; likely not by their own decisions, but the sycamore hoped otherwise. The sycamore knew not of the lands beyond these hills, but he was optimistic that the two would be richer for the experience, together or not, beyond his sight.

The sycamore hoped the people beyond the hills were like them.

The sycamore had never really understood the travelling the automatons undertook; they led journeys that always ended where they began- back to the village. But once his most favoured company was deprived from him… the sycamore almost wished that he too could move.

The girl’s recounting had aroused a fractured memory from within the sycamore to bubble into its conscious. The memory was merely a frozen image from the sycamore’s sapling infancy what must be centuries ago at least. In this frozen memory, the sycamore is only as tall as a dandelion, with shallow roots and low to the dirt. The ground is ashen and the clouds are heavy. What could only be an unseen flame casts a saffron light upon the stone brick wall of a long-felled farmhouse. The memory felt true; the sycamore was born in the razing of the fields.

In time, this thought grew to wondering about origin of the other trees that covered this hills and sheltered the paths. Did they too think as it did itself? How old were they? The sycamore understood that it was older than most by a considerable margin; even though some were very tall for their ages, none were as tall as the sycamore was now. But then the sycamore noticed a detail; one that had been present to the sycamore for an unascertainable amount of time and provoked a wealth of thought and reflection. Their bark was different. Or it would be more accurate to say that the sycamore’s bark was different from every other tree.

The sycamore could not recall a memory where its bark was the focal point, and so could not recall when it may have changed, if it had been sudden or gradual. The sycamore only knew that it had not always been like this. Its bark now mimicked the skin of the automatons: the same strangled shade of blue and coarseness of rock. Beneath the cracks in its cliff-like hide no fiery glow escaped, but the sycamore did feel something beyond those jagged seams. It felt like its own consciousness was beyond the cracks, inside of it, like a physical construct.

When? How!? How had I not noticed sooner, the sycamore now thought, aloud. Aloud? The sycamore could have sworn it had heard a voice. Its own voice.

In the period of time that followed, a week or a month or a year, the sycamore’s thoughts were stolen away from the immediate hills and enraptured on the focus of itself. In some way, it was unique, it understood that. It also assumed the likelihood of the other trees being as mindful as itself was very unlikely: with the amount of trees around the valley, surely one would have attempted some form of communication if given mind. Or so the sycamore assumed, knowing full well that it never made such an attempt itself.

In the following period of time, a week or a month or a year, a malignant pattern of thought began to creep into the sycamore’s wonderings. Whether the infection was sudden or gradual was not a topic on the sycamore’s mind, nor was the infection to begin with: the contagion of regret.

The sycamore had began reflecting on its life up until that point. Initially, its focus was on how it had grown: the milestones of its height, the stretching span of its branches. Then the malignancy took root, and the sycamore began to reflect on how many hours, how many years it had spent idle, its mind unfocused as if staring into space. It cursed its lost comprehension of time, uncertain of the spans of chronology between the few lifetime milestones it could recall. Truly, the sycamore loathed the lack of ability to use a precise measurement of lost time to chastise itself, though to what end even it was uncertain.

If I had been more aware of this before, it thought, maybe I could have achieved something. Maybe even…maybe I could have gone with them. The sycamore knew its own voice now from its time in self-reflection. It was indeed its own voice. It echoed distantly from beyond the cracks in its strangled stone skin. With the passing of inconceivable time, the voice grew less regretful and mournful and more…angry. Furious. It spoke like fire.

The sycamore had lost interest in observing the automatons in this period, so it took no heed of their avoidance of the tree. They had spoke of the unsettling feeling that emanated now from the sycamore, rumours that it could make passersby ill. Some talked about felling the ancient tree, but the inevitable dilemma of the potential damage to surrounding houses in the felling was often enough to dampen the topic. The tree was immeasurably large, after all. These conversations reverberated through the sycamore’s branches and died without being taken into its mind. They were not its concern.

The sycamore had reflected on the villagers however, about their temporary pilgrimages out of the village specifically. Seeing as its own bark was now alike to the automaton’s skins, the sycamore shifted perspective and instead compared the villagers to itself. Where the sycamore’s roots were physical, the roots of the automatons bound to this village were in responsibilities: responsible for their homes, for their children, for themselves. It was for these reasons that they had to return. 

The sycamore had no such responsibilities; it could leave and never return. It could seek out the endless oceans and the glowing concrete jungles selfishly and the village would be at no loss. All that rooted it here in this “receding” village was physical. It just had to move. If its very bark could change to something so unnatural, surely it could uproot itself.

This purpose stirred the centuries of dormant desire within the sycamore to a rumble. Then to a roar. The cracks between its stony bark began to glow, to radiate heat. Each morning at first light, the sycamore woke for this purpose, rather than being awoken. It cared not if it betrayed all it had learned: The value of reservation, the romanticised nature around it. It was defiant. It burned with desire to see beyond the hills for itself. To see what they had seen. It focused itself on the passing wind rustling its branches; the vibrations that ran through its boughs and into its trunk. Just move.

Centuries of dormant desire…

This morning was especially chill. The clouds of mist rolled through the streets of the village and bit at the automatons stirring from their homes, eating what warmth they had themselves. The children were all up early again, bundled up like presents by their parents to protect them from the vampiric fog. The kids were not accustomed to rising this early, but the pyre was still burning. They didn’t know how long it would still be burning for, and it was a sight they wanted to take in as much as they could, as to never forget it even in their adult years. The adults had little interest, they had places to be.

In a side street of this village nestled in nowhere, the children gathered at early light just to watch the great pyre and absorb its warmth. Their village’s ancient sycamore was aflame and burning brilliantly. Its bark beneath the fire was charred to obsidian, and the ground around it had cracked and parted where the sycamore’s roots had tensed and contracted. Jets of fire pulsed from the bark beneath and sent heatwaves out to the children, hands outstretched, taking in the heat beneath their own stony skin.