The Woods' Whisperer

What if trees could talk? How many wonders do you think lie there? How many secrets have people whispered to the woods and how many secrets have actually been heard?

There’s an old legend in my hometown, how old? you would ask, as old as the old wood.

A man that grew up as a tree, he would not speak in the language you and I are talking right now, nor move, he just laid there under the good sun, and at night he would walk between the trees, you would mistake him for a pine or a cedar, not a baobab, he's slim like the trunks of the darkest trees. You could walk past him and never notice, but then realize the pine is moving. Son of a very young lady and a very violent man, he was left in the forest, left to die, alone with no one else, a newborn, yet he lived to be of very old age. That I know, the story has been around before the eldest man was born, the Whisperer must not humane, perhaps his father was an old god or his mother a nymph, or maybe he was granted the gift of longevity. They say once two siblings got lost in that ocean of trees, someone whispered the way out, it was believed to be one of those creatures, you know? Those faes, or even spirits, someone from the other world. But it was none of that, that voice was the woods whisperer, that man I told you about. It has happened more than once, a group of scouts, a couple that got lost in their way to a camp center, he's always there, he perdures. Nobody knows how he survived, for as long as his will lives on, it must remain a secret, that’s a story he keeps to himself. How people know about him then? Some claim to have seen a tree with eyes, some claim to have seen a man standing still in the place where sunlight touches the treetops, some claim they must have hallucinated his image due to being extremely frightened. Me? Oh, he’s real, real but greatly exaggerated.

The most popular song about that legend is one that went something like:

Oh the man of the trees

that grew to be like them

not a man but not a tree

oh man of the trees 

A bit repetitive, not a piece of poetry but it’s a popular song in these towns, that's just part of the chorus, you can ask the kids on the river town nearby for the full song. Based on that song trees actually raised the whispered to be like them, to settle roots, to grow leaves entangled in his beard, to stand still, and to listen to what the woods have to say.

There are three rules for entering the woods: first, always follow the path, or you might get lost in the woods. Second, don’t turn around, if you do you are gonna start doing it and you are gonna put your panic in the hands of the wood, we’ve lost too many to paranoia. And third, if you hear the breeze making its way through the trees, listen, listen because it might be the whisperer and that means that you are lost and helpless at this point. Those are the three- you know what? I’m actually going to put a fourth one there, when you’ve finally gotten out of the woods, say “thank you“ maybe he didn’t help you at all, but the woods do not pardon anyone with freedom, if you made it, you received some help, some kind, and it should always be welcomed.

But he does not only help lost villagers, several times have people with much richness come to us, talking of opportunities and economy, we people from the river never cared much about that cursed paper that makes people forget they are supposed to act like people, not like the flower that does not grant the woods its beauty by not blooming. Of all of us, he, the one that never felt too much like a human, was the one that did the most for us, he would go around the forest making the axes incapable of cutting through wood, or making those big land crushers fail and burn themselves to ashes. He lives for the woods, it’s his home, maybe it’s even part of him, we’ll never know, oh man of the trees, wonderful specimen rejected by the creation, what secrets have your leaves heard.

About him, he knows everything, but boy don't ask him questions that have never been answered, there's a reason for their absence, there's a reason some mysteries must remain mysteries, if we knew half the things he guards, we'll know too much, he guard what's been said in the woods, what trees knows, because it would be too much for us, and why would a simple mortal like you want to know everything? There's no way we'll take it, we cannot pursue his knowledge. It is rumored that he learned the language of the trees, his fathers, the rumor from the flowers, his mothers, and the whisper from the wind itself. He speaks to them in a language we have not listened before, and one that we'll never understand. Some say he is the heir to the woods, the son of Mother Earth, some that he actually wants to lure us into the depths of his woodland, some that he's not real and a product of scared foreigners' imagination.

But boy, legends are just that, bedtime stories to keep people out of the area, there will be a time when the Whisperer will become a myth, the songs will be forgotten, and his existence will get lost in time. Now I won't entertain you more, go sleep and in the morning you'll leave. Oh, and another thing, just because, don't forget to say thank you on your way out.