This is a short story I wrote some years ago. It was my fist competition success, being longlisted in the 2005 short story category of the Yeovil Prize. It was a turning point for me. The moment I realised that maybe I really could write!! I've never found a home for it, and so I thought I might as well share it with you here. Enjoy...
The Trees
By Kate Kelly
The trees stirred. They stretched their roots, probing into the cool damp soil, and their branches sighed in the breeze, leaves shivering in the moonlight. Woodland creatures, badger, fox, passed by beneath and an owl hooted gently from above. The trees had been here as long as anyone could remember. The trees had been here for a hundred years.
#
The tree-people came. Ed walked into the clearing and dropped his rucksack onto the leaf mould. He flicked his blonde dreadlocks out of his eyes and stared around. Fionnula came up beside him.
“This is the place,” he announced grandly, and Fionnula smiled at him. She reached out tentatively and touched the bark of one of the trees, smooth and golden. Then she put her arms around the trunk in fond embrace.
“Hello tree,” she said.
Ed suppressed an urge to laugh. She was a daft girl, whimsical. He would tire of her soon enough. For now though it thrilled him that he had enticed her away from her wealthy professional parents and her boarding school education, to run away with him to save some trees, and to live like a tramp in the woods. He knew how much they hated him for this and the thought was delicious.
Others now entered the clearing, a motley assortment of people, mostly unkempt, mostly young. The dropped their bags and burdens onto the damp earth and gazed around at the trees towering above them.
“Is this it?” one of them asked, turning to Ed; a tall bearded man with heavily tattooed arms. “Is this where the bypass is going to come?”
“No,” giggled Fionnula, still hugging her tree, lank mousy hair pressed against golden bark. “Because we’re not going to let them. We’re going to save these trees.”
Ed glanced over towards her. She was humming gently to herself, still embracing the tree and swaying slowly against it in rhythm to her song. He smiled. She was high, still tripping from the night before, which they had spent in a bus shelter, dusty and stinking of urine. You had to get high in a place like that to forget the cold and the grim reality of the city.
He gazed up at the trees, eyes squinting at the sunlight which filtered down between the shimmering leaves. The he turned towards the others. The bearded man was also looking around.
“Odd looking trees,” he remarked.
“They’re lovely trees!” Fionnula called across, still cuddling bark. The bearded man shrugged.
“No time to waste,” said Ed, stepping forwards, demanding their attention, taking charge. “We’ll start work now. Build our shelters high up in the branches, and rope walkways between the trees. That way we’ll be impregnable. They’ll never be able to shift us!” The people nodded in assent and set to work.
#
The trees stirred. Something was changing. They pressed their roots deep into the soft earth, but the badgers and foxes had fled. Strange creatures were moving in their branches, large blundering creatures. Nails pierced, axes severed. The trees shifted their boughs.
#
Ed kissed Fionnula and they made love beneath the stars, their passion fuelled with amphetamine. Then they lay, side by side in the long meadow grass, staring at the sky and the moon, rising, full and golden behind the copse.
“A harvest moon,” murmured Ed and Fionnula giggled by his side.
“Our trees look so beautiful in the moonlight,” she sighed, stretching in the grass and summer flowers. Ed sat up and started searching his pockets for a smoke. That had been all right as far as sex went, but he wasn’t really in the mood for one of Fionnula’s dreamy conversations. She continued: “They’re funny looking trees mind. What sort of trees do you suppose they are?”
“How should I know.”
“Oh I guess you wouldn’t. You probably don’t get many trees on council estates.” She giggled again.
Ed tired of her in that instant. He had always known he would. She was a silly and naïve girl, daughter of a wealthy city trader, and the thrill had been the look of hate in her fathers eyes as he saw Ed standing there, hand in hand with his precious offspring. He stood up without a word and started walking back towards the copse, leaving her lying amongst the meadow flowers, humming to herself in the moonlight.
She was right about the trees though. They were a bit strange, the golden bark and shimmering leaves which reflected the sunlight with an inner iridescence. Their branches were stirring beneath the stars as he climbed the rope ladder into their treetop shelter; a makeshift construction cobbled together from corrugated iron and wood, both scavenged and stolen. He hated to admit it, even to himself, but he was much more like Fionnula than she would ever know. He had never set foot on a council estate and had grown up in the countryside. So it was odd that he couldn’t identify these trees. He sat down on the stained and threadbare rugs beside the stove, pulled out a piece of wood he had cut from one of the trees, and his hunting knife, and began to whittle, noticing as he did so, the glow of the bark, the hardness of the wood, and the sap seeping like blood over his fingers as he carved. These were indeed strange trees.
After a while Fionnula appeared at the top of the rope ladder, scrambled over to sit beside him and rested her head on his shoulder. He found himself wishing that she would go away. The branches were swaying and the whole shelter was rocking gently back and forth.
“I think there’s a storm coming,” she murmured. He ignored her and carried on whittling. “It’s odd, ‘cos there’s no clouds. It’s a storm without clouds.” She smiled to herself, eyes half closed.
“Silly girl,” thought Ed.
Then, suddenly, someone screamed; a piercing scream in the night, a cry of sheer terror that ended abruptly, as if at the flick of a switch. Ed dropped his knife and his carving and Fionnula sat bolt upright beside him.
“What was that?” she whispered, eyes wide with alarm. Ed listened intently. There were no more screams but now he could hear a hubbub of voices, shouting in the darkness, and the sound of someone or something crashing through the undergrowth. Ed swore under his breath.
“Bailiffs. That’s what. Curse them. I didn’t expect them to come so soon –or in the middle of the night!” He rose and moved towards the rickety door. The shelter was swaying more than ever and he reached out a hand to steady himself.
“Oh, bad karma,” Fionnula wailed behind him. He paid her no heed and stepped out into the darkness. He peered into the gloomy shadows below. He could both hear and see people rushing back and forth. The camp was in a commotion. All was chaos. Then something struck him from behind
#
The trees stirred. They pressed their roots deep into the moist meadow soil. They stilled their rocking branches, and a new suite of nutrients enriched their sap. A deer paused beneath, nibbled at the long grasses that lapped against the trunks of the trees as waves lap at the shore, and went on its way. The copse was tranquil in the moonlight.
#
The engineering contractors arrived with the dawn, and with a police escort. The police went on ahead into the wood, but the copse was deserted. The Head Engineer watched as the Inspector walked slowly through the long grass between the trees. There was no-one there. The tree people had gone. He returned to studying his charts and maps, standing some distance from the trees, on an area of rough and muddy ground
“Hello. What’s this?” he said, stooping, and picked something up from the mud and compost by his feet. He looked at it closely. “It’s a wallet!” He flicked it open and quickly inspected the contents, pulling out a single card for a closer look. “Hmm, driving licence. ‘Edgar Smythe’.”
“Edgar Smythe? Isn’t that that MP’s son who went missing?” The Head Engineer turned towards the Inspector, intrigued. The story had been all over the papers a few months back.
“Yes indeed. Son of the Tory Minister of Transport. Disappeared from Cambridge just before his law degree finals.” The Head Engineer peered over the inspector’s shoulder at the picture on the driving licence. A fresh faced young man, smiling and cheerful, blonde hair cropped short. No sign of the dreadlocks which he later wore with such pride.
“So I guess he was among the protesters,” the Engineer remarked, and laughed briefly at the irony. “Odd he should have left his wallet.”
“Probably just dropped it in the rush to leave.” The Inspector said with a shrug. The Engineer smiled and glanced around. The churned earth was littered with the debris of human habitation, wood and rope half buried, a sheet or two of corrugated iron, some stained and threadbare rugs, even a makeshift stove and a pair of jeans. “Look at the mess, all the rubbish they’ve left behind!” He snorted and turned back to consulting the plans and scratched his head. He consulted his plans again.
“Everything OK?” the Inspector asked.
“Come and take a look at these plans.” The Head Engineer spread them out over the bonnet of his car and the men leaned forwards to study them. “I don’t know who the surveyors were that they used to draw these plans up but, see here, they’ve got the trees in completely the wrong place.”
The Inspector peered closer. “Oh yes.”
The Engineer sighed and looked round at his men, waiting to start work. “Looks like I’m going to have to tell these fellows they’re not needed.” He sighed again and glanced towards the copse, branches stirring gently in the breeze on the hillside.
“Odd looking trees,” he thought.
#
A long time ago, after drifting for aeons through the emptiness of space, the spores had finally come to rest on fertile ground. The trees have been here for a hundred years. And these trees can look after themselves.
END
© Kate Kelly 2009