AND YOU SHALL HEAR

Harold sat down at the breakfast table, then glanced up with irritation at his wife Alice. She was angrily pulling back the curtains on the kitchen window by the table. “I don't understand how you can even consider destroying that tree,” she said, motioning out the window at the backyard. “It's so old – probably hundreds of years old.” She turned to face Harold, frowning. “In fact, I wonder if you even have the right to just get rid of it. There might be a law or something.”

Harold buttered a piece of toast and scowled. “I've already checked. It's on my property and I hate it, so I have every right to cut it down.”

Alice shook her head. “You can't own something like that tree, something so old. Think of the years it took for it to grow. It's not right to just chop it up!”

Harold dropped his toast onto the plate, accidentally sending the butter knife spinning, clattering to the floor. “For God's sake, Alice,” he said. “It's only a tree. A tree is a tree. What's growing out there is nothing but uncut firewood – and a lot of it, at that.”

Alice sank into the chair opposite Harold. “No,” she said urgently. “It's not just firewood. It's more than that.” She paused. “I know it sounds crazy,” she began again, hesitantly, “but when I'm out there near it, I feel things. It seems almost . . . alive or something.” Harold sat stone still, listening with amazement. “It's lived so long,” Alice went on, her voice soft, pleading. “Can't you understand how important that makes it?”

Harold laughed out loud. He knew what was important in life. He had a great job in an accounting firm. He made good money. These were the things that counted, the black and white realities of life.

He had no time for yard work, for fighting to push the lawn mower around the huge gnarled roots of that tree, for raking away the heavy wet mountains of leaves that covered the yard every fall. He hated that tree and the work it caused. And he was going to get rid of it. It was that simple, the only logical thing to do.

“I've already made arrangements with the tree service,” he said. “They'll be here on Monday. And, I'm taking the week off, just so I can enjoy it.” He gave a nod of finality to Alice.

“Well, I want no part of it,” said Alice, anger and resignation both showing on her face. “I'll be spending the week at my mother's. In fact, I'm going to call her right now.”

“You go right ahead,” said Harold, as she left the room. He smiled. No wife, no tree. Next week will be the most peaceful week of my life, he thought.

He raised his fork to take a bite of egg. Suddenly tree branches scratched across the windowpane with a nerve-jarring screech. Harold startled and a chill went through him. A cold presence seemed to fill the room. He laid his fork down and pushed his breakfast away, his appetite completely gone.

* * * * *

Early Monday morning, Harold watched through the sheer curtains in the living room as the taxi taking Alice to the airport turned the corner and disappeared. He smoothed thin strands of hair over his balding head, hiked his pants a little higher on his round middle and hummed to himself. It was almost time.

A big orange truck with a cherry picker and chipper attached pulled up about ten minutes later. Three tanned men in T-shirts and overalls came to the front door. “It's out back,” said Harold, stepping eagerly outside.

Unusually cold for September, thought Harold, then he noticed that the workmen didn't seem to feel it. He rubbed his upper arms as he led them around to the back of the house.

“There it is,” he pointed needlessly, then he shivered violently as a chilling tendril of air twined around him. It pinned him for a second with its piercingly cold grasp, as if icy hands touched him, gripped him. Then as suddenly as it had come, the cold was gone. Harold hugged his arms to his chest, then faced the tree with hostility in his eye.

The tree stood in the very center of the yard. Massive and ancient, it towered over the house. A maze of branches spread out in all directions, the lowest bowing halfway to the ground, creating a canopy effect. Dark green leaves, tinged with the first rosy-gold hints of autumn color, sparkled and glowed in the early morning sunlight, throwing shifting lace-work patterns of shadows over the whole yard. Harold, however, saw only a monster with a voracious appetite for his spare time.

He turned back to the three men as one of them gave a low whistle. Another walked across the yard and paced around the tree's huge girth. The third one gazed up until the back of his head touched his neck. Then he looked over at Harold and shook his head. “You sure you want that cut down, Mister?”

All three men turned to Harold, waiting for his answer. An eerie hush fell over the yard. The tree seemed to loom above him, suspicious and listening. Harold shook off an involuntary shudder at the unnatural silence, then rolled his eyes up in exasperation.

“Yes!” he shouted, his voice splintering the suspense. “Yes, I want it cut down! There are a million leaves up there just waiting to fall and lie knee-deep in this yard. I want that tree out of here, now!”

He stomped back to the house, muttering to himself. “Why is it so hard for everybody to understand that I want that tree out of my yard.” He slammed the door behind him. The men watched him go, then shrugged, and within minutes the roar and whine of chain-saws chewed up the quiet morning.

* * * * *

Very late that afternoon, Harold sat out on his patio studying the mess in his backyard, and feeling vaguely uneasy. He had to shade his eyes now against the bright glare of the setting sun. Pale mounds of sawdust filled the air with a sharp smell that made his nose itch and he could hear annoying sounds from the neighborhood and the highway three blocks over.

He squinted through the sunlight and frowned at the huge flat surface of the stump that now centered his yard. The yard was acutely empty now, of quiet and charm, of comfortable shade, disturbingly empty. And as Harold sat contemplating that emptiness, it seemed to gather around him as something almost tangible. It wrapped itself around him, thick, disquieting, unshakable . . . and cold.

All through the evening, as he sat before the T.V. with his frozen dinner, the chilling emptiness held him, gnawed at him. It followed him to bed, pricking at the back of his neck until he huddled under the blanket, trembling.

At last, he slept, but fitfully, and woke in a cold sweat, tossing, in the small hours of the morning. Grabbing his robe and slippers, he headed for the kitchen to get a glass of warm milk.

Going through the den, Harold suddenly stopped. He turned toward the windows and ran his hand nervously over his bald head. He felt a strong urge to see the treeless yard, now, at night. He was drawn to the window, unable to resist parting the curtains and peering out. His mouth dropped open at what he saw and an unnerving tremor ran down his back. Someone was in the yard sitting on the stump. A girl it looked like, dressed in a flimsy, white nightgown.

Harold closed his mouth and steadied himself. Who would be out at this hour of the night? He thumped on the windowpane. “Hey!” he yelled through the glass. But the figure on the stump didn't move.

Harold tightened up his robe, threw open the back door and stalked out onto the patio. He paused at the edge of the cement. “Hey!” he yelled again. “Get out of my yard!” But still there was no response.

“Hey you, are you deaf! This is private property!” Harold paused one moment more before he plunged slipper-shod into the wet grass, fists clenched at his sides as he stomped out across the lawn.

As he approached, grumbling, ready with threats, the pale figure stirred finally, slowly lifting her face that had been bowed down almost to her breast. Harold stood stark still before her, his anger snuffed out in an instant. He made only one small whimpering sound.

The face he saw before him was unimaginable. The eyes were round and as black and bottomless as a starless sky, as if all the light that entered those eyes was drowned in the dark sorrow that lay deep and heavy within them. Her hair was long and shimmered pale as moonlight. Her dress was strange, thin and gossamer; she shivered in the frosty night air.

“What do you want here?” asked Harold at last, his voice able to manage only a whisper.

“My tree,” she answered. Her voice was a warm summer night full of sweet perfume and regret for the coming of autumn.

“Your tree . . . ?” whispered Harold, not comprehending.

“My tree . . . is dying. I am dying.”

Harold stared at her for a long time before he spoke again. Maybe she was crazy, escaped from somewhere. He didn't understand her or her appearance in his yard and that irritated him. Hadn't he had enough trouble with this tree already. “You'll just have to find another tree somewhere else,” he said finally. “Now come on, I want you out of my yard.”

She shook her head, her long hair sweeping across her lap. Harold stuck out his broad stomach, fists clenched on his hips. “Come on now, Miss, or I'll have to call the police.”

She took hold of her skirt with long white fingers and pulled it up to her knees.

Harold gasped, looked away, then slowly looked back. His hands fluttered around his open mouth. The girl had no feet, only stumps just above where her ankles should have been.

“I can't walk,” she said simply, summer's warmth fading from her voice. “My feet are still there.” She moved aside and trailed her long fingers across the face of the stump.

Harold looked, and there embedded in the stump were two slender, ghostly white feet, glowing with pale luminescence within the somehow, now translucent wood, their severed tops matching exactly the jagged cut surface of the tree.

“Oh God,” said Harold. “Oh my God.” Cold horror rose in his gut, stood in goose bumps on his flesh. The first raw edge of understanding penetrated his mind. He closed his eyes, but even in his mind's eye, he saw. The white face, the round bottomless black eyes, the round bottomless white legs of her.

He had never, ever believed in . . . in what? He didn't even know what to call her. He knew numbers, things you could see in black and white. Round black eyes spilling over the white face in his mind.

He opened his eyes, startled. She was shivering hard, her head bowed down again, her arms wrapped around herself for warmth. Harold too was chilled. His feet were wet in the grass-stained slippers.

He didn't know what to do. He couldn't just walk away, leave her out here. At last, he lifted her in his arms and carried her into the house. She was light and brittle in his arms like a cut flower.

He laid her in his bed, piling blankets on her trembling body. He made hot tea to warm them both, but she wouldn't drink. He heated canned soup, but she wouldn't eat, and Harold found he couldn't stomach anything either. But at last, she stopped shivering and lay quietly, her eyes closed.

Harold pulled a chair up to the side of the bed. Her eyes opened slowly, then looked straight at Harold. “Why did you hate me so much?” she asked. In her voice was the sound of dry and crumbling autumn leaves.

Harold's eyes widened. His face burned. “Hate you . . . ?” he whispered. “It was the tree, I hated. Not you. I didn't know about you. It was just the tree.”

“I am the tree,” she said, and her voice was the wind stirring cold fallen leaves, rustling over brown grass.

“I didn't know,” said Harold, shaking. “I didn't know!” He jumped up and ran from the room, but there was nowhere to go, no place to hide from her. Her eyes, her face, black on white, were printed indelibly in his mind.

Soon, he slunk back to the chair by the bed. She seemed to be sleeping. He stared at her. There was not enough room in his mind to take in the beauty of that face. He covered his eyes with his hands and looked at her through his fingers, dividing her into more manageable fragments.

She seemed carved of alabaster, or marble, or ivory. The pristine arch of her brow above the pale violet eyelid. The fair feather of lash on white cheek. The round lips barely blushed. Hair lying like moonlight on the pillow. She lay very still.

Harold leaned close. Was she . . . ?

She stirred and moaned. Harold jumped back, startled. Her head began to rock from side to side. She doubled up, clutching at the ends of her footless legs, moaning louder and louder.

Harold groaned and knelt beside the bed. Vainly, he tried to comfort her, hold her, hush the dreadful moaning. Then she screamed a scream of raw pain, holding her legs, quivering, rocking.

Harold buried his face in the blankets and covered his ears. His fingers dug white into the flesh of his neck, and he began to cry. He wept as he never had in all his life; he wept for someone else's pain.

* * * * *

She died for days, slowly fading, blurring, the once sharply defined edges of her body slipping away into shadowy haze, as if out of focus. Her appearance changed to a vaporous transparency that became more and more nebulous each day. She seemed now to be sculpted of misted crystal or of cloudy melting ice.

And every day Harold tried to feed her, but she took nothing. He had no taste for food either, no hunger other than to sit and stare at her. Sometimes, he put a wet cloth to her lips, but he could not tell if it helped her.

Every day she rocked and moaned and screamed. And every day, she opened black bottomless staring eyes that were blinded by pain and asked, “Why did you hate me so much?” Her voice held the chill winter breath, the snapping of icicles, the touch of frost on frozen flowers.

And every day, Harold, a thinner shadowy Harold, pleaded on his knees beside the bed. He didn't hate her. He didn't hate her. No! How could she think that. He loved her. She filled every part of his mind with her pure whiteness, her moon-colored hair and black starless eyes. When she screamed, he wept.

As the days passed, Harold began to despair that she would ever hear him. If she would only hear him, she might come to understand, might even forgive him. He had nothing else to cling to but this small hope of forgiveness, as every day she stared unseeing in her pain, asking him over and over, “Why did you hate me?”

* * * * *

When she lay, after five days, like a hazy moonbeam barely visible upon the sheet, he saw her eyes open. He steeled himself for the torment, the questioning, his eyes pooling up. But her eyes turned to look at him directly. He knew instantly that this time would be different, perhaps this time she would listen. For a timeless moment she stared at him and then she spoke. Her voice came out brittle, snapping like dead twigs underfoot. “You said you love me?”

Harold fell to his knees beside the bed. “Yes!” He breathed it out with all his heart. Tears spilled over and ran down his stubbled cheeks. “I love you.” He took her glassy hand and held it. It lay like cold mist within his grasp.

She raised up a little and stared again at Harold. He felt as if her eyes were probing his heart. He quivered in shame, but held himself open before her until she laid back with a sigh as keen as river ice. “You are changed,” she said. “I feel the difference.”

“I am so sorry,” he said, sobbing. “I never knew.”

She watched him weeping for a time and the bitterness in her eyes seemed to soften a little. “Come,” she said at last, reaching out to touch his face with cold fingers, drawing him closer. “I will show you the truth, and you shall hear us.”

Harold bent close to her, not understanding, but willing to give her anything. Her fingers brushed his eyelids, her hands covered his ears. “Look,” she whispered, soft as the brush of snowflakes on windowpanes. “Look within me.”

He looked into her eyes and felt himself falling into the blackness of them, the bottomless blackness filling him, swallowing him, the room swirling far away, unnoticed, unimportant, lost to him. Deeper and deeper he fell into her mind until she filled him entirely and he lost himself in her.

Then, he walked through the world in a vision, seeing with her mind, and the world he saw was alive. Deep was the joy of its living, deep was the pain of its suffering. He saw the flowers whispering secrets to the wind, blades of grass swaying and laughing in their daily dance with the sun.

He saw the trees, felt the pulse of the life-sap in the heartwood as the beat of his own heart. He was one with them, the living trees, that breathed the air and drank from the earth, whose bodies lay felled like uncovered corpses beside the roads of men, the living trees that shrieked their silent screams into the wailing, biting howl of the chain saw.

Harold screamed, and jerked free of her, jolted back into himself by shock. Shocked to the core that they lived, that all of it was alive and felt and . . . and could feel! Harold slid backward from the bed and fainted.

* * * * *

When he came to, twilight had darkened the room and she was gone. Only a slight cold depression on the bed sheet showed where she had lain. Harold stood up as from a nightmare. She was gone, leaving him with a desolate emptiness.

He was weak, and trembled where he stood, wringing his hands, not knowing what to do. Then a breath of winter chill touched his mind, made him turn and look around in the darkened room.

Up in the far corner, near the ceiling, a mist floated, swirling slowly. It seemed to glow, like moonlight on icicles, sparkling with small starry bursts of brilliance.

Harold's heart beat wildly. She wasn't gone. And suddenly he knew that she might live again, if only she could get back to her tree in time. He must help her, show her the way.

“Come,” he whispered. “Come with me.” He reached out his arms and the mist came to him, sparkling at his touch, following his outstretched hands.

He led her to the door in the den that went out onto the patio. He felt dizzy and unsteady, his fingers almost too weak to turn the lock. At last, he held the door open, stepping aside as the mist floated by him, flowing out into the darkening yard, touching his mind with a bitter cold as it passed.

But the feeling that brushed his mind was not the cold of death, but of sleep, of the flame of life buried deep beneath the snowy blanket of winter. “You have given me the strength to sleep, and not die.” He heard the faint whisper in his mind as an icy wind rattling bare branches, but something else was there too, the hint of thaw, of budding leaves, of quickening sap, a promise of spring to come.

The pale mist floated across the yard, hovered a moment, faintly flickering like moonbeams seen through leaf-shadow, before it sank slowly down and disappeared, soaked down and into the stump. Harold watched as the stump glowed faintly from within, pulsing as the mist had, but slower, the light sinking deeper until it was gone into the roots and the earth.

And Harold understood that from those roots the tree would grow again. She would rest, gather strength, through the winter sleep. In the spring, he would watch for the new shoots, for the first fingers of her to reach out, stretching heaven-ward. He knew with a sureness in his heart that they would come.

He went back to the bed and laid face down in the place where she had lain. The murmuring of the fern on the windowsill to the violet across the room calmed him, lulled him into sleep. Far into sleep he fell, and never heard the phone that rang and rang and rang.

* * * * *

He woke slowly, hearing voices. To his left, he caught bits of conversation, one voice unknown, another familiar, “. . . will he be alright . . . I was so afraid . . . couldn't wake him.” On his right he heard a low moaning, like someone in pain.

He turned his head toward the familiar voice and slowly, heavily, opened his eyes. He saw Alice in the doorway with a white-coated man who was saying, “He'll be fine . . . needs rest . . . mostly it was exhaustion . . . hadn't eaten . . . .” They went into the hall, the swinging door closing behind them, cutting off their voices.

The soft moaning continued from behind Harold. He turned over toward it, still feeling groggy. He realized then, as his eyes swept over the room, that he was in a hospital bed. He sat up weakly and turned to face the sound.

A single cut rose stood in a vase on a bedside table. Harold put his feet over the edge of the bed and sat beside it, holding very still for a moment as dizziness passed over him. The moaning was definitely coming from the rose.

Harold put out his hand and stroked the flower gently with one finger. It whimpered a little, then sighed and was quiet. Harold swallowed at the lump in his throat and put his hand over his mouth to hide the quivering in his lower lip. So, it was all true, he thought.

He got up from the bed, slowly walked the three steps to the window, and looked down at the green expanse of lawn several floors below. Alice came in and he turned to face her. Somehow her face was strange to him, as if he expected to see only black eyes in a pale moonlit face. He closed his eyes for a moment to steady himself.

“Harold!” she said, as she came around the bed to him and hugged him. “What happened to you? The doctors said you hadn't eaten for days.”

Harold looked away from her blue eyes that he could not quite be comfortable with. What could he possibly tell her. “I got sick,” he said, after a moment. “Couldn't keep anything down.”

“You should have called me to come home.”

Harold shrugged and turned to the window. “I didn't realize how bad it was.”

“Harold,” she said softly, “you really scared me.”

He turned back to her, surprised by the caring in her voice, surprised next to see it in her eyes. Suddenly the love he had learned to feel for the tree maiden was welling up in him again for Alice, reawakening love long forgotten, pushed aside by years of misunderstandings.

“Alice,” he said, pulling her close, remembering what she had said about the tree that seemingly long ago morning at breakfast, realizing that she might understand. “It was the tree. I made such a terrible mistake. It was alive. I . . .”

Suddenly, from outside, below the window, a lawn mower roared to life. Harold jerked away from Alice and turned frantically back to the window.

“Harold?” said Alice. “What is it?”

Harold faced her with round haunted eyes. “I . . . I need to go home.” He reached out and gripped her by the shoulders, speaking urgently. “I need to go home now!” He was starting to shake. “Please, find the doctor, tell him I need to leave.” He pushed her toward the door. “Hurry!”

“Okay, okay. Calm down. I'll get the doctor.” She moved away slowly, looking back at him as if he was crazy until finally the door swung shut behind her.

Harold pressed his hands over his ears, tears stung his eyes. He tried to take deep breaths; he had to calm down. He couldn't let the doctors see him like this, no one must ever know what he could hear. How could he tell them, how could they believe, that down below, out on the lawn, he could hear the grass screaming.

The End

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