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’I know the sun and the
moon. I know the stars. My aura bends and sways with slow
seasonal passage--oscillating between lucidity and madness.
And
still I bide my time.
My
skeletal fingers are black against a slate sky. I shift my
limbs. Thus do I make dour music using a keening wind which
scours the heath. Mistletoe shakes and acorns rattle in the
grey dawn like a thousand dry bones.
Surrounded by primeval bog I wait for the False Night, the
night-in-day that will free me, and I wait for my queen.
Memories are shadows of our past. These I call mine own:
Once, I held power in human hands. My people revered Mars
and Apollo, yet we called them by names now lost in the
mists of time. We knew the healing ways of plants. All the
animals and all the world under the blue sky was alive and
venerated by us.
Now my
queen, whom I served, sleeps at my feet and the talisman
which captured my soul, that essence that makes every man a
man, burns fiercely in my twisted oaken column.
I
tower over her sleep chamber. Unhewn stone slabs set
edgewise like the rotten teeth of an old crone support a
heavy capstone. The dolmen is covered with a tumulus of
sick earth. Limbs heavy with withered mistletoe, I stand
sentinel to my queen's ancient grave. My boughs provide
ample shadow for her grave during the day. At night, I
dapple it with lozenges of moonlight.
This
is an unholy site. I am alone on an island of coarse
bracken and open heath surrounded by limitless bog. A
prisoner, guarding a dead queen.
So I
make my music, day after day, while Isidora sleeps in the
cold earth below, safe inside her dolmen. Isidora, creature
of habit. When the sun sleeps under a blanket of stars she
crawls from her earthen womb, nostrils flared to scent
prey. She spreads her arms unto the night wind and flies.
When she returns she flutters to the damp ground at my
knotted roots. Bloated, she scrambles into her bower before
the pink dawn stings her flesh. There she sleeps, curled
like a cold knot of death as the red-life seeps from her
slack mouth (or if she fed well, the corners of her eyes)
and it is from this grisly font I drink with whiskered root
tips.
Throughout many centuries I have waited thusly with infinite
patience. I watch the sun and the moon and the stars. I
bide my time. (I prefer it this way because it reads better
to me and acts as an echo of the first sentence. –KMH)
A man
village lies beyond a tumble of blue hills to the south.
Last year, a party of men hanged a florid-faced man from one
of my sturdier branches. His hair was long and blond, his
beard muddy-brown. His blue eyes sparked with intelligence,
but my aura perceived his mind was somehow malformed and it
was this sickness that caused him to kill others.
His
executioners tied a red cloth over his eyes and bound his
hands and feet. As he swung helplessly, slowly strangling
to death, the village men returned to their ignorant wives
and filthy children.
When
the sun fell Isidora crept from her chamber and scaled me
like a cold insect. She paused, head crooked to study the
blindfolded man. --She was listening to his heartbeat. I
was afraid. She leapt and landed upon him. They swung like
a pendulum. Their combined weight tensioned the rope and I
creaked. Isidora climbed his body, her iron nails gouging
his skin. Maddened with animal lust over such a helpless
victim she gnawed and tore a ragged wound in his throat.
After filling her hollow veins she dropped to the ground and
licked her blood-slicked fingers. Satiated, she clambered
down the hewn steps of her underground nest of rotted tissue
and bone and horror.
These
memories are part of me. I wait and watch the sky. I bide.
O,
Isidora! Lifting my heavy limbs I lament her name on the
morning wind. The villagers sometimes call me the Wailing
Tree.
She
flies on the night winds, but has no memory. My long memory
is another cage I cannot escape. Myself, I can only move
with great effort. However, if I save my strength, restrict
my movements, then by channeling my energy I can make
gestures against the wind. A century ago, I brushed the
ground beneath me, sweeping the scaly involucre of dead
acorns.
Decades past I grabbed for Isidora with a green branch, but
she spread her bloodless arms and allowed the night breeze
to carry her away.
So
now, I drink from her, bit by bit, and gather my strength
for the False Night. My time draws near. My destiny has
come.
Isidora, of tangled hair and dark eyes, why did you forsake
me? You were my Queen and, though it was forbidden, I
cleaved unto you with all my love, though it was forbidden.
But you corrupted my heart with your lust for power. I did
as you begged, against my better judgement, and used all my
combined powers to call forth the Dark Ones. Even today,
frozen as I am, I shudder when I remember how our sacrilege
was discovered by your people. Toppled from power, I am now
trapped in a living coffin of oak, and your dead body flies
the night in search of the red-life of mortals. In this
way, we serve our life sentences.
Rage
boils the syrupy life-stream within my pith. My scream is
soundless. Isidora, look what you have wrought of me!
But
today...today I escape. This I vow. I know the sun and the
moon. I know the passage of seasons. For centuries I have
awaited this one perfect day. Isidora is a creature of
habit. That will be her downfall.
When
it begins my branches tremble with anticipation. The moon
shaves a sliver from the western limb of the sun. I wait.
Inexorably, the moon slides across the burning face of the
sun. The air grows chill. Birds seek their roosts.
Insects shrill uneasily. My aura perceives rippling waves
of light and shadow flickering over the heath from the
west. In the final seconds a great diamond flares between
the merging limbs of moon and sun.
The
sky draws dark. Stars twinkle overhead. A brilliant corona
suffuses this False Night. My aura perceives its intrinsic
beauty. My beloved Mars is in a noon sky studded with
stars.
My
queen my love! my Isidora! dead creature of habit, emerges
from the gloamy depths of her foul cell. She lifts her head
to catch a scent of prey. She is still flushed with her
last feeding. She has not had enough time to transmute the
stolen red-life in her veins into the demonic energies that
operate her limbs. She is sluggish,. Ffull of the red-life
that I need to escape my prison.
Standing on the hillock of her dolmen, white silk rags
billow from her body. Shadows marble her lovely face. She
raises her arms to catch the slight wind. I move.
I use
a supple branch, green and rich with virile sap. I whip it
around her columnar neck and draw her up towards hidden
tendrils lovingly cultivated over the long years. Her naked
feet scratch briefly at the ground then kick wildly. A
feral snarl twists her face into an unrecognizable mask.
She snaps and slashes her own lips to ribbons as I lash her
wrists and ankles with more capture tendrils.
I
fight with my queen. She is strong with red-life. I have
only minutes before the moon unveils the fierce sun. We
struggle, Isidora and me. We dance our wicked dance. When
Ifeel her beginning to shape-shift into mist to escape the
interlocking weave that binds her, I move my Spear into
place.
Such a
beautiful thing, my Spear! with an obdurate tip hardened by
pain and isolation. I pierce her wriggling body,and for the
first time in six hundred years memory floods her mind and
she shrieks my name.
"Camden!"
Her
scream is camouflaged by the raging music shaking from my
limbs. Red-life froths in a delicious fountain from her
throat. Runnels in my trunk divert the precious syrup to my
thirsty roots. Our battle wanes as shadow bands again fly
like ravens' wings over the desolate heath and lonely bog.
They streak and race east.
Concentrating my power I crush my queen's mind with a
terrible psychic blow. The mind-kill is complete.
Isidora's soul flees weeping from her Undead body and
fragments like ancient parchment. I have won.
I
lovingly wrap her body during the penumbra. Not a chink of
sunlight must reach the pallid flesh. I shift my limbs and
form her name on the stark wind. I have so much energy I
feel I can do anything, become anything.
The
world slowly awakens from the solar eclipse. The liberated
sun burns my bare limbs. I am content. Isidora's red-life
burns bright inside my pith. Her body is now safe inside a
giant cocoon of mistletoe high in my leafy boughs.
My new
aura perceives the reality of the world around me. There is
much I want to explore. Distant horizons of space and
thought and time. But, first, I must attend to the village
and meet the men there so I can learn what they know.
The
talisman that captured my soul burns deep inside me,
charring my core. I endure the pain and wait for nightfall
to transfer my consciousness from this oaken prison to
Isidora's empty vessel. Again I wait, but this time for my
freedom.
And
then I will shatter all that ever was, and be unleashed
forever upon the world.
--End-- |
