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Tranziltor Park: roots (2/7)
copyright (c) JMD, 2006
Madring stood upon the root of the Giant, the one which dwarfed all other trees of Shadewood -- that forest of uncertain shadow and questionable growth, avoided by those who lived outside its voracious acres. Its emerald innards had risen to infamy, and throughout the ages fear had taken that disrepute and inflamed it to magnificent proportions. That was why Madring was here, in this place, this dark wood of nightmarish fable, huddled now upon the root of the Giant, scrutinizing the flock of crows that had just then landed upon the unrivaled canopy above him.
“blak, blak, caw-blak!” he chortled at them, shaking his gnarled fist. Drool dribbled through his thin lips, escaping the dankness of a rotted mouth full of black teeth. He wiped his face clean with the meager rags clinging to his bony arm and, stretching at the crows now, cawed violently from his throat and scared them to flight.
His cackle echoed across Shadewood, and he patted the Giant companionably. He leapt from the root as deftly as a man with crooked legs could, landing flat-footed and abruptly. He bent double, an exercise that sent electric pain down his back, and retrieved a knotted staff from the ground. Somewhere a fox yipped, a gentle breeze caressed Madring’s face, and the sun burst forth from behind a mass of congested cloud.
Too many years had he been living, in this damnable wood, cuddled close to soil and brook and mossy stone. A hundredfold he had seen the leaves die, exploding in color before giving up in graceful flutter to melt into the mud of the earth. He was the last one, he knew, the last druid of old, sore and hurting and waiting to die. But death, dear death, did she come for him as she did the leaves? Not once! Not ever! But her sister pain was ever close, and sorrow too, that frail cousin of unbidden tear and tender heartache. And how he had begged her, sweet death, to come; lamenting at the side of creek, singing softly to the northern face of lichened boulder. Again and again he had seen her, dancing through Shadewood on the wings of ending Autumn; he had beseeched her on bended knee, with sobs of utter futility, imploring her with the sum of his being to take him with her when she left. But her reply had ever been the same:
“Not now, ancient one, but perhaps next year you will see Beyond,” and her silver hair encircled her pale, white, rapturous face, “Alas! We are destined to meet, but forbidden the touch, forbidden the release! I cannot!”
To tree and bush she would then whisk off, at last ending with the Giant, cooing and chiding its garments away, stripping it naked until it stood unashamed to face the ice of winter. Always the resistance from this tree, this one of monstrous magnitude, how it shuddered in protest and shivered in denial. But it knew, yes it knew, that she would win, and with a final creak of opposition it would cry its leaves off its proud, strong boughs.
How Madring wished he were a tree! Then she would take him! He made countless attempts to turn himself into such, at the quivering moment of expectant spring, covered by fresh sprigs of dandelion and tiny buds of the oak tree, writhing beneath his self-made grave of sprouting life, trying beyond all measure to be what he knew was innately impossible. He was no tree. He was a man. A druid, and the last one at that.
As such, his soul had attached itself irreversibly to the land, the entire land, the whole breadth and width of the vast blue ball of Earth that spun on skewered axis around the brilliant sun. He felt the cracks that covered its surface, the plates that shifted and groaned and broke into each other, the violent eruption of volcano and unrelenting rage of tornado. The pestilence and hunger of all vegetative life, the out-crying urge of all flora to end! To end! Oh, what had happened so long ago to curse them into a perpetual state of such desirous self-cessation? Consequently, Madring had the self-same urge, and for some reason he had not died like all the other druids -- and oh, how blessed those others were! What fortune had found them!
Madring hobbled around the giant, patting its trunk over and over as though consoling the wooden behemoth. “Yes, yes, I will sing it for you, child, but just once today, my body aches, my eyes are dim,” and he smiled, his whole face splitting in two. He let out a hack of congealed phlegm and sighed deeply before beginning a song writ eons ago beneath the unseen crevices of shadowed glade.
His body sagged as the lilting words tripped out of his mouth, his voice a rough scratching noise, tuned though, to the music of his cracked soul. He finished with a sweeping motion, as though with this act he could cover the Giant in slumber and let it sleep forever. Thus ended The Visible Sorrows of Untread Places, one of his favourite melodies. The Giant hummed deeply, from down beneath its far-reaching roots. Madring beat his head thrice against the hard bark, murmuring sullenly beneath his putrid breath. When? Oh, when?
Suddenly he felt a shifting. But a shifting so strong that he knew this was no mere intruder -- not some lost soul who had dared to wander into Shadewood, not the accidental straying of a fearless idiot...
“Madring,” the voice was a small girl’s, one that he had not heard since...since the others had been alive...since he had been just as young as the possessor of the voice.
“Etherea,” he sputtered, and waddling around he beheld the darling guardian of woods. Her hair was the fine silk of spider web, so soft, floating away from her head as though she were under water. Seeds were in that hair, tiny dots of silver, and they fell in wisps of light as the girl tread across the forest floor on silent feet. She wore a cloak of leaves, green now, sometimes they were red and orange, Madring remembered, and her eyes...striking black ponds of dark water, always flaring up blue, then yellow, then some other bright color. Her arms were bare and smooth and waxing ivory, and the smile...ah, the sweetness of innocence, the joy of youth.
“He wishes me here,” Etherea spoke quietly, motioning to the tree, “for your sake.”
Madring could hardly contain the excitement, his chest swelled, and he looked up at the Giant with tears in his eyes. He whispered his thanks.
“You are sad,” the girl noted, her voice emphatic.
“Yes,” Madring affirmed. “For many, many years now.”
Etherea turned and took in the Shadewood with her dark, liquid eyes. The entire surroundings shimmered, called out, shouting and cheering at her blessed arrival.
“I wonder...” she said, and looked back at Madring with seeds wisping from her hair.
“I want to go!” Madring fell to his knees. He ignored the pain that shot up them, and continued, “I want to go! I need to die! Don’t you see how long I have been waiting? Oh, forever, Etherea, forever, and I know you can call her for me, you can let her take me!” And then he wailed bitterly, for he couldn’t contain anything anymore, he had lost so much will power.
“Oh, my precious Madring,” the girl consoled, kneeling down beside the crippling druid. She placed a delicate hand on the old man’s matted head, stroking gently, soothing him with kind words. She wiped the tears from his face, every one and, curiously, placed them on her lashes.
“I will take these from you this day,” Etherea’s face cracked. Her smooth child-face broke and pain shot across her visage. “She is coming,” she whispered, “she is coming...”
“Oh!” Madring began to shake. He couldn’t believe it.
“But not death, druid, not death.”
Madring fell. New tears rose up, but Etherea caught them on elegant finger and pressed them again onto her own eyes.
“If not death, then who?” the old man bit back anger.
“Oh, he is much more than death, Madring, much more. He is life!”
Bewilderment caught hold of the druid and would not let him go. There was something to this, something he was missing, a mystery, he could feel it, as surely as he could feel the eternal mourning of earth that rocked and shattered his soul. Life? He was life? Not death? Well, what of death then?
“Life?” he blurted out his thoughts.
“Yes, life!” Etherea laughed. “He is being delivered to you...at this moment!”
“Where? Where? Where is...he?” Madring began to fumble about, glancing around wildly when he very well knew nobody would be there.
The girl trembled with more laughter. “Not long now, druid, not long, you are to be married!”
“M-married To whom?” He glowed, then frowned, spittle trickling from his mouth. “But look at me,” he panicked, “I am a rotted core!”
“Do you not know who I am?” Etherea said. “After all this time, do you not recognize me? And in turn, who you are? Look at this wood, listen to it!”
Madring cocked his ear in obedience. Ah! There was no more unease, no more lamenting, just...a peace, a gentle crystal ringing.
“You...you are...” Madring could hardly bring himself to speak such revelation.
“Yes!” the girl urged. “I love you, Madring.”
And before he could grasp hold of her she chuckled -- oh yes, the very substance of youth was she -- and shimmered into a place beyond time where Madring could not follow.
“Wait...” he mumbled weakly, stretching out a hand to where she once stood. And then he saw that hand. Smooth and unblemished, whole, straight and strong.
Madring grasped the trunk of the Giant and let his face press against the bark. Quickly then, in a burst of exhilaration, he ran to the creek faster than he had ever run before. Oh, yes, he knew! His legs were amazing, he was vibrant, but he just had to see! Leaning over the reflecting water he beheld the face of a fiery, young man.
“No more pain...” he stretched his entire body out on the embankment, rolling in the soft mud. But he leapt to his feet once again and listened intently to his insides. Oh, yes, he was still the druid: he could yet feel the tug and strain of the earth, pulling and pushing, moaning for the end. But his body! Young! Whole! Restored!
And the wood, too, it whispered and hushed in harmony; all the discord had fled, no more grating quakes of anticipatory end.
“Ah, beautiful Life! I can wait! I will wait! Forever, if need be! Past eternity!” He whipped his arms out to the sky in jubilation, spinning in exaltation.
And indeed Madring did wait. Many more years, until humanity, bolstered courageous by the advances of science, overcame its fear of dark places and encroached upon the Shadewood. A city of steel-plastic-brick congealed around the forest, and slowly, slowly, the trees dwindled and but a small copse remained.
Here, above the dead and buried roots of the fallen Giant, beneath the few remaining towers of brown bark and emerald leaf, do all origins begin. And yes, it is here that this particular plot of land first came to be known as Tranziltor Park.
copyright (c) JMD, 2006
Madring stood upon the root of the Giant, the one which dwarfed all other trees of Shadewood -- that forest of uncertain shadow and questionable growth, avoided by those who lived outside its voracious acres. Its emerald innards had risen to infamy, and throughout the ages fear had taken that disrepute and inflamed it to magnificent proportions. That was why Madring was here, in this place, this dark wood of nightmarish fable, huddled now upon the root of the Giant, scrutinizing the flock of crows that had just then landed upon the unrivaled canopy above him.
“blak, blak, caw-blak!” he chortled at them, shaking his gnarled fist. Drool dribbled through his thin lips, escaping the dankness of a rotted mouth full of black teeth. He wiped his face clean with the meager rags clinging to his bony arm and, stretching at the crows now, cawed violently from his throat and scared them to flight.
His cackle echoed across Shadewood, and he patted the Giant companionably. He leapt from the root as deftly as a man with crooked legs could, landing flat-footed and abruptly. He bent double, an exercise that sent electric pain down his back, and retrieved a knotted staff from the ground. Somewhere a fox yipped, a gentle breeze caressed Madring’s face, and the sun burst forth from behind a mass of congested cloud.
Too many years had he been living, in this damnable wood, cuddled close to soil and brook and mossy stone. A hundredfold he had seen the leaves die, exploding in color before giving up in graceful flutter to melt into the mud of the earth. He was the last one, he knew, the last druid of old, sore and hurting and waiting to die. But death, dear death, did she come for him as she did the leaves? Not once! Not ever! But her sister pain was ever close, and sorrow too, that frail cousin of unbidden tear and tender heartache. And how he had begged her, sweet death, to come; lamenting at the side of creek, singing softly to the northern face of lichened boulder. Again and again he had seen her, dancing through Shadewood on the wings of ending Autumn; he had beseeched her on bended knee, with sobs of utter futility, imploring her with the sum of his being to take him with her when she left. But her reply had ever been the same:
“Not now, ancient one, but perhaps next year you will see Beyond,” and her silver hair encircled her pale, white, rapturous face, “Alas! We are destined to meet, but forbidden the touch, forbidden the release! I cannot!”
To tree and bush she would then whisk off, at last ending with the Giant, cooing and chiding its garments away, stripping it naked until it stood unashamed to face the ice of winter. Always the resistance from this tree, this one of monstrous magnitude, how it shuddered in protest and shivered in denial. But it knew, yes it knew, that she would win, and with a final creak of opposition it would cry its leaves off its proud, strong boughs.
How Madring wished he were a tree! Then she would take him! He made countless attempts to turn himself into such, at the quivering moment of expectant spring, covered by fresh sprigs of dandelion and tiny buds of the oak tree, writhing beneath his self-made grave of sprouting life, trying beyond all measure to be what he knew was innately impossible. He was no tree. He was a man. A druid, and the last one at that.
As such, his soul had attached itself irreversibly to the land, the entire land, the whole breadth and width of the vast blue ball of Earth that spun on skewered axis around the brilliant sun. He felt the cracks that covered its surface, the plates that shifted and groaned and broke into each other, the violent eruption of volcano and unrelenting rage of tornado. The pestilence and hunger of all vegetative life, the out-crying urge of all flora to end! To end! Oh, what had happened so long ago to curse them into a perpetual state of such desirous self-cessation? Consequently, Madring had the self-same urge, and for some reason he had not died like all the other druids -- and oh, how blessed those others were! What fortune had found them!
Madring hobbled around the giant, patting its trunk over and over as though consoling the wooden behemoth. “Yes, yes, I will sing it for you, child, but just once today, my body aches, my eyes are dim,” and he smiled, his whole face splitting in two. He let out a hack of congealed phlegm and sighed deeply before beginning a song writ eons ago beneath the unseen crevices of shadowed glade.
His body sagged as the lilting words tripped out of his mouth, his voice a rough scratching noise, tuned though, to the music of his cracked soul. He finished with a sweeping motion, as though with this act he could cover the Giant in slumber and let it sleep forever. Thus ended The Visible Sorrows of Untread Places, one of his favourite melodies. The Giant hummed deeply, from down beneath its far-reaching roots. Madring beat his head thrice against the hard bark, murmuring sullenly beneath his putrid breath. When? Oh, when?
Suddenly he felt a shifting. But a shifting so strong that he knew this was no mere intruder -- not some lost soul who had dared to wander into Shadewood, not the accidental straying of a fearless idiot...
“Madring,” the voice was a small girl’s, one that he had not heard since...since the others had been alive...since he had been just as young as the possessor of the voice.
“Etherea,” he sputtered, and waddling around he beheld the darling guardian of woods. Her hair was the fine silk of spider web, so soft, floating away from her head as though she were under water. Seeds were in that hair, tiny dots of silver, and they fell in wisps of light as the girl tread across the forest floor on silent feet. She wore a cloak of leaves, green now, sometimes they were red and orange, Madring remembered, and her eyes...striking black ponds of dark water, always flaring up blue, then yellow, then some other bright color. Her arms were bare and smooth and waxing ivory, and the smile...ah, the sweetness of innocence, the joy of youth.
“He wishes me here,” Etherea spoke quietly, motioning to the tree, “for your sake.”
Madring could hardly contain the excitement, his chest swelled, and he looked up at the Giant with tears in his eyes. He whispered his thanks.
“You are sad,” the girl noted, her voice emphatic.
“Yes,” Madring affirmed. “For many, many years now.”
Etherea turned and took in the Shadewood with her dark, liquid eyes. The entire surroundings shimmered, called out, shouting and cheering at her blessed arrival.
“I wonder...” she said, and looked back at Madring with seeds wisping from her hair.
“I want to go!” Madring fell to his knees. He ignored the pain that shot up them, and continued, “I want to go! I need to die! Don’t you see how long I have been waiting? Oh, forever, Etherea, forever, and I know you can call her for me, you can let her take me!” And then he wailed bitterly, for he couldn’t contain anything anymore, he had lost so much will power.
“Oh, my precious Madring,” the girl consoled, kneeling down beside the crippling druid. She placed a delicate hand on the old man’s matted head, stroking gently, soothing him with kind words. She wiped the tears from his face, every one and, curiously, placed them on her lashes.
“I will take these from you this day,” Etherea’s face cracked. Her smooth child-face broke and pain shot across her visage. “She is coming,” she whispered, “she is coming...”
“Oh!” Madring began to shake. He couldn’t believe it.
“But not death, druid, not death.”
Madring fell. New tears rose up, but Etherea caught them on elegant finger and pressed them again onto her own eyes.
“If not death, then who?” the old man bit back anger.
“Oh, he is much more than death, Madring, much more. He is life!”
Bewilderment caught hold of the druid and would not let him go. There was something to this, something he was missing, a mystery, he could feel it, as surely as he could feel the eternal mourning of earth that rocked and shattered his soul. Life? He was life? Not death? Well, what of death then?
“Life?” he blurted out his thoughts.
“Yes, life!” Etherea laughed. “He is being delivered to you...at this moment!”
“Where? Where? Where is...he?” Madring began to fumble about, glancing around wildly when he very well knew nobody would be there.
The girl trembled with more laughter. “Not long now, druid, not long, you are to be married!”
“M-married To whom?” He glowed, then frowned, spittle trickling from his mouth. “But look at me,” he panicked, “I am a rotted core!”
“Do you not know who I am?” Etherea said. “After all this time, do you not recognize me? And in turn, who you are? Look at this wood, listen to it!”
Madring cocked his ear in obedience. Ah! There was no more unease, no more lamenting, just...a peace, a gentle crystal ringing.
“You...you are...” Madring could hardly bring himself to speak such revelation.
“Yes!” the girl urged. “I love you, Madring.”
And before he could grasp hold of her she chuckled -- oh yes, the very substance of youth was she -- and shimmered into a place beyond time where Madring could not follow.
“Wait...” he mumbled weakly, stretching out a hand to where she once stood. And then he saw that hand. Smooth and unblemished, whole, straight and strong.
Madring grasped the trunk of the Giant and let his face press against the bark. Quickly then, in a burst of exhilaration, he ran to the creek faster than he had ever run before. Oh, yes, he knew! His legs were amazing, he was vibrant, but he just had to see! Leaning over the reflecting water he beheld the face of a fiery, young man.
“No more pain...” he stretched his entire body out on the embankment, rolling in the soft mud. But he leapt to his feet once again and listened intently to his insides. Oh, yes, he was still the druid: he could yet feel the tug and strain of the earth, pulling and pushing, moaning for the end. But his body! Young! Whole! Restored!
And the wood, too, it whispered and hushed in harmony; all the discord had fled, no more grating quakes of anticipatory end.
“Ah, beautiful Life! I can wait! I will wait! Forever, if need be! Past eternity!” He whipped his arms out to the sky in jubilation, spinning in exaltation.
And indeed Madring did wait. Many more years, until humanity, bolstered courageous by the advances of science, overcame its fear of dark places and encroached upon the Shadewood. A city of steel-plastic-brick congealed around the forest, and slowly, slowly, the trees dwindled and but a small copse remained.
Here, above the dead and buried roots of the fallen Giant, beneath the few remaining towers of brown bark and emerald leaf, do all origins begin. And yes, it is here that this particular plot of land first came to be known as Tranziltor Park.
copyright (c) JMD, 2006
posted by Jonathan Dobson | 4:58 p.m.
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