Dry Tree Branches Quotes

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Tell me about the hands that broke you like tree branches. Tell me about the heart that made you a home, the barren soul that used your dry bones like kindling in the middle of winter. Tell me about the house fire, the ashes which you rose from. Tell me about your resurrection - but don't you dare tell me that you are not strong enough this time, don't you dare tell me that you cannot rise again, and again, and again.

We were in the autumnlands. Dim as it was, the forest glowed. The golden leaves flashing by blazed like sparks caught in the updraft of a fire. A scarlet carpet unrolled before us, rich and flawless as velvet. Rising from the forest floor, the black, tangled roots breathed a bluish mist that reduced the farthest trees' trunks to ghostly silhouettes, yet left their foliage's luminous hues untouched. Vivid moss speckled the branches like tarnished copper. The crisp spice of pine sap infused the cool air over a musty perfume of dry leaves. A knot swelled in my throat. I couldn't look away. There was too much of it, too fast. I'd never be able to drink it all in...

Soon the trees affected not only her mood but her understanding. Each year a trunk put on a new ring of growth, and within those rings she found the tree's own story. She listened to the scent of it, the feel, the sound, and her mind gave it words- soil, water, sap, light...and before, night and rain, dry and sun, wind and night...the drowsy stillness of leaves in a rainfall, the sparkling eagerness of leaves in the sun, and always the pulling up of the branches, the tugging down of the roots, the forever growing in tow directions, joing sky and soil, and a center to keep it strong... -Rin, Forest Born

The tinker in his burial tree was a wonder to the birds. The vultures that came by day to nose with their hooked beaks among his buttons and pockets like outrageous pets soon left him naked of his rags and flesh alike. Black mandrake sprang beneath the tree as it will where the seed of the hanged falls and in spring a new branch pierced his breast and flowered in a green boutonnière perennial beneath his yellow grin. He took the sparse winter snows upon what thatch of hair still clung to his dried skull and hunters that passed that way never chanced to see him brooding among his barren limbs. Until wind had tolled the thinker's bones and seasons loosed them one by one to the ground below and his bleached and weathered brisket hung in that lonesome wood like a bone birdcage.

Who can say what they’d have done in her situation. She’s stronger than she knows. I tried to tell her that every day, too.” “Was that the truth?” Grant asks. Joseph smiles. “You ever see a tree that’s dying, it’s nothing but a bunch of dried out branches? You can talk to this tree, tell it all about how its leaves are growing green and healthy. Then you sit back and watch how it changes.

During the night a fine, delicate summer rain had washed the plains, leaving the morning sky crisp and clean. The sun shone warm—soon to bake the earth dry. It cast a purple haze across the plain—like a great, dark topaz. In the trees the birds sang, while the squirrels jumped from branch to branch in seeming good will, belying the expected tension of the coming days.

Then the Unlight of Ungoliant rose up even to the roots of the trees, and Melkor sprang upon the mound; and with his black spear he smote each Tree to its core, wounded them deep, and their sap poured forth as it were their blood, and was spilled upon the ground. But Ungoliant sucked it up, and going then from Tree to Tree she set her black beak to their wounds, till they were drained; and the poison of Death that was in her went into their tissues and withered them, root, branch, and leaf; and they died. And still she thirsted, and going to the Wells of Varda she drank them dry; but Ungoliant belched forth black vapours as she drank, and swelled to a shape so vast and hideous that Melkor was afraid.

woods. The road was still paved with yellow brick, but these were much covered by dried branches and dead leaves from the trees, and the walking was not at all good. There were few

There is a rustle of dead leaves. Dried sap, a branch crack, the whirring teeth of Mr. Omaru's saw. My father--my real father--is a limb that got axed off the family tree a long time ago now. My mother coughs and cleans phantom juices off her silver with a cloth doily. My sisters clench their knives.

Ouma Nella’s quotes p 144 -146 “Man, if you don’t know where you going, any road will bring you there.” “It don’t matter how far a river run. It never forget where it come from. That is all that is important.” “No matter if it’s wet or dry,” she grunt. “As long as you keep a green branch in your heart, there will always be a bird that come to sing in it.” “It’s no use crying in the rain, my child, because no one will see your tears. “Don't think you can climb two trees at the same time just because you got two legs.” “Ouma Nella, where am I not?” “But you’re right here with me, Philida. So there’s many places where you’re not.” “Tell me where those places are. I got to know. So I can go and look for myself.

Tradition looks at a traditional civilization as a tree. The root of the tree is permanent and firm in the ground of revelation, but the branches grow in different seasons and in different directions. Tradition does not deny the fact that if you have a harsh and dry winter, the next spring you have fewer flowers and that if you have a winter with more agreeable conditions, you will have more flowers.

desert place! Here let us all for death prepare, Or on the last great journey fare;320 Of Ráma our dear lord bereft, What profit in our lives is left? Huge trunks of trees around us lie, With roots and branches sere and dry, Come let us set these logs on fire And throw our bodies on the pyre.

But we would emerge from our shelter, for the rain was playing a game, now, among the branches, and, even when it was almost dry again underfoot, a stray drop or two, lingering in the hollow of a leaf, would run down and hang glistening from the point of it until suddenly it splashed plump upon our upturned faces from the whole height of the tree.

the dry wind soughed again through the trees, stirring branches as it moved like an invisible spirit through the forest. With the susurration came another thought,

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow and evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

It's like this, Bunny Boy, if you walk up to an oak tree or a bloody elm or something - you know, one of those big bastards - one with a thick, heavy trunk with giant roots that grow deep in the soil and great branches that are covered in leaves, right, and you walk up to it and give the tree a shake, well, what happens?' (...) 'I really don't know, Dad,' (...) 'Well, nothing bloody happens, of course!' (...) 'You can stand there shaking it till the cows come home and all that will happen is your arms will get tired. Right?' (...) 'Right, Dad,' he says. (...) 'But if you go up to a skinny, dry, fucked-up little tree, with a withered trunk and a few leaves clinging on for dear life, and you put your hands around it and shake the shit out of it - as we say in the trade - those bloody leaves will come flying off! Yeah?' 'OK, Dad,' says the boy (...) 'Now, the big oak tree is the rich bastard, right, and the skinny tree is the poor cunt who hasn't got any money. Are you with me?' Bunny Junior nods. 'Now, that sounds easier than it actually is, Bunny Boy. Do you want to know why?' 'OK, Dad.' 'Because every fucking bastard and his dog has got hold of the little tree and is shaking it for all that it's worth - the government, the bloody landlord, the lottery they don't have a chance in hell of winning, the council, their bloody exes, their hundred snotty-nosed brats running around because they are too bloody stupid to exercise a bit of self-control, all the useless shit they see on TV, fucking Tesco, parking fines, insurance on this and insurance on that, the boozer, the fruit machines, the bookies - every bastard and his three-legged, one-eyed, pox-riden dog are shaking this little tree,' says Bunny, clamping his hands together and making like he is throttling someone. 'So what do you go and do, Dad?' says Bunny Junior. 'Well, you've got to have something they think they need, you know, above all else.' 'And what's that, Dad?' 'Hope... you know... the dream. You've got to sell them the dream.

Her wild race caused the dried-up ferns, thorny plants, and low-hung tree branches—away from the lake—to grab at our clothing in the mad dash over the narrow packed dirt through the trees.

In a rush, the world opened its mouth to her—and it was screaming. Everywhere—the air around her, the ground beneath her, the stars above—rippled with the soul-wrenching cries of hunger: the trees and bushes and plants all twisted and bent, their branches and stems clawing the sky in skeletal panic; the animals and insects, flying and crawling and burrowing, each frantic in its own way, searching incessantly to end the gnawing demand in its belly; the swarms of people, clotting the world, stuffing themselves only to beg for more, be it food or wealth or attention—all of them, desperate, insatiable. So very hungry. All of them, leeching on to her. Sucking her dry.

In the afterglow of the Big Bang, humans spread in waves across the universe, sprawling and brawling and breeding and dying and evolving. There were wars, there was love, there was life and death. Minds flowed together in great rivers of consciousness, or shattered in sparkling droplets. There was immortality to be had, of a sort, a continuity of identity through replication and confluence across billions upon billions of years. Everywhere they found life. Nowhere did they find mind—save what they brought with them or created—no other against which human advancement could be tested. With time, the stars died like candles. But humans fed on bloated gravitational fat, and achieved a power undreamed of in earlier ages. They learned of other universes from which theirs had evolved. Those earlier, simpler realities too were empty of mind, a branching tree of emptiness reaching deep into the hyperpast. It is impossible to understand what minds of that age—the peak of humankind, a species hundreds of billions of times older than humankind—were like. They did not seek to acquire, not to breed, not even to learn. They had nothing in common with us, their ancestors of the afterglow. Nothing but the will to survive. And even that was to be denied them by time. The universe aged: indifferent, harsh, hostile, and ultimately lethal. There was despair and loneliness. There was an age of war, an obliteration of trillion-year memories, a bonfire of identity. There was an age of suicide, as the finest of humanity chose self-destruction against further purposeless time and struggle. The great rivers of mind guttered and dried. But some persisted: just a tributary, the stubborn, still unwilling to yield to the darkness, to accept the increasing confines of a universe growing inexorably old. And, at last, they realized that this was wrong. It wasn't supposed to have been like this. Burning the last of the universe's resources, the final down-streamers—dogged, all but insane—reached to the deepest past. And—oh. Watch the Moon, Malenfant. Watch the Moon. It's starting—

MAN AND WOMAN Man is a like a desert without the rain of a woman. Nothing can be born and grown without her nourishment. She is a life-giving river that gives and loves without holding anything back. And without her water, man would walk around aimlessly, feeling incomplete and hollow like an empty well. The longer he roams, the deeper the hole within his soul expands, growing bigger and bigger like a barren tree whose branches resemble the cracks on hard, dry soil. And he shall continue to feel incomplete and malnourished, until he encounters a godly woman. To show him life and quench his thirst.

THE RIVER OF A WOMAN Man is like a desert without the rain of a woman. Nothing can be born and grown without her nourishment. She is a life-giving river that gives and loves without holding anything back. And without her water, man would walk around aimlessly, feeling incomplete and hollow like an empty well. The longer he roams, the deeper the hole within his soul expands, growing bigger and bigger like a barren tree whose branches resemble the cracks on hard, dry soil. And he shall continue to feel incomplete and malnourished, until – he encounters a godly woman, to show him life and quench his thirst.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you only know A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock […] I will show you something different from either Your shadow morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising times meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Nevertheless, there was something extraordinary about it when a man so young, with so little experience in flight test, was selected to go to Muroc Field in California for the XS–1 project. Muroc was up in the high elevations of the Mojave Desert. It looked like some fossil landscape that had long since been left behind by the rest of terrestrial evolution. It was full of huge dry lake beds, the biggest being Rogers Lake. Other than sagebrush the only vegetation was Joshua trees, twisted freaks of the plant world that looked like a cross between cactus and Japanese bonsai. They had a dark petrified green color and horribly crippled branches. At dusk the Joshua trees stood out in silhouette on the fossil wasteland like some arthritic nightmare. In the summer the temperature went up to 110 degrees as a matter of course, and the dry lake beds were covered in sand, and there would be windstorms and sandstorms right out of a Foreign Legion movie. At night it would drop to near freezing, and in December it would start raining, and the dry lakes would fill up with a few inches of water, and some sort of putrid prehistoric shrimps would work their way up from out of the ooze, and sea gulls would come flying in a hundred miles or more from the ocean, over the mountains, to gobble up these squirming little throwbacks. A person had to see it to believe it: flocks of sea gulls wheeling around in the air out in the middle of the high desert in the dead of winter and grazing on antediluvian crustaceans in the primordial ooze. When

Outside, the fields were shaking off their sleep and the first rays of sunlight were cutting the peaks of the cordillera like the thrusts of a saber, warming up the earth and evaporating the dew into a fine white foam that blurred the edges of things and turned the landscape into an enchanted dream. Blanca set off in the direction of the river. Everything was still quiet. Her footsteps crushed the fallen leaves and the dry branches, producing a light crunching sound, the only noise in that vast sleeping space. She felt that the shaggy meadows, the golden wheatfields, and the far-off purple mountains disappearing in the clear morning sky were part of some ancient memory, something she had seen before exactly like this, as if she had already lived this moment in some previous life. The delicate rain of the night had soaked the earth and trees, and her clothing felt slightly damp, her shoes cold. She inhaled the perfume of the drenched earth, the rotten leaves, and the humus, which awakened an unknown pleasure in all her senses.

Something marvelous is happening underground, something we’re just learning how to see. Mats of mycorrhizal cabling link trees into gigantic, smart communities spread across hundreds of acres. Together, they form vast trading networks of goods, services, and information. . . .  There are no individuals in a forest, no separable events. The bird and the branch it sits on are a joint thing. A third or more of the food a big tree makes may go to feed other organisms. Even different kinds of trees form partnerships. Cut down a birch, and a nearby Douglas-fir may suffer. . . .  In the great forests of the East, oaks and hickories synchronize their nut production to baffle the animals that feed on them. Word goes out, and the trees of a given species—whether they stand in sun or shade, wet or dry—bear heavily or not at all, together, as a community. . . .  Forests mend and shape themselves through subterranean synapses. And in shaping themselves, they shape, too, the tens of thousands of other, linked creatures that form it from within. Maybe it’s useful to think of forests as enormous spreading, branching, underground super-trees.

It is quiet in the clearing, though gradually Lillian's ears attune to the soft rustling of insects and birds moving through the undergrowth, the faraway tapping of a woodpecker high in a tree. Down on the ground, a bronze-colored beetle tries to scale the side of her shoe. It slips on the smooth leather and tumbles back into the dry leaves, waggling its legs in the air. She shifts slightly on the tree trunk then watches as Jack pulls a strand of grass from a clump growing nearby and sucks on one end, looking about at the canopy overhead. "Wonderful light," he murmurs. "I wish I hadn't left my sketchbook at the house." She knows she must say something. But the moment stretches and she can't find the words so instead she looks about, trying to see the clearing as he might, trying to view the world through an artist's eyes. What details would he pull from this scene, what elements would he commit to memory to reproduce on paper? A cathedral, he'd said; and she supposes there is something rather celestial and awe-inspiring about the tall, arched trees and the light streaming in golden shafts through the soft green branches, filtered as though through stained glass.

them—or something like it. They even got the Doctor some tobacco one day, when he had finished what he had brought with him and wanted to smoke. At night they slept in tents made of palm leaves, on thick, soft beds of dried grass. And after a while they got used to walking such a lot and did not get so tired and enjoyed the life of travel very much. But they were always glad when the night came and they stopped for their resting time. Then the Doctor used to make a little fire of sticks; and after they had had their supper, they would sit round it in a ring, listening to Polynesia singing songs about the sea, or to Chee-Chee telling stories of the jungle. And many of the tales that Chee-Chee told were very interesting. Because although the monkeys had no history books of their own before Doctor Dolittle came to write them for them, they remember everything that happens by telling stories to their children. And Chee-Chee spoke of many things his grandmother had told him—tales of long, long, long ago, before Noah and the Flood—of the days when men dressed in bearskins and lived in holes in the rock and ate their mutton raw because they did not know what cooking was, never having seen a fire. And he told them of the great mammoths, and lizards as long as a train, that wandered over the mountains in those times, nibbling from the treetops. And often they got so interested listening that when he had finished they found their fire had gone right out, and they had to scurry around to get more sticks and build a new one. Now, when the King’s army had gone back and told the King that they couldn’t find the Doctor, the King sent them out again and told them they must stay in the jungle till they caught him. So all this time, while the Doctor and his animals were going along toward the Land of the Monkeys, thinking themselves quite safe, they were still being followed by the King’s men. If Chee-Chee had known this, he would most likely have hidden them again. But he didn’t know it. One day Chee-Chee climbed up a high rock and looked out over the treetops. And when he came down he said they were now quite close to the Land of the Monkeys and would soon be there. And that same evening, sure enough, they saw Chee-Chee’s cousin and a lot of other monkeys, who had not yet gotten sick, sitting in the trees by the edge of a swamp, looking and waiting for them. And when they saw the famous doctor really come, these monkeys made a tremendous noise, cheering and waving leaves and swinging out of the branches to greet him. They wanted to carry his bag and his trunk and everything he had. And one of the bigger ones even carried Gub-Gub, who had gotten

There was only one thing to do, she decided: make pickles. The mangoes on the tree were just about ready: grassy-green and tongue-smackingly sour. She asked the boys to pick them from the tree. When they were younger, this was the children’s job. Maya was by far the better climber: her foot would curl over the branches and hold her fast, while she stretched her arms and plucked the fruit, throwing it down to Rehana, who kept shouting, ‘Be careful! Be careful!’ She would slice the green mangoes and cook them slowly with chillies and mustard seeds. Then she would stuff them into jars and leave them on the roof to ripen. There was a rule about not touching pickles during the monthlies. She couldn’t remember who had told her that rule – her mother? – no, her mother had probably never sliced a mango in her brief, dreamy life. Must have been one of her sisters. Marzia, she was the best cook. And the enforcer of rules. But Rehana had decided long ago this was a stupid rule. It was hard enough to time the pickle-making anyway, between the readiness of the fruit and the weather, which had to be hot and dry. As she recited the pickle recipe to herself, Rehana wondered what her sisters would make of her at this very moment. Guerrillas at Shona. Sewing kathas on the rooftop. Her daughter at rifle practice. The thought of their shocked faces made her want to laugh. She imagined the letter she would write. Dear sisters, she would say. Our countries are at war; yours and mine. We are on different sides now. I am making pickles for the war effort. You see how much I belong here and not to you.

My mother had a passion for all fruit except oranges, which she refused to allow in the house. She named each one of us, on a seeming whim, after a fruit and a recipe- Cassis, for her thick black-currant cake. Framboise, her raspberry liqueur, and Reinette after the reine-claude greengages that grew against the south wall of the house, thick as grapes, syrupy with wasps in midsummer. At one time we had over a hundred trees (apples, pears, plums, gages, cherries, quinces), not to mention the raspberry canes and the fields of strawberries, gooseberries, currants- the fruits of which were dried, stored, made into jams and liqueurs and wonderful cartwheel tarts on pâte brisée and crème pâtissière and almond paste. My memories are flavored with their scents, their colors, their names. My mother tended them as if they were her favorite children. Smudge pots against the frost, which we base every spring. And in summer, to keep the birds away, we would tie shapes cut out of silver paper onto the ends of the branches that would shiver and flick-flack in the wind, moose blowers of string drawn tightly across empty tin cans to make eerie bird-frightening sounds, windmills of colored paper that would spin wildly, so that the orchard was a carnival of baubles and shining ribbons and shrieking wires, like a Christmas party in midsummer. And the trees all had names. Belle Yvonne, my mother would say as she passed a gnarled pear tree. Rose d'Aquitane. Beurre du Roe Henry. Her voice at these times was soft, almost monotone. I could not tell whether she was speaking to me or to herself. Conference. Williams. Ghislane de Penthièvre. This sweetness.

Violent Storm" Those who have chosen to pass the night Entertaining friends And intimate ideas in the bright, Commodious rooms of dreams Will not feel the slightest tremor Or be wakened by what seems Only a quirk in the dry run Of conventional weather. For them, The long night sweeping over these trees And houses will have been no more than one In a series whose end Only the nervous or morbid consider. But for us, the wide-awake, who tend To believe the worst is always waiting Around the next corner or hiding in the dry, Unsteady branch of a sick tree, debating Whether or not to fell the passerby, It has a sinister air. How we wish we were sunning ourselves In a world of familiar views And fixed conditions, confined By what we know, and able to refuse Entry to the unaccounted for. For now, Deeper and darker than ever, the night unveils Its dubious plans, and the rain Beats down in gales Against the roof. We sit behind Closed windows, bolted doors, Unsure and ill at ease While the loose, untidy wind, Making an almost human sound, pours Through the open chambers of the trees. We cannot take ourselves or what belongs To us for granted. No longer the exclusive, Last resorts in which we could unwind, Lounging in easy chairs, Recalling the various wrongs We had been done or spared, our rooms Seem suddenly mixed up in our affairs. We do not feel protected By the walls, nor can we hide Before the duplicating presence Of their mirrors, pretending we are the ones who stare From the other side, collected In the glassy air. A cold we never knew invades our bones. We shake as though the storm were going to hurl us down Against the flat stones Of our lives. All other nights Seem pale compared to this, and the brilliant rise Of morning after morning seems unthinkable. Already now the lights That shared our wakefulness are dimming And the dark brushes against our eyes.

Quote from "The Dish Keepers of Honest House" ....TO TWIST THE COLD is easy when its only water you want. Tapping of the toothbrush echoes into Ella's mind like footsteps clacking a cobbled street on a bitter, dry, cold morning. Her mind pushes through sleep her body craves. It catches her head falling into a warm, soft pillow. "Go back to bed," she tells herself. "You're still asleep," Ella mumbles, pushes the blanket off, and sits up. The urgency to move persuades her to keep routines. Water from the faucet runs through paste foam like a miniature waterfall. Ella rubs sleep-deprieved eyes, then the bridge of her nose and glances into the sink. Ella's eyes astutely fixate for one, brief millisecond. Water becomes the burgundy of soldiers exiting the drain. Her mouth drops in shock. The flow turns green. It is like the bubbling fungus of flockless, fishless, stagnating ponds. Within the iridescent glimmer of her thinking -- like a brain losing blood flow, Ella's focus is the flickering flashing of gray, white dust, coal-black shadows and crows lifting from the ground. A half minute or two trails off before her mind returns to reality. Ella grasps a toothbrush between thumb and index finger. She rests the outer palm against the sink's edge, breathes in and then exhales. Tension in the brow subsides, and her chest and shoulders drop; she sighs. Ella stares at pasty foam. It exits the drain as if in a race to clear the sink of negativity -- of all germs, slimy spit, the burgundy of imagined soldiers and oppressive plaque. GRASPING THE SILKY STRAND between her fingers, Ella tucks, pulls and slides the floss gently through her teeth. Her breath is an inch or so of the mirror. Inspections leave her demeanor more alert. Clouding steam of the image tugs her conscience. She gazes into silver glass. Bits of hair loosen from the bun piled at her head's posterior. What transforms is what she imagines. The mirror becomes a window. The window possesses her Soul and Spirit. These two become concerned -- much like they did when dishonest housekeepers disrupted Ella's world in another story. Before her is a glorious bird -- shining-dark-as-coal, shimmering in hues of purple-black and black-greens. It is likened unto The Raven in Edgar Allan Poe's most famous poem of 1845. Instead of interrupting a cold December night with tapping on a chamber door, it rests its claws in the decorative, carved handle of a backrest on a stiff dining chair. It projects an air of humor and concern. It moves its head to and fro while seeking a clearer understanding. Ella studies the bird. It is surrounded in lofty bends and stretches of leafless, acorn-less, nearly lifeless, oak trees. Like fingers and arms these branches reach below. [Perhaps they are reaching for us? Rest assured; if they had designs on us, I would be someplace else, writing about something more pleasant and less frightening. Of course, you would be asleep.] Balanced in the branches is a chair. It is from Ella's childhood home. The chair sways. Ella imagines modern-day pilgrims of a distant shore. Each step is as if Mother Nature will position them upright like dolls, blown from the stability of their plastic, flat, toe-less feet. These pilgrims take fate by the hand. LIFTING A TOWEL and patting her mouth and hands, Ella pulls the towel through the rack. She walks to the bedroom, sits and picks up the newspaper. Thumbing through pages that leave fingertips black, she reads headlines: "Former Dentist Guilty of Health Care Fraud." She flips the page, pinches the tip of her nose and brushes the edge of her chin -- smearing both with ink. In the middle fold directly affront her eyes is another headline: "Dentist Punished for Misconduct." She turns the page. There is yet another: "Dentist guilty of urinating in surgery sink and using contaminated dental instruments on patients." This world contains those who are simply insane! Every profession has those who stray from goals....

Unchopping a Tree. Start with the leaves, the small twigs, and the nests that have been shaken, ripped, or broken off by the fall; these must be gathered and attached once again to their respective places. It is not arduous work, unless major limbs have been smashed or mutilated. If the fall was carefully and correctly planned, the chances of anything of the kind happening will have been reduced. Again, much depends upon the size, age, shape, and species of the tree. Still, you will be lucky if you can get through this stages without having to use machinery. Even in the best of circumstances it is a labor that will make you wish often that you had won the favor of the universe of ants, the empire of mice, or at least a local tribe of squirrels, and could enlist their labors and their talents. But no, they leave you to it. They have learned, with time. This is men's work. It goes without saying that if the tree was hollow in whole or in part, and contained old nests of bird or mammal or insect, or hoards of nuts or such structures as wasps or bees build for their survival, the contents will have to repaired where necessary, and reassembled, insofar as possible, in their original order, including the shells of nuts already opened. With spider's webs you must simply do the best you can. We do not have the spider's weaving equipment, nor any substitute for the leaf's living bond with its point of attachment and nourishment. It is even harder to simulate the latter when the leaves have once become dry — as they are bound to do, for this is not the labor of a moment. Also it hardly needs saying that this the time fro repairing any neighboring trees or bushes or other growth that might have been damaged by the fall. The same rules apply. Where neighboring trees were of the same species it is difficult not to waste time conveying a detached leaf back to the wrong tree. Practice, practice. Put your hope in that. Now the tackle must be put into place, or the scaffolding, depending on the surroundings and the dimension of the tree. It is ticklish work. Almost always it involves, in itself, further damage to the area, which will have to be corrected later. But, as you've heard, it can't be helped. And care now is likely to save you considerable trouble later. Be careful to grind nothing into the ground. At last the time comes for the erecting of the trunk. By now it will scarcely be necessary to remind you of the delicacy of this huge skeleton. Every motion of the tackle, every slightly upward heave of the trunk, the branches, their elaborately reassembled panoply of leaves (now dead) will draw from you an involuntary gasp. You will watch for a lead or a twig to be snapped off yet again. You will listen for the nuts to shift in the hollow limb and you will hear whether they are indeed falling into place or are spilling in disorder — in which case, or in the event of anything else of the kind — operations will have to cease, of course, while you correct the matter. The raising itself is no small enterprise, from the moment when the chains tighten around the old bandages until the boles hands vertical above the stump, splinter above splinter. How the final straightening of the splinters themselves can take place (the preliminary work is best done while the wood is still green and soft, but at times when the splinters are not badly twisted most of the straightening is left until now, when the torn ends are face to face with each other). When the splinters are perfectly complementary the appropriate fixative is applied. Again we have no duplicate of the original substance. Ours is extremely strong, but it is rigid. It is limited to surfaces, and there is no play in it. However the core is not the part of the trunk that conducted life from the roots up to the branches and back again. It was relatively inert. The fixative for this part is not the same as the one for the outer layers and the bark, and if either of these is involved

Our fatalism goes beyond, even if it springs from, the Hindu acceptance of the world as it is ordained to be. I must tell you a little story – a marvellous fable from our Puranas that illustrates both our resilience and our self-absorption in the face of circumstance.’ I sat up against my bolsters and assumed the knowingly expectant attitude of those who are about to tell stories or perform card tricks. ‘A man, someone very like you, Arjun – a symbol, shall we say, of the people of India - is pursued by a tiger. He runs fast, but his panting heart tells him he cannot run much longer. He sees a tree. Relief! He accelerates and gets to it in one last despairing stride. He climbs the tree. The tiger snarls below him, but he feels that he has at last escaped its snapping jaws. But no – what’s this? The branch on which he is sitting is weak, and bends dangerously. That is not all: wood-mice are gnawing away at it; before long they will eat through it and it will snap and fall. The branch sags down over a well. Aha! Escape? Perhaps our hero can swim? But the well is dry, and there are snakes writhing and hissing on its bed. What is our hero to do? As the branch bends lower, he perceives a solitary blade of grass growing on the wall of the well. On the top of the blade of grass gleams a drop of honey. What action does our Puranic man, our quintessential Indian, take in this situation? He bends with the branch, and licks up the honey.’ I laughed at the strain, and the anxiety, on Arjun’s face. ‘What did you expect? Some neat solution to his problem? The tiger changes its mind and goes away? Amitabh Bachhan leaps to the rescue? Don’t be silly, Arjun. One strength of the Indian mind is that it knows some problems cannot be resolved, and it learns to make the best of them. That is the Indian answer to the insuperable difficulty. One does not fight against that by which one is certain to be overwhelmed; but one finds the best way, for oneself, to live with it. This is our national aesthetic. Without it, Arjun, India as we know it could not survive.

There is a steady dripping sound of yesterday’s rain sliding down branches and splashing on rocks, into the stream, or onto the soft ground. Periodically, there is a loud chirp from a bird that flits from branch to branch, answered later by a bright melody from its unseen companion. Behind these noises is a quieter, humming sound. I follow the humming, walking soundlessly under branches and over flat, slippery rocks. I keep walking until I come up to a grouping of thinned trees that let sunlight come streaming down onto a small patch of ground that is covered in dry, coppery pine needles.

The rain was warm, and it washed over my face. It was raining so hard that the ground was exploding beneath me; rivulets braided, frothed, ran away toward the river. I must have been a ridiculous sight, drenched to the bone in two seconds but still, ludicrously, holding an umbrella high above my head with one hand and grasping binoculars with the other, through which I eagerly gazed. That’s why I was holding the umbrella, you see, not in an attempt to stay dry but because it offered a modicum of protection to the binoculars’ lenses, without which I hadn’t a hope in Hades of catching a glimpse of the raucous denizens of the forest; I followed with my ears, shifting directions, adjusting my course, homing in on them in the ocean of rain as their cries became louder and louder. I scanned the treetops, teetering with my umbrella like Mary Poppins, and then, suddenly, there they were. I had found the ultimate birdbath. In the winding branches of the Ype trees above me, I counted two Scarlet Macaws, thirteen Chestnut-fronted Macaws, and two Blue-headed Parrots.

Alderheart looked up at the clear, black sky. He narrowed his eyes against the brightness of the moon. Countless stars glittered above the island. For the first time in days, his fur was dry, and a warm wind promised newleaf once more. The island clearing was crowded. Across the sea of pelts, Alderheart could see Twigbranch and Violetshine sitting with Hawkwing, Tree, and Finleap. Their eyes were round and their fur fluffed. They were clearly happy to be reunited. He whispered in Jayfeather’s ear, “It looks like every cat has come.” Jayfeather grunted. “After what we’ve been through, who would be mouse-brained enough to miss this Gathering?” Alderheart purred softly. Tigerstar had called the emergency Gathering when SkyClan arrived in his camp. Now the Clans looked up at the Great Oak, where Bramblestar, Harestar, Tigerstar, Mistystar, and Leafstar sat side by side on the lowest branch. Their deputies sat below them on the roots. Only Juniperclaw was missing. Alderheart felt a pang. He knew he’d been right to speak out, but he wished his investigation hadn’t ended in Juniperclaw’s death. As Puddleshine shifted beside him, Alderheart blinked at him warmly. The tom’s fur was sleek once more. His scars were hidden beneath his thick pelt. His eyes were bright, and he was staring eagerly at the Great Oak. Tigerstar got to his paws and looked around at the gathered cats. “We come to speak of change,” he meowed. “Change that must come if the Clans are to survive. But first I have news of Juniperclaw. Many of you will know that he is dead. But you may not know the whole story. Juniperclaw admitted to poisoning the SkyClan fresh-kill pile. He saw an easy way to drive SkyClan from the lake and he chose to go through with it, even though he knew he was breaking the warrior code. He believed he could protect his Clan best by saving us from fighting for our land. But a Clan that won’t fight for their land when they have to is no Clan at all. And Juniperclaw paid dearly for his crime. He lost his deputyship and his life.” The Clans watched him in silence as he went on. “But he died a courageous death. He died saving lives. Shadowkit was caught in the flood on RiverClan land. Juniperclaw pushed him from the water before being swept into the lake. He could have saved himself, but he chose to help Violetshine get out of the flood. He saved the SkyClan warrior, at the cost of his own life. I hope that he finds peace in StarClan.

From the perspective of the objective world with its opaque qualities, or from the objective body with its isolated organs, the phenomenon of synesthesia is paradoxical...For the subject does not tell us merely that he has a sound and a color at the same time: it is the sound itself that he sees, at the place where colors form. This formula is literally rendered meaningless if vision is defined by the visual quale, or sound by the sonorous quale. But...the vision of sounds or the hearing of colors exist as phenomena. And they are hardly exceptional phenomena. Synesthetic perception is the rule and, if we do not notice it, this is because scientific knowledge displaces experience and we have unlearned seeing, hearing, and sensing in general in order to deduce what we ought to see, hear, or sense from our bodily organization and from the world as it is conceived by the physicist...In fact...by opening itself up to the structure of the thing, the senses communicate among themselves. We see the rigidity and the fragility of the glass, and, when it breaks with a crystal-clear sound, this sound is borne by the visible glass. We see the elasticity of steel, the ductility of molten steel, the hardness of the blade in a plane, and the softness of its shaving...The form of a fold in a fabric of linen or of cotton shows us the softness or the dryness of the fiber, and the coolness or the warmth of the fabric...In the movement of the branch from which a bird has just left, we read its flexibility and its elasticity, and this is how the branch of an apple tree and the branch of a birch are immediately distinguished. We see the weight of a block of cast iron that sinks into the sand, the fluidity of the water, and the viscosity of the syrup. Likewise, I hear the hardness and the unevenness if the cobblestones in the sound of a car, and we are right to speak of a 'soft,' 'dull' or 'dry' sound.

stopped at once, swaying gently with suddenly halted momentum. All the fronds twitched and fell limp, hanging in gentle curtains like willow fronds ought to, and there was a shower of dislodged leaves and twigs. If the tree-sprite got its hand back on the tree, Alice was certain, it would all start back up again. The fall seemed to have stunned it, and she didn’t intend to give it a chance to recover. The swarmers dropped from the branches like a rain of strange-shaped fruit, bouncing and rolling across the uneven ground, then homing in on the ape-like thing. They charged beak-first, burying the points into its skin, slashing and cutting. Alice, recalling the vicious sharpness of those beaks, quailed at the sight, but there seemed to be no flesh or blood in the tree-sprite. Chunks of bark came away with dry cracks and pops. The thing started to move, freeing its hand from the broken branch and swatting feebly at its tormentors. Alice directed the swarmers to pin it to

Once the Tree Was in Bloom- Bruno K. Öijer Translated from the Swedish by Victoria Häggblom & Bruno K. Öijer colors and thread unraveled from the weave I heard steps leading away from me I stood alone among everything ravaged and bare once the tree was in bloom once the branches glimmered I prayed to the seeds inside me I prayed the tree would bloom again I saw the future a face that had run dry a doomed river everyone drank from I saw all humankind stare I saw men and women caress the executioner inside them I saw that we had lost this planet once the tree was in bloom once the presence of a hungry winter night was strong enough for you to put out pieces of bread along your windowsill once you were alive and carried a name once you nursed the seeds inside you the seeds of a tree and moon leaves fell star leaves drifted down in your body

A master without students is like a tree with rotting fruits on its branches; on the other hand, a student without a master is like a tree that dries because it is not watered!

In their urge for survival, the seed-bearing trees hit upon countless different devices for carrying pollen from one flower to another, but essentially the methods fall into two main categories. The first is wind-pollination, which requires the presence of light, small, dry pollen grains, easily shaken from the stamens, or male flowers. To receive the tiny bits of pollen that are blown about by the wind, the stigmata of flowers must be long, or feathery, or sticky, or so constructed as to trap the fine dust. All conifers are pollinated this way, as are the poplar, ash, birch, oak, beech, and certain other species. But since this method is so haphazard, a disproportionately high percentage of pollen is wasted and these trees must produce immense quantities of pollen in order that even a tiny amount will be effective. Scientists have estimated that a single stamen of a beech tree, for example, may yield 2,000 grains, while the branch system of a vigorous young birch can produce 100 million grains a year. One pine or spruce cone alone releases between 1 and 2 million grains of pollen into the air: In Sweden, which is covered with spruce forests, an estimated 75,000 tons of pollen are blown from the trees each year.

The air blowing in through the open window is surprisingly cool. Sam rolls down her own window, breathing in the fresh air tinged with the smell of warm cedar. Pulling some stray hairs across her forehead, she gazes happily at the beautiful scenery rushing past. These woods are different than the ones back home. The trees are bigger and the forest appears denser. Instead of moss hanging off the branches, sweet smelling pine needles cover the dry ground. Sighing,

I skip down the driveway, hurry up the road, linger on the bridge for a moment, looking down at the reflection of the sky like mercury on the dark water, the foaming white suds near the rocks. Ice glistens on tree branches, frost webs over dried grasses in a sparkling net. The evergreens, dusted with the light snow that fell last night, are like a forest of Christmas trees. For the first time, I am struck by the austere beauty of this place.

No way was clear, no light unbroken, in the forest. Into wind, water, sunlight, starlight, there always entered leaf and branch, bole and root, the shadowy, the complex. Little paths ran under the branches, around the boles, over the roots; they did not go straight, but yielded to every obstacle, devious as nerves. The ground was not dry and solid but damp and rather springy, product of the collaboration of living things with the long, elaborate death of leaves and trees; and from that rich graveyard grew ninety-foot trees, and tiny mushrooms that sprouted in circles half an inch across. The

Attempt 1: (Thirty seconds after crossing the bridge.) Adrian: “This place really is kind of beautiful.  Like, look at this flower…” (Flower spits acid into his eyes.) Adrian: “Oh, gawd!  Oh, sweet, merciful gawd!  I think I’m blind!” (He promptly stumbled over a cliff before Dom could put him out of his misery.) (He screamed the entire way down.) Attempt 19: Dom: “You should stay behind me.” Adrian: “Why?  Last time, nothing was on this trail.  And did you see these glowing rocks—" (A panther pounced on him from a low-hanging branch.) Adrian: “Ahh!  Is that my intestine?  How am I even still alive?” (He somehow survived for a full minute.) (A very loud minute.) Attempt 37: (Adrian walked behind Dom, talking to himself) Adrian: “Okay, this time, I’m going to be careful.  I’m going to stay behind Dom.  I’m going to watch my surroundings.  I’m not going to sniff the flowers.  Or actually anything with bright colors.  Hell, if it’s interesting enough to take a picture of it – it can definitely kill you.  Ha!  That’s actually pretty good…  Hey Dom, I think I just invented the Photograph Rule—” (Adrian tripped over a root and bashed his head against a tree trunk.) (He then fell into a small pond where he was promptly drained dry by a swarm of leeches.) (They were bright pink.)

Everywhere beneath the branches of the four oak trees the moonlight showed him pools of drying blood and tufts of torn-out fur.

The air blowing in through the open window is surprisingly cool. Sam rolls down her own window, breathing in the fresh air tinged with the smell of warm cedar. Pulling some stray hairs across her forehead, she gazes happily at the beautiful scenery rushing past. These woods are different than the ones back home. The trees are bigger, and the forest appears denser. Instead of moss hanging off the branches, sweet-smelling pine needles cover the dry ground.

The whispers split into undiscernible words, sounding like wind through dry leaves. A shudder passed over Éamon’s skin, as if the air of the cave had suddenly become real, and ahead of him, the darkness seemed to crack. Splitting light traced over it like branching tree boughs, and then it was opening around him.

I stood in a round garden with high white walls. I felt that I had seen it before, but I couldn't remember where. Trees ringed the edge of the garden; all around me were great hedges of rosebushes, blossoming in cascades of crimson, white, and red-tipped gold flowers. Overflowing petals lay spattered on the ground beneath them. The light was a liquid, living thing that swirled and eddied through the leaves, rustling them like wind. In the corner of my eye, I thought it had shaped itself into figures that stood watching with still, perilous attention-- but when I looked, they were gone. Before me stood a dried bush, barely more than a skeleton, just a few brown leaves clinging to its twigs. On the topmost branch perched a brown-and-gray sparrow, its black eyes bright. Thank you for the crumbs, it said. My throat itched and stuck to itself as I swallowed. "You," I whispered. "You're the Lar of this house.

Landowners in the bone-dry southwest United States irrigate their properties to evoke the lush, grassy savanna. Gardeners in Japan prune their trees so that the boughs resemble the spreading branches of the trees of East Africa. Such choices reflect the brain’s very particular evolved history—the “ghosts of environments past,” in the phrase of biologist Gordon Orians. What we imagine to be aesthetic preferences are really survival instincts honed over millennia, instincts that helped us find promising places to forage and to rest. When, today, we turn to nature when we’re stressed or burned out—when we take a walk through the woods or gaze out at the ocean’s rolling waves—we are engaging in what one researcher calls “environmental self-regulation,” a process of psychological renewal that our brains cannot accomplish on their own.

The Way I Feel" The way I feel is like a robin whose babes have flown to come no more like a tall oak tree alone and cryin' when the birds have flown and the nest is bare Now a woman Lord is like a young bird and the tall oak tree is a young man's heart among his boughs you'll find her nesting when the nights are cool she's warm and dry Your coat of green it will protect her her wings will grow your love will too But all too soon your mighty branches will cease to hold her and she'll fly from you Now the way I feel is like a robin whose babes have flown to come no more like a tall oak tree alone and cryin' when the birds have flown and the nest is bare when the birds have flown and the nest is bare Gordon Lightfoot, Lightfoot (1966)

Jean’s resplendent tree wasn’t shaking like mine; either Jean was more courageous than I was—of which I had little doubt—or the tree was stouter. A true elder. Leading, commanding, dignified. Its crown deeper and more imposing than those of its neighbors. Providing shade for the younger trees below. Shedding seed evolved over centuries. Stretching its prodigious limbs where songbirds roosted and nested. And where wolf lichens and mistletoes found crevices in which to root. Letting—needing—squirrels to run up and down its trunk in search of cones to store in middens for later meals. And to hang mushrooms in the crooks of branches to dry and eat. This tree alone was a scaffold for diversity, fueling the cycles of the forest.

Amazing Info About The Gerenuk Listed below are some gerenuk facts that'll make for an intriguing read. Gerenuks Fact #1: They've got very long necks and lower limbs to help them endure. There are many gerenuk diversifications that help these kinds of creatures exist adequately in their natural habitat. One of these diversifications is a lengthy, skinny neck and throat. These necks are handy for helping the gerenuk grasp into the trees it enjoys to consume. They also help the animal search quickly so it can pay attention to possible predators that could be sporting it. The gerenuk also has very long, skinny legs and feet that function in the same manner as its neck and throat in relation to looking for foods and nutrients. These legs and feet also aid the creature sprint and bound as it attempts to escape from predators that could be going after it. Gerenuks Fact #2: They can get up on their own rear limbs to get to nutrition that’s a lot higher in trees. The long limbs of the gerenuk have one other purpose, too: enabling the creature to stand up on them to grasp nourishment high in trees. There are tons of animals that eat the same kinds of nutrition as the gerenuk, and it may be hard for these creatures to find something to eat, particularly for the duration of dry times. Nonetheless, whenever they can fully stand up on their back legs to forage, they have better chance at finding tree branches that haven’t been eaten from yet. These animals often stand on their hip and legs and lengthen their necks way out to grasp plant life to consume. Gerenuks Fact #3: Gerenuks often frequent forest areas with plenty of plants and can also frequent scrublands and deserts. The gerenuk environment is shrinking as it loses area to mankind. Even so, the gerenuk still has some space where it likes to dwell and roam. The common gerenuk biome consists of scrublands and deserts with a bit of vegetation, along with anywhere that there is low, thick plant life. The gerenuk likes to hide itself among this sort of plant life and also looks for its favourite Acacia plants among the plant life here. This creature will not tolerate to live in wide open locations, simply because it may not be able to hide properly from possible predators. In addition it likes to stay away from very heavily wooded areas. Find out much more about the incredible Gerenuk at our blog: GERENUK.INFO

Merciful heavens, what a view!" We were running along a high white road that hugged the side of Parnassus. Below us to the left, the steep hillside fell away to the valley of the Pleistus, the river that winds down between Parnassus' great flanks and the rounded ridges of Mount Cirphis, towards the plain of Crissa and the sea. All along the Pleistus – at this season a dry white serpent of shingle beds that glittered in the sun – all along its course, filling the valley bottom with the tumbling, whispering green-silver of water, flowed the olive woods; themselves a river, a green-and-silver flood of plumy branches as soft as sea spray, over which the ever-present breezes slid, not as they do over corn, in flying shadows, but in whitening breaths, little gasps that lift and toss the olive crests for all the world like breaking spray. Long pale ripples followed one another down the valley. Where, at the valley's end, Parnassus thrust a sudden buttress of gaunt rock into the flood, the sea of grey trees seemed to break round it, flowing on, flooding out to fill the flat plain beyond, still rippling, still moving with the ceaseless sheen and shadow of flowing water, till in the west the motion was stilled against the flanks of the distant hills and to the south against the sudden sharp bright gleam of the sea.

Sleep finally comes like a summer dry river, a trickle that's shallow and splits around rocks and downed branches and tree roots, dividing and dividing, till by morning it's the thin bead of gathered morning dew, dripping lazy off the army tent overhead.

There comes a point in everyone’s life when they’ll find themselves getting chased by a pack of ferocious werewolves. While I didn’t think this was something that was going to happen to me until I was much older, say in seventh grade, I wasn’t surprised to find it happening to me right at that moment. My name is Chase Cooper, and I’m a sixth grade ninja… getting chased by werewolves. I sprinted through the dark forest as the tree branches slapped at my face as if they were against the idea of my escape. I’m not sure what I did to make the trees angry. Maybe it was because I carved my initials into one of their friends when I was younger – who knows? Reaching behind my head, I pulled my ninja mask from the hood of my sweatshirt, slipping it over my cheeks until it completely covered my face. With every step I took, I heard dry leaves crunch under my feet. I could also hear the same crunch from the pack of monsters

1989 I’ve been awake all night in an attempt to maintain some kind of hold on what has happened, on what I have done. My eyes are red and prickling with tiredness, but I daren’t go to sleep. If I sleep, when I wake up I’ll have one blissful, terrible second when I’m unaware –and then it will all come crashing in on me, its power multiplied indefinitely by that one un-knowing second. I think of the last time I saw the dawn in, lying in Sophie’s bed. This time it’s a more tempestuous and bleaker affair. A ceaseless summer rain has been falling all night, and the branch of a nearby tree is thwacking intermittently against my windowpane. It’s not just the chemicals keeping me awake, although I can still feel them coursing, unwanted, around my veins. I’ve been sitting here on the floor for four hours, as my bedroom turns gradually from darkness to a dull grey half-light. I’m surrounded by the debris of my elaborate preparations for the evening that, twelve hours ago, stretched out invitingly, bright with the promise of acceptance and approval. There are three dresses strewn on the bed, with the accompanying pair of shoes for each lying discarded in front of the full-length mirror. My eyes rest dully on the stain on the carpet where Sophie dropped my new bronzing powder and I made a clumsy attempt to wipe it up with a bit of tissue dipped in a glass of stale water. The dress I wore lies in a crumpled heap next to me –I’ve pulled on an old sweatshirt and leggings. There are dark smudges under my eyes and my lips are dry, the remains of my lipstick clinging to the cracks and bleeding into the skin around my mouth. I’ve been sitting here on the floor for so long only because I can’t move. I would have expected my heart to be racing, but in fact an iron fist grips it so tightly that I am surprised it is beating at all. Everything has slowed to a funereal

You want to gather up brush first or return fire?” Shane asked. “I’ll gather brush.” “The dangerous part.” “You’ll get your turn.” They alternated scooping up handfuls of the dry weeds, with one of them returning fire while the other worked. They also collected dry branches and small tree limbs, all the time exchanging fire with the militiamen in the cave. “Persistent bunch,” Max muttered. “You think we’ve got a big enough pile?” “Depends. Do we want to roast them or keep them from coming out?” “Good question. I think we can’t gather enough for a militia barbecue. We’d better settle for pinning them inside while we get away.” “Agreed.

After the mountains, the road passed along an endless stretch of dead orchards, the trees' bare brown branches uplifted in a silent curse to the dry, hot skies.

rude little man!’ ‘We’d better not look in at any windows we pass,’ said Joe. ‘But I was so surprised to see a window in the tree!’ Beth soon got dry. They climbed up again, and soon had another surprise. They came to a broad branch that led to a yellow door set neatly in the big trunk of

Why are you here?” I asked and my heart was suddenly in my throat. “Does it… does it have to do with the stake?” “You’re damn right, it’s the stake,” the witch snapped. She fumbled in the giant, oversized purse she was wearing and pulled out something that looked like an old, dried up tree branch. “What’s that?” I asked, staring at it blankly. “That’s the stake! The soul eater.” She thrust it at me and I pulled back instinctively. “What the hell—keep it out of my face!” “It can’t hurt you now—it can’t hurt anyone. Someone neutralized it—someone reversed my spell.” She glared at me as if I was personally responsible. Which actually, I probably was. “That was my best magic and I come from a long line of powerful witches. Even I couldn’t have reversed that spell. How the hell did you do it?” Taylor turned to me, her eyes wide. “You reversed a witch’s magic? But how, Addison? You’re not a witch—are you?” “No, of course not.” I tried to laugh. “I think you’d know by now if I was. You would have caught me out casting spells at midnight or dancing with the devil or something.” An uncomfortable look crossed Gwendolyn’s face. “That’s a fucking stereotype and I don’t appreciate it. Witches are neutral agents of power—they have nothing to do with demons or any other creatures of the Shadow Lands.” She glared at me. “So how did you reverse my magic?” “She paid the Crimson Debt.

Furl your banners and hang you heads,” muttered the wind, “this is no time for tourney. Cast into my four arms those gaudy trappings, for what can cause you joy, O trees, at such a time as this?” “This rising Sun and the long bright bright day,” the beech cried out. “The setting Sun and the cool dark night,” the oak said quietly. “And the rain,” the pine murmured gratefully, “wit it’s gentle fingers finer than my needles.” The maple was silent. The wind spun around it’s rough gray trunk and sent a shower of gold into the sky. “O wind,” the maple said, “the side passage of the year from cold to heat, from growing to fruition, from birds nesting to their migrations, is joy enough for us. Let us celebrate it, O wind, before the snow lays it’s white fingers on us and bids us be silent for a time.” The maple spoke wistfully, golden leaves tumbling down the day at every word. “You speak of memories,” the wind went on. “I who have roamed the earth have seen suffering and cruelty and sorrow. You who stand so still in one place always must believe me.” “For you, O wind, perhaps it has been a year of sad revelation,” the beech said softly; “but for us it has been a year like all others—rising suns and waxing moons, rains and dews and storms, and the seasons marching in orderly procession around us.” “Ah,” the wind wailed, clutching at gold and scarlet and green, “how can you hold those banners high when evil still stalks the earth?” The trees quivered and were silent. The wind raged around them, and his fury brought down cascades of leaves, which he sent hurling over the dry ground. “We hold our banners high in faith, O wind,” the pine spoke out, lifting its voice so the wind would hear, “emblem for this brief moment of the pledge we have made. We have heard before of these things that you would tell us. The stars have told us many strange tales, and the moon has told us even stranger ones. But we must still be faithful.” “To what?” moaned the wind, annoyed that his words could not deter the trees from their galliard ways. “To the everlasting right at the heart of things,” replied the maple. “Evil has but a little day, O wind, and good has a thousand.” The banners were fading and falling, and the wind laughed to himself that the brave words of the trees must be as thin and fleeting. He stamped and reached high, swept over the ground and leapt aloft, while leaves fell in a gilded shower about him. Cheering at his triumph, he looked through bare branches to the sky, heavy with scudding clouds. Oak, maple, beech were silenced now. Dark trunks stood rooted in the earth, crossed boughs were held uplifted to the heavens. The pine swayed slowly, it’s heraldic blazon of sable and vert gleaming darkly. “Look higher, wind, than those bare boughs. Look wider.” The wind looked, and there, outlined against the sunset gold, on every twig tight buds were tipping: the crimson secret of the oak, the enscaled cradle of the maple, the little sheathed sword of the beech. “Faith, my friend,” the pine said in a whisper, “faith has the last word always.” The wind bowed low, low enough to kiss the leaves that swirled around him in a moment of ecstasy; then the wind went on his way down the archway of the year that was luminous with promise.

The next day after work, we took the bumboat to Pulau Ubin. The tree was located after the Chek Jawa Quarry, where we cut through a dirt path to arrive at a clearing. The tree reminded me of a witch's fingers, upturned towards the sky. Its branches were gnarly and skinny, its trunk about the size of my waist. It looked like a severed hand, sticking out of its grave for one last snatch. 'It's as good as dead,' I said, patting it with my hand and feeling the dry bark. The sun had set, lending the remote island an eerie feel at dusk. We were only twenty minutes out of Singapore, yet Pulau Ubin with its small wooden homes and backyards filled with chicken coops felt like a different country altogether.