Sometimes, I dream. Sometimes, when they come to me with their clippers, I stir and I dream. Recollection and familiarity filtered through the song of slumber. I rarely remember my dreams, but my dreams always remember me.
I dream of a sunny afternoon. Past seasons’ saplings play host to yellowhammers and finches and sparrows. The carefully dug brook twists amongst the mossy mounds, leaving pools of water in its wake. I dream of my foot slipping along the wet dirt to plunge into such a pool. That the water’s still cold from last spring chill. I dream that I tend to a fresh new sprout, with its first leaves reaching for the warm sunshine.
I dream of the season’s first nip. I dream of a flutter of wings that brush against the hairs on my arm. In the dream, I do not notice them. Not until a mellow burn sneaks into my flesh, and I hold back the instinct of swatting at it.
“Reinar!”, I hiss over to my right.
“What – no!”, I hear hissing back at me from beyond the curtain of last season’s planted elms.
“Get over here!”
I dream of the soft squelching that his feet make against the wet moss and undergrowth as he makes his way over. I dream that I can feel him squatting down beside me, to hover over my shoulder.
“What, Jonas?!”, he snaps at me in a hushed tone.
“Look…”
I lift my arm to the light. Just in time for the bug to fill with a brilliant red.
“Huh”, I hear Reinar’s irritation deflate as he spots the mosquito. “That’s early.”
“First of the season.”
“Good sign”, he muses as the insect has its fill and flits away into the afternoon.
“Earlier and earlier each year. In a few weeks, we’ll be more rash than hide.”
“Oh joy”, Reinar mutters, but lingers by my side.
“I’ll scratch yours if you’ll scratch mine…”, I tease and send him a side-long grin.
He flushes. I can tell even through his sun-rubbed skin. I smile, in my dream, because I love making him blush. It’s still easy to. At first, he shifts uncomfortably in his squat. Until the embarrassment catches up to him, and turns to ire.
“For Mother’s mercy, Jonas!”
“What?”
“Is that what you called me over for? To taunt me?”
“Would I do that?”, I sneer and wink at him.
Sometimes, I dream that he pushes me over. That I slide down the mound and crash into the marshy pools. We laugh. I splash water at him. We’re happy. Sometimes, I dream that he is interrupted.
“Is it sickly?”, a groaning voice creaks from behind us. Reinar’s flush evaporates. We stumble, slip off the balls of our feet, and turn around. Because behind us looms our overseer. With her crown of brambles intermingled with her coarse hair. Her slanted eyes staring nowhere and everywhere. The left side of her throat and cheek is covered with a graft of bark. Her mouth is open just enough for me to see her row of jagged fangs, like deformed rose thorns. And when she speaks, she barely moves her thin lips. Her voice grinds forth from her throat like the wind rubbing boughs together in a coming storm.
“Gnestra!”, Reinar erupts and scrambles to his feet. She isn’t tall, but even when Reinar stands up, her presence lords over him.
“Yes arborist”, the askefroa hisses and stays still. The only thing of hers that moves are her left-hand fingers, grinding away at an age-old chestnut. “Is it sickly? Is it unwell?”
“What is, oh Gnestra?”, Reinar prostrates before our overseer, our tree whisperer. Sometimes I dream that I try to follow suit. Sometimes, I just stand and watch and fear.
“Your ward, of course”, the askefroa rasps. “Your responsibility. Your sprig. Is it sickly?”
“No, oh Gnestra”, I answer back. “It is growing well.”
“Then why… oh why… does it demand two arborists to tend to it?”
Reinar looks at me. He’s afraid. He’s frustrated. Rarely, he’s hateful. But every time he turns away and darts back past the curtain of saplings. Back to his own ward. It is a season of alders. And mine is growing well. I am proud of it. I am proud of my work. But sometimes I dream that I make it sickly, just so that Reinar and I can work together to make it better.
The askefroa stares at me. She stares at my young alder. She sees all, and her eyes are as black as resin stained with old blood. I dream that I wait for punishment. That I wait for her judgement. A heavy weight that hangs from around my neck, on the inside of my garments, burns against my skin at her baleful stare.
“Then carry on, arborist”, she simply states. “Carry on with your devoir.”
I bow. She waits until I turn back to my ward. And then she’s gone. Sometimes I dream that I feel the moss under my feet shift as she passes by. Sometimes, I dream that she filters away between the trees, the young and the infant, and touches each branch and stem like one would their child. I dream that she sings. Sometimes I dream that she sings with her dead voice, that fearful hiss and gnarl. Sometimes, she sings the song of my sleep. A song that isn’t hers. Not really. Sometimes, her song dims my dreams. Sometimes, I fall into that song, without hope or effort to ever dream again.
Sometimes, I dream that it is dark. I’m laying in my cot. The ceiling above me rises high. It was painted, once. It is hard to see with what. Ivy and hops clamber up the walls, and creep along the beams. I lay there, and imagine what the ceiling once showed. I imagine a master’s dinner for his apostles. I imagine sacrifice. I imagine hope. I dream that I am in my cot and paint the ceiling over and over again. I lay in the darkness, imagining, and hold my hand tight around my talisman.
“What is that?”, Reinar whispers through the darkness from the next cot over.
“What?”, I defensively answer, and pull my blanket up to my chin to hide it.
“The thing in your hand?”, he pushes.
Sometimes, I dream that I lie. That I say that there is nothing in my hand. I release my talisman, and instead reach over the gulf between cots to take his hand. Reinar doesn’t push any more. We lay in the darkness, hands clutched, and do not talk about it again.
Sometimes, I relent, and I show him.
I can hear him stiffen and swallow a terrified gasp. I feel shame rise to the tip of my ears. And I quickly hide it away again.
“A cross?!”, he nearly chokes in the darkness.
We hold our breath in fear that someone heard him. But no one else stirs from their rest.
“Are you mad?!”, Reinar hisses at me.
“Do you know what they’ll do if they catch you with it?”
“You can’t have that!”
“Hide it!”
“Throw it away!”
“Bury it!”
“Destroy it!”
It doesn’t matter what I answer. Reinar says the same things. I see his eyes, in the darkness. Wide. The whites showing around his blue irises. Bulging with panic. I am tempted to do as he says. But I can’t bring myself to. I tell myself, and him, that he is overreacting. That the Circle won’t care. That Gnestra won’t care. But I do not convince him. And I do not convince myself. I keep the steel cross hidden away. Under my blanket. In my hand. Beneath my garment.
Our whispered arguments falter. Silence reigns the halls again. I stop imagining the many ways the ceiling was once painted. I turn my back to Reinar. We stay silent, and sleep with the gulf unbridged between our cots. I clutch at my cross, and scratch at the mosquito bite, to numb myself to the silence.
I dream when they come to me with their shears and pincers. I dream of the morning congregation. Most times, we take our morning gatherings in the courtyard of the complex. But not this time. We are below ground. The air is cold and damp. High above our heads, the arched ceiling is broken. The walls are polished clean, to reflect as much light as possible down onto the atrium floor. The hall is dotted with strangely arched and knotted trees. I cannot make out what kind. The loam is soft beneath my naked feet. Most times, the overseers, the whisperers, or the Mother’s Maid do not preach. They hum in unison, channelling the Mother’s song for us arborists to hear. The song is never the same, but always familiar. Like something you once heard before your memories could form. Organic and endlessly shifting.
The whisperers pass among us arborists, and offer us Mother’s Milk. Meant to represent her sap and blood. The bowls are not carved, but grown.
At my side stands Reinar. I cast him a thin smile of reconciliation. He sees it. I know he does. But he does not return it. His jaw is clenched. He is still angry. Still afraid for me. It pains me, but yet, I am happy. He cares. And I promise myself to talk to him later.
I dream that Gnestra interrupts my attempts to catch Reinar’s eye. She strides up to me with a bowl and lifts it up for me to sip. I bend my head and drink. The milk is bitter this morning. More bitter than it usually is. But I think little of it. The kitchen’s goat is old.
The humming ceases. The whisperers line the atrium walls. And the Mother’s Maid steps up onto the heavy roots at the end of the hall. Roots as thick as trees themselves, roots that have broken through the end wall and wind their way through the soil. By standing on top of them, the Mother’s Maid is elevated enough to be seen from the back rows of arborists. She wears simple robes, the colour of pale linen, stained brown and green from garden work. Her wide, amber eyes scan our faces. She looks stoic. And sad. But calm and determined.
“The Mother loves you”, she begins. Her voice carries effortlessly across the massive atrium. It isn’t coarse like Gnestra’s. It is heavy, like a summer storm shower. Weighted. Rich. And she speaks to each of us gathered just as naturally as if it were a personal audience. “All of you. All of us. Despite what… we have done to her in the past. Despite our negligence, our apathy, our forgetfulness… or our crimes.”
Many of my peers shift uncomfortably by the mention. Reinar stiffens. And shame makes the cross hanging from my neck all the heavier. The hall is absolutely silent for a beat.
“Though some more than others, we all had a part in the Cataclysm”, the Mother’s Maid continues. Her willowy mane flits and stirs even down here where barely a breeze reaches. “Our Mother was vibrant and healthy once. And we, her children, had a duty to tend to her just as she tended to us. We failed that duty. Some, many, rejected her love. Her health turned to sickness. To frailty. And eventually, collapse. And as she collapsed around us, she could no longer protect us against the hollow heart of the world.”
“It is our duty as wayward children, more so than ever, to tend to our Mother now that she is ailing. It is our duty to give everything to nurse her back from death’s door. Not just because of a sullied conscience. Not just because we failed her once. But because her death would spell the doom of everything. And she is-… I am, ever so proud of each and every one of you for dedicating yourselves to her now that she needs us more than ever.”
I shift my eyes along the lines of arborists. We stand before the voice of the Circle of Muorra, the Mother’s Maid herself, and listen to her mournful pride. I spot Gnestra striding toward me between the rows. Her black eyes pinned on me. I glance at Reinar, but he sets his eyes straight ahead and doesn’t acknowledge me. I grow nervous.
Gnestra stops before me. I try to bend down, but my knees and neck are stiff. She holds out her hand to me, but I do not know what she wants. I glance once more to Reinar, and catch him looking away. He’s now the only peer around me that isn’t looking.
My overseer won’t wait for me to understand what she wants. She reaches out for my throat. I try to stagger away, but my feet won’t move. I look down and see grey tendrils straining out of my feet, out from between my toes and from under my nails, that reach down into the loam. Gnestra interrupts my mounting panic by grabbing onto my linen poncho and she pulls me down to her. She snatches the cord around my neck and snaps it off. My cross dangles from her hand in front of my face. I hear a wave of gasps from my neighbours. From everyone except Reinar.
“Which is why it is so important for us to remember the signs of how the rejection of our Mother came to pass”, the Maid continues. “Which is why it is important for us to stay vigilant against the symbols of the past that lead us here. And if they crop up, meet them with dire consequences. Because it is our duty to serve our Mother. And if we cannot prevail to serve with our hearts, we will have to serve with our flesh.”
I dream that Gnestra holds my cross high for all to see. I try to reach out for it. For her. But it is hard. My shoulder is stiff. And as I try to grasp for the steel, the insect bite on my arm itches more than ever. I look down and see a budding shoot pierce the raw bubble of flesh and spread sickly pinkish leaves. I turn to Reinar. He’s looking at me now. Finally. But his tanned hide has gone pale. His eyes sunken with horror. He wears pain and fear on his face, and it hurts me. More than the roots taking hold from under my toenails. More than the shoot breaking my skin to search for light. More than my lungs cracking and ripping. I try to say something nice to him. I try to ask him for help. I try to say that I love him. But as my lips part, my tongue feels rough and coarse and won’t move in my mouth.
I dream of voices. Of arboritsts crying out in shock and fear. Of the Maid soothing the congregation. But the harder I try to hear exactly what she says, I instead hear the song. The tune behind the whisperer’s humming. I see Reinar shy away. His eyes shot with red. I see him cower. I see him run out of the atrium, and I cannot run after him. My feet won’t move. I feel something pop behind my eyes. It hurts, but it is a dull hurt. The song soothes it like a warm balm. I see shadows in my sight. Blurry outlines shifting in front of my eyes, like wriggling worms. I try to blink them away, but with each attempt my lids grow heavier. For a moment, I catch a glimpse of one of the crooked trees. And I can make out a pattern to the grotesque knots and gnarls in the pale bark. I see a nose. An eye. And even a mournful face.
But the song grows clearer. Even though the whisperers aren’t humming. And my dream dissipates to deep slumber.
Sometimes, when they come with their clippers and shears to prune and cut me, I dream. I dream of planting trees in our new forest. I dream of resting, hand in hand with Reinar. I dream of his face twisted in terror. I dream of my mute lips and stiffening joints. But then the song soothes me again.
But sometimes, I still dream…
/Sebastian Lindberg 8/4-2021
WastedWords 