This is a long fairy tale that I wrote and illustrated years ago and haven't yet figured out how to share. This is a section from the middle of the story where Kalili gets turned into a tree and must be saved by her companions, Fireball the knight, and Loretta, a young princess, both of whom have decided to accompany her on her journey. Stay tuned as I figure out how best to share this story....
...Once again I wake and this time Loretta, Fireball, mostly healed it seems and Perry are standing around my trunk in a circle, holding hands. Loretta is singing and Perry and Fireball are singing along.
What is this tune and melody that they are singing? Did they perhaps ask for the second guidance? From a tree, I vaguely remember, as if from another lifetime. My identity is drifting away. I no longer have a sense of me as Kalili, or if I do, it is as if that persona were from another lifetime very long ago.
I can feel the melody in my many ears. Something about this is not too uncomfortable. Perhaps I could get used to being a tree. I can feel the insects on my bark, scampering up and down, busy and preoccupied with their multiple tasks. There will always be insects, won’t there? It occurs to me that though many of the animals have died or have been poisoned, the insects seem to survive everything. This fact seems important somehow but then it drifts out of my mind.
I struggle to stay awake this time. I will myself to listen to and really hear their song.
“Oh, most beautiful, most sacred of the forest. The holy tree of Forest Wittergrund. Hear us, oh hear us….”
I hear these words and the faintest feeling comes into my limbs, but it is still my tree limbs, not my Kalili limbs. Are they implying that I have become a holy tree? And if so, why? I suppose I am still able to question and think in my mind. Does a tree have questions? This gives me an idea. I can try to communicate with the other trees around us. I know or seem to remember that we have come into a circular grove of trees.
My eyes are now many eyes, just as my ears are many ears. Is this the way of the tree? Or is it that the tree communicates by sensing with its entire being. I can feel a YES building in my tree body. Yes, OK, so that is it.
Now if I can just get my body to communicate to the trees nearby. It seems to call for something different than all of this efforting that I have been engaging in. Tree language seems much slower and deeper than that. I have forgotten who I really am, Kalili of the depths. I should be able to understand this without a problem. I have to trust that I can do it.
How does a tree breathe? I take a deep tree breath, which seems to involve reaching deep down into my roots and bringing up the energy and air all the way to my outermost leaves. Now. And once again. And now the words. What do I want to say? Tree beings of the Forest Wittergrund. What do you know of what has happened to this forest? What is it that you need for your healing and what is needed for the healing of the land altogether? Will you answer my request?
And now I have the sense enough to wait. I make myself as still as I possibly can. Which is not entirely possible, as it seems that some of my functioning is beyond my control. The leaves continue to shift in the breeze. The insects continue to scurry. And the sap continues to flow through my body. But still I wait.
And wait. The song wafting from below, enters into my consciousness and flows out again. But what is this? I can hear something, a deep, deep voice that I don’t think I would have heard if I were not a tree and were not as silent as I am now.
At first it is not words but a deep rumbling and booming sound, almost like thunder or sheets of storm rains hitting the side of a mountain. “Kaaaalllilli…..” The voice is calling my name. Or is that my companions? I can hear my name being called is all that I can figure out.
But no, Kaaaaaaliiiiiiliiiiii,” deep and soft. It must be the tree. Or the trees. One picks up the call and then the next and the words, the sound of my name echoes around me and through the entire forest, because now it is not just the trees of this grove that are responding but the entire forest of trees. What a deep and powerful voice that is!
What is this now? What are they saying? It seems that even Loretta and my other companions are beginning to listen. Is it possible that the trees communicate like this at all times and we just don’ t hear them? This thought crosses my mind and I immediately know that it is true. What have I missed in all these years?
Once more, Kaaaliiiiiliiiii! What is your mission here? Why do you call to us, the spirits of the Forest Wittergrund? No one has called on us for far too long. We have watched the destruction of this land, of our beloved forest and have not been able to do anything about it. That is the lot of the trees. We stand and watch. We provide shelter. We provide air to breathe and we provide the sap of our life force. We are cut down for our wood. We provide shelter for the animals, who live within us and are sheltered under our branches or among our roots. But no one before this has called us in this way.
I am overcome by a deep feeling of sweetness and love. The voices that I hear have an ageless sound. They call forth deep truth and resonate with something deep inside me. I am full of joy. It doesn’t seem to matter any more that I may never live my life as Kalili again. The life of a tree seems like the noblest and most sacred of lives to live. Perhaps there is nothing that needs to change.
And then I hear the voices of my companions again, their song breaks through the song of the trees and reminds me of my mission. Of why I have come to this forest in the first place. And no, I cannot remain as a tree forever. But how do I break out of this shell? What must I do?
The voices of the trees seem to be saying something different now. I realize that the beginning of an answer to my question is coming. I have to concentrate all of my attention to hear what they are saying. It is if, among the many threads of their song, and there are many, there is the theme that I have described already and now I am able to discern, as if a melody which resonates with multiple overtones, that there are hundreds of different voices combining to create the thread that I am hearing. It is as if there is a separate note for each leaf on each tree whose voice is added to the song. This is why it has been difficult for me to separate out this one, low, deep and subtle voice, which is giving me an answer to my request.
“The answer is in your closest companions. They must sacrifice for you and then you too will be freed. They must hold their hands into your bark at the place of connection. They must hold their hands in the place of connection for as long as it takes. And then you will return to your previous form.”
The place of connection? A sacrifice on the part of my closest companions? I can’t ask them to make a sacrifice for me. And what is this place of connection? Am I going to have to be a tree forever? But the voice, this deepest one, was not finished.
“You must ask yourself, however, is this truly what you want. We of the Forest Wittergrund recognize you as one of our own. Ask yourself do you really want to return to the pain of being who you were before. Consider the life of a tree. Would it not be so much preferable to join us forever? You must consider this.”
I would never have thought this possible, but there is a part of me that would like to believe this last part of what the voice has said. I can very easily see myself remaining as a tree. Never before have I felt the sense of communion that I now feel within this community of trees. They are part of me and yet separate. I am part of something larger than myself and yet I do not feel that inner struggle that was so much a part of my being as Kalili.
Once again I hear the voices of my companions, and the sound is bittersweet to my ears. They are appealing also to the sacred trees, to my companions in treeness. I can sense that this is what they are doing but I can no longer understand the words they are saying. It is as if my ears are being closed to the voices of humankind. The tree voices have filled my consciousness; have filled the entire height and depth of my being and what I am hearing is fulfilling a deep yearning in me that I was never aware of before. I am lost to the voices, no longer am I who I was before. I completely surrender to the sound.
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There is a deep pain in my being, deeper than I have ever felt before and I have felt many kinds of pain in my long life. It is a burning sensation, two burning sensations, one at either side of my trunk. It is as if two red-hot irons are being forced into my sides. Again, I feel the wish to scream but cannot. No voice comes out except a low rumbling which could be mistaken for thunder or maybe the wind in the tops of the trees. Without my really desiring it, I am feeling myself being violently drawn back into my Kalili form. But it as if my parts are all scrambled up, both inside and outside, as if some giant unruly child has torn off my head and is trying to put it in the place where my arms should be and is trying to stick my arms into my neck. I am no longer a tree but I am also no longer Kalili. I am somewhere in between.
And then gradually, my parts begin to integrate into their correct configurations and I can see that to one side of me is Loretta and her hand is holding mine and on the other side is Fireball and he is holding my other hand. Their faces are contorted in pain and this is what finally jolts me completely back into my former identity.
And then it as if it had all been a dream. We are back in the grove of trees and I am Kalili. And my companions are with me, one on either side. Yet something is wrong with one of their arms, for Loretta it is her left arm and for Fireball it is his right. Immediately I set about with my chest of potions to find something that can help the melting mass that was once flesh but is now something completely unrecognizable of their mangled arms. “Perry, help me!” I cry and he is there at my side as if he had never left, or was it I who had left?
“Hold this for me, Perry,” I say, and I hand him the tiny purple bottle of the potion, which I have saved for those who are in mortal danger. Carefully I remove the stopper from the top of the bottle, “first Loretta, bring her here,” and Perry drags an unconscious Loretta over to where I am standing. I drop two tiny drops of the potion into the squirming mass that was once her arm and instantly it returns to its former wholeness and at the same time she wakes up, rubbing her eyes. “Quick, now Fireball,” and Perry drags Fireball over and I do the same with his damaged arm. He heals and wakes as quickly as Loretta did.
“Now, let them rest,” and Perry gently guides one and then the other over to a soft patch of moss in the center of the clearing...
Kalili trapped inside the tree, Kalili being saved by her companions, Loretta and Fireball, the knight and a scene that occurs later where they fly through the air in a vortex...