When French settlers arrived they lumbered the pines surrounding the mighty oak’s field for their own use. Wood to build and wood to burn. Powerful swings of countless axes broke the pines and obliterated the field’s once mighty borders.
The men that first stumbled upon the field felt its oppressive atmosphere and only barely mastered their dread in the face of the mighty oak that towered over them.
They sullied the bright green grass with their filthy boots as they approached the powerful tree. One of the men touched the oak’s beautiful bark and proclaimed that she’d make the finest wood he had ever seen.
The wildlife screamed and the birds roared through the sky as the first ax struck the oak. The men chopped as if their lives depended on it. The sweat on their forehead driven by a desire they themselves could barely understand. As if the fall of the mighty oak somehow underscored their dominance over the area they claimed as their own.
But the oak never fell. Whenever an ax struck it the bark would quickly regenerate itself. The powerful tree drew from a life force so ancient and deeply rooted beneath the earth that no mere man could ever touch it, let alone claim it for himself.
If the oak could have laughed it would have mocked the frail attempts of these mindless workers with a violent snicker. As it was, the oak’s disdain for their blatant weakness quietly took hold of the men’s minds and hearts.
As the night fell the men turned their beaten backs toward the oak and knew that they would never return. All but one committed suicide over the failure that kept echoing so brutally through their tired skulls. The one that survived his inner turmoil made sure that no man would ever try to bring down the oak ever again.
The pines, however, had all been cleared and there was no longer a border surrounding the oak’s quiet domain. Now boundless, the oak’s silent call spread through the air and through the earth, and contaminated the waters. Whatever the oak was, and whatever it wanted, had been freed to do as it saw fit.
In time the oak’s call would reach the ears of those that should never have heard it.
(1808)
Margaret wasn’t crazy. She kept telling herself that she wasn’t crazy. Even when the townsfolk had kicked and beaten her and she had run for her life, she knew she wasn’t crazy.
She was right. Not crazy.
Margaret had first seen him in the pale moonlight when she was but a girl. His perfectly sculpted body. His flowing dark hair that reached all the way to the middle of his back. That beautiful smile, and the dark gaze he had directed at her as she watched him through the window.
“I am Baal,” the raspy voice she heard inside her little head had told her. “You will one day be my bride.”
Little Margaret had believed him then and prayed that ‘one day’ would arrive very soon.
It hadn’t.
She had waited for years as she kept herself clean and untouched for the man she knew was waiting for her. Waiting for that one right moment to claim her and take her away from the town she hated. The town that hated her right back.
It had shown its hate in its mockery, and in its contempt. It had not believed Margaret’s stories of the stranger in the night. Her stories of a fate that was far greater than the lives the others in town could ever imagine.
When Margaret got pregnant by the drunk that raped her, but that swore he never touched her, the town was quick to cast her out.
Margaret could still remember the beating that almost killed her. That would have killed her had she not run blindly toward the woods that called out to her.
She roamed the woods aimlessly for days, her desperation growing with every passing moment as she had not only herself to feed, but the child inside of her as well. Perhaps the woods could have provided to those knowledgeable enough, but Margaret knew nothing of such things.
It was only when she was at her hungriest that the man she had seen all those years ago appeared to her. He was warm and beautiful and she wanted to embrace him but he kept her at arm’s length.
“Not yet….” The voice echoed through her skull and subdued her.
Quietly he took her hand and guided her out of the woods and toward a bright and open field. There Margaret found the generous oak.
The man’s voice sounded through her head. “The oak will feed you, and will provide you with all that you need to build a home for you and your daughters.”
Then the man vanished and left her in the safe embrace of the towering oak.
Every day Margaret came back to that oak. Every day the oak provided her with fruit and mushrooms and sometimes even a loaf of bread that would hold for days. It gave her wood and tools to use so she could build herself a small home in the woods.
When Margaret confessed to herself that she didn’t know how to build anything, the oak even whispered the instructions in her ear.
This became Margaret’s life. She visited the oak during the day, where she would sit and eat and sometimes converse with the oak’s silent voice lingering through her head. It would whisper truths to her that she had never known. About the origins of the stars and the moon and how they all danced in a beautiful and cruel balance. Nature was about destruction as much as it was about creation, the oak confided in her.
At night she would retreat to the safety of her home, only to sink into wild and vivid dreams of dances around the fire accompanied by a deep humming tune playing in the back of her head that guided her dreams along a predetermined path.
Margaret’s latest hours were colored with visions of warm and naked bodies piled up into a frenzied orgy. Every early morning, right before she woke up, the dreams granted her a loud and powerful orgasm.
The day Margaret gave birth the sun refused to rise. The animals in the woods surrounding her home did not leave their dens. The birds did not dare to spread their wings, not even to flee. The insects, always so resilient in the face of nature’s cruel demands, did not buzz or crawl. The essence of nature, that is to eat and to fight and to fuck, was denied on that dark day abandoned by the sun.
A circle of deep blue flames drew itself around Margaret’s house and from it stepped the man that had appeared to her all those years ago. Soft yet powerful steps took him to her door and he walked inside without announcing himself.
Margaret lay on her bed, frightened and confused, with only the vaguest idea about what her body was supposed to do. When she saw her prince enter the house all those fears abandoned her and she was at once enthralled by his presence. The pain seemed less, the anxiety fell to the background of her busy mind, and she again noticed his soft and divine beauty.
He gently put his hand on her sweaty forehead and whispered sweet nothings into her mind. His other hand he placed on her bloated belly, rubbing it carefully.
Soon a deep blue light appeared from his presence and extended from his body to Margaret. It bathed her in a hypnotizing warmth and for a moment Margaret thought that she would lose consciousness. Her eyelids grew heavier, her breathing more relaxed, and she no longer felt the tension than ran from her shoulders all the way down to her toes.
And then she screamed because the blue light wasn’t kind. It didn’t take her pain away, nor the labor that was her womanly duty to perform. She screamed and she pushed and she huffed, and she huffed, and then she screamed and she pushed again.
Her body felt as if it would tear apart underneath the pressure of the child that needed to be born but tried its hardest not to. The child that knew that moving toward the light meant moving away from the dark and warm comfort of its old home. The womb where it floated, where it was heated and fed without any effort. Its tiny fingers desperately reached for the walls of Margaret’s insides in a last attempt to resist its mother’s force. Its mother’s denial. Its mother’s rejection.