The Tree is Here, Still, in Pure Stone

    What else could they do but love each other? She loved him with all the intensity of fire and he loved her with the certainty of stone.

    The river flowed slowly by in the darkness, they lay on its bank and named the stars.

    “That is Llandyssil,” he said pointing to a faint blue star.

    “The pebble?” she laughed and twined her fingers with his. “That is Caerswych.”

    He let out a snort and pulled her closer, “It’s hardly a candle.”

    “We’re going to war,” she said after a long silence broken only by the curling sounds of water flowing in the night. She was the Witch of the East and he the Sorcerer of the West and they were bound to their lands as much as they cleaved to each other.

“The King is furious,” he replied.

“The Queen wants his head.”

They held each other until dawn.    

    The people of the West, were hewers of wood and miners of stone. Strong and unyielding they came down from the hills and the mountains in their thousands and marched east.

    Her people, of the East, were traders and sailors. They built large cities and controlled the waterways. They debated and argued and fought over the merits of this course or that course.

    The army of the West arrived at the border. The Captain of the garrison had turned out all his men, though they numbered less than one fourth of the enemy, and they stood athwart the bridge and made as to stop the invaders.

    The sorcerer came forward and changed into the form of a wolf. He tore the Captain’s throat and the army followed him across the bridge, bloody and howling.

The Queen, her witch at her side strode into the Hall of Lords

She asked her Lords their thoughts, their opinions, and their council. She listened and asked attentive questions. She took note of the arguments between them; the petty feuds held so long by rich families they become as much a part of a person as teeth.

    The Queen made a small coughing sound and nodded to her witch. The witch stepped forwards and bowed to the Lords, then she raised her hand and pointed her finger at them, one after the other.

    “You have failed your Queen,” she said in her softest, sweetest tone. And the Lords died, screaming as they burst, one after the other, into blue flames.

    The army marched from the Capital that day.

    “It’s blood, is the problem,” an old drunk was heard to say in a tavern one night. “It’s too close. We’ve been next to each other a hundred generations, ‘s far back as there’s any memory. We marry them and they marry us until it’s hard to tell the difference and we claim there’s a difference and that’s what’s got us at each other’s throat.” Of course, no one listened. It was about the King of the West and the Queen of the East and spurned love and old, old grudges. It had nothing to do with blood.

    The sorcerer tore through the battlefields. He was everywhere, massive teeth raking and tearing, leaving a wake of gore. The hewers and miners of the West came behind him, howling and waving their axes and cudgels. Their bearded faces taking on a wolfish aspect as they struck deeper and deeper into the lands of the East.

    They were incredibly strong and incredibly brave. The Easterners fell back, giving way.   

She laid the trap to catch the wolf.

They spilled down into the valley before the capital, a brown horde, screaming and fat with blood and victory. The army of the East drew up at the far end of the valley and let them come.

Her soldiers were not strong, nor were they insanely brave, but they were disciplined, they held their ranks. And they built machines. They built machines which hurled iron spikes and pots of flaming oil. They built machines which drifted on the wind and spilled choking clouds onto the screaming mass of the wolf-warriors.

The King of the West died from an iron spike falling from the sky, his army disintegrating around him

The witch came forth at the end, and she called her great love. She strode through the dead and dying, a blue flame of loving anger.

He was gone.

The sorcerer had shed his wolf form and taken the shape of a bird. Her name drifted back on the wind as he soared away. She stood a long time, until the army left and her only company were the crows.

And then she went after him.

The first time she found him was by the ocean. We know this because there was an old, pious hermit who had made his home there. He had been alone for many, many years and so it was a great shock for him to come out one morning to see a handsome man and beautiful lady talking quietly to each other on his beach.

“You could just give up,” the man said with a small smile.

She shook her head, “You know that’s not true.”

The hermit realized both were crying and it was obvious they loved each other very much.

“You could,” he repeated.

“You’ll never stop, so long as you live, the West lives.”  

He nodded, “You’d never stop either.”

“No,” she said and crystal-clear tears slid down her cheeks.

“I’m not going to make it easy,” and a particularly large wave came then and broke over the man and as he was pulled to sea he changed into a blackfish and he leapt into the air once and then crashed into the water and disappeared into the depths.

“I know, my love,” the woman said.

The hermit left the ocean that day and walked for months and months until he came to the East and here, he saw her again, and here he stayed, to be near to her.

The second time she caught him they had a terrible fight.

She had been searching for many years, she would leave the palace for months and months and come back filthy and bleeding and once even sick. She chased down every clue, every whispered rumour.

It happened in a black jungle.

We know this because there was a girl in the forest that night, her people insist their young have to know how to survive and so, on their thirteenth birthday, they are sent into the jungle and told not to come back until they have learned a secret.

This dark-skinned girl had thought she’d learned where to find the biggest fig-tree in the whole jungle when she stumbled upon a much greater secret.

A woman, unlike any she’d ever seen, pale and glowing with a beautiful, hard blue light, was bleeding. A man, tall and broad with dark eyes and thick hair on his face stood over her.

She threw out her hand and a blade of light slammed into the man and knocked him back. The girl hid herself away, for here, surely, the Gods were fighting.

He hurled himself at the beautiful woman and slashed at her with a tremendous blade. The woman fell back and then screamed out words which hurt to hear and the jungle exploded into flames.

In the terrible blue light, the girl watched as the man, surrounded by fire, changed into a colossal ape, shaggy and grim. He leaped into a tree and swung away through the jungle.

The girl ran to her village and, when she told her secret, the village sent her away from them and she travelled for years until she came to the East and just as the hermit did, here she stayed.

The trail went cold.

There was no news, no clues, no stories reached the Witch for many years. She became angry, brittle. The nation sagged under the weight of her sadness. There were famines and plagues.

    She found him on the bank of a river, where two lovers had lain and named the stars.

We know this because a minstrel had settled for a nap at the base of a great tree. When he awoke, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen was standing in front of him, talking to the tree.

“Of course you’d be here,” she said. And the minstrel, recognizing the Witch, wisely fled to the edge of the meadow.

The tree swayed, though there was no wind.

She leaned forwards and pressed her forehead against the rough bark.

“I have missed you so very much,” she said to the tree and then she started to cry. Her body was wracked for a long time with great, heavy sobs and she buried her face in the grass.

The leaves of the tree seemed to caress her, gently touching her back as she lay and cried out her heart.

The minstrel, wisely, left then. But later her heard the thud of an ax, echoing through the forest.

By the time the tree tumbled to the ground, its leaves had reddened and fallen and winter blanketed the land.

In the centre of the city, at the foot of the great stone tree, the old lady stops her story. She has told it well and more than one listener is weeping.

    “Agate, cornelian, gemstone,” she says as she lays her hand on the pride of the capital. “A thousand artists slaved for years before the Witch was pleased. When it was finished, they set it here, to stand at the heart of the lands of the East and West forever.
    The tree reaches above the crowd, the stone so pale as to be translucent, the branches so fine they are known to sway in a strong breeze. It is the sorcerer’s tree, replicated to the smallest crack of bark and knot of wood, deep evidence and solid beauty of the witch’s unending adoration.  

“And the Witch laid herself down underneath the marble roots and went to sleep, fusing a parallel being,” the old lady finishes, and the children come forward and lay their hands on the tree and, as has become tradition, they make a wish. Above, the celestial ashes mantle the branches of the tree, and pale blue Llandyssil glitters in the sky.