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He saw trees being born, yet some were born ancient, ancient of time, begotten outside the winding of the planets and the courses of the stars and the circuits of the sun and the moon; from there, beyond the void, some of the trees were born onto this earth. Fantastic light glowed from within their woods, light which came from all around, from every possible point in the universe, collecting there, right before him, in the woods, where ancient trees were being born amid seedlings and mischievous saplings.
Alive they were, and they began to reach; in holiness they reached up and contended with each other for height, but it was joyous, for light was all around them, and they grew and danced nonetheless. Their contention was playful and easy as they danced within the glow. Abe looked and he saw, behold, that they did not walk as trees in fairy tales walk, on roots as feet. No, these primordial trees, with roots still in their home beyond the enslaved existence—they manipulated the very soil and moved it.
The saplings and mischievous saplings bowed to the ancient trees, prostrating themselves in willing honor and obeisance.
“These will protect them all, guide them,” Abe said.
Suddenly, he was aware of himself, as in a dream but not in a dream. He was on the edge of magic, but not magic; he was standing upon the razor’s edge between the myth and the seen world, the place where trees enter the world. And just as suddenly, the trees were aware of him. The mischievous saplings moved soil to make their way toward him; he was momentarily terrified, but he recognized that no malice was possible within their glinty countenances, such as they were, being without faces and expressions. They came to him with great haste, laying hold of him, tickling him.
With that, a great darkness flooded over the woods, and the mischievous saplings were made to drop him, but before he fell onto the soil, it was gone, and they were gone, and Abe was falling into terror again. And then he was gone. He was aware of himself being gone. He was no longer falling.
He heard in the very furthest distance, as coming from a lighted place hidden in darkness—he puzzled. “How can darkness swallow up light? What forces have the power to tear and obscure light itself?” He continued reasoning to himself, there, in a washing of eternal opposite, eternal lifelessness. A long time he stood, or lay, or floated, as nothing within nothing, but it was coming from a distance to his hearing, as from a lighted place:
It was the theme song to The Morose Alpaca.
“That’s my favorite anime!” he said aloud, there in the darkness. “I am not nothing, and it is not nothing, not anymore. Listen! Listen to it! It’s everything delightful in Japanese progressive rock! It has all the silliness: the wonderful hitch of time signature; the strange modulations from key to key; the blistering rectified wall of sound. It is all in all, but it is special somehow, not introducing another episode, but introducing—”
He turned his ear toward the music, studying the sound for reality. “It is introducing life.”
He saw light, now; he saw that he had turned a corner in a very long, formless, immaterial corridor, whose walls were unseen and could not be felt, could not be sensed in any way, but were a prison even so. The light was plain, and bright, and wholesome, and alive, and through it and from it was pouring a song from God, a song that sounded so familiar and so wonderful, but also of God, alien and weird.
Indeed, Abe marveled that everything familiar and wonderful seemed twisted and bound, but now, at this un-place before the light, it was free, wild, and in perfect order, like the trees.
Suddenly the wash of darkness was gone, and the mischievous saplings caught him before he hit the ground, and he was laughing before they resumed tickling him. He closed his eyes in mirth, but the light remained undimmed within his mind. He realized that it was washing over him, inside and out.
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“There is evil within him, Lord,” said one of the larger trees whose birth was within this realm, not one of the ancient trees born from beyond the void.
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“Alas, you will see much evil in such as these,” said another one of the larger trees. “Yet the Great Elm has said there is a decree about this one in particular. He is to be brought here to have it all pruned back.”
“It will only regenerate.”
“Evil always does.”
“Not always,” said another voice, one that reminded Abe of the Great Elm, but it belonged to another. “Not always; otherwise we prune in vain.”
“Yes, Lord.”
Abe winced. “You’re hurting me.”
“No,” said the Lord of this realm. “You are feeling pain indeed, but we are not hurting you. We are healing you. Do you understand these things?”
“Yes, Lord,” he said.
The other trees laughed. Abe felt ashamed.
“No, we do not mock you,” said the Tree Lord. “It is not often we hear one of your sort call me Lord. You must not feel obliged to call me Lord, even as you remain here under my care, for I am under another command, and you are under another command. As a matter of fact, you are my lord, by that command, though the evil within you makes you a terrible lord.” Abe heard the Lord chuckle. “It is a pickled fruit of business to hate your own lords, but I daresay from my roots beyond the void the hope for such as you is a marvel to everything both here and there.”
Abe winced again. “Are you sure you’re not hurting me?”
“Everything is cleansed.”
“Yowch!” Abe said.
“Not with you, not cleansed yet,” said the Lord. “My servants have the skillfullest tendrils, but, alas for your kind, how deep the undergrowth delves, and into such places as only the roots themselves might find, and only in this light. Do you understand these things?”
“I highly doubt I do. Why does it have to hurt so much?”
“Alas for mysteries!” said the Tree Lord.
“Are you like the Ents from The Lord of the Rings?” Abe asked.
“Ho! Ha! Hroom! Burahrum!” said the Tree Lord. “Indeed, we love that story, but his is the grandest of fairy tales. Ents are people, you know; his Elves, his Men, Hobbits, Stoors, and even Orcs—these are all people. We are trees, altogether trees.”
“But you’re a talking tree!”
“Only in this realm, my dearest man-lord, only in this realm, where the light has come, but the sun has not yet, neither the stars nor the moon. In this realm alone do we talk, for we are free here from the bondage of your realm, which is set by the one who made it in futility.”
Abe cried out in pain again. “Is that why it hurts so much?”
The Tree Lord chuckled again. “No. Oh, most certainly not. Evil has done this; not punishment, not futility. Evil, man-lord. Evil has done this to you; yet you own it.”
“I own it?”
“You own evil.”
“I do?”
“Every bit of it. See how your hand reaches out to wrap around a little evil for yourself, and you think to yourself, ‘it is only a little evil, and it is only for myself,’ yet you have laid your whole self into the very channels of evil, as the great ribbon of coal which rings your realm: as the coal face shows itself in mines from land to land, so your evil shows itself from heart to heart, and we here are laid with the task of pruning it back.”
“Then take it all away from me!” Abe demanded.
“Alas for mysteries,” said the Tree Lord. “We cannot, else we destroy the entirety of you.”
“Why not? And why?”
“Root and soil, man-lord. The roots of this scrub grow in the soil of your very being. It is fertile for evil.”
“Alas for mysteries,” said Abe.
There was silence, but Abe saw in the grand light of this realm that the Tree Lord was giving instruction to the team of trees assembled around him. He saw that what had begun as tickling was the beginning of a deep and complex surgery involving the invasion within of countless tendrils of living trees. He felt a tug and painful pulling sensation, then the notion from the trees that their task was complete
“And now for his head,” one of the larger trees said. With that, they turned him over, rather unceremoniously, and he felt the same tendrils that had been within him now on his outside, ministering to his neck and head while certain stiff branches held him still, as in a rigid hammock.
“That’s a nasty gash,” said one of the larger trees.
Abe watched the soil beneath him churn and roil while trees positioned themselves around him. “Hey,” he said, “I thought this was Ume’s magical power.”
“Hm?” said the Tree Lord. He chuckled again. “Man-lord, I declare to you that it must be difficult for you to understand these things. You do not have magical powers. Neither do they belong to the machinery of your kind. No, these powers of yours and your friends—they are neither here nor there. They are of the seed of things which passed away from your realm many ages ago, but are nevertheless present and available to your machinery.”
“So, magic.”
Abe heard a toilet flush. In his dream, these precipitous sounds of the machinery of portable plumbing were made part of the song and music which came with the light. It was beautiful and ordered, melodic with very many angelic harmonies.
“Abe,” Lars said.
“Besides which,” Abe said, feeling the anxiety of an arc coming to its completion, “I thought you were working on my soul. Why do you work on my body, as well?”
“What is a soul?”
“What?”
“We have finished our labors,” said the Tree Lord.
“No, don’t send me back!”
“Send you back? You never went anywhere.”
Who uttered those words was hidden in the dream. A darkness came to Abe, but it was not the darkness of evil realms or dream lands; it was the plain old darkness of having his eyes closed in an ordinary space.
“I want to stay here!”
“Well, that’s nice!” said Lars. “And here you are, my dearest friend!”
Abe perceived that he was lying on his left side, which would be facing the wall with the maps, the chair, and all the people crowded around trying to go back and forth between the bathroom and the kitchenette. He opened one eye.
Lars was there, sitting in the chair, smiling. “Hey, buddy. How are you feeling?”
Alayna was nearby, clothed in her utility gear, to Abe’s great disappointment. She was walking around, not paying attention to him. He sighed, frowned, and closed his eye.
“Hey, now, pal,” said Lars, laughing. “Don’t look so thrilled to see us!”
Abe opened his eyes, smiled, and propped himself up on his elbow. “I feel better,” he said.
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