If you’re familiar with Shel Silverstein’s 1964 children’s book “The Giving Tree” to any extent, then you most likely have a good idea of its core premise as well – that of a young boy and the titular tree developing a friendship that lasts a lifetime, even after the tree has gotten fully trimmed and cut down in the name of giving its dear friend anything and everything he ever needed.

And if you’re wondering what this brief summary of “The Giving Tree” has to do with anything, its purpose was to prepare you for the story you’re about to read now. A story that, very much like the aforementioned children’s book, concerns the friendship between a boy and a tree, as well as the events this particular bond would transpire into…

***

The Schmidt family had a house located on the far edge of the suburbs it was built in, accompanied by a spacious yard surrounded by wooden fences. And accompanying that yard was a big tree.

The Schmidt family also had a young son, named Dalton. And like with many parents who had young children, Mr and Mrs Schmidt often saw Dalton playing on his own by creating an imaginary friend to “keep him company”, so to speak. Whenever Dalton was let out to play in the yard, he could always be seen doing so next to the tree, whether it was climbing the lower branches under his parents’ supervision or racing his toy cars around the big wooden trunk.

But most of all, Dalton was always seen talking to the tree like it was a sentient being. This lead Mr and Mrs Schmidt to come to the conclusion that their young, imaginative son had made it his imaginary friend. Quite different from most other kids, whose imaginary friends were just empty spaces they pretended were characters they could interact with. But the couple didn’t think much of it and humored his behavior. They wanted Dalton to simply be able to have that sort of fun while he could, figuring that through the right parental guidance, Dalton would eventually learn to separate fiction from reality and grow out of his phase of imaginary friends, like all kids did.

However, there was one other thing Mr and Mrs Schmidt didn’t know about their son’s imaginary friend, which was that his imaginary friend wasn’t imaginary at all. Whatever Dalton did with the tree, none of it was the least bit make-believe. Dalton really was able to interact with the tree despite its immobility, believe it or not.

If anyone else was to come across a seemingly sentient tree like this one, no doubt they’d end up either questioning their sanity or donating the tree to a lab for science. But not Dalton. Being the innocent, carefree child he was (as most children are at that age), when he began to see the tree for what it was, he saw in it not a hallucination or a scientific anomaly, but a friend unlike any other.

In other words, aside from the obvious point that said friend was an inanimate plant rather than a human being or even an animal, the fact everyone who knew – mostly Dalton’s parents – dismissed Dalton’s interactions with the tree as nothing but pretend play had formed a sort of exclusive bond between the two. The tree was happy to have a true friend it could openly be its real self towards without unwanted judgement (like being experimented on or treated as a result of mental illness). And Dalton was happy to share a friendship with such a unique, fascinating being others could never dream of coming across and befriending like he had, as you’re about to see.

***

“Hey, wanna see what I got for you today?” Dalton asked after he’d excitedly run across his house’s yard and up to the tree, hiding something behind his back.

From somewhere between the tree’s branches up above, a tiny beetle emerged and crawled down the trunk until it was level with Dalton’s face. Taking the beetle’s sight staring into his own as the tree answering yes, Dalton revealed what he’d been hiding, which turned out to be a picture book.

Holding the book up closer to the tree as if wanting it to get a good look at the cover, Dalton said, “Mommy found this at the library and said she thought I’d like it, and I did! So I wanted to read this to you and hope you like it too! It’s almost like a story about you and me!”

Sure enough, the cover of the book featured a small boy standing in front of a great tree. The boy was catching an apple falling from one of the tree’s branches, which was drawn to look like it was deliberately handing the red fruit down to him.

Dalton sat down against the bottom of the tree’s trunk and began reading the book aloud to it. Much to his happiness, he could tell the tree’s reaction to his reading was as positive as he’d hoped it would be. During the scene in the book describing the boy carving his and the tree’s initials in the tree’s bark, Dalton saw a couple of centipedes crawl near him down the trunk to form a heart shape with their bodies, similar to the carved initials from the book. When Dalton read about the scene where the teenaged boy asked his wooden friend to give him its apples so he could sell them for money, the tree (surprisingly) dropped a ripe apple right onto Dalton’s lap for him to eat. And by the time the last page of the book was turned, Dalton felt a sweet-smelling blossom gently fall into the palm of his hand, once again courtesy of his own wooden friend.

“So you did like it?” Asked Dalton, to which the tree answered through the beetle from earlier spinning almost enthusiastically around in circles on the bark.

The sight made Dalton laugh out in joy. “I know I said the book’s almost like a story about you and me, but you know what?” He took a moment to put the book down and hug the tree around its trunk the best he could (the trunk was much thicker than his body width), then said, “I’ll never cut you down and stuff like in the book. Let’s keep being friends just like this, forever till the end!”

As if the tree agreed to his words, Dalton thought he felt the smell from the blossom in his hand grow much sweeter than before, and he giggled happily.

Noticing this, Mrs Schmidt came over to Dalton and gently pulled him away from the tree, saying, “Honey, you might ruin your clothes from doing that, do be mindful.” Before dusting his shirt and pants. She then saw the book Dalton had laid down on the ground and added, “Same with this, we don’t want to stain something that doesn’t belong to us, now do we?”

Dalton hastily picked up the book back in his hands and dusted it the same way his mother had done so to his clothes. “Sorry, I forgot.” He said.

“Well then, let’s do our best not to.” Mrs Schmidt replied. “So if you’re done reading the book to that ‘friend’ of yours,” she took a second to eye the tree with disbelief, albeit still playing along for her son, “Why don’t we take it back inside just to be safe, where it can’t get dirty?”

Dalton nodded to that in agreement, and held his mother’s hand as she began to walk him indoors. Looking over his shoulder at the tree, Dalton called to it, “I’ll be back!” and saw some of the tree’s leaves slightly rustling in response as if there was a breeze about.

Mrs Schmidt chuckled a little. “I assume your ‘friend’ there liked the book too?”

Dalton nodded again, to which Mrs Schmidt continued to humor him, “Of course it did. It’s almost like the story was made for you two, isn’t it?”

Dalton laughed. Truth be told, even at his young age he could tell his mother didn’t believe a single bit about anything he said about the tree, and most certainly never would. And for that matter, nor would anyone else either. Despite that, Dalton was not at all bothered by any of it. What did it matter whether or not others believed his friendship with the tree was real, just so long as he and the tree itself knew it was indeed real? If anything, at least as far as Dalton could see, it was because only he and the tree knew that made what they had special. For the less of something there is, the more that something is worth.

On top of that, if his parents’ attitudes towards the tree told Dalton anything, it was that other folks most likely wouldn’t have the same understanding he and the tree had between them. Meaning they wouldn’t be able to see the tree the same way he did. That, no doubt, would inevitably lead to unwanted conflict, which was the last thing either of them needed if they really did want their friendship to last. Not that Dalton had actually tried to get anyone else to see the tree’s true nature (if he could even convince anyone to do so in the first place), but he didn’t think he ever would. This was just something he considered way too special and rare to take such a chance and risk potentially tainting it. Thus, he figured he’d rather keep it unchanged like this for as long as he could, preferably for the rest of his life.

And apparently the tree also agreed with Dalton’s opinions on such matters, because as mentioned earlier, Dalton was the only one it trusted more than well enough for them to interact the way they did in the first place. It couldn’t bring itself to trust Dalton’s parents as much as it trusted Dalton himself due to how dismissive they were of its interactions with their son. Nor could the tree bring itself to do so with pretty much anyone else, whom the tree had no idea of knowing whether they’d understand it the same way Dalton did. Similarly to Dalton, the tree too was unwilling to take such a risk out of uncertain fear of something unwelcome getting in the way. As far as both of them were concerned, their friendship was best left alone.

And so that was indeed how their friendship remained for years to come – kept only to themselves as a secret of some sorts. However, with any passage of time, change is inevitable for everything, and even this special, seemingly unbreakable bond between two unlikely friends was no exception.

This was because while the tree remained mostly unchanged as it stood rooted to its spot in the yard as it always had, Dalton didn’t. Much like the boy in the story he once read to the tree, he too had to grow up. And the more he did, the less time he began to spend with the tree, his attention now more on making friends from his own kind (AKA humans), schoolwork, and various other life responsibilities that came with growing up.

Even when Dalton was home for either the weekends or holidays, his time was spent mostly on family and friends. He only occasionally stopped by the tree to briefly convey a few words to it if he had some minutes to spare and no one was around to see it. Eventually, this reached a point in which the tree barely saw Dalton at all as the boy entered his high school years.

To say that all of this didn’t sit well with the tree would’ve been an understatement. Having to stand in the side of the yard unable to do anything but watch its one and only friend live his life but also seemingly drift further away from itself was agonizing beyond words. In the tree’s view, at this rate it wouldn’t be long before Dalton was truly gone, leaving it here all alone again forever, not at all unlike the life it had lived before it first met Dalton.

The tree refused to return to that torturous past of pure solitude, when the only attention it ever got from other living beings was birds treating it the same way they treated every tree in the world, or stray dogs coming through loose gaps in the fence to use the bottom of its trunk as a bathroom. A whole life’s worth of perpetual loneliness was bound to drive any sentient being stark raving mad. But at least with other sentient beings such as humans, as the tree came to see in what little of them it saw within its limited vision, they had each other to rely on in times of need. On the other hand, who did the tree have except itself to confide its solitude-driven madness in? And of course, this only drove the madness further and more painfully into the tree, like a poisonous dagger fatally spreading its deadly substance through the veins of the victim it had stabbed.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

This was all the more reason why Dalton meant so much to the tree – a much, much bigger reason than what was previously mentioned. Dalton had been the tree’s light at the end of the long, dark tunnel of isolation that used to be its life. For the first time in forever, the tree was free from the suffocating agony of being alone, saved by company it had never imagined it could ever have. For the first time, rather than living only because it couldn’t die, it had something worth living for.

And most of all, that very reason was now slowly but surely slipping away, none of which the tree was going to simply stand still and take, if it meant the hellish life it had lived before was to repeat itself. If it meant never having to be alone again, the tree was willing to do anything to achieve that.

To make sure that Dalton would never leave its side. That he would stay no matter what it cost.

***

Passing through the fence gates of his home as he came back from another day at high school, Dalton eyed the tree on the side of the yard as he crossed it. He then pausing for a second to think as well as to make sure there wasn’t anybody around, before walking right up to it.

“Hey buddy,” Dalton said to the tree in the same mildly awkward way one would address an old friend they haven’t spoken with in ages – which was exactly what he was doing here. “I don’t have any homework today and all my friends just happened to be busy with personal things, so I figured I ought to see you again properly just like old times.”

The tree’s leaves rustled subtly in response, to which Dalton noticed and added, “I know I haven’t had a lot of time to be with you, if at all, and to that I do have to say sorry. It’s just that, you know, life happens and all.”

He paused again to step closer to the tree and patted its trunk in the friendliest manner he could muster up, continuing, “But know this; regardless of how little time we got to have together these past years, you’re still my friend just as much as I hope I’m still yours, and there hasn’t been a single moment in which I forgot about you.”

Another rustle of leaves came, this time followed by a couple of beetles scurrying down the tree trunk and stopping at eye level with Dalton, who tried to lighten up the awkward mood by saying, “I mean, how could I? We basically live under the same roof – not literally, but you know what I mean…” and weakly laughed at his own lame attempt at a joke.

Dalton wished he could express his thoughts to the tree in better words than this. It was just that after so many years of not interacting with the tree this up front, he didn’t know what were the right words to say, nor what his wooden friend would make of it.

That said, he did mean every word he just spoke, because despite having no proper time for the tree from being preoccupied with everything else in life, he also missed it at the back of his mind. It was a feeling that simply saying a couple of words at it or catching glimpses of it outside his bedroom window couldn’t get rid of. Just because he’d gone on to make a handful of friends at school over the years didn’t mean he’d forgotten about the one he used to cherish his time with as a child. He didn’t care that his parents thought he was long past the age of playing with imaginary friends. The tree was no imaginary friend; it was real, and he intended to continue treating it like one as he had all these years ago.

As his mind got itself lost in these thoughts, however, Dalton saw the two beetles before him skitter around in circles on the tree’s bark in an excited manner he was all too familiar with.

Grinning up at the tree, Dalton found more confidence in his voice as he said, “Great to see you’re just as happy to spend some time with me again as I am.” And gently patted the tree on the trunk again in the same way he would do so on the back of any of his school friends.

Some more excited skittering around in circles later, the beetles then climbed back up the tree to where they first came while their gaze still remained on Dalton, as if beckoning him to follow them.

Dalton stood there thinking for a second, looked around at the surrounding houses again, and put his backpack down on the ground beside the bottom of the tree’s trunk. His grin spread wider, and he asked, “Shall we then, for old time’s sake?”

A single blossom fell from one of the branches for Dalton to catch in his hand, which he took as a yes. Temporarily pocketing the flower, he proceeded to climb the tree all the way up to where he could sit securely between several branches thick enough to support his teenage body’s weight.

“Oh yes, just like old times!” Dalton exclaimed, just as delighted as the beetles that beckoned him seemed to be, both of which were now buzzing above his head while several more came into sight to greet their long-time-no-see companion.

Briefly huffing out a quick sigh of happiness, Dalton even found himself cracking jokes with more confidence than before, regardless of whether they were actually funny or not, saying, “Well buddy, if you remember that storybook I read you a long time ago, the ‘boy’ came to his own tree at roughly around my age and asked her for all her apples to sell and make a buck… I say this because you don’t have to worry about me doing anything like that to you right now. I’m only here to hang out, and that’s all. Besides, what would I even do with that much apples in real life anyway?”

In response to this, Dalton saw the tree drop a readily ripe apple from a higher branch right into his lap. Bringing it closer to fascinated eyes and examining the shiny, blood-red surface of the fruit, Dalton complimented the tree, “Some things never change, do they – I will never not be amazed by that instantaneous apple-generating ability of yours.”

The various bugs around him made a bunch of skittering noises as if laughing along with him, then quieted back down as he added, “Though I might have to wait a while to eat this, as grateful as I am for the gesture – I gotta go inside for dinner in like an hour.”

Dalton saw the tree’s leaves rustle yet again in the windless air and added right after, “Which is why I’d like to make the most out of that hour with you. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Rustle rustle. Dalton recognized that as the tree answering yes.

“Nice.” Replied Dalton, before he noticed something else fall into his lap. The rustling of the leaves had apparently shaken another flower loose from the tree’s branches, because that was what Dalton saw and picked up from his pants’ leg.

Out of old time’s sake again, Dalton brought the flower close to his face and took a whiff. Sure enough, there was the sweet signature scent of the tree’s blossom he was also all too familiar with. What he hadn’t expected though, was the scent coming across as much stronger than how he remembered it. It felt like he had sprayed a dose of one of those really expensive perfumes right in front of his nose.

Dalton addressed this to the tree, but this time it didn’t do anything in particular as a response. Eventually finding it to not be that big a deal, Dalton simply laughed it off, “Guess all that excitement you had at the thought of hanging out with me again went into this here flower.” And chuckled to himself as he rested his head against the branch behind him to sit more comfortably on the spot.

***

“Dalton! DALTON! What are you doing up there?!”

Dalton woke up with a startled jolt and looked around him in a dazed confusion. For a surprising moment he couldn’t see anything, which only confused him further. Then he realized it was because his surroundings had gone dark.

As his sight adjusted to the darkness, Dalton tried to get up and make sense of what was happening. But then he remembered his current position and stumbled frantically where he sat to stop himself from accidentally careening off the tree’s branches.

Once that moment had passed, Dalton immediately recognized the voice that had just called out to him – now saying, “Careful, you’re gonna fall out!” – was his mother’s.

Looking down, Dalton saw his mother standing in the yard staring up at where he was, with her face full of both worry and bewilderment. His father was here as well, his arms outstretched right next to the tree as if to catch Dalton in case he really did fall.

By now fully awake, Dalton then took a moment to take in more of his surroundings, and realized the reason everything was so dark was because it was past sunset. Looking back down at his worried parents, Dalton asked, “What happened?”

“That’s what we’d like to ask you too.” Mr Schmidt replied. “Not only were you not picking up our calls as we were coming back home, but when we got here we found you up in this here tree fast asleep!”

This raised more questions than answers inside Dalton’s mind as he cautiously but quickly made his way down the tree’s trunk and onto the ground. How much of a deep sleep had he been in to not wake up until this late into the evening, as well as not hear his cell phone ringing in his pocket at all if his parents had indeed called him? Above all, how did he even manage to fall asleep on the tree in the first place?

However hard he thought, Dalton had no idea how any of that could’ve been remotely possible. Therefore he couldn’t give his parents any proper answers when they asked him the exact same things on their way into the house. He couldn’t so much as remember anything that may or may not have happened between him climbing the tree to talk with it and him falling asleep…

…except perhaps a familiar scent that came across as much stronger than the last time he recalled ever smelling it.

This narrow sliver of a memory flashed past Dalton’s mind and he looked over his shoulder at the tree in the yard, just before the front door closed behind him. Remembering this particular detail sent a strange feeling down his spine that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. What could possibly be the meaning of this?

The feeling lingered throughout the whole rest of the night, from during his well-overdue dinner to preparing the bed for some sleep. Just before turning the light off in his bedroom, Dalton took one last glance out his window at the tree. As he did, that unexplainable feeling prodded at his curiosity more than ever. This came with the weakest of sneaking suspicions he hoped was just his confusion getting to his head and leading it to weird places, as confusing unanswered questions constantly nagging at one’s mind typically did.

Dalton shook off this train of thought and decided to call it a day for now. He turned off the light, crawled into bed, and soon fell asleep – but not before reminding himself to question the tree about today’s incident the next time he could afford to properly talk to it. Something about that nagging feeling seemed to tell him that the tree would know a few things he didn’t.

***

Dalton didn’t get a chance to do what he’d kept in mind that night for several days, as the typical high school routine of schoolwork, studying, or spending time with his closest peers took up most of his time again. However, once the weekend arrived, Dalton made no haste in confronting the tree as soon as he was done with breakfast and a few minor chores around the house. His parents weren’t home at the moment, and he still had a good half hour left before he had to leave the house himself for a promised hangout with some friends, so now was a better time than any.

Hoping no passersby would happen to come across and witness him holding a conversation with a plant like this was a bad M. Night Shyamalan horror movie, Dalton walked up to the tree and first started with a, “Hey, how are you doing?”

There was the recognizable rustle of leaves from above. Dalton took this as his cue to get to the point, “Look, I just wanted to ask you something – you know when I fell asleep in your branches after climbing onto you several days ago, and had to be woken up by my parents? This may sound kinda silly, but would you happen to know anything as to what happened that day for me to doze off that badly?”

This time the tree showed no reaction. Not even a single movement from its leaves or a bug coming down to visually provide a reply.

Interpreting this as the tree also not having an answer to that, Dalton nodded at it, yet that same nagging feeling from that particular night came back right then and there. Because of it, the next thing Dalton knew, he spoke again to the tree before he could even think it over, “Do excuse me for the weird question… it’s just that I have an equally weird feeling in my gut that made me think you might know – for whatever reason, that also brings to mind something about the blossom you gave me that day smelling kinda funny as well…”

Again, the tree remained still and silent. This left Dalton to wonder to himself what on earth had made him bring up such a seemingly unrelated and minor detail in regards to this matter. Could it be that maybe, just maybe, a part of his mind suspected the tree had something to do with him unknowingly falling asleep on it?

Dalton had to snap himself out of that thought, as he mentally asked himself, “Why would you suggest such a thing?! You were seriously thinking of accusing your lifelong friend for something unexplainable that just happened to occur around it?”

Though he hadn’t said these thoughts out loud at all, Dalton still found himself looking guiltily up at the tree as if he had indeed verbally uttered his embarrassingly false accusations towards it. Thankfully for him, he didn’t need to linger on that guilty thought any longer, as when he looked up at the tree, he saw a centipede scurrying down the trunk to look back at him intently, before going back up to where it came.

Dalton knew what the centipede was doing. No doubt it was beckoning him up the tree like the beetle had done on the day he fell asleep. The tree was asking him to come and play again.

Dalton shortly glanced at his watch, then turned back to the tree and replied, “Sorry, but I haven’t got that long today. I promised my school friends I’ll be seeing them, so I gotta get going soon.”

Having said that though, Dalton walked up to the tree to give it a friendly pat on the trunk, adding, “Still, that’s not until like in twenty-five minutes or so, meaning I can stay for a brief while to chat…” before he felt his nose being enveloped by that same strong flowery scent from last time.