Carlotta Dale
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I’m not a character in a fairy tale. I don’t live in an enchanted forest or in a gingerbread cottage in the middle of a deep, dark wood. I live in a suburb of Los Angeles. Granted, it’s not a burb with cookie-cutter houses and HOA Karens searching for infringements, but still, it’s a burb.
It was farmland, once. Lima Beans. A few of the old turn-of-the-century homes and farmhouses remain, along with lots of bungalows built for returning WWII soldiers and their Leave It to Beaver families. And now, of course, Mansions on a Lot have sprouted up everywhere.
Fatty Arbuckle lived here, but his house is long gone, as far as I can tell. It’s also the scene of a notorious murder—Jeanne French—which was overshadowed by the slaying of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, a couple of weeks earlier. People still argue about whether the two deaths were connected.
So much for the history lesson.
And then there’s the Tree.
The Tree. Someone told me it’s a coral tree, but I don’t know if that’s right. I don’t know about trees, except the common ones: pine, eucalyptus, jacaranda. And, because it’s L.A., palms. But this Tree: so dense, so tightly packed with leaves and branches, so wide—twenty-five, thirty feet—it’s always as dark below as when there’s no moon at all, even on the brightest days.
It’s not in my yard, which consists mostly of a brick patio. It’s one street over, viewable from my second-floor balcony. It struck me as a place for arcane rituals or magical rites, even though it’s on a sidewalk on the Westside. Seemed like a spot for Druids, or Necromancers, or Werewolves.
Well. Coyotes, anyway.
#
On Thursday night, after a mind-boggling foray into Druid lore, I noticed the time. I should be asleep. I shut down my computer and went out on the balcony for a final smoke before bed. A number of small lights were shining from the Tree. If this wasn’t L.A., I’d have thought they were fireflies, but we don’t have those here. They might be twinkle lights, but the holidays were two months past.
Next night, same thing.
Next next night, ibid. So I decided to investigate, pulling on a coat and heading out. Down the driveway, left, to the corner, left again, and then straight on till morning, as they say in Peter Pan. Although, really, it was only eleven o’clock.
And there it was, the Tree, sparkling like a mofo. And then the rain hit. Damn.
People who don’t live here think it’s sunny all the time. Nope. And when it does rain, it pours, man, it pours, as the song tells us. You can get drenched in the time it takes to exit your car and fish for quarters to feed the meter.
So it was now. I ran under the Tree. No rain came through, so thick were the leaves. The air felt overly oxygenated, almost fizzy, like breathing the bubbles in a glass of champagne. And it was as dark as a cave. There should have been street light reflections on the wet pavement, but there weren’t. Only the hundreds of tiny lights, which weren’t leftover Christmas decorations; definitely not. They floated freely, like will-‘o-the wisps. Like a kid grabbing at winged dandelion seeds, I tried to catch one, but my hands went straight through.
“We call them the Glimmers,” a voice said, coming from all around. A leafy, rustling sound.
I backed up. If this was a prank, it was an elaborate one. Unlikely on a rainy night.
“Who are you?” it asked.
Maybe I was in a fairytale, or a myth, or Narnia. Or maybe the CBD gummy I’d munched–shut up, they’re for insomnia–had packed an oversized wallop.
“Nobody special,” I answered. “What are Glimmers?”
“They are the seeds we made, you see. All that’s left of them, anyway. We have no living children,” the voice continued.
Nope, not a prank. I’d always believed—privately—that trees were sentient beings, but this was a lot to take in. I backed up further.
“Don’t worry, we’re not going to harm you. We’re grateful for the cee-oh-two.”
“Okay…”
“The seeds, they came to witness our death.”
“You look healthy to me. I’m no arborist, mind.”
“We might live another fifty, one hundred years. But the best-laid plans, etcetera.”
It gave what I interpreted as a sigh.
“The storm will worsen later. We’ll be struck by lightning.”
“Direct hit? Ouch.”
“Yes. We won’t survive. So it’s goodbye to all we knew. Over one hundred years, gone in a flash.”
My parents had always impressed upon me that one of the worst places to be in a thunderstorm is under a tree. Better to get soaked than electrocuted.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but maybe I should leave.”
“You needn’t worry. It comes later. Around three.”
“How do you know?”
“A Network–the great Network–runs beneath the surface. We exchange information. Everything is connected, really, you know. We can’t explain to you how, not in your language. Which is quite limited, by the way.”
“What happened to your children?”
“There was nowhere for them to grow. They can’t sprout on the sidewalk, or on the road. You have so much concrete. And the ones that fell on the lawns, are either swept up by leaf blowers or get mowed down.”
“How sad.” I thought about my patio bricks, that weren’t even real bricks. Just brick veneer over concrete. Lifeless. Sterile. And damn ugly. ”Why do they look like lights, though?”
“Everything has a spark of life, if you look.”
“I guess…”
“Take a pod or two. Take them, and plant them. If they grow, have a conversation over a cup of tea. Tell them about us.”
“Will it hurt you, if I pluck them?”
“Less than our extinction will.”
I twisted the stems until two pods broke off.
“Go now. Don’t forget.”
“I won’t. Wait. Have you got a name, so I can tell them?”
“You wouldn’t be able to pronounce it, if we told you. Just call us Thrina. They’ll understand.”
“May I ask one more question?”
“Of course.”
“Have you ever met a Druid?”
“Unfortunately, no. We did have a passing acquaintance with Merlin, though.”
“The wizard?”
“That’s him.”
The Tree gave itself a shake. Even under the canopy, cold rain slid down my neck.
#
I slept through the storm. Maybe I wanted to. But in the morning the wreckage was unavoidable. The Tree had split down the middle. The homeowner had called a tree removal service; a truck pulled up as I watched. I shut all the doors and windows on that side of my house. I couldn’t bear the sound of the chainsaws. I hoped the workers would save some of the trunk for firewood, instead of shoving it all into the wood chipper. Although they sell the chips as mulch, so that might be a more fitting end. Protection for new plants, new trees. In the house, I split open the pods and found seeds nestled inside. I planted them in earthenware pots.
The Tree of Endless Night, Thrina, was gone. I’ve noticed, since, that if I walk on the sidewalk where it once stood, the air is a good ten degrees colder than it is elsewhere. And the sun always seems to retreat behind a cloud. So there’s a shadow of a shadow. Or a shade of a shade. Maybe nothing is ever truly lost.
#
By spring, six of the seeds had sprouted. I’d placed a chip from the Tree–retrieved from the gutter–in each pot. Was that morbid? I don’t even know.
I’d also contracted to have half my patio torn up–it was going to cost a small fortune–and ordered soil amendments and fertilizer. This tree business wasn’t cheap. But the seedlings would need to be connected to the Network.
Now I just needed to figure out what to do with them. And figure out what to tell them when they learned to talk.
I wouldn’t be able to keep all six–not enough room–so I’d need to find homes for most of them. I couldn’t imagine how that conversation would go.
“Hey, do you want a talking tree?”
Ah well. I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.
Carlotta Dale lives in Los Angeles, a city she adores from the top of her head to the soles of her feet, in a house that’s essentially an oversized cabinet of curiosities. She still uses adverbs—sparingly—and her novelette, The Parrots Come Again, is available on Amazon. Dale has had short stories published in Punk Noir Magazine, Pistol Jim Press, Literary Garage, Alien Buddha Press, Bristol Noir, Bunker Squirrel Magazine, Mythic Picnic, Private Dick Story Friday, and Pulp Punch.
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