The Watchtower

ineffable face, her glide past a window in profile or shadow. A look directly at him was by now his wildest ambition. Indeed he would have settled for the sight of her in rapt conversation with an attentive courtier—with a prince—settled for their rapturous kiss!—rather than this void. He could not settle for what he did get out of all his desperate scrutiny: nothing.
    On this third day at Fontainebleau, Will was sitting on a rock he had come to regard as his friend, on the edge of tears, staring into a stand of poplar trees across a rough path on a gray, wind-split afternoon. It hadn’t taken much for Will to convince himself that the rock was his friend. Wasn’t it composed of atoms just as he was? They had that in common. People used the term flesh and blood to refer to their family members. But atoms were an even more intimate bond, as they made up flesh and blood. Look at the lifestyle and mentality of his friend the rock. Much to admire there. He/she was self-sufficient, no disastrous entanglements for the heart and mind, even if it had such organs. It certainly didn’t travel wildly from place to place in pursuit of disingenuous and possibly malevolent signs; it didn’t travel at all. The rock was a soul mate. Will would sit here right now and soak up the gray air, and the breeze with its hint of rain, alongside the rock. The rock was quiet, but at least now Will needn’t feel so all alone.
    Then Will suddenly noticed, amidst the poplars, that one tree seemed different. He knew it could be his imagination, and a desperate imagination at that, but the tree seemed to have a slender, angular face near the top of its branches. Almond-shaped, sap-glistening eyes were staring directly at him. Other trees were bending away from him in the recurring gusts, but this tree leaned consistently toward him, peering at him to get a closer look. Will gasped in amazement as the tree stepped fully out of its grove and took a gigantic stride across the path toward him.
    A face was clearly visible near the top of its crown, but the trunk, several feet below the face, shrouded in underbrush, turned out to be not quite a trunk. It forked midway down into two bark-sheathed legs …
    Will was tempted to flee, but decided to maintain his ground. He wasn’t going to get far anyway against the giant strides this creature could take. So far she—something in the way the tree moved made Will think of her as female—hadn’t displayed anything in the way of teeth, her apparent mouth an irregular pink gash in the silver, speckled bark of her highest branch. Her fingers and hands were glossed over with benign-looking leaves; her feet were shaggy roots like slippers. No cutting edges.
    Tree woman, if that’s what she was, continued to gaze down at him from a few feet away, at last shaking her slanted head as if in disapproval. Long branches coming out of her scalp that seemed to be her hair but resembled a myriad of bark-covered snakes rippled with her motion. All the branches were greened with poplar leaves, except for one of bright gold.
    “What are you doing here, Sad Boy?” the creature asked him in a rasping voice, as if her vocal cords were pieces of broken wood, roughing up against one another as she spoke. “You’ve been haunting these woods recently, with some sorrow of yours. I’m watching you and wearying of it. These are my woods, except when that horror of horrors comes around. So fess up! Now!”
    “I fess up, as you put it, to few. Actually, right now, to none.” Will appreciated her interest, but saw no reason to confide in this ungainly stranger. “I can’t fit you in as a confidant after such a brief introduction.” He glanced upward, as if to emphasize how little room there was to fit her in anywhere.
    Then he felt twigged fingers grasping his right shoulder from above, an arm shadowing his face against the gray light, leaves that dangled against his neck not altogether displeasing in their silken touch. The hand began to draw him toward her, and Will felt the undeniable strength of this creature, and he felt a bit fearful. He tried to surge out of her grip. After a stalemate he felt her let go, with the snapping of a few twigs; whether that happened from his tugging or hers, he couldn’t tell. The let-go was sharp, and he fell and sprawled flat on the rough ground, his hands bracing his fall at the last instant. To add to this ignominy he heard a high-pitched, brittle crackling high above him.