The Willow Tree

The young woman stood near the sapling, content that the willow tree would grow strong and tall. She’d planted the tree in the fall, when the autumn moon was still blood-red in the sky. The ground was soft and fertile, and she buried the root system deep into the earth to survive the harsh winter months. She was happy to see that her planning and praying paid off.

Her name was Kelah. She was born in the days before The Harvest.  She’d was lucky...at least, that’s what her mother said.  

The cut off was the first blood moon of the fall. The elders of the village decided that any female born after the first blood moon would be sacrificed to appease the Harvest God, Mata. The rains stopped coming with regularity ten years prior and the village was starving. Neighboring villages, once reliable if uneasy partners in resources, were no longer friendly and no longer plentiful. The elders felt they had no choice.

That first year, five girls were hung by their necks on the branches of a large cottonwood tree near the bank of the river.  The elders, certain Mata was angered at the small number of sacrifices that first year, forced impregnation on every available woman.  The next year they sacrificed eight children. And finally, the rains came.

So it had been for twenty years of Kelah’s life. She’d grown up with women friends her age and older, but few women younger than her escaped The Harvest. Those that did were shun by the village, often cast out in anger and despair for having the fortunate luck of not getting picked for that years’ sacrifice.   If they weren’t outright killed by those that had lost their baby in The Harvest, many simply drifted away, never to be seen again.

Kelah never felt fortunate, no matter how often her mother told her she was. The village was more kind to women born before The Harvest, but not by much. She lost two friends to a murderous mob before she was ten.

The Willow Tree swayed in a gentle breeze and Kelah touched the delicate leaves, letting them glide through her fingers in streams of green color. She loved how the dangling limbs and gentle leaves made her feel, the embrace of a mother, the warmth of a womb. She was on the very edge of her village, Kol, near a stream that sprung up two years earlier. The rain was good that year and the previous year, but the elders continued their ritual, certain that if they stopped, Mata would send his dry plague back upon them.

Her reverie didn’t last long. She could hear Dender hollering her name through the woods on the other side of the stream. She didn’t have much time left, she knew. Before she began the process, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes, remembering her mother during the kinder years. She wished, for the last time, that her father had been less of a coward and a drunk. She wished she’d had a sister to play with, to share life with.

Kelah knew what Dender wanted. She’d always known. She’d escaped her duty to the village for too long already. This disobedience wouldn’t be accepted if it was any other woman, but Kelah had a way of making men nervous.  When she was twelve, she was to be wed to an elder named Garrett-expected to produce children the following year-she’d been off playing on her own, trying to find the perfect walking stick. She wanted to go on a grand adventure, far away from the village. Maybe even to the mountains that she’d heard about but never seen. If she could just find a perfect stick to lean upon. When Garrett learned that she was off on her own, tired of her insubordination, he attempted to drag her back into the village. He found her on the outskirts of the village, poking around a giant Oak Tree. He crept up behind her-normally she would have heard his labored breathing and heavy footsteps, but she was preoccupied, watching a worm wiggle its way out of the soft earth- and grabbed her around the waist. He came screaming back into the shelter of the center of the village, burned so badly that the skin turned black and began to rot off. He lost both arms up to his elbows but survived. Nobody ever touched Kelah again.

And they dared not banish her, for rumors had swirled throughout the village that Kelah was Gata’s wrath. Gata was the god of fertility. It was said she was getting her vengeance on the death of so many girl sacrifices. The year after Garrett’s unfortunate calamity, the elders only hung three girls. The rains continued to come, and everyone was satisfied. Kelah was left alone, considered undesirable and a necessary plague.

That is, until Dender came along. He was, in every way, the opposite of Kelah. Whereas she was slight with dark hair and preferred to spend her time hiking through the forests or tending the small garden she began growing after the rains came back, Dender was a brute of a man. Nobody ever remembered him with hair, even as a child. His skin was pale and flabby, but he was as strong as a buck. He preferred to spend his time mating with any woman that was of age, and some that weren’t, and already at the age of twenty-two he was the proud father of more than a dozen children. He was first, always, to volunteer to pull the rope up the tree at Harvest time and relished watching the squirming bodies jerking from his knot. Sometimes he climbed the tree ahead of time and whispered down to the victims, calling their names one by one, as they struggled with their last breath. Even the elders thought Dender was hard to handle, but they never punished him. He was too valuable as a producer of children.

He’d heard the rumors about Kelah, but he didn’t believe she was the reason Garrett lost his arms. He laughed that day when Garrett returned from the fields, screaming, on fire. Dender accused him of doing it to himself- Garrett had a secret hobby of going into the woods and starting small fires, only Dender knew about it-and slapped his fat belly as he told the older man that he got what he deserved.

Yet he didn’t approach Kelah, even as he refused to believe she could harm a man like himself. It wasn’t until her twentieth year, this year, that Dender really took notice of her-commenting on her breasts or her lean figure or her wavy hair every chance he could. And now he was chasing her through the forest, a lumbering, unkillable giant after a vulnerable deer.

He came at her from the other side of the stream, his red lips peeled back in a vicious smile, his sunbaked head pouring sweat. He kicked his fat legs through the water, taking a second to splash water up into his parched mouth, lapping up the water like a sick dog, eyes never leaving Kelah.

Kelah stood in front of the willow tree, her safe harbor, and knew what Dender was after.  She’d seen him do it to other girls. Her friend, Lora, had a pup she loved more than her own family, and every time Dender got the chance, he kicked it. It was like he had an angry passion for it. The pup became a dog and even though he was a strong herding animal, he ran far away any time Dender came around.  Lora struck out at Dender during one such episode, as she was moving a small flock of sheep, throwing a large rock in his direction. It missed him by several feet but gave Dender a reason to knock her teeth out. Lora tried to appeal to the elders for help. They handed down justice with a wedding between the two, and Dender got another wife and child out of the deal while Lora lost everything. Sometimes Kelah would see Lora and wave and try and talk to her but the light was gone.

Dender stepped onto Kelah’s side of the creek and she tensed as he approached her, his clothes soaked and sticking to his body. Kelah’s hands brushed against the willow tree like a mother soothing a child. She thought of running but thought it’d be worse for her later if she did. Dender was close to her now, a wide smile on his face. No warmth radiated from his eyes.

Kelah took an involuntary step back as Dender came right into her space. She’d expected him to say something, to make a sick comment, but he didn’t. The smile never left his face as he grabbed Kelah’s wrist and began to pull her toward the ground. With his other hand he began loosening his pants. Then he spoke, a guttural sound coming from the bottom of a muddy ditch.

“You’re going to suck it now,” is all he said as he pulled her down to the earth.

Kelah fought back, but her tiny wrist in his grip was no match. She pulled harder, digging her heels into the ground. Dender frowned and with one sharp yank he pulled Kelah down on top of him.

Before she could react, he was pinning her body to his and ripping her top off with his free hand. She began to scream for help, but deep inside she knew nobody would come. Nobody ever came.

Kelah’s face was close to Dender’s piggish mouth and she could smell the charred pig on his breath. He was trying to kiss her with his wet lips and slippery tongue. She wrestled her head away from his grip, but her body was crushed to between his chest and the hard ground beneath her. She could feel his member poking her stomach, searching for her womanhood. Her top was ripped and Dender went for her breast with his mouth.

Kelah let out another scream and then felt heat. She felt the warmth spread throughout her entire body, tiny needle pricks of heat traveling up and down her spine and into her legs, arms and then into her neck, face and head. Dender stopped moving, his eyes wide as he felt the heat rush to him. His clothes began smoldering and he opened his mouth in astonishment. Then flame began to cover his body and he screamed. He threw himself off Kelah, his hands burned raw from touching her skin. He rolled over until he was in the water, dousing the flames that had sprouted up all over his body. He groaned in agony as he soaked beneath the surface of the water, only his head floating on top like a cork. He looked at Kelah with pained, fearful eyes.

Kelah picked herself off the ground, her skin still tingling. No burns affected her. The feeling was once of intense anger and a deeper feeling-the feeling that she was alive.  She looked at Dender, curiously-as if she wasn’t quite sure what happened but also wasn’t surprised by it either-and then decided to run.

She splashed through the water, knowing she could outrun him if she could just make it beyond the stream, her legs churning as fast as she could make them go. The river was deep here but she knew the waters well and found a shallow trail to the other side. The water never went past her knees, but it was deep enough to slow her down. Dender picked himself up off the riverbed floor and lurched his body forward just as she was about to step onto the other embankment. His outstretched hand tipped her heal with enough force to knock her off balance and she fell to one knee in the water, no more than a foot from firm ground. Dender reached out and grabbed her by the ankle.

Kelah’s body was still burning, and Dender screamed again, but he didn't let go. He dragged her legs into the water, submerging his hands. Kelah screamed as Dender dragged the rest of her body into the water and pushed his knees into her back, her face smashed against the murky bottom. She channeled the heat, not knowing exactly how she did it-never knowing how she did it-forcing the fire upward into the being that threatened her. She heard a muffled scream through the mud and a release of the pressure on her back. She began pushing upward and out of the water, gasping in air, hoping that the fire had consumed Dender.

She turned her head to see where Dender was, only to see him launch his body toward her again, his body black and smoldering as water licked at the flames. His eyes were white with fear and anger. She crouched down, her shoulder pushed into the mud, hoping to bring forth the fire one last time while she still had the strength, but it was too late. His body smashed upon her head and neck and the darkness came.

…..

Kelah’s death was met with fear. Dender told the elders that she’d slipped and fell while they were playing in the water. Nobody believed him. Nobody cared what happened either. They waited for the next Harvest, though, to see if Gata’s wrath would visit them.

The village sacrificed all the female babies that year. Dender rounded them up and hung them himself. He dragged Kelah’s friend Lora and her mother to the cottonwood tree as well and hung them from their neck. Anyone associated with Kelah went up the tree. And the rains came.

The village saw this as proof that Kelah was part of a plague and should have been sacrificed a long time ago. They rejoiced in the rains and the crops that grew that spring and summer. Dender joined the Council of Elders that spring.

Winters and summers turned, and the village prospered enough that they allowed more girls to live so that they could produce children of their own when ready. The population had dwindled down dangerously low during the long drought; ten years after Kelah’s death, however, and a new group of girls were almost ready to produce. Dender had wed two of them already, but they hadn’t produced offspring yet. He continued to try.

The willow tree grew next to the bank of the stream that became a river. It was forgotten by the villagers. It wasn’t until the twelfth year after Dedra’s death that a villager finally took notice of the tree. It had grown unusually large-so large that the branches now bowed out over the river and flowed onto the other side, snaking along the riverbank.  The elders, except for Dender, who wouldn’t be bothered to get dressed or get out of bed with his wives just to look at a tree, ventured out to the river. They gathered around the tree with curious gazes, each of them remembering who it was that planted the tree, none of the saying her name. They left, deciding that the tree was thriving because of the proximity to the water-further evidence that Mata was happy.

But the tree continued to grow. The branches began to slouch lower to the ground, forming a thick but delicate green bridge over the water, as they grew outward into the forest and closer toward the village. The cottonwood tree on the other side of the creek was covered by the branches of the willow tree, its giant trunk turned into a green monster. The branches behaved like a vine, covering every surface with purpose.

The elders took ax and cutters to the tree and cleared the branches back across the river. They burned the scraps and preyed and sacrificed to Gata. The village numbers dwindled the following year.

The summer, though, saw the trees branches grow back across the river, over the trunk of the cottonwood and covering its wide, thick branches. The willow tree began encroaching on the outskirts of the village, the branches snaking around the huts. And as the village cut and hacked away the branches, they grew faster. The elders burned and chanted and preyed and sacrificed. In the end they decided that any child, no matter boy or girl or age, should be sacrificed. They used brute strength to overtake the people, Dender leading the way. The women had no say, never a say, never as they always did.

By the fifteenth year after Kelah’s death, the willow tree covered many of the households, the branches penetrating through every hole and crack, breaking through the roofs and doors. Villagers reported going to sleep with the branches outside their door, only to wake up with branches sliding up their legs and arms, green leaves fluttering against their skin. The sawing and hacking had no effect on the tree anymore; the branches becoming impossibly tough to cut through.

Dender and the rest of the elders decided to take the tree out by the roots. They took their tools and their anger and they began digging into the earth one winter day as the sun hung red in the sky.  When the liquid first appeared, they thought it was mud until the villagers noticed it seemed to be leaking out of the tree branches. It was a dark reddish color, thick, oozing.

The elders followed Dender out to the tree, using with unease the thick branched bridge to cross the river. Dender put his hand to the trunk of the tree, felt the pulsing heart of the tree. It was warm and he snatched his hand away in fear. The elders screamed in horror, certain that Kelah had returned for revenge. They began hacking at the tree, slashing and biting, but nothing they did would penetrate the bark.

Dender threw his body against the tree, like he had to so many women before, hoping to knock it down with his weight. The tree swayed and shook, but never broke. He took his biggest ax to the tree and hacked away but nothing worked. They tried to burn the tree but it would not light. They prayed to Gata.

It was late afternoon, as they sat on top of the branches, exhausted, when the tree began to shudder. It was subtle at first, and Dender wasn’t sure he believed what he was seeing. He sat at the base of the tree, exhausted by his efforts, fuming with anger at his inability to break the roots. But then a branch wrapped itself around his leg, and then his other leg, and he began to scream. The tree worked on the other elders as well, sitting under the billowing branches of the tree, and the more they struggled the more they were consumed by the branches, green leaves crawling over their skin, then penetrating, tiny ants rummaging through a forest of human flesh.

The rest of the village watched, some out of fear and some out of hate, as the elders were pushed and dragged along the creek bed and over to the cottonwood tree. They watched as the branches of the willow tree covered their entire bodies, save their mouth and eyes and, one by one, inched them up the trunk of the cottonwood. The villagers watched as the elders were pushed out onto the broad and strong branches of the cottonwood and suspended by their necks. They watched as the life began to choke out of the elders, all of them slowly losing their breath, their eyes bulging, their screams dying in their throats. Finally...

They watched in horror as Dender was the last lifted into the air, his fat body wrapped in green, his cries and screams going unheard, as he was hauled upward to the lowest branch, his feet barely touching the ground. They watched as he gasped for his life, hung by his neck, his eyes big and dark, his mouth wide.

When the life began to go out of Dender, the villagers began to turn away, except then they heard a strange gasping sound. They looked back to see the branches lower Dender to the ground and loosen around his neck, breath flowing back into his lungs. He gasped for the sweet breath of his life, panting, his face slowly fading from a deep purple into its more natural pinkish hue. He looked to them for help as he struggled in the branches. Nobody moved to help him. They just stared, curious as to why the tree was showing him, of all people, mercy. The tree answered their unspoken questions, though, when it began to tighten its branches around Dender’s neck again, lifting him up off the ground, his face quickly turning purple again, his eyes giant within his skull. The villagers walked back to their homes, understanding, submissive.

The branches around the village died swiftly, leaving the people alone, fading back beyond the river. The people went back to their lives, attempting to replace what was lost over the years, the council of elders dissolved, the village ruined by the dying. They knew they could never go back, that they would spend their days with sorrow. And every night as long as the village remained, they heard the screams of Dender coming through the forest, echoing off the walls of their homes, as the willow tree’s branches lifted him up and down, suspending him from the cottonwood tree, feeding him its lifeblood through a branch forced down his throat..

 Some villagers left, unable to endure the nightly reminder of their crimes. It was rumored that the screams followed them no matter where they found themselves. Many went insane, starving for nourishment, receiving torment.

Eventually the village died.  The Harvest ritual was ended. The few women of childbearing years remaining refused the advancements of men, moved away to their own lives, free of the oppression. The elders’ bodies remained wrapped in the branches of the willow tree, hung where they died on the branches of the nearby Cottonwood, now so many years ago. The Harvest was forgotten because nobody was alive to remember it.

Except Dender, who continued to scream into the bloody night.