Tree Singer

Tree Singer -- Chapter One

Something was wrong with the trees. Mayten could feel it, but she didn't have the words or the training to understand what it was. She brushed it off with "I'll ask Mother later." and lay with her long legs stretched out on the sturdy limb of her favorite oak tree. Her back pressed up against the thick trunk and her face turned upward. This was the best view of a tree, from a low branch looking up. From here she could see the structure of the tree, the beauty and symmetry of its branches.

"And so," she continued talking to the tree, "when we move levels, I'm worried about my best friends; I'm just sure that Tray will be called to be a traveler. And that's what he wants of course, and Cather is just beside herself with worry, you know how she feels about him – I know I've already said all this but I just can't help it. Why do things have to change?" She smacked her fist down on the branch beneath her so hard that she almost lost her balance. "Sorry Auntie," she said sheepishly and scrambled into a sitting position, crossing her legs over the branch, she knew she must sound like a petulant child.

Shame washed over her as she remembered her mother's firm warning, "Mayten, you'll never get past stage three if you don't stop talking to the trees and start listening, focus child!" She felt silly. Only the very youngest singers spent all their time talking to trees, but she felt shaky today, and this tree was like an auntie to whom she'd poured out all of her hurt and pain as a child. She was leveling up tomorrow and starting her real training, stages four through seven. In stage four you learned to send and receive feelings with the trees, something she'd already been practicing in anticipation, but it was hard for her to focus. There were so many distractions, and here she was babbling on like a level two baby. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, focusing all of her energy on listening to the tree.

As she concentrated, she felt the warmth of sun on her face, heard the chatter of squirrels and the flutter of bird's wings. Insects buzzed about her and she smelled the earthy woodiness of the oak. In the distance, laborers out behind her homestead, chatted as they worked. She had to push past all of that to hear the tree.

Finally, she was able to block out all the other noises and tune into the tree. Her auntie tree hummed, comfort and peace washed over Mayten. The humming was the sound of her sap, reaching up from the roots, ready to flow into new growth. She hummed along with it, unable to block out the joy and new life she heard there.

She loved spring when the trees came out of their winter quiet and started to sing about light and birth and joy. The sun filtered through the branches above her, drawing the sap up, up, up and out in new, leafy growth. She sang to the tree and coaxed the sap upwards. There was the familiar comfort coming to her from her oak friend, yet, there was something new in the voice of her auntie tree, something that unsettled Mayten. This wasn't the first time she'd noticed it, and it dampened her joy.

Mayten wanted to discuss the sound with her mother, but Castanea was extra busy with clan duties, preparing for the leveling ceremony. Tomorrow was the first day of spring, the day all children fifteen-years-old, graduated to the next level of their training, from apprentices to initiates. If she hadn't known how busy her mother was, Mayten would have sworn she, the clan's chief singer, was avoiding her daughter. She'd barely seen her in the last few weeks.

If she was honest, Mayten was a little nervous about the ceremony. She'd climbed the tree because being in the trees always put her at ease. But today the auntie tree didn't calm her. Today, the auntie needed calming, and with frustration she realized she didn't know how to do it. She tried to sing away the darkness she felt from her friend...was it sadness? Was it fear? In her three years of apprenticing her mother, she'd never heard this particular sound from the trees and identifying feelings was advanced level work, but she knew there was something not quite right.

It was probably nothing, maybe her own jitters were getting in the way of hearing clearly. Mayten didn't like change and tomorrow everything about her life would take a new direction. Tomorrow she would get her calling, which she wasn't worried about, but Tray, one of her two best friends, would get his, and that would change everything.