At first the thing was no more than a visual whisper. Nothing more than a brief movement of the air, a fluttering. Into the corner of his eye. A something that should not be in the old oak’s bark, or hidden by it.
On examination it turned out to be a carving, one so wrought with remorse that the oak did not want to share it.
But Trevor was nothing if not curious. And so he set out to find out.
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Trevor retraced his last few steps, then faced the tree again. The somber trunk, thick and gray and brownly furrowed. No words. He stepped back a little, looked again, tried to envision the spot that had spoken, if indeed it had. Still no words. He approached the tree again, looked closer. Shook his head: no, there was nothing. Though he could have sworn.
But as he straightened and turned to go, there it was again, the same whisper, peripherally: definitely something—what was that?
Again he faced it, and again, nothing.
Now he stepped all the way up to the tree, scanning it closely for letters. Touched it now. Still nothing. Took two steps back to get a different point of view. Scanned the bark again, probed it with his eyes, in depth, asking it to give it up. No, no. Still nothing. Strange illusion, though. For he could have sworn.
Looking away now: and there again, letters. Or what very well could be letters. This time he did not shift his gaze back to the tree, instead he held the spot firmly at the edge of sight, and only when he was certain of the spot, he again approached the stocky trunk, and now, yes, he finally saw them, letters. He placed his finger on what seemed the first of several. Almost wholly obscured by bark it seemed buried by years and years.
But now he could see it, as if the tree had finally consented.
The first of four, it struck him like an old wound, a welt, buried within and under years and years of subsequent bark. He traced it carefully with his finger, the bark as rough as sandpaper under its tip. A vertical line it was, which then, at the bottom, angled to the right, half again the distance.
An L, then. Could be. He looked closer, searched the fine crevices of the miniature landscape, and in the depth of it—underneath both ridge and valley—he saw the foot of the L quite distinctly now. Yes. An L it was. The stem clear enough, now that he knew what he was looking for—or how to look for it, rather—and there, yes, the foot.
An L-shaped scar, well camouflaged, but definitely an L. Faintly, as if it had once grown itself into young brown tree-skin, then thought better of it and done its best to vanish.
He stepped back again, farther this time, again taking in all of the tree, all seventy feet of it—at least—soaring above him into the overcast sky, still mumbling about rain. It must be ancient. Took in the massive lower branches, giant arms carved in rock. Ancient, he thought again. He looked back for the L. For an instant—faintly tinged by panic—he thought he’d lost it again, but no, there it was. And so were the other letters. He stepped closer again, to about an arm’s length, the right distance, the right depth. Looked. The second letter was a D.
Or an O.
An L, and a D. Capital letters both. No, he looked again, that was not a D, it was an O. LO. And there was a V. And the fourth, an E. LOVE. That was the word. LOVE.
And now he saw, underneath this first one, the other two words, or their shadows. More letters. He counted. Seven letters on the second line, then four again beneath that.
A very short poem, he thought. Or a message.
And—letting the letters come to him, as if on their own volition, on the tree’s terms—he read:
LOVE
THYSELF
LAST
He approached the tree again. Stepped on a twig that didn’t as much snap on the moist underground as groaned. He looked down, briefly thinking it had been alive. Saw the twig and just about apologized.
Looked again at the trunk. Now that he knew what was there he could see it well enough and it spoke to him quite clearly. “Love thyself last,” it said. Then something odd struck him. The words LOVE and THYSELF—except for the final letter, the F—were, what? Efforts, that was the only word that came to mind, like hard work. The F, however, seemed slightly different. As if, yes, effortless, poured, smoother. And so was, now that he could discern the difference, the third word, LAST. It was as if the writer had finally found his tongue.
“Love thyself last.”
He knew those words, or had known them. They smacked of public school, the did. Of English Literature, the verbatim kind, his growing up kind, the rapped knuckles if you didn’t kind. Love thyself last. Milton, was it? Blake? John Ruskin? The Bible? He read the words again. No, he could for the life of him not place them. Then he wished he had brought his camera.
Stepping back, careful not to hurt the twig again, he leaned his head back and once more took in all of the tree, looking up through it. This oak was indeed very old. How old do they get anyway, oaks? He wasn’t sure.
He looked around for others of his kind, to compare, to get a sense of seniority, of relative age, but noticed instead that the clouds had begun to softly keep their promise with a fine, almost misty drizzle. Not cold though, warm for September, pleasant almost. The kind of rain that makes the ground give up all its secret smells. The faint musk of dead leaves, not quite mulch yet, but well on their way. The fresher scent of things alive, of moss, of berries. The scents of stones, and lichen, and earth, they all mixed and rose into the falling mist and added dimension to the forest, and for a moment he felt as if standing in a strange room, some sort of museum.
A pleasant drizzle. It would come down harder soon, though. He looked again for other oaks, brother and sister trees, of offspring. A few, but not many. What there were a lot of, however, were beeches. And ash, and willow, and what looked like a birch or two; and, yes, there and there, one, two, he could count five oaks from where he stood, his soaring messenger included. Loners each, outcasts almost, pushing their neighbors away, and none of them all that happy with the company.
He looked back at his oak one final time.
The rain, due warning now over and done with, set out in earnest, heavier drops. One found his nose with an almost splash. Time to retreat. In a second. He returned to the words. Ran his fingers over them one last time, as if to commit their hiding place to fingery memory. Off in the distance he could hear a lorry’s horn. And from the same direction, faintly, like a river, other traffic on the not so far away motorway. Time he headed back.