[ WP ] The life of a tree is a long one . The Sacred Oak had quite a story to tell .

I heard the whispers from the wood. Echoes of life swimming beneath the ripples of its surface, fragmented and incoherent like the pieces were now, forced into new shapes, learning new memories. Chair memories and broom memories, charcoal I sketched with even putting memory to paper as it lost its power to retain. But my father's desk, grandfathers before him, and older still than that man, rugged and oaken, huge and dark and full of men's thoughts, still dreamed like a tree. 
 
 I was twelve when I found the book that talked of witches and warlocks and all things fae the average villager need fear. The book was old then of course, and most who held superstitions were too, like my father's mother who had kept it. She was happy to let me read my discovery after a little more work clearing out the attic with grandfather. The effort was warm and sweaty in the afternoon sun, we had the shutters open for the breeze blowing in fresh with the scent of the summer wood, and my grandfather, realising there was still a great deal to do, brushed some dust off of my head and shoulders with a calloused hand, tousled my hair and handed me my book while saying'go hound your grandma for some lemonade'. 
 
 So as I left for the stairs I put a hand on the nearest beam and listened while the floorboards creaked and groaned, revelled in the sighs and whispers behind them that it seemed people were seldom aware of. The sounds of an old house and of the older wood. My grandmother through a magic of her own had known we were ready for a break, and there stood a tall glass of lemonade waiting for me in my favourite spot on the table near the bench on the deck outside. I settled into the bench and heard what I had come to know as relief that it was not the significantly greater weight of my heavy shouldered grandfather easing to rest, and smiled at the thought. My smile widened as I saw the woods the breeze had blown through, green and gold and full of life. I remembered my father's desk while the voices of the trees swept over me. How its voice was older than this house, and how I somehow knew that out there beyond the green and sun, was the heart of the forest. Darker, and secret, and full of stories. 
 
 Then I remembered my new book, and how it held some stories easier to get my hands on with tired legs and parental supervision. 
 
 I turned the pages and looked at skilled drawings of fantastical creatures, unicorns and knifetooth cats, devils and draugr and even a large bat like creature I decided was not a dragon, but so it was labelled. Scanning through more entries dedicated to which root vegetables could keep away which lycanthrope or vampire, my eyes were caught by some unsettlingly like my own. 
 
 I was looking at my mother. 
 
 The page was marked ‘ Dryads ’, and I read on. 
 
 “ Dryads: Nymphs of the trees. Commonly argued to be forces of nature and life, most of my collated evidence suggests they are more similar to the Sirens of the northern ocean. Beautiful things, seemingly all female, purportedly innocuous, they use their charms and songs to tempt otherwise noble men ( and accountably women ) from their duties to the Church and Dukedom to unknown ends. Predators truly, their beauty should be trusted no more than the bright colours of a poisonous toad, and their nefarious ungodly magics avoided at all costs. Keep your children and loose husbands away from the wood, most certainly at night, and weave a garland of ragweed and swordgrass to dissuade their corrupting presence. ” 
 
 I thought over this analysis sceptically, having no true intention of believing words like this about anyone resembling my mother. Certainly not from someone who didn ’ t know what a dragon looked like. 
 
 My eyes found hers again and I fell into the page and memory. 
 
 My father found me that night in her chair in, well, only his room now. It was solid and oaken, and it rocked. I remembered it from when I was small enough to sit on her lap, and she would sing to me songs that wove between the echoes of life all around us. The chair remembered too, but it was a false image of her, like in the book. Imperfect, however beautiful, untrue to what it meant to have a mother to hold. 
 
 My father reminded me I still had him when he thudded into the room. He noticed my tear tracks and heard sobs turned to sniffles, and after offering me a chance to collect myself further by removing his rugged boots and hide jacket, he swept me up and onto his knee while he sat in the chair himself, hugging me close, stubbled chin scratching my head as he kissed me. 
 
 He was solid, and human, and now he rocked. I could feel the song echo in the empty space inside him where my mother once was. Where my sister would have been too, had she been born. Some part of him knew what was missing because he started to hum, a little off key, and not as melodious as she was. But it helped us both and I joined in. 

