The Only Tree in the Forestby HapChaptersChapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 5Chapter 7Chapter 9Chapter 10Chapter 12Chapter 13Chapter 15Chapter 16Chapter 19Chapter 20Chapter 21Chapter 22Chapter 23Chapter 24Chapter 25Chapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 6Chapter 8Chapter 11Chapter 14Chapter 17Chapter 18Chapter 3Life has never been easy, but it’s always been nice. I only see full sunlight for a couple of hours each day as the sun passes over the gap in the canopy, but the soil is black and living, and there is always plenty of water. Each season, I grow taller. I stretch my branches toward the sky and dream of what it will be like to be in the canopy with the other trees. They call me “sapling” and tell me stories. Even The Ash, who watched all of them grow from sprouts, was once a sapling like me. Not just like me, of course. The Ash made seeds that fluttered in the wind to spread far and wide, but – one day soon, I hope – I will make acorns that will be carried away by squirrels, buried and forgotten, to sprout the next spring. The Ash also needed younger ash trees nearby to pollinate her flowers. When she was smaller, she was a he, and pollinated the older, larger ash trees. But I have both kinds of flowers. I wonder what that would be like to need someone else? It sounds scary. I wonder how she would have felt if she was all alone? Being alone sounds nice to me sometimes. Especially when I know I could be growing so much bigger and taller if I could get more sunlight. The other trees are polite, of course, but… I know they need the sun too, and they keep getting taller, and spreading out, and the canopy gap The Ash left me keeps getting smaller. It feels like a race, to get to the canopy before the others shade me completely. Before I become nothing more than a scrub. The Ash used to tell of the things she could see on the horizon. She was taller than any other tree, so her horizon was farther away. Some of the trees sigh, and say it’s not true, but the others swear they can taste the dust when the wind blows the right way. There is a desert, far to the south. A place where there is no rain. This sounds terrible to me. I know I struggle to get enough sunlight, but I can’t imagine what it would be like to have so much sun that it dried out my leaves, and so little water that I would shrivel up and die. I like where I am. It is a good place. One day, I will be in the canopy, and I will have everything I need. Chapter 4Life isn’t fair. I’m not the tallest tree around. I’m not even up to the canopy yet. I only just dropped my first crop of acorns last fall. I’d seen the scars on the other trees, the taller ones. They say The Ash was covered in them. The taller a tree gets, the more it will draw lightning. But I’m the shortest tree around, and I was struck. Every thunderstorm, I had been terrified. Each crack would send shivers through my leaves. I would remember the story of the mightiest ash, exploding into splinters with that very sound. Even in the hot summer storms, when the hail falls with clouds of steam, I would imagine frost nipping at my leaves and ice clawing at my bark. But it wasn’t ice I should have feared. When it happened, I didn’t have time to be afraid. There was searing pain and a crack of thunder inside me, and I instantly knew that my heartwood had been burned. When the storm was over, the other trees laughed and told me I looked fine. No scars. That I was lucky. Tough. But I could feel it smoldering still, when the sun rose the next day. Without the hardened heartwood, I am little more than a hollow shell of soft sapwood. I am just waiting for rot to set in. Or for the wind to blow me over. Life isn’t fair. Chapter 5I saw my first ponies. The other trees had talked about them, of course. I’d heard that yonder maple heard from a distant elm who heard it from a yew on the horizon, who… I wish I’d been prettier when they showed up. I feel silly for feeling that way. When my heartwood was burned, I’d had to grow my trunk thicker, not taller. Stronger, to keep from being blown over. I became twisted and gnarled. The other trees refuse to speak to me, so I squat in the shade and try not to look up at a canopy I have no hope of ever reaching. The ponies seem so happy. They enjoy the forest with such a wide-eyed wonder that I wanted to impress them. They look in awe at every trunk and branch, but pause to regard me. An ugly curiosity in a picturesque living landscape. I see three kinds of ponies. The pegasi, who fly overhead and land on branches, chattering to each other like birds. Their feathery weightlessness belies their power. I heard the other trees talking as they watched the little flying ponies break up a thunderstorm in the east, and bring rain to the dry patch in the north. It would be nice to have them around. The unicorns perform feats of impossibility. They lift things without touching them, or transform one object into another. But I suppose the sun lifts the morning fog, and trees transform soil into living wood. Perhaps they are as astounded by trees as I am by them. Then there are the ponies who… connect with us. They are solid. Heavy. Their hooves are roots that sink deep into the earth and reach out. They touch us, and we respond. And when they touch me, they shake their heads and walk away. Chapter 7It looked like a thunderstorm on the horizon, which bothered me. I’m still shy of such things; though I am now too fat to be blown over, I am the tallest thing for miles. After a time, I determined that it was not a storm, but smoke from a great fire. Fire is a terrifying thing to a forest, but I am the only tree around, now, and there is nothing around me to burn, or to hold the flames against my wood long enough for me to catch fire. The town burns and the last traces of a once-mighty forest turn to smoke. Even the smoke is eventually lost in the night sky. There is nothing left of the world I remember but me. I remember what the older trees told me, so long ago. “That is the way of the world.” What is old dies and makes room for what is new; it rots and nourishes what comes next. The Ash died to make room for me, and its decaying wood fed my soil. The forest died to make room for the castle town, and its wood fed the ponies’ buildings. Even now, I watch the town die. I wonder what will grow in its place. Chapter 9Where a town once stood, now grows a forest. Over its canopy, I can only see the tips of the highest towers of that ruined castle. Even though it is only on the horizon, I can tell it feels wrong. That's not how trees grow. It seems like they spring up overnight. Sometimes they rearrange themselves from one day to the next. Paths and rivers and even ravines are impermanent. That strange pony who comes to sit in my shade watches with me as the forest grows. She seems as uncomfortable as I am. She still whispers to the moon. Sometimes it sounds like she is telling stories. Sometimes it sounds like half of a conversation, but I have never heard the moon whisper back. I don't know what she says, but I know what she feels because she is like me. She is hollow. She was struck by lightning. Her heart is burned away, and soon she will begin to rot. She is tall for a pony. I wonder if she must have been like The Ash, back when she was whole. Chapter 10Today is the day I realized that she wasn’t going to come back any more. I don’t miss the other trees. They stunted my growth, they starved me of sunlight, and they laughed at my misfortune. I do miss their stories about The Ash. Once they were gone, I would watch the ponies live their lives in the castle town. And when they in turn had gone, I would let the tall pony sit in my branches and talk to the moon. She would sit in my shade and think next to me, or chatter away like ponies do. I’d only ever seen them talk to each other. I don’t know if she was trying to talk to me, or only to herself. But I miss it. Now I’m alone. The strange forest in the distance doesn’t seem like company. I feel certain that, should it choose to expand in my direction, the trees would be incapable of conversation. I doubt that they are trees at all. Capricious spirits with the likeness of trees, always shifting and changing when one looks away. Ghosts, perhaps, born of whatever calamity befell the ponies in the castle town. I can see a new castle near the top of a very tall mountain in the distance. I wonder whether the tall pony is living there. Or perhaps she grew old and died, as ponies do. I miss her. Chapter 12Yesterday, the ponies finished their first harvest of rainbow-colored apples, and now they pull a wagon towards me. I do not know why they cross this ocean of grass, but they cannot wish to chop me down for lumber. There are countless trees better than I in that strange forest, and they move past every one of them. Perhaps they have some magical purpose in mind, but I cannot imagine what it would be. When they arrive, they pull food from their wagon and sit on a blanket in my shade. Not one of them has axes or saws. The little ones chase each other and laugh. The older ones talk. One seems to be telling a story. This must be a feast for them. They eat many of the strange apples, in a dozen different ways. Raw apples, mashed and spiced apples, apples wrapped in big flaky bread, apples wrapped in little crispy bread. After a time, they slow down and become quiet. The sun is high now, and the day is warm for autumn. Some of them lean against one another and talk quietly. The little ones snuggle against their parents. A big one leans against my trunk and falls asleep. I am certain they could easily tell that I am rotten to the core. None of them have bothered to search into me. It reminds me of the tall pony. They simply enjoy my shade, or chatter away. They all seem happy. Strange magic indeed. Chapter 13At first it was just one pony with a cart, who brought tools and such to trade for apples. Then it was a team of ponies with carts, trading with a few other farms that had sprung up near the apple farm. Today, it is a trading post opening its doors for the first time. I suppose there will be a town before too long, over on the other side of that creek. There are even ponies cutting down trees at the edge of the strange forest, where the trees are sparse, and aren’t quite so unusual. As night falls, a light continues to shine from the upstairs window of the trading post. The windows go dark not long after the last traces of daylight have disappeared from the horizon. Even with the ponies so nearby, it is peaceful. I am far enough away that they seldom come my direction. Most don’t even bother to look my way. The stars are shining crisp and strong. The sky seems happy. Chapter 15I have seen many ponies use an axe. The magic ones use their horns to grip them in a glow of magic. The ones with roots grip the handle in their teeth. But they all swing from the side, first up and then down. Cutting out one chip at a time, until the remaining trunk is narrow enough that it fractures as it tips over. But this pony has carved a chunk out of my side, and though she has a horn, she has only used her hooves and her teeth to hold her tools. Soon the hole is large enough for her to stand in. She steps inside and continues hacking away, tossing the wood chips outside as she digs deeper. Her hooves stand on my wood, and I can feel her reaching out, reaching in to me. The ponies who swung axes before, they chopped with precision, but without haste. They were doing a task, a job, and that was all. This pony chops with a manic energy that I’ve never seen. Her fur is lathered with sweat, and still she attacks the wood with frantic, haphazard strokes of the axe. Soon, she will break through to the rotten wood. She will see what is inside. She senses that she is close, and redoubles her efforts. I feel the last of my sapwood give way. The spongy rot beneath lets the axe sink in deep, and takes hold of the iron head. Tugging on the handle with her teeth is not enough to free the axe, and she resorts to punching through the last bits of solid wood with her hooves, splintering it until she can wiggle the axe free. With a growl, she tugs loose a large chunk of the rotten wood and hurls it outside. She sits and pants and sobs, leaning against the wall she has carved into my trunk. Salt from her tears and her sweat soaks into my exposed wood. Her hooves are not just against my bark, or pressed into the soil over my roots. They are standing on the living fibers of my trunk. I see into her, and I understand that I was right, so long ago, when I first met her. She is like me, I remember concluding. Her heart was burned away that night, when fire consumed the castle town and smoke rose up to stain the moon. Burned, like me, and slowly rotting from the inside out. As she shudders and sniffs, her cheek pressed against the splintery, ravaged timber, I realize why she is here. She is not going to chop me down to build a house or a cart, or to burn me to cook her oats. She is here to cut the rot out of my heart. We are one and the same, and she will do to me what she cannot do to herself. I wonder what it will feel like to be hollow. My heartwood has long been dead and rotten, but I have never been empty. I have become accustomed to the twisting, crawling sensation of worms and beetles eating their way through the spongy fungus. After a moment, she wipes away her tears and takes a deep breath. She takes the axe in her teeth and steps inside the hole she has made, poking around the rotten wood with its blade. Dust and spores float outward in a cloud. She sneezes violently, three times, and backs out of the alcove. My heart is as toxic to her as it is to me. She stares at me. The sun has barely climbed above the eastern mountains, and their shadow still falls over the foothills beyond the sea of grass. I remember the first time I saw those mountains. I never would have seen them, if not for the ponies’ axes and saws. A bell rings out from the distance, drawing the tall pony's eyes to the apple farm that I've been watching for the past several years. Ponies stream out of the orchards toward the farmhouse. I can't hear them, but I can see that they are laughing and shouting as they run to breakfast. She smiles. It feels good to see her smile. She lights her horn, and shakes her mane. Her whole body glows, and she shrinks down to the size of a normal mare, her horn and wings disappearing entirely. She is now a root pony, her fur the dusky pink of a dogwood flower, with a mane the color of the deepest cloudless skies. Her disguise complete, she scoops up her empty saddlebags and trots off toward the buildings over the hill, across the creek, where ponies come and go with their carts and crops. Chapter 16I wonder why she disguised herself. I suppose the other ponies must know her, or at least her appearance. She is older than the rest, I know, and taller. She is every kind of them all at once. She is one of them, but different. I know a squirrel will hide from hawks, but so will a bobcat hide from its own prey. I wonder which she is. A few minutes later, she emerges from the general store and trots back to me. Her bags are full, and an apple pie rests on her back. In a blink, she transforms back into her usual self. I have seen eight ponies share an apple pie, but she eats the entire thing in a few ravenous bites. She uses her horn to move the pile of wood chips out from under my branches, then focuses a beam of magic on it until flames appear. As the fire grows, she pulls a scrap of cloth out of her bags and magicks it into a different shape. This she wraps over her muzzle, and ties the loose ends around the back of her head before picking up the axe in the crook of one hoof and hobbling back into my trunk. She chops, she tears, she pulls chunks of rotten wood out of me and throws them on the fire. The moist wood steams and smokes before catching fire, but once it does, it burns hot and fast. I hear the worms popping as the fire grows ever larger. I can't tell what she is doing inside. She has passed the part of me that is alive, and now works inside a cavern of dripping, crawling rot. I sense her work with something that is between hearing and feeling. Her work continues into the night, with only one small break for her to watch the sun set. The last of the embers die down as she flies away. Except for the doorway she carved, she has not cut into my living wood. The bulk of the rot is gone, but the last remaining bits still coat my interior. I do not know what will happen next; whether the fungus will dry out and die, or if the exposure to air will invigorate it. Will the worms disappear, or will they burrow into my live sapwood? The cold night air stings. Chapter 19The sting of fresh cuts has mellowed to a throbbing ache. The fungus is gone, and with it the bugs and worms. Part of me has been cut away and burned, and I am better off for it. There is less of me now. I can feel a few of my branches dying where their xylem has been carved out. Without the infection, my remaining branches and leaves will be more than enough to sustain me. For the first time I can remember, I feel… at ease. When I was young, there was an urgency to grow taller, before the surrounding trees closed off the canopy above me. After I was struck by lightning, I was forced to grow wider and stronger, so I did not blow over. Even after I had been left alone, life was a constant race to collect enough sunlight to grow ever fatter to outpace the ever-expanding rot. As she finishes whatever work is left, the sun seems to favor me, pouring on my leaves and warming me through to the inside. I hope that whatever metaphor she has been laboring under has removed as much of her rot as mine. When she steps outside, I occasionally see a smile as she looks up at me. I wonder if this is where she will live when she has finished, here on the outskirts of this little town. Chapter 20I have doors now, and glass windows. An upstairs and a downstairs and a basement. Two balconies. Flower-boxes full of wildflowers that the tall pony spent hours collecting at the edge of that strange and shifting forest. She painted my insides with some kind of varnish that bore the tickle of magic. It burned as it seeped into my living wood, but the burn reduced to a tingle, which is now nothing more than a sense of dullness. My trunk feels asleep, like in the deepest part of winter, and is no longer raw to the touch. It feels like a thick layer of bark, the same as the outside of my trunk. She arrives again, just like always, early in the morning. But this time, she is not alone. Half a dozen carts, pulled by pegasus stallions in polished armor, landed on the grass just outside my shadow. The carts were made of wood, like every cart I’d ever seen. But these carts were also full of wood like I’d never seen. All sorts of trees, chopped and ground into pulp, and formed into blocks. No, I had seen this, decades ago. Books. The apple-growing ponies who visited me would, after their feasting and frolicking, sit in my shade and pull out a single book. The eldest would open it, separate it into leaves, and speak aloud. Whatever the content of that book, it was meaningful to those ponies. There were hundreds of books here, packed securely into the bottom of each cart. For what purpose, I have no clue. But every one of the ponies treats them reverentially. The tall pony opens my door with her magic and strides into the echoing interior. The stallions outside unload the carts and trot inside one by one, each with a small pile of books. I can’t see inside myself, but I feel their hooves lighten as the books are lifted from their backs. A moment later, the books settle on the shelves carved from my very living wood. This goes on for hours. Carts leave, and more arrive. Books and furniture and bookends and decorations. I am to be a house, a living place for some pony to live within. The moment arrives that everything to be moved into me has been. The stallions hook up their carts and fly away, leaving the tall pony standing in front of my open door. Her long shadow only lengthens as the sun approaches the horizon. She takes a moment, as she always does, to appreciate the sunset, with her horn lit to no visible effect. The moon rises as a tear graces her cheek. Her head droops low with a sigh before she steps inside. I feel her hooves make a complete circuit of my interior, from the basement to the upper reaches that stretch out onto a balcony where I can see her again. She nods and smiles, then spreads her wings and leaps, gliding around me in a lazy spiral toward the silvery moonlit grass. She smiles up at me. Not a sad smile like I’d seen so many times as she was carving me out, but a kind of smile that I’d never witnessed. Gentle, warm like the sun, and full of grace. Her horn lights, and a chunk of wood I’d not taken note of before floats out of my doorway. Not the blocks of pulp like books, but built from solid planks and straight timbers. It has a symbol carved on its face – an open book. She drives the timbers deep into the earth, so that the symbol is visible to all those who approach my door. She steps forward, placing a hoof against my trunk. She feels everything I feel right now. I want her, more than anything. I try to drink her in like the sun, and she leans forward to nuzzle me with the soft fur of her cheek. Her magic closes my door and she takes a step backward. She closes her eyes and smiles one last time, spreading her wings, and coils to leap into the air. She does so, and takes flight. I am left standing, without her, in the cold light of the moon. Chapter 21She did not return in the morning. Chapter 22Today they opened a post office. I suppose that makes it an official town. Chapter 23Somepony noticed that I am a house for books. None of them had come close enough to notice the sign before. Too busy with their farms and their mail, I suppose. He ran off, and an hour later here I am, surrounded by curious ponies. One opens my door. It is unlocked; it never had a lock. The ponies file inside, and I feel their hooves exploring. They look at the books, they lift them from my shelves, they put them back, and they leave. They go back to their farms and their general stores and their post office. Chapter 24She hasn’t come back. Not in half a century. There have been foals who came inside and borrowed books. Young ponies who threw books from my shelves, and others who clucked and sighed and put them back. Old, creaky ponies who lightened my shelves by one book, and sat for a time before replacing it and finding their way out. The town has grown, and new trees have sprouted up. They have a hard time believing that there was ever a forest here. Though they are nearly fully grown, I still call them each “sapling.” Ponies like to sit in their shade and talk, or sip their drinks, or chase each other and laugh. I seems odd that I feel more connection to the ponies than the other trees. But it occurs to me that I have been around ponies for more of my life than I have been around other trees. I watch the ponies grow. I watch the town grow. I watch the trees grow. But I do not grow. I am frozen where I am, neither rotting nor growing. Just… waiting. Waiting for what? I do not know. But I wait. Chapter 25Today, a mare stands in front of me. A magic one, with the wide eyes and impatient energy of youth. The tall pony reminded me of myself after I was burned; this one reminds me of myself before that. I can smell her on this little one. A very long time ago, as a sapling with only a few leaves, I wondered what it would be like to need someone. Looking back, it seems that I had needed someone, and she needed me. I was catharsis for her, and she for me. We did not speak, but we shared much. More than I knew. And now I see this filly – this sapling the color of lavenders and indigo – standing at my threshold and looking up at me. As old as I am, I have lacked foresight. This filly steps inside me and I hear her gasp. As large as I am, I have lacked scope. Books fly off my shelves, and I am filled with a warmth I have not felt since the tall pony burned like the sun inside of me. I am a place for her. She needs me, and I understand now that I have always needed someone. As wise as I like to think I am, I have lacked joy. I feel her hooves dance. Chapter 1Not long after I unfurled my first pair of leaves, the other trees told me it was a terrible winter that made room for me to grow. An enormous Ash stood here, towering over the canopy, before her trunk shattered from the pressure of ice crystals growing in her sap. Like thunder, they said. Perhaps that is why I am always afraid of thunderstorms. Now, the rotting wood of that once-regal giant sweetens the soil where I grow. Sun pours through the gap she left in the canopy. Sometimes I feel guilty when I enjoy the rich earth or the warmth of the sunlight on my leaves, but the other trees tell me that is the nature of the world. The old die, and the young grow. I wish I could have seen her in her glory. Chapter 2The other trees have long since dropped their leaves, but I hold all six of mine. Through their bare branches, I can see an occasional oak in the distance still holding their leaves too. I understand what snow is, now, and ice and winter. The crystal skies I had been promised now stand above me, perfect black with blazing stars looking down in a kind of holy silence. The world sleeps under a blanket of snow nearly as deep as I am tall. Most winters are peaceful, the trees told me. Indeed, swaddled in beauty such as this, I have trouble imagining the furious howls of the swirling winds from just last year. The creeping frost, spreading along the ground like choking vines until the biggest and strongest tree fell victim to the unnatural cold. But this is a good winter, they say. A time for sleep and thought and gazing at the stars. I am grateful for nights like this. Chapter 6A dead heart rots slowly. There is no way for water or insects to get in. But I can feel the mold festering, expanding, clawing at my sapwood from within. So I keep growing outward. And for the first time in my centuries, I have all the sun that I can stretch out to receive. Because the ponies have cut down every other tree. Those root ponies were carrying terrible instruments, things which none of us had known before. The birds, the bears, the beasts; they could bore holes, rip away our bark, or break off entire limbs. But ponies? They can wipe out an entire forest. It was my rotten heart that saved me from their axes. They could see what I was, and they knew that I was no good. So they came, and they chopped. They brought axes and saws and chisels and fires. In the blink of only thirty years, I was left alone. I’d never been able to see this far before. Only trees. But now there are no trees between myself and the horizon. I always wondered what the horizon was. The taller trees had talked about it. Talked about what The Ash had told them about her horizon. I’ve decided that I do not like the horizon. I watched it anyway. First a castle, then a whole town sprang up. I watched the ponies erect timber to brace the heavy stone of the castle. They used it to frame the homes and businesses in their little village. To build carts and tools. To warm their houses and cook their oats. Each tree provides shelter for a family of ponies, just as my branches give home to squirrels and birds. I don’t know if the ponies care, but I suppose one could say that the forest lived on in their homes. I am not sure how to feel about this. Should I be grateful to be still standing, still growing after every other tree has been felled and cut into lumber? Should I feel left out, after every other tree has found use at the hooves of industrious ponies? I don’t know, and I have no one to talk to about it. Chapter 8A pony came to visit me today. She has roots, but did not carry an axe. She has wings, but did not sit on my branches. She has a horn, but did not do anything impossible. I fancied her immediately. I still do not know why. She felt warm and full and I wanted to drink her in like sunlight. I had never felt anything like it before. I had never seen a pony act like her before either. She only sat in my shade and wept, staring at the ruins of the castle. Perhaps she lost her home in the town. But many ponies must have lost their homes, and none of them have come here. Only her, and she does nothing but sit. For a long time. She sighs, and then her horn glows. The glow lasts until the sun has set and the moon has risen into the sky. I have spent many centuries looking into the sky, and the last few centuries of sky have been unobstructed by branches. I have seen the moon many thousands of times, but it looks different tonight. It is marred by a stain that I have never seen before. Perhaps the smoke from such a great fire rose so high into the sky that it has sooted the moon itself. I feel the pony’s roots pull up from the earth as she flaps her wings. Lost in my thoughts, I had nearly forgotten she was here. The moon draws her like a moth. She ascends, pauses, and alights on my uppermost branches. This is very confusing. She perches, light as a feather, but her mass is… solid? She is sturdy, immovable, yet fragile as a bird. I feel her roots reaching into me, through me, down to the earth. Her feathers stretch toward the sky as she whispers to the moon. The moon seems very far away. I doubt that it can hear her. Chapter 11For half a year I have been watching a group of ponies in the distance. They are the first I have seen since the tall one disappeared centuries ago. I watched them settle near the edge of the unnatural forest and chop down many trees to build their homes. But then they planted trees of their own. I had never seen this before. Ponies do not plant trees; they chop them down. So I decided to watch them more closely. Apple trees, it looks like. I remember there used to be a few over by the little creek. Just far enough away that I couldn’t see them during the summer. But in the late autumn I would watch the deer sniffing around in the fallen leaves for apples. Apples seemed to be their favorite, even more than the tender grass that sprouted in the spring. It will be a few years before these little trees produce any fruit. The ponies spend their days tending the vulnerable saplings, and have little time left for their vegetable gardens and maize. They are very dedicated to their trees, but they must be very hungry. Even as the sun sets, I watch them carefully picking bugs off the leaves or tying the tiny stems onto sticks to keep the apple trees growing straight. This is no chore for them; it is their passion. They care for the trees as if they were family. I wonder if the trees feel the same way about them. So I continue to watch. And if I had not been watching, I would not have believed what I saw. Apple trees sprouted instantly from the ground. Back when the old castle still stood, I watched generations of root ponies plant oats and carrots and beans outside of the castle town. They tended their crops, and grew them well. Faster, perhaps, than wild plants. Bigger. More fruitful. But never had I seen them arise instantly. These new trees bore fruit very quickly. Spectacularly. I could see the unnatural colors from here. Lightning in their branches and rainbows in the sky. None of these ponies are the kind with a horn, but what they do seems utterly magical. The world is changing, I suppose. The old world has died, and a new world full of magic and ponies has come to take its place. Chapter 14I feel the warmth of sunlight just before dawn. The sky is dark but I feel light on my leaves. I am confused, at least until she touches down on the grass not far from the edge of my overhanging branches. I keep telling myself it can’t be her. That she died centuries ago. But it was her. I am happy to see her, but I wonder why she had been gone for so long. She speaks, and not to the moon. She speaks to me. I do not understand but she smiles in the half-darkness and steps closer. Her smile grows dry as she takes another step forward and presses a hoof to my trunk. I can feel her reach out with her roots. She senses the rot in me, but she doesn’t stop and walk away. She presses deeper until I am certain she can feel every branch and knot, and knows the extent of every living fiber of my sapwood, and where it meets the decay. Though she has not grown ugly on the outside, I can sense something in her as well. I remember that she had been burned inside, just like me, but she is not full of rot and worms. She is simply… hollow. I know how deep her glowing smile reaches, and the extent of her white fur and flowing mane. The emptiness inside her aches like the rot inside of me. Like me, she has watched the world change around her. And that change has always been according to its nature. The old die, and the young grow in their place. But not us. She pulls her hoof back and looks up at me. I can see something in her eyes that I didn’t understand before. A spark that burns from deeper than her smile, and deeper even than her hollow heart. She smiles again, but not a smile I’ve seen before. This smile is sad but warm, smoldering with that deep spark. Her horn lights up and she lifts the saddlebag from her back. With a deep breath, she turns to face the east and lights her horn again. As the rising sun paints the sky with a blossom of red, I see in the growing light that her bag is full of tools. A blade, a hammer, a chisel. An axe. In the full light of day, she lifts the axe in her magic and circles me slowly, looking my trunk up and down. She steps forward and rubs her hoof across my bark before nodding to herself. Slowly, her magic fades and the axe lowers until she can bite down on the handle. She raises the axe. Chapter 17She came back again, just before dawn. Just like yesterday. I hadn't expected to see her again so soon, but here she is. She still wears her mask. She brought different tools this time, and still refuses to use her horn to hold them. The tools are smaller, and I can feel her scraping away a thin layer of the living wood along with the rot. She is removing the last traces of my decaying heartwood, and making sure nothing infected with fungus remains. There is a lot of living wood that comes away with each scrape of her tools. This is piled with the rot upon another little bonfire on the grass outside. Now I know what the castle town smelled like as it burned. She carves stairs into my sides and digs deep into my roots, and climbs to the highest reaches of my trunk. Every second of this work is excruciating. Yet she does not pull back her roots. Her hooves stay on my wood, and she feels everything that I feel. She works into the night again. I wonder if she will be back tomorrow, again. Chapter 18She did come back. She brought new tools. New to me, at least. Some device with a spiral blade that spins. She presses it against my trunk and it cuts away a tiny hole in my wood. This is followed with a little saw that fits into the hole, and cuts a wide circle that lets a shaft of sunlight inside. Windows. She is cutting windows into me. I have floors and stairs and shelves and a doorway and now holes for windows. I am to be a house, I think. I’ve not seen the inside of a house, but I watched a few being built. There is a house for the ponies who grow apples. There is a house for the things other ponies sell. Houses have flat places for ponies to walk on, and to put their things on. Houses have windows and doors and a roof to keep off the rain. Just like the squirrels and the birds build houses to stay warm and keep the rain off their heads, ponies build their houses from the trees they chop down. I will make a poor house, I think. I am still growing, slow though it may be. Ponies do not make houses from living wood. My floors will not stay level, my walls will move, and without a layer of bark, my insides will begin to rot again or dry out and crack. So why does she carve a living tree? I cannot imagine any reason. Why does she press her hooves against my tender wood and feel my pain when she could easily fly, or shod herself against the hurt? And why does she not kill me first and dry the wood and then build a house to suit her, rather than try to shape her house to my gnarled, twisted trunk? I don’t know. I cannot feel her pain. I first saw her long ago, that night when ash stained the sky, and I knew that she was like me. Burned and dead on the inside. And, as she works to carve me into a house, shaping and preparing my inside, I wonder if she, like me, is unable to see inside herself. Ponies see in a very different way, I am sure. Their wide eyes take in the world with impatience and wonder. As quickly as they live and die, they must do everything quickly: grow and laugh and love and think and plan. Their farms feed them after only a single season, their houses are built in mere days. They look only a few winters ahead, if at all. But not her. She has seen the inside of me, just as I have seen the inside of her. And I feel that she sees my future, just as I saw hers on that night I first met her. When I saw that she was like me, when I was first burned. I don’t know what future she has planned for me, but I know that it hurts.
Chapter 3Life has never been easy, but it’s always been nice. I only see full sunlight for a couple of hours each day as the sun passes over the gap in the canopy, but the soil is black and living, and there is always plenty of water. Each season, I grow taller. I stretch my branches toward the sky and dream of what it will be like to be in the canopy with the other trees. They call me “sapling” and tell me stories. Even The Ash, who watched all of them grow from sprouts, was once a sapling like me. Not just like me, of course. The Ash made seeds that fluttered in the wind to spread far and wide, but – one day soon, I hope – I will make acorns that will be carried away by squirrels, buried and forgotten, to sprout the next spring. The Ash also needed younger ash trees nearby to pollinate her flowers. When she was smaller, she was a he, and pollinated the older, larger ash trees. But I have both kinds of flowers. I wonder what that would be like to need someone else? It sounds scary. I wonder how she would have felt if she was all alone? Being alone sounds nice to me sometimes. Especially when I know I could be growing so much bigger and taller if I could get more sunlight. The other trees are polite, of course, but… I know they need the sun too, and they keep getting taller, and spreading out, and the canopy gap The Ash left me keeps getting smaller. It feels like a race, to get to the canopy before the others shade me completely. Before I become nothing more than a scrub. The Ash used to tell of the things she could see on the horizon. She was taller than any other tree, so her horizon was farther away. Some of the trees sigh, and say it’s not true, but the others swear they can taste the dust when the wind blows the right way. There is a desert, far to the south. A place where there is no rain. This sounds terrible to me. I know I struggle to get enough sunlight, but I can’t imagine what it would be like to have so much sun that it dried out my leaves, and so little water that I would shrivel up and die. I like where I am. It is a good place. One day, I will be in the canopy, and I will have everything I need.
Chapter 4Life isn’t fair. I’m not the tallest tree around. I’m not even up to the canopy yet. I only just dropped my first crop of acorns last fall. I’d seen the scars on the other trees, the taller ones. They say The Ash was covered in them. The taller a tree gets, the more it will draw lightning. But I’m the shortest tree around, and I was struck. Every thunderstorm, I had been terrified. Each crack would send shivers through my leaves. I would remember the story of the mightiest ash, exploding into splinters with that very sound. Even in the hot summer storms, when the hail falls with clouds of steam, I would imagine frost nipping at my leaves and ice clawing at my bark. But it wasn’t ice I should have feared. When it happened, I didn’t have time to be afraid. There was searing pain and a crack of thunder inside me, and I instantly knew that my heartwood had been burned. When the storm was over, the other trees laughed and told me I looked fine. No scars. That I was lucky. Tough. But I could feel it smoldering still, when the sun rose the next day. Without the hardened heartwood, I am little more than a hollow shell of soft sapwood. I am just waiting for rot to set in. Or for the wind to blow me over. Life isn’t fair.
Chapter 5I saw my first ponies. The other trees had talked about them, of course. I’d heard that yonder maple heard from a distant elm who heard it from a yew on the horizon, who… I wish I’d been prettier when they showed up. I feel silly for feeling that way. When my heartwood was burned, I’d had to grow my trunk thicker, not taller. Stronger, to keep from being blown over. I became twisted and gnarled. The other trees refuse to speak to me, so I squat in the shade and try not to look up at a canopy I have no hope of ever reaching. The ponies seem so happy. They enjoy the forest with such a wide-eyed wonder that I wanted to impress them. They look in awe at every trunk and branch, but pause to regard me. An ugly curiosity in a picturesque living landscape. I see three kinds of ponies. The pegasi, who fly overhead and land on branches, chattering to each other like birds. Their feathery weightlessness belies their power. I heard the other trees talking as they watched the little flying ponies break up a thunderstorm in the east, and bring rain to the dry patch in the north. It would be nice to have them around. The unicorns perform feats of impossibility. They lift things without touching them, or transform one object into another. But I suppose the sun lifts the morning fog, and trees transform soil into living wood. Perhaps they are as astounded by trees as I am by them. Then there are the ponies who… connect with us. They are solid. Heavy. Their hooves are roots that sink deep into the earth and reach out. They touch us, and we respond. And when they touch me, they shake their heads and walk away.
Chapter 7It looked like a thunderstorm on the horizon, which bothered me. I’m still shy of such things; though I am now too fat to be blown over, I am the tallest thing for miles. After a time, I determined that it was not a storm, but smoke from a great fire. Fire is a terrifying thing to a forest, but I am the only tree around, now, and there is nothing around me to burn, or to hold the flames against my wood long enough for me to catch fire. The town burns and the last traces of a once-mighty forest turn to smoke. Even the smoke is eventually lost in the night sky. There is nothing left of the world I remember but me. I remember what the older trees told me, so long ago. “That is the way of the world.” What is old dies and makes room for what is new; it rots and nourishes what comes next. The Ash died to make room for me, and its decaying wood fed my soil. The forest died to make room for the castle town, and its wood fed the ponies’ buildings. Even now, I watch the town die. I wonder what will grow in its place.
Chapter 9Where a town once stood, now grows a forest. Over its canopy, I can only see the tips of the highest towers of that ruined castle. Even though it is only on the horizon, I can tell it feels wrong. That's not how trees grow. It seems like they spring up overnight. Sometimes they rearrange themselves from one day to the next. Paths and rivers and even ravines are impermanent. That strange pony who comes to sit in my shade watches with me as the forest grows. She seems as uncomfortable as I am. She still whispers to the moon. Sometimes it sounds like she is telling stories. Sometimes it sounds like half of a conversation, but I have never heard the moon whisper back. I don't know what she says, but I know what she feels because she is like me. She is hollow. She was struck by lightning. Her heart is burned away, and soon she will begin to rot. She is tall for a pony. I wonder if she must have been like The Ash, back when she was whole.
Chapter 10Today is the day I realized that she wasn’t going to come back any more. I don’t miss the other trees. They stunted my growth, they starved me of sunlight, and they laughed at my misfortune. I do miss their stories about The Ash. Once they were gone, I would watch the ponies live their lives in the castle town. And when they in turn had gone, I would let the tall pony sit in my branches and talk to the moon. She would sit in my shade and think next to me, or chatter away like ponies do. I’d only ever seen them talk to each other. I don’t know if she was trying to talk to me, or only to herself. But I miss it. Now I’m alone. The strange forest in the distance doesn’t seem like company. I feel certain that, should it choose to expand in my direction, the trees would be incapable of conversation. I doubt that they are trees at all. Capricious spirits with the likeness of trees, always shifting and changing when one looks away. Ghosts, perhaps, born of whatever calamity befell the ponies in the castle town. I can see a new castle near the top of a very tall mountain in the distance. I wonder whether the tall pony is living there. Or perhaps she grew old and died, as ponies do. I miss her.
Chapter 12Yesterday, the ponies finished their first harvest of rainbow-colored apples, and now they pull a wagon towards me. I do not know why they cross this ocean of grass, but they cannot wish to chop me down for lumber. There are countless trees better than I in that strange forest, and they move past every one of them. Perhaps they have some magical purpose in mind, but I cannot imagine what it would be. When they arrive, they pull food from their wagon and sit on a blanket in my shade. Not one of them has axes or saws. The little ones chase each other and laugh. The older ones talk. One seems to be telling a story. This must be a feast for them. They eat many of the strange apples, in a dozen different ways. Raw apples, mashed and spiced apples, apples wrapped in big flaky bread, apples wrapped in little crispy bread. After a time, they slow down and become quiet. The sun is high now, and the day is warm for autumn. Some of them lean against one another and talk quietly. The little ones snuggle against their parents. A big one leans against my trunk and falls asleep. I am certain they could easily tell that I am rotten to the core. None of them have bothered to search into me. It reminds me of the tall pony. They simply enjoy my shade, or chatter away. They all seem happy. Strange magic indeed.
Chapter 13At first it was just one pony with a cart, who brought tools and such to trade for apples. Then it was a team of ponies with carts, trading with a few other farms that had sprung up near the apple farm. Today, it is a trading post opening its doors for the first time. I suppose there will be a town before too long, over on the other side of that creek. There are even ponies cutting down trees at the edge of the strange forest, where the trees are sparse, and aren’t quite so unusual. As night falls, a light continues to shine from the upstairs window of the trading post. The windows go dark not long after the last traces of daylight have disappeared from the horizon. Even with the ponies so nearby, it is peaceful. I am far enough away that they seldom come my direction. Most don’t even bother to look my way. The stars are shining crisp and strong. The sky seems happy.
Chapter 15I have seen many ponies use an axe. The magic ones use their horns to grip them in a glow of magic. The ones with roots grip the handle in their teeth. But they all swing from the side, first up and then down. Cutting out one chip at a time, until the remaining trunk is narrow enough that it fractures as it tips over. But this pony has carved a chunk out of my side, and though she has a horn, she has only used her hooves and her teeth to hold her tools. Soon the hole is large enough for her to stand in. She steps inside and continues hacking away, tossing the wood chips outside as she digs deeper. Her hooves stand on my wood, and I can feel her reaching out, reaching in to me. The ponies who swung axes before, they chopped with precision, but without haste. They were doing a task, a job, and that was all. This pony chops with a manic energy that I’ve never seen. Her fur is lathered with sweat, and still she attacks the wood with frantic, haphazard strokes of the axe. Soon, she will break through to the rotten wood. She will see what is inside. She senses that she is close, and redoubles her efforts. I feel the last of my sapwood give way. The spongy rot beneath lets the axe sink in deep, and takes hold of the iron head. Tugging on the handle with her teeth is not enough to free the axe, and she resorts to punching through the last bits of solid wood with her hooves, splintering it until she can wiggle the axe free. With a growl, she tugs loose a large chunk of the rotten wood and hurls it outside. She sits and pants and sobs, leaning against the wall she has carved into my trunk. Salt from her tears and her sweat soaks into my exposed wood. Her hooves are not just against my bark, or pressed into the soil over my roots. They are standing on the living fibers of my trunk. I see into her, and I understand that I was right, so long ago, when I first met her. She is like me, I remember concluding. Her heart was burned away that night, when fire consumed the castle town and smoke rose up to stain the moon. Burned, like me, and slowly rotting from the inside out. As she shudders and sniffs, her cheek pressed against the splintery, ravaged timber, I realize why she is here. She is not going to chop me down to build a house or a cart, or to burn me to cook her oats. She is here to cut the rot out of my heart. We are one and the same, and she will do to me what she cannot do to herself. I wonder what it will feel like to be hollow. My heartwood has long been dead and rotten, but I have never been empty. I have become accustomed to the twisting, crawling sensation of worms and beetles eating their way through the spongy fungus. After a moment, she wipes away her tears and takes a deep breath. She takes the axe in her teeth and steps inside the hole she has made, poking around the rotten wood with its blade. Dust and spores float outward in a cloud. She sneezes violently, three times, and backs out of the alcove. My heart is as toxic to her as it is to me. She stares at me. The sun has barely climbed above the eastern mountains, and their shadow still falls over the foothills beyond the sea of grass. I remember the first time I saw those mountains. I never would have seen them, if not for the ponies’ axes and saws. A bell rings out from the distance, drawing the tall pony's eyes to the apple farm that I've been watching for the past several years. Ponies stream out of the orchards toward the farmhouse. I can't hear them, but I can see that they are laughing and shouting as they run to breakfast. She smiles. It feels good to see her smile. She lights her horn, and shakes her mane. Her whole body glows, and she shrinks down to the size of a normal mare, her horn and wings disappearing entirely. She is now a root pony, her fur the dusky pink of a dogwood flower, with a mane the color of the deepest cloudless skies. Her disguise complete, she scoops up her empty saddlebags and trots off toward the buildings over the hill, across the creek, where ponies come and go with their carts and crops.
Chapter 16I wonder why she disguised herself. I suppose the other ponies must know her, or at least her appearance. She is older than the rest, I know, and taller. She is every kind of them all at once. She is one of them, but different. I know a squirrel will hide from hawks, but so will a bobcat hide from its own prey. I wonder which she is. A few minutes later, she emerges from the general store and trots back to me. Her bags are full, and an apple pie rests on her back. In a blink, she transforms back into her usual self. I have seen eight ponies share an apple pie, but she eats the entire thing in a few ravenous bites. She uses her horn to move the pile of wood chips out from under my branches, then focuses a beam of magic on it until flames appear. As the fire grows, she pulls a scrap of cloth out of her bags and magicks it into a different shape. This she wraps over her muzzle, and ties the loose ends around the back of her head before picking up the axe in the crook of one hoof and hobbling back into my trunk. She chops, she tears, she pulls chunks of rotten wood out of me and throws them on the fire. The moist wood steams and smokes before catching fire, but once it does, it burns hot and fast. I hear the worms popping as the fire grows ever larger. I can't tell what she is doing inside. She has passed the part of me that is alive, and now works inside a cavern of dripping, crawling rot. I sense her work with something that is between hearing and feeling. Her work continues into the night, with only one small break for her to watch the sun set. The last of the embers die down as she flies away. Except for the doorway she carved, she has not cut into my living wood. The bulk of the rot is gone, but the last remaining bits still coat my interior. I do not know what will happen next; whether the fungus will dry out and die, or if the exposure to air will invigorate it. Will the worms disappear, or will they burrow into my live sapwood? The cold night air stings.
Chapter 19The sting of fresh cuts has mellowed to a throbbing ache. The fungus is gone, and with it the bugs and worms. Part of me has been cut away and burned, and I am better off for it. There is less of me now. I can feel a few of my branches dying where their xylem has been carved out. Without the infection, my remaining branches and leaves will be more than enough to sustain me. For the first time I can remember, I feel… at ease. When I was young, there was an urgency to grow taller, before the surrounding trees closed off the canopy above me. After I was struck by lightning, I was forced to grow wider and stronger, so I did not blow over. Even after I had been left alone, life was a constant race to collect enough sunlight to grow ever fatter to outpace the ever-expanding rot. As she finishes whatever work is left, the sun seems to favor me, pouring on my leaves and warming me through to the inside. I hope that whatever metaphor she has been laboring under has removed as much of her rot as mine. When she steps outside, I occasionally see a smile as she looks up at me. I wonder if this is where she will live when she has finished, here on the outskirts of this little town.
Chapter 20I have doors now, and glass windows. An upstairs and a downstairs and a basement. Two balconies. Flower-boxes full of wildflowers that the tall pony spent hours collecting at the edge of that strange and shifting forest. She painted my insides with some kind of varnish that bore the tickle of magic. It burned as it seeped into my living wood, but the burn reduced to a tingle, which is now nothing more than a sense of dullness. My trunk feels asleep, like in the deepest part of winter, and is no longer raw to the touch. It feels like a thick layer of bark, the same as the outside of my trunk. She arrives again, just like always, early in the morning. But this time, she is not alone. Half a dozen carts, pulled by pegasus stallions in polished armor, landed on the grass just outside my shadow. The carts were made of wood, like every cart I’d ever seen. But these carts were also full of wood like I’d never seen. All sorts of trees, chopped and ground into pulp, and formed into blocks. No, I had seen this, decades ago. Books. The apple-growing ponies who visited me would, after their feasting and frolicking, sit in my shade and pull out a single book. The eldest would open it, separate it into leaves, and speak aloud. Whatever the content of that book, it was meaningful to those ponies. There were hundreds of books here, packed securely into the bottom of each cart. For what purpose, I have no clue. But every one of the ponies treats them reverentially. The tall pony opens my door with her magic and strides into the echoing interior. The stallions outside unload the carts and trot inside one by one, each with a small pile of books. I can’t see inside myself, but I feel their hooves lighten as the books are lifted from their backs. A moment later, the books settle on the shelves carved from my very living wood. This goes on for hours. Carts leave, and more arrive. Books and furniture and bookends and decorations. I am to be a house, a living place for some pony to live within. The moment arrives that everything to be moved into me has been. The stallions hook up their carts and fly away, leaving the tall pony standing in front of my open door. Her long shadow only lengthens as the sun approaches the horizon. She takes a moment, as she always does, to appreciate the sunset, with her horn lit to no visible effect. The moon rises as a tear graces her cheek. Her head droops low with a sigh before she steps inside. I feel her hooves make a complete circuit of my interior, from the basement to the upper reaches that stretch out onto a balcony where I can see her again. She nods and smiles, then spreads her wings and leaps, gliding around me in a lazy spiral toward the silvery moonlit grass. She smiles up at me. Not a sad smile like I’d seen so many times as she was carving me out, but a kind of smile that I’d never witnessed. Gentle, warm like the sun, and full of grace. Her horn lights, and a chunk of wood I’d not taken note of before floats out of my doorway. Not the blocks of pulp like books, but built from solid planks and straight timbers. It has a symbol carved on its face – an open book. She drives the timbers deep into the earth, so that the symbol is visible to all those who approach my door. She steps forward, placing a hoof against my trunk. She feels everything I feel right now. I want her, more than anything. I try to drink her in like the sun, and she leans forward to nuzzle me with the soft fur of her cheek. Her magic closes my door and she takes a step backward. She closes her eyes and smiles one last time, spreading her wings, and coils to leap into the air. She does so, and takes flight. I am left standing, without her, in the cold light of the moon.
Chapter 23Somepony noticed that I am a house for books. None of them had come close enough to notice the sign before. Too busy with their farms and their mail, I suppose. He ran off, and an hour later here I am, surrounded by curious ponies. One opens my door. It is unlocked; it never had a lock. The ponies file inside, and I feel their hooves exploring. They look at the books, they lift them from my shelves, they put them back, and they leave. They go back to their farms and their general stores and their post office.
Chapter 24She hasn’t come back. Not in half a century. There have been foals who came inside and borrowed books. Young ponies who threw books from my shelves, and others who clucked and sighed and put them back. Old, creaky ponies who lightened my shelves by one book, and sat for a time before replacing it and finding their way out. The town has grown, and new trees have sprouted up. They have a hard time believing that there was ever a forest here. Though they are nearly fully grown, I still call them each “sapling.” Ponies like to sit in their shade and talk, or sip their drinks, or chase each other and laugh. I seems odd that I feel more connection to the ponies than the other trees. But it occurs to me that I have been around ponies for more of my life than I have been around other trees. I watch the ponies grow. I watch the town grow. I watch the trees grow. But I do not grow. I am frozen where I am, neither rotting nor growing. Just… waiting. Waiting for what? I do not know. But I wait.
Chapter 25Today, a mare stands in front of me. A magic one, with the wide eyes and impatient energy of youth. The tall pony reminded me of myself after I was burned; this one reminds me of myself before that. I can smell her on this little one. A very long time ago, as a sapling with only a few leaves, I wondered what it would be like to need someone. Looking back, it seems that I had needed someone, and she needed me. I was catharsis for her, and she for me. We did not speak, but we shared much. More than I knew. And now I see this filly – this sapling the color of lavenders and indigo – standing at my threshold and looking up at me. As old as I am, I have lacked foresight. This filly steps inside me and I hear her gasp. As large as I am, I have lacked scope. Books fly off my shelves, and I am filled with a warmth I have not felt since the tall pony burned like the sun inside of me. I am a place for her. She needs me, and I understand now that I have always needed someone. As wise as I like to think I am, I have lacked joy. I feel her hooves dance.
Chapter 1Not long after I unfurled my first pair of leaves, the other trees told me it was a terrible winter that made room for me to grow. An enormous Ash stood here, towering over the canopy, before her trunk shattered from the pressure of ice crystals growing in her sap. Like thunder, they said. Perhaps that is why I am always afraid of thunderstorms. Now, the rotting wood of that once-regal giant sweetens the soil where I grow. Sun pours through the gap she left in the canopy. Sometimes I feel guilty when I enjoy the rich earth or the warmth of the sunlight on my leaves, but the other trees tell me that is the nature of the world. The old die, and the young grow. I wish I could have seen her in her glory.
Chapter 2The other trees have long since dropped their leaves, but I hold all six of mine. Through their bare branches, I can see an occasional oak in the distance still holding their leaves too. I understand what snow is, now, and ice and winter. The crystal skies I had been promised now stand above me, perfect black with blazing stars looking down in a kind of holy silence. The world sleeps under a blanket of snow nearly as deep as I am tall. Most winters are peaceful, the trees told me. Indeed, swaddled in beauty such as this, I have trouble imagining the furious howls of the swirling winds from just last year. The creeping frost, spreading along the ground like choking vines until the biggest and strongest tree fell victim to the unnatural cold. But this is a good winter, they say. A time for sleep and thought and gazing at the stars. I am grateful for nights like this.
Chapter 6A dead heart rots slowly. There is no way for water or insects to get in. But I can feel the mold festering, expanding, clawing at my sapwood from within. So I keep growing outward. And for the first time in my centuries, I have all the sun that I can stretch out to receive. Because the ponies have cut down every other tree. Those root ponies were carrying terrible instruments, things which none of us had known before. The birds, the bears, the beasts; they could bore holes, rip away our bark, or break off entire limbs. But ponies? They can wipe out an entire forest. It was my rotten heart that saved me from their axes. They could see what I was, and they knew that I was no good. So they came, and they chopped. They brought axes and saws and chisels and fires. In the blink of only thirty years, I was left alone. I’d never been able to see this far before. Only trees. But now there are no trees between myself and the horizon. I always wondered what the horizon was. The taller trees had talked about it. Talked about what The Ash had told them about her horizon. I’ve decided that I do not like the horizon. I watched it anyway. First a castle, then a whole town sprang up. I watched the ponies erect timber to brace the heavy stone of the castle. They used it to frame the homes and businesses in their little village. To build carts and tools. To warm their houses and cook their oats. Each tree provides shelter for a family of ponies, just as my branches give home to squirrels and birds. I don’t know if the ponies care, but I suppose one could say that the forest lived on in their homes. I am not sure how to feel about this. Should I be grateful to be still standing, still growing after every other tree has been felled and cut into lumber? Should I feel left out, after every other tree has found use at the hooves of industrious ponies? I don’t know, and I have no one to talk to about it.
Chapter 8A pony came to visit me today. She has roots, but did not carry an axe. She has wings, but did not sit on my branches. She has a horn, but did not do anything impossible. I fancied her immediately. I still do not know why. She felt warm and full and I wanted to drink her in like sunlight. I had never felt anything like it before. I had never seen a pony act like her before either. She only sat in my shade and wept, staring at the ruins of the castle. Perhaps she lost her home in the town. But many ponies must have lost their homes, and none of them have come here. Only her, and she does nothing but sit. For a long time. She sighs, and then her horn glows. The glow lasts until the sun has set and the moon has risen into the sky. I have spent many centuries looking into the sky, and the last few centuries of sky have been unobstructed by branches. I have seen the moon many thousands of times, but it looks different tonight. It is marred by a stain that I have never seen before. Perhaps the smoke from such a great fire rose so high into the sky that it has sooted the moon itself. I feel the pony’s roots pull up from the earth as she flaps her wings. Lost in my thoughts, I had nearly forgotten she was here. The moon draws her like a moth. She ascends, pauses, and alights on my uppermost branches. This is very confusing. She perches, light as a feather, but her mass is… solid? She is sturdy, immovable, yet fragile as a bird. I feel her roots reaching into me, through me, down to the earth. Her feathers stretch toward the sky as she whispers to the moon. The moon seems very far away. I doubt that it can hear her.
Chapter 11For half a year I have been watching a group of ponies in the distance. They are the first I have seen since the tall one disappeared centuries ago. I watched them settle near the edge of the unnatural forest and chop down many trees to build their homes. But then they planted trees of their own. I had never seen this before. Ponies do not plant trees; they chop them down. So I decided to watch them more closely. Apple trees, it looks like. I remember there used to be a few over by the little creek. Just far enough away that I couldn’t see them during the summer. But in the late autumn I would watch the deer sniffing around in the fallen leaves for apples. Apples seemed to be their favorite, even more than the tender grass that sprouted in the spring. It will be a few years before these little trees produce any fruit. The ponies spend their days tending the vulnerable saplings, and have little time left for their vegetable gardens and maize. They are very dedicated to their trees, but they must be very hungry. Even as the sun sets, I watch them carefully picking bugs off the leaves or tying the tiny stems onto sticks to keep the apple trees growing straight. This is no chore for them; it is their passion. They care for the trees as if they were family. I wonder if the trees feel the same way about them. So I continue to watch. And if I had not been watching, I would not have believed what I saw. Apple trees sprouted instantly from the ground. Back when the old castle still stood, I watched generations of root ponies plant oats and carrots and beans outside of the castle town. They tended their crops, and grew them well. Faster, perhaps, than wild plants. Bigger. More fruitful. But never had I seen them arise instantly. These new trees bore fruit very quickly. Spectacularly. I could see the unnatural colors from here. Lightning in their branches and rainbows in the sky. None of these ponies are the kind with a horn, but what they do seems utterly magical. The world is changing, I suppose. The old world has died, and a new world full of magic and ponies has come to take its place.
Chapter 14I feel the warmth of sunlight just before dawn. The sky is dark but I feel light on my leaves. I am confused, at least until she touches down on the grass not far from the edge of my overhanging branches. I keep telling myself it can’t be her. That she died centuries ago. But it was her. I am happy to see her, but I wonder why she had been gone for so long. She speaks, and not to the moon. She speaks to me. I do not understand but she smiles in the half-darkness and steps closer. Her smile grows dry as she takes another step forward and presses a hoof to my trunk. I can feel her reach out with her roots. She senses the rot in me, but she doesn’t stop and walk away. She presses deeper until I am certain she can feel every branch and knot, and knows the extent of every living fiber of my sapwood, and where it meets the decay. Though she has not grown ugly on the outside, I can sense something in her as well. I remember that she had been burned inside, just like me, but she is not full of rot and worms. She is simply… hollow. I know how deep her glowing smile reaches, and the extent of her white fur and flowing mane. The emptiness inside her aches like the rot inside of me. Like me, she has watched the world change around her. And that change has always been according to its nature. The old die, and the young grow in their place. But not us. She pulls her hoof back and looks up at me. I can see something in her eyes that I didn’t understand before. A spark that burns from deeper than her smile, and deeper even than her hollow heart. She smiles again, but not a smile I’ve seen before. This smile is sad but warm, smoldering with that deep spark. Her horn lights up and she lifts the saddlebag from her back. With a deep breath, she turns to face the east and lights her horn again. As the rising sun paints the sky with a blossom of red, I see in the growing light that her bag is full of tools. A blade, a hammer, a chisel. An axe. In the full light of day, she lifts the axe in her magic and circles me slowly, looking my trunk up and down. She steps forward and rubs her hoof across my bark before nodding to herself. Slowly, her magic fades and the axe lowers until she can bite down on the handle. She raises the axe.
Chapter 17She came back again, just before dawn. Just like yesterday. I hadn't expected to see her again so soon, but here she is. She still wears her mask. She brought different tools this time, and still refuses to use her horn to hold them. The tools are smaller, and I can feel her scraping away a thin layer of the living wood along with the rot. She is removing the last traces of my decaying heartwood, and making sure nothing infected with fungus remains. There is a lot of living wood that comes away with each scrape of her tools. This is piled with the rot upon another little bonfire on the grass outside. Now I know what the castle town smelled like as it burned. She carves stairs into my sides and digs deep into my roots, and climbs to the highest reaches of my trunk. Every second of this work is excruciating. Yet she does not pull back her roots. Her hooves stay on my wood, and she feels everything that I feel. She works into the night again. I wonder if she will be back tomorrow, again.
Chapter 18She did come back. She brought new tools. New to me, at least. Some device with a spiral blade that spins. She presses it against my trunk and it cuts away a tiny hole in my wood. This is followed with a little saw that fits into the hole, and cuts a wide circle that lets a shaft of sunlight inside. Windows. She is cutting windows into me. I have floors and stairs and shelves and a doorway and now holes for windows. I am to be a house, I think. I’ve not seen the inside of a house, but I watched a few being built. There is a house for the ponies who grow apples. There is a house for the things other ponies sell. Houses have flat places for ponies to walk on, and to put their things on. Houses have windows and doors and a roof to keep off the rain. Just like the squirrels and the birds build houses to stay warm and keep the rain off their heads, ponies build their houses from the trees they chop down. I will make a poor house, I think. I am still growing, slow though it may be. Ponies do not make houses from living wood. My floors will not stay level, my walls will move, and without a layer of bark, my insides will begin to rot again or dry out and crack. So why does she carve a living tree? I cannot imagine any reason. Why does she press her hooves against my tender wood and feel my pain when she could easily fly, or shod herself against the hurt? And why does she not kill me first and dry the wood and then build a house to suit her, rather than try to shape her house to my gnarled, twisted trunk? I don’t know. I cannot feel her pain. I first saw her long ago, that night when ash stained the sky, and I knew that she was like me. Burned and dead on the inside. And, as she works to carve me into a house, shaping and preparing my inside, I wonder if she, like me, is unable to see inside herself. Ponies see in a very different way, I am sure. Their wide eyes take in the world with impatience and wonder. As quickly as they live and die, they must do everything quickly: grow and laugh and love and think and plan. Their farms feed them after only a single season, their houses are built in mere days. They look only a few winters ahead, if at all. But not her. She has seen the inside of me, just as I have seen the inside of her. And I feel that she sees my future, just as I saw hers on that night I first met her. When I saw that she was like me, when I was first burned. I don’t know what future she has planned for me, but I know that it hurts.
