The Tree that turned into a Man

© Anahita Sukhija

In days long ago, when things happened much more grandly, there lived a woman who had many good things to look at and bad things to think about. She lived in a town on the outside edge of the forest and spent many years in the company of beautiful trees for as far as she could ever see.

During her young adulthood, she met a man who was not such a bad man, for whatever his intentions were, he was nice to her and let her have her way. He liked her naivety and she liked his generosity, and it was unclear even between the two of them who was taking advantage of whom.

She gave birth to a girl, but being too young and unable to look after her, she left her near a row of nice houses in the middle of the night, so that in the morning someone with a bit of wealth might find her and care for her.

Having lost his wife, the town hunter had never been able to have a child of his own. He considered himself lucky to have been the first one to rise among the houses near where the child was left, and took the infant girl in as his own. He provided for her a good childhood, until he too died during her sixth year and left her to be watched over by nobody in particular. Aside from the occasional visit from a neighbor, she raised herself.

The daughter grew up lonely. Without a mother or father to cherish, and no children around to play with, she found herself spending nearly all her time in the forest. She grew closer to the trees, giving each one of them her attention as one would a person.

As she grew older, her feeling of aloneness increased, and she longed for another person. Her experiences with the people in the town left her unhappy, as she thought they only talked about things that didn’t make sense, so she confined her attempts for connection to the trees.

There was one tree in particular she liked the most for its beauty. It grew in a very strange manner; sensitively in one area and completely harsh and gnarled in another, and twisted together in ways that were troubling before they were pleasing. It looked to be wise, and old, and delicate while still being very strong. She followed the way the branches split off for hours with her eyes, filled with increasing wonder for what it was like for this tree to be.

“I wish this tree would be a person, so it would bring me company, and teach me things.”

The next morning, she returned to the forest, and in place of the tree, she saw a young man. He was wearing a dress woven of leaves that had dried up, and looked only slightly confused.

After her initial surprise, she remembered her wish and went towards him, smiling. He was calm, as that is how he had been as a tree.

The girl told him her name was Mela, and then asked for his. He took a few moments to think of it, because of never having thought of it before, and said that his name was Kurst.

“How strange it is to be able to think, and have legs, and leave the place which I have stayed since my birth”. He did not share his doubts, for he knew by watching the girl how much his happiness would mean for her.

Mela and Kurst enjoyed several years in the forest together among the trees. Lacking much human contact, Mela had not been educated in the manners and etiquette of the townsfolk, and so each one relaxed in the presence of the other as though there were no difference between them. They found food through small traps that Mela would create and Kurst’s vast knowledge of where things grow due to his centuries of having looked over everything. Kurst pointed out the places where grand things had happened, where the most ferocious lion had been shot by her hunter father and where, centuries ago, the last person to have taken interest in him in his tree form fell into a ditch and starved.

When she asked if those were the things that caused him to grow in that gnarled way, he thought for a while and said it must have been, but he hadn’t thought it was gnarled at all.

After it had been long enough, the girl had begun to think it would be good to bring Kurst into the town where he could see life as it was among people and make the choice to become a part of it if he pleased.

Everyone was astonished to see this couple come out of nowhere. The townsfolk quickly realized how innocent they were after talking to them, and began discussing what should be done about them.

They were given jobs and quickly made to rely on the comforts and easy meals and entertainment the town provided. They soon forgot about returning to the forest.

Having seen what it was like to be a human, year upon year, the young man’s face lost its beauty and grew more and more horrific. He lost his feeling of calmness when the town baker left the residence of the town seamstress in the middle of the night, and upon seeing Kurst, requested that he not disclose anything to his wife. In all his years of living, Kurst had never been asked to keep a secret. The sense of duty he developed living in the town forced him to keep it, but made him grow more bitter. He now had secrets of his own. His patience, which had been so full when he had been a tree that he would have comfortably waited eighty years for the slightest change in the scenery, had dwindled to moments. He now lived anxiously and self-consciously in a state of constant uneasiness.

He was quickly forgetting his past as a tree, mostly because he did not like to think of it.

“I have lived for four hundred and fifty years without ever feeling the time pass so unbearably”

Mela saw Kurst’s unhappiness, but she too had been hardened by the years spent in the town. She worked long days and late nights making clothes and catering to her clients’ demands. She tried not to think about how nice life had been before she left the forest.

Without realizing it, they had grown apart in the years, and their conversation soon lost its quality of being something special. Soon, there was no difference between Mela and Kurst speaking to each other and two strangers. It was only when Kurst would beg for Mela to turn him back into a tree that any part of their past together was brought up.

His requests became more frequent and his attitude more hostile so that she and he begin to argue. She said that it was unfair that he should get to escape, that he should have never been turned into a human in the first place, and that she was evil for doing it.

Mela, who had never been called evil but was fragile enough to believe it finally gave in to Kurst’s request.

“I wish this person would become a tree that would grow right here and be forced to see everything in this town for as long as it is alive.”

And when the man was turned back into a tree, it was scarcely recognizable. Where it had once been beautiful, it grew more twisted and looked more haunted than ever, altogether too terrible to look at. It grew unevenly, leaning to one side, as though trying to escape some constant unease. It was a tree with the thoughts of a human. It watched a sidewalk being built around it, endured the endless urinating dogs, and lost count of the people walking past that refused to look because it was so ugly.