3: The tree of heaven

The funeral was over and the house was full of people and there was a hubbub of noise that seem to sit uncomfortably on top of a deep silence. A silence, not to put too fine a word on it, that was like a grave, so Isabella decided it was time to leave and seek solace elsewhere.

As she was escaping though the back door her aunt caught her in mid flight, she stooped down to whisper in her ear. She pressed a small silk bag into her hands. “Hold this when you think of Raven,” she said, “keep it in his memory. You don’t need to open it now, look at it when you are on your own. He will always be there for you, you know, the bonds of love are never broken.”

Isabella felt the colour rise in her cheeks as she stumbled over her, “Thank you,” before dashing out the door. Aunt May was always treated with suspicion by her parents and she was not too sure what to make of her either. Aunt May kept herself to herself and yet seemed to have a wisdom about the world that Isabella did not experience in anyone else.

Outside the sunshine was bright and there was a soft breeze in the air, that meant one thing for Isabella, a trip to the Tree of Heaven. This majestic tree nestled anonymously in her local wood, and although it towered above most of the other trees, most people would pass it by without a single glance. It was not its long pendulous leaves that first caught her attention, but the sound of the wind in its leaves, it reminded her of the sea. So when to her delight Raven discovered a platform high up in its branches. that became their place of refuge. A hand shaped tree house, open to the elements, entwined in nature with the added advantage of height and seclusion.

The thought of Raven made her throat constrict and she thought she was going to cry, so she ran more quickly than she had intended to avoid making a spectacle of herself.

It is strange how time alters according to the mood you are in. Today her trip to the Tree of Heaven seemed to take ages. She noticed, half way across the wood, how some spaces were quite magical, the light moved gently across the plants and though the trees as if it was dancing with the little people. In other places that same sunlight seemed to cast more shadow than light, and more gloom than happiness.

She thought of the times that she and Raven had chased each other in these woods, of the bluebells that carpet the floor in the spring and the blackbirds that nest every year in the same tree. She remembered Raven falling out of the beech tree and limping home covered in grazes, clutching her shoulder as he clambered over the fallen tree trunks where the logging had taken place.

“This is how it is going to be,” she thought, “for the rest of my life I am going to be sifting through memories of Raven and trying to remember his face.”

She climbed the Tree of Heaven in a pensive mood and reached down for the silk bag that Aunt May had given her. Whatever was inside was small and hard with two pointed ends. The silk on the outside was a beautiful purple with two birds embroidered on it sitting on a branch with their necks intertwined. As she opened the drawstring she saw that the inside was a deep gold and she fancied that she caught a spark of light as she looked inside. She reached in and pulled out a crystal, quite clear but with frosting inside that looked like a wing, “Perhaps a bird’s wing or even an angel’s wing,” she thought to herself and held the crystal up into the daylight where the wing transformed into a sheet of rainbows and it felt as if the crystal was reaching out to her.

She settled back into the branches that cupped her body like an open hand and closed her eyes. In the far distance a wood pigeon called and she heard Raven’s voice calling her to follow him. She could not see his face and so she turned and turned again until she found herself in front of the most magnificent gates made from chain mail. They stretched high above her head and sparkled in the sunlight, the links were gold and silver and there were fragments of colour throughout which made the whole thing look like one of the art gallery paintings that her dad loved so much.

At the top was the cosmos, stars, planets and clouds. Underneath was a dizzying array of people from ancient times. Some she didn’t recognise and some, like soldiers, priests and farmers she did. Each person was beautifully carved from metal and hung from the links of the chain, so a soldier was next to a farmer, who was next to a nun, who was above a priest. In the centre was a woman holding a child, with other children looking on. There were buildings too, a pyramid, temple like buildings, open meeting spaces surrounded by trees and mountains. It was like one huge history lesson because the clothes were from all different times. She recognised the robes of Egypt and Greece, there were the long dresses of Victorian England, but there were other clothes that she could not place.

There was so much to see, but straining her head back was making her neck hurt, so she moved closer and tried to peer through the links to the house behind. She was disappointed because all she could see was an outer ring of garden, shrubs that were slightly overgrown and paths that had been trodden into the grass that seemed to go nowhere and which were slowly filling with daisies. Beyond the outer circle she could see nothing at all except this opaque blue mist, a mysterious shimmer and a vague sense of movement. No big house, no people, no animals just a feeling of activity behind an blank screen. She felt disappointed and wondered what had happened to Raven’s voice. Was he now behind that screen? After all he called her and has now disappeared.

She pushed against the gate, but it did not move and she was relieved and disappointed at the same time. She looked around to check for Raven, but he was not there and so she took one last look at the gate and walked back to the tree.

“Isabella, Isabella where are you?” Came the cry from her mother. There was a touch of anxiety in her voice so Isabella quickly tucked Aunt May’s crystal back in its pouch, pushed it into a hiding place in the tree and added some moss for safe keeping. She then scuttled down the trunk and across the woods in the direction of home as neither of her parents knew about the tree house and she wanted to keep it that way.