Alone

Disclaimer: The story has some content about abuse and some violent visuals, which might be disturbing. Discretion requested.

The tree standing alone in the middle of the field calls to me. Through tunneled vision, I can see myself approaching it, wanting to touch its shining leaves with reverence. But every time I come close enough, wolf’s howling wakes me up, as usual.

While I am used to this nightly howling since I was a baby, I am beginning to begrudge it lately.

My father can never know about the dream. He never allows anything outside the ordinary for me. He considers me evil incarnate because of my eyes—one brown and the other blue. The only reason he didn’t manage to kill me the day I was born was my mother, who had shielded me with her body, tolerating his rage alone quietly. I still can’t look at him straight in the eyes without being punished for being “scary”, and I am always just a breath away from being beaten into pulp.

So, he must not find out about the tree. Talking about a magical tree would confirm his assumptions about me.

But the dream is insistent, catching me every night and leaving a longing so deep that I can’t stop myself from looking for the tree around the village. Maybe, if I could see it in reality and touch it, I would see the silliness of it all. I can’t find it though, and the longing is growing into a deep ache every day, until I feel like I can’t fit into my own skin.

I have to talk to someone…

Anyone…

My mother is sweet. She often tries to shield me from my father’s beating—not that it stops him from taking a swipe at me. Worse, he then turns on her and beats her senseless. But she tries anyway, every single time. I trust her to understand.

So, today, I have returned home a little early while my father is still out cutting wood for the fire. Once he returns, he will beat me again for ditching him early… But it’s nothing new and, at least, I will get some answers.

I wait for my mother to light the fire in the kitchen before asking the question, trying to be casual, “Mother, do you ever dream of trees?”

She looks up, startled, “Why do you ask?”

“Just wondering…”

She hesitates for a moment, “Well, just one. It’s a memory really,” she admits sheepishly. She can probably see the question on my face, so she adds, “The faery tree at the eastern end of the village…”

Of course, why didn’t I think about it? People in our village avoid that area at all cost because of the tree’s reputation. Could it be my tree?

Mother’s brown eyes, so much like my right one, are far away, “Years ago, I went there when I was married for a couple of years. I was tired of your father’s daily beatings and accusations for being barren. So I went there hoping to die. But I met a stranger instead.”

I don’t want to hear anymore, but my mother goes on, like a dam has broken, and she is unable to contain the flood.

“For hours, we sat under that tree, just talking and holding hands. By the end of the day, he promised to stay with me forever. I never went there again,” she sighed and continued, “Sometimes, I dream of us holding hands under that tree—more often on the days when your father beats me. It gives me hope that I have promise of an eternity with the man who never told me his name.”

Words tumble out unbidden, “But why didn’t you return to him?” She would have been so much better off with him…anyone who wasn’t my father would be better…

“I was still married to your father till death parts us,” she sighed. “Anyway, you were born nine months later. Sometimes I wonder if he was fae—you look so much like him, but I don’t know how else he could be your father unless—”

“You slut!” My father’s voice rings through the doorway. “You bore this bastard son of a monster in my house! I’ll kill him! I’ll kill you both!”

Shaking with rage and raising his axe, he strides towards me. His face is contorted with passion like I’ve never seen before. He is going to kill me, kill us…

I cower in the corner, shaking and eyes wide with fear, waiting for the axe to fall. But my mother covers me with her body yet again.

“NO!”

Senses overwhelm me—the tang in the air tells me that mother is bleeding before the blood trickles down her chest on my shirt. I am not sure how, but I can hear her pulse slow down.

Grief and pain—physical pain like I had never felt before—send ripples through my entire being. For the first time, I wish I am the monster my father always made me out to be. I sway where I stand, angry beyond words.

Through tunneled vision, I see my father taking a step back, eyes wide, raising his axe over his head again to kill me.

For the first time, I hit my father back…with claws…on a hairy hand…a paw…

His body falls where he stood as his head flies to the wall, blood oozing freely from his severed neck.

I wheel around on all fours to check on my mother. Her pained brown eyes are looking at the door as she smiles, relieved. The blue-eyed wolf I’d heard howl all my life is right there, whimpering now.

Mother whispers with an effort, “I always wondered…eternity…meet you…tree…” Her eyes roll in her head, heart still, pulse dead.

The wolf howls like someone had driven an axe through it too. A few heartbeats later, it dissolves into nothingness in front of my eyes.

I can still hear a howl though, shocked to realise it’s mine. I wonder for a moment and then run on all fours towards the eastern end of the village. Something tells me when I reach my tree, my mother and my true father will be waiting for me.

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This is a photo-prompt story. Thank you, JR Korpa (on Unsplash) for fueling my imagination with your photograph.