Balance

• Anna Theris, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2009

I live in a world unseen. Hidden from the human eye, we live in the trees and the breeze and the seas. We are the very essence of Nature.
I am part of a civilisation of Nature-Dwellers. I myself am a tree nymph, or, a Dryad. They call me Lafe. There are all sorts of secretive creatures in every aspect of Nature. There are the Nereids (water nymphs), the Sylphs (air nymphs), the Sepals (flower nymphs), and the Oreads (mountain nymphs).
Our whole realm is in danger. Slowly, we are dying, and it’s almost inevitable. There was once a balance in Nature, long ago, in the time before humans started the slow destruction that has continued ever since. We don’t know what we did to deserve this. But it happens.
In the Time of Balance, nymphs were everywhere, flourishing with health and prosperity. Now, we have been forced back by huge structures and loud noises. When we first noticed the humans they didn’t seem like a threat, they were peaceful and we didn’t see as being different to any other animal in this world.
But then they began destroying the Dryads’ homes and drowning the Nereids in their filth. They soon began choking the Sylphs with the strange and putrid air they seem to be able to create.
When this started happening we didn’t know what to do. We are still too afraid to reveal ourselves because, whether they know it or not, they are killing us all. Our culture is so delicate that when one type of nymph is affected, the rest of us are.
We make ourselves invisible to them because we are scared. Even though we see them all the time, we still don’t know what they’re thinking. We don’t understand their culture. I’ve seen one human kill another, and I really don’t understand why. This is why we fear them. In our culture one nymph would never kill another. We are far too scarce, and we are all brothers and sisters. We mourn over every nymph dead.
A while ago, we were under the impression that no human could see or hear us. But then something wondrous happened. I still remember that day.
Acacia lay there dying. Her face had a hue of deathly pallor; her breathing was slow and laboured. There was a chilly breeze and the sun barely poked through the trees on this cumbersome morning. There was the scent of wood chipping in the air, seeming to add to the atmosphere of despair. I looked around the circle of us gathered by Acacia’s side. A few were weeping. Every time one of us dies it feels like we are losing a part of ourselves.
She exhaled for the last time and died. She was the first to die that day. We started to hum our song of renewal in the hopes that a new tree would grow in Acacia’s place and a new nymph would be born. But it doesn’t always turn out that way. Sometimes the trees never emerge where we fall.
Mid way through the song, I heard a rustling in the trees. A few other nymphs heard it and recognised the fact that it was not a nymph or a breath of wind. Something was coming.
Out of the shrubs emerged a human girl, her wild copper curls bouncing and swaying in the breeze. She looked at us with wide eyes of a vivid green, a green almost like the colour of moss. We looked back at her through eyes that were glossed with tears. There was a moment of stunned silence.
She saw Acacia lying there dead, and her face filled with sorrow. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt…”
Our first instinct was to run away and be angry at the fact that this little girl could see us. But then we saw that she was genuinely upset. I opened my mouth to speak.
“How are you able to see us?” I asked. “Don’t hurt us!” cried a young Sylph.
“Why would I hurt you?” she pondered.
“Because you are human,” answered a Dryad, “and humans hurt everything.”
She looked befuddled for a moment, but then her eyebrows rose in understanding, then fell back down when she realised the truth.
“Are you… in the trees?” she asked.
We looked at each other, unsure of whether we should tell her of our plight.
“Yes. We are in the trees, in the air, in the water, in Nature itself.”

* * *
Walking back from the forest, I stumbled a few times in a daze. My day had been typical until now. Before I went for a walk in the forest I had been eating my breakfast and my mother had been ranting on about how I needed to be more social, more included by the girls my age. I’ve had this lecture many times before, and I tried to explain that girls my age are not interested in me and I am not interested in them. They find me just intolerable. I decided that I didn’t want to hear it again, so I went for a walk by myself – as usual.
My mind wandered aimlessly as the cool green of the trees calmed me. I walked past a wood chipper tearing up a tree, making ghastly and greedy noises. I wondered what the point of those vile contraptions was anyway.
I kept walking until the sound of the wood chipper was distant and forgotten. I then started to hear another sound, a strange humming noise, and it seemed to make my core shiver. It got louder and louder, I was strangely drawn to it. I eventually pulled some ferns aside and stumbled on a rather peculiar gathering.
The creatures had dainty bodies but large, captivating eyes. They seemed to be about the size of a garden gnome. They all looked a little different; some had wispy translucent skin with snow white hair, while others had dark brown skin and rebellious hair riddled with leaves and twigs. They stared at me with wide-eyed shock, and I stared at them until I noticed the forlorn little figure which was lying on a bed of reeds nearby a small creek. The poor little creature was dead, and even in death, the creatures were still the most beautiful beings I had ever seen.
I had a sudden urge to console them, even though I had no idea what they were and what they were doing. But they all looked broken-hearted, nonetheless.
They told me that they called themselves “Nature-Dwellers”, and that they are a species of nymphs that are like the caretakers of nature. At first they feared me because I am human, and I couldn’t really blame them. From what I gathered, that tree I saw being mauled by a wood chipper led to the death of one of their kind, and I had no doubt that she wasn’t the only victim of our many machines. How could we do this to them? They told me that millions of their kind dies everyday and that nymphs used to be in abundance everywhere, including the cities. They also said that they make themselves invisible to humans because to them, humans are these strange, violent, and mysterious beings. They need a way to communicate with them, but they are too afraid.
This is where I come in. They were happy when they realised that I could tell the humans of their suffering. When they told me this I was happy because I actually felt like I was needed somewhere, and that I could help them.
I opened my front door and walked through my living room. My mother came out of her bedroom and looked at me sternly. “Emily, where have you been? You don’t just walk out the door when I’m speaking to you and vanish for a couple of hours! I’ve been worried!”
I pulled a wide grin on my face, not because I was trying to annoy her but because I actually felt happy. “Mum, I’ve seen the most wonderful thing. I went for a walk in the forest, and… Well, I saw the most beautiful creatures that I’ll ever see. They were called ‘nymphs’ and they live in the trees and the water and the air and everywhere.”
My mum closed her eyes and shook her head. “Emily, you’re 13 years old. You are too old to believe in fairies and the like. This is exactly what I was talking about this morning. You need to grow up. You need to be friends with the kids your age. You shouldn’t be wearing odd socks and you shouldn’t be carrying around that mottled old teddy of yours.”
I felt my muscles tense and my eyes narrow. “Mum, nobody likes me. Why can’t you accept that I like being by myself? I don’t want to be like everyone else, and I only carry around Martin because he reminds me of Dad.”
Her eyes widened slightly. “Do not bring your father into this!”
“Fine, then. I won’t. But the nymphs do exist! Please believe me, Mum! They’re suffering and they need our help!”
My mother sighed and her face fell. She paused for a moment, as though she had a hard time saying whatever she was about to say.
“Emily, I think we need to take you to a counsellor.”

* * *
After the girl’s first visit she did come again. At first she came everyday but then her visits became less frequent. On the last day we saw her, she had tears in her eyes when she told us that her mother was taking her to one of the big cities. That meant that we could never see her.
We thought that if she told the humans about us, they would know what they’re doing to us. But when she tried, they didn’t believe her and they mocked her. She told us that her mother made her see some people because they thought she was crazy. We miss her a lot, not only because she was caring and compassionate but because she also represented hope to our dying culture.
We’re now waiting for another like her. There has to be another. We’ve been looking for some time now but we’ve had no luck. We hope to find many so then we could tell the human race that we are an endangered species.
They also need to know that, when we are gone, they’ll be the next to perish.

* * *
Many years later, we heard a rustling in the trees. A grown woman with tamed copper curls and vivid green eyes emerged. We recognised her as being the same girl as before, but there was something different about her, a new spark of confidence that we did not see before. There were a few other humans following with her with black bags and strange machines they carried over their shoulders.
She looked straight at me and smiled, then turned back towards her people. The other humans muttered a few things to her, before pointing the machines at her as though they were a group of eyes. She said in a clear voice, “As Minister for the Environment, it gives me great pleasure to declare this area as a national park. With your continuing support, I will persist in lobbying parliament to establish many more nature reserves so that the natural balance of life survives.”