Under The Willow Tree

• Lisa Willey, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2010

I sat beneath the Willow Tree, absorbing the glorious sun rays. It was such a perfect day – it always was. The wind whispered my name through the leaves above; my thick-haired tail wrapped around my legs. The golden-red fur on my back shimmered in the rays of the rising sun.
The running river flowed nearby. He would never stop running, never run out of breath; just as the trees would never stop swaying, and the grass would never cease to grow, and all the while the wind would sing to me of songs so beautiful.

One day, though, she sang a song of which I have never heard, one of danger and warning, and as turned my head to the sky, I saw the birds crying, and as I looked to the ground, I saw the deer fleeing.

So I fled -though my heart remained- to the hills, where I saw the instrument which put fear into all our hearts.
The great yellow beast walked slow on rounded legs, the likes of which I could never have imagined; and crushed all that lay in its path.

I ran for many days, to a place where the earth had no soil to tread, and every surface was hard as stone. Many aliens I saw, some with rounded legs like the beast, and others, who balanced on two legs like a bird, but had no wings.

One day I heard a sound like thunder and the wood beside me split in two, a dark ball, solid as a gem, remaining. It was then that I knew I had to return to my home.
Perhaps the beast was gone; perhaps I could go back to my beloved Willow and hear the wind sing once again.

So though I knew not where I was, I trusted that my heat would always know the way back to my beloved home. I walked many days upon unknown land, until the sense driving me to walk ceased and I collapsed with exhaustion.

When I awoke, I noticed the tree by witch I lay. I knew this bark – how could I forget? I looked around and saw what my soul had ignored- pretended this was unknown land.
I saw the green fields, now all but dirt and splintered wood. And the river, who had indeed stopped running, finally out of breath. And the trees had stopped swaying, their limbs with which they danced taken from them; and the grass had stopped growing; death had come to them, and was final.
And the wind no longer sang, for her voice had been lost with the leaves who it.

I sit now beside my weeping Willow as she slowly fades away. I wrap my thick-haired tail around my mud-laden legs. And my dusty red fur looks so dull in the setting sunlight.
And there I sit for so long that hunger consumes me; and I close my eyes as my life too fades away; beside my Willow Tree.