Bend With The Wind

• Jacob Parker, Grade 12, St Aloysius College - Senior School
• Short Story
• 2017

Finalist in the 'Spread The Word 2017' competition

It was nearer to midnight than dusk and as the full moon loomed overhead, I moved deeper into the field, closer to the oak tree. Tall grass grazed against my pale thighs, itching against my skin, but I knew I couldn’t stop until I reached the tree. She had to be there.
Limbs of bark stretched out, reaching for the black sky where the stars twinkled high above, pinpricks of light dotted in a colossal dome of darkness. The trunk was thick and sturdy, the roots holding the tree to the ground. I would always climb the tree, breaking through the sea of green leaves and looking out into the endless fields which surrounded me. Up here the world seemed to stop.
I would call for mum, tell her to join me and she would meet me with a kind smile, auburn hair dancing in the wind, emerald eyes glinting in the sun.
“Not today,” She would smile and I would grin back.
I’m sure I would find her here, waiting for me by the base like she always did. She had to be.
Out of the grass, I emerged, into the clearing that surrounded the tree. Wind, so strong I thought it might fall, buffeted the tree but it stood strong.
“Watch the tree,” Mum told me one day in her croaking voice, “It moves with the wind, not against it. It embraces it. The wind makes it stronger.”
She had changed. Grown sick. I hadn’t noticed how her voice was weary and her eyes were faded, how her red hair had begun to fall out. I didn’t notice until I found her lying there at the base of the tree. Maybe she was still here? No.
The base of the tree was empty. She wasn’t here. The tree seemed to laugh at me. The trunk mocked me, the roots, like malicious claws, reached out of the earth, threatening to grab me, to pull me down, pull me down into the dark soil-down to where mum lay. She wasn’t here.
The ground felt empty without her. Nothing left but a footprint where she had once been and her voice, soft as velvet, flowing like honey in my ear.
“Be like the tree,” She had whispered to me as I sat beside her. “Bend with the wind.”
I stepped over where she had once been, my feet finding their way onto the recesses in the trunk. I wavered slightly, my arms trembling. It all felt so different at first but as I climbed higher instinct took over until I breached the canopy. Up here it was different. Up here it was peaceful.
Up here I moved with the wind, feeling it blowing my hair, the same colour as my mothers and as I looked up I saw that sky and I knew that mum was no longer down beneath me looking up but somewhere up there, among the stars, among the sky, among the tree. Looking, watching, and caring. Forever.