the boy with the green hair

Shit. The sun is going down, it’s getting colder, and you still haven’t found her tree. You don’t know why you can’t find it, other than there are a lot of trees in this forest. Her tree should give off the same aura of openness and warmth that she had in life, right? Right. 

Your fingertips are blue and you probably should have worn gloves, but it’s only November. You blow air on your wrinkled hands, rubbing them together in a vain attempt at warming yourself up. The light is quickly fading, and the trees seem more ominous in the dusky air, their bare branches pointing at you like knives ready to skewer your frail body if you get too close. 

Maybe you should turn back, you old fool. If you can’t find her tree in daylight, then you sure as hell won’t find it in the dark. You shuffle around to face the way you came and—shit. Your eyes dart between the two paths, both equally dark and lined with spiky trees. Which way did you come from? You’ve got no clue, and the sun’s almost completely gone now, the air frosty. Your wife always made sure you were properly dressed. She tucked gloves in your coat pockets and wrapped a scarf around your neck if the weather forecast didn’t look good, kissing your nose gently before you headed off to work. She even did that once you retired, making sure you were warm enough when you went on walks, resting her nose against yours, saying it was the surest way to warm the darn things up.

A tear pricks your eye when the sun disappears, leaving you alone in darkness. You stand there, arms wrapped around yourself, nose cold and dripping, and cry silently amongst the trees. You’re old, over 90, and not as healthy as you were ten years ago when your wife died. If you can’t find your way out of the woods before it gets much colder, you’re sure to die. And wouldn’t that be just great? After all these years, you finally muster up the courage to face your wife’s tree and you die in the cold before you can even get to it. Your tears catch on your beard, a wiry, white nest for your sorrow to fall into. One trickles into your ear when you tilt your head back to look at the sky. It tickles wetly, cooling quickly in the chilled air.

Is this really how you want to die, old man? Are you just going to stand here crying until the cold takes you? What a sad way to die. You rub your cheeks, wiping away the tears and turn to face one of the paths. You came here to find your wife’s tree, and dammit, you’re gonna find it. 

It’s been a decade since she died, ten years of silence and loneliness, ten years of spending your birthday alone with a bottle of whiskey, and today was the last straw. You celebrated your 91st birthday as usual, cooking misshapen fried eggs and soggy hash browns and cracking open a new bottle of Basil Hayden’s. The breakfast wasn’t satisfying and you couldn’t taste the alcohol. However, instead of melting into the armchair and staring out the window all day, you picked up a book. It was your wife’s favorite, and you hadn’t touched it in years. The feel of the pages beneath your fingertips awakened an intense need in you to see your wife, to find her tree. So you put on your coat, plucked a flower from the neighbor’s garden, and set out for the forest.  

Stuffing your hands into your pockets, you thumb the pages of your book in one and rub the petals of the winter jasmine in the other, determined to find that tree. You pick a path and follow it, breathing through your nose and walking, as quickly as your old bones can, to keep warm. A change in the light up ahead catches your eye. It’s brighter there and the trees are much further apart, like a clearing. You walk towards it, trying to make out the dark shape at the edge. It looks like a building? Shivering, you shuffle in that direction, rubbing your hands together to produce some semblance of warmth. The light fades as you get closer, but there’s a soft green glow emanating from the clearing. 

You pause at the edge, gazing up at the dark, brick building curved along the southern side of the clearing. It looks like an old dormitory you’d find at a boarding school on the East Coast, with tall, narrow windows, chimneys on the roof, and vines crawling up the walls. There’s smoke coming from one of the chimneys. You take a step forward and are suddenly enveloped in a bone-tingling warmth. That’s odd. The temperature inside the clearing is much higher than the rest of the woods, especially for as late in the day as it is. It feels almost like summer, which is wonderful. You wait a few moments, soaking up the heat and regaining feeling in your toes before making your way towards the building.

You climb the short steps up to the main entrance and stop in front of the doors. They’re huge, and honestly a bit intimidating, with their sharp, silver elephant door knockers. Breathing in through your nose and exhaling slowly through your mouth, you curl your fingers around one of the knockers and bang it down hard. The sound echoes throughout the clearing, ringing six times before fading quickly. You figure no one could miss that noise and wait for someone to answer the door. When no one comes after a few minutes, you try the handle. The right elephant watches you heave the left door open. You stare back at it as you slip inside, only breaking eye contact once the door is shut.

The lights flicker on when you turn around, casting a green glow across your body. Across from you stands a magnificent, dark wood staircase that spirals up into the ceiling. You walk closer and lean back, looking up to see where it ends, but it doesn’t. It just keeps spiraling up and up, and the ceiling stretches along with it. Okay. Weird green light, summer weather in November, door knockers with eyes that move, and a never-ending staircase. This place ain’t right. 

You hesitate at the base of the stairs, glancing around the room at the green lamps and blank wood walls. Well, there’s really no other way than up, because you aren’t going back out there to the cold, and you need to get a better look at the forest so you can find your wife’s tree. You take another deep breath and start up the endless staircase. Maybe you’ll find someone interesting on one of the floors. Maybe they’ll be friendly. Maybe they can help you with your search. You’re not sure, but you want to find out.

You reach the first landing. This floor is just a long hallway lined with narrow doors. The doors feel cold and unwelcoming, so you move on. The second, third, fourth, and fifth floors are also boring hallways. The sixth floor looks like a massive library, which you would love to get lost in, but you won’t be distracted from your mission. The seventh floor is some sort of maze of music rooms, each one dedicated to a specific instrument. You open the first door, see an unreasonable number of pianos inside, and close it, heading back up the stairs in hopes of finding something or someone helpful. There’s a single door on the next landing with a small, circular window next to it. The window is frosted, so you can’t see what’s inside. You knock once and then immediately open the door, thankful there aren’t any strange door knockers to watch you enter this time.

You’re assaulted by a mix of orange, mint, and jasmine—the smell of your wife’s perfume. Your eyes widen and you whip your head around, searching the room for any sign of her, but she’s not there. There is, however, a boy. He’s standing at a window across the room, gazing out at the clearing. He’s tall, taller than you at least, and young, probably around 16 or 17 years old. His hair is short but soft and wavy, like a women’s pixie cut. It’s a bright emerald green that stands out starkly against his pale skin, which, upon closer inspection, is patterned like a birch tree. Well, you can add that to the long list of odd things about this place. The boy turns away from the window to face you. His face is round and smooth with youth yet square and sharp with age at the same time. He smiles at you, his sunshine yellow eyes glowing in the dim light.

“Welcome, I have been waiting for you,” he says, stepping away from the window and walking towards the middle of the room.

You stand frozen in the doorway, still overwhelmed by your wife’s scent. “You, uh, have?”

“Yes! Your wife has told me much about you. She’s been feeling guilty lately about leaving you.”

That cuts through to you. You step forward, a tingle of excitement caught in your throat. “Hold on, my wife is here?”

“Ah, not precisely.” The boy rubs the back of his head, his smile turning sheepish. “She is here in the forest, but she is not here in this room.”

You cross your arms and scowl, careful not to crush the flower in your pocket. “Alright, explain, boy.”

“Oh, it’s probably better if I just take you to her. But I can explain a bit on the way.” The boy walks up to you and holds out his hand. “Here, come with me.”

You glance at him skeptically. He smiles wider and wiggles his fingers. This is the best lead you’ve found in hours and it’s still cold outside, so why not? You uncross your arms and take a deep breath, trying to capture your wife’s scent in your lungs in case you do actually die here. Opening your eyes, you grab his hand and watch him expectantly. 

Suddenly, you feel a warm breeze swirl around you. The air thickens until all you can see is the outline of the wind enveloping your body. Just as quickly as it arrived, the air bursts and reveals the forest, just as dark and cold as when you left it. The boy is still holding your hand and tugs at it to get your attention.

“Your wife is this way.” He smiles and pulls you in the direction of a squat oak tree, the tree you wish you would have come for sooner. You stop in front of the tree and he releases your hand. “Here she is. She’s had a bit of time to settle in the last ten years, so I’m afraid she won’t be able to communicate very well.”

You’ve hardly heard him because you can see her, your wife, right there in the tree. You see her face in the knots of the trunk, her warm eyes, crooked nose, and plump lips. A sharp pang in your chest makes your eyes sting. In all these years, you could have seen her, you could have read underneath her, enjoyed her shade in the summer. She was right here. You lay your hand on her cheek and smile for the first time in a decade. “It’s good to see you,” you whisper, resting your forehead on her trunk. A subtle warmth and the scent of orange, mint, and jasmine spreads from where your skin touches the bark. You rest there for a bit, enjoying the presence of your wife after so many years. The boy gently says your name. You look up, keeping one hand on your wife.

“She’d like you to join her,” he says, yellow eyes shining in the dark.

“That’s possible?” you ask, staring at the strange boy warily.

“Yes.” The boy smiles, mottled skin stretching and wrinkling around his wide mouth. “Your wife mentioned her role as a daughter before, correct?”

Your fingers curl against the bark of her tree, holding her trunk tightly the same way your wife held you when the two of you were young and spent days just laying in bed, talking. She always shied away from questions about family. It took you seven years to learn where she was born. And as you aged, the mystery surrounding her origins only grew. When she turned 40, she told you she wanted to move back home, making a vague reference to her duties as a daughter. You didn’t understand what she meant, but you were happy to live in her hometown if it made her happy. 

The mentions of her role as a daughter became more frequent and significant as she aged. They didn’t stop even once her parents died. Your wife spent more and more time in the woods until it felt like she practically lived there. You joined her on her walks when you could, gently cradling her hand in yours as you slowly meandered through the maze of trees. It was on one of these walks that she stopped in front of a large oak tree at the edge of the lake. 

The tree’s branches arched over you, enveloping you in a net of darkness, only a few twinkling specks of light peeking through between the leaves. Your wife gazed up the trunk, her silver hair loose across her shoulders, a warm spring breeze causing several strands to fly away, like autumnal leaves traveling along the wind. She squeezed your hand and turned to face you, an odd wistfulness in her eyes.

“I’m going to die,” she said, smiling sadly.

“Well, yes, we’re all going to die in the end.” You chuckled nervously. “We’re both almost eighty, we have maybe five, ten years left to live, fifteen if we’re lucky. I don’t think death is much of a surprise,” you said, heart racing a little behind your confident words. You didn’t want your wife to die, she was the only truly good thing in your life. You wanted to spend eternity with her. Even if you came back as a pair of rocks, at least you would be together.

Your wife’s eyes softened. “You know that’s not what I meant.” She raised her other hand and brushed it against your cheek, trailing her rough fingers along your wrinkled skin. “You may have five or ten more years, dear, but I have less than one.”

You stared at her, the breeze turning cool against your skin.

She stared back, still stroking your cheek. “My real parents are this forest.” She lowered her hand and wrapped her arms around herself, clutching the smooth fabric of her dress between her fingers. “I’m not,” she said, dropping her eyes to the ground before looking back up at you and holding your gaze. “I’m not human. Or, at least, I’m not meant to be. I’m a daughter of the forest, of this forest. I was given the chance to live a human life, but only for eighty years. The day after my birthday, my body will turn to wood and my soul will return here.” She looked back up at the great oak tree. “I’ll become a tree, just like this one.”

You gazed at her, at her warm brown skin spattered with the patches of light that shone between the leaves. You rubbed the back of the hand still entwined with yours, noticed the roughness of her skin, how it felt and was beginning to look like the bark of the oak tree. Your wife turned back to you, the same openness in her green eyes was there now as there was the day you met her all those years ago. You grasped her other hand in yours and smiled. “I guess that just means I’ll have to get used to reading outside then.”

She laughed, the sound like the tinkling of wind chimes, only deeper, earthier. “I’ll provide you with the best shade, so the sun doesn’t white out your pages,” she said, resting her forehead against your shoulder. You raised your hand to her head, threading your fingers through her soft gray hair and relaxed in the warmth of her embrace.

The boy cocks his head, staring intently at you. The movement brings you back to the present, to the cold, dark forest. Your fingers are still curled into the bark of your wife. You ease your grip and stroke your thumb against it, looking back at the boy. “Yes, she told me,” you say.

“Excellent,” he says, smiling warmly. “Normally, daughters never get the chance to be with their human family again, but your wife believes you could become a forest spirit yourself. You weren’t ready when her time was up, but in the years since, your soul has changed.”

“Changed how?” you ask. 

“It’s grown misty with age, enough that we could separate it from your body. As the guardian of this forest, I can plant your soul here so you can be with your wife as long as these trees live. Would you like that?”

You narrow your eyes at the boy. “What’s the catch?”

The boy’s shoulders lift and his yellow eyes widen slightly. “Pardon?”

“The catch,” you say. “What is it? I’ve been on this Earth over ninety years. I’ve seen a lot of shit, boy. And your deal sounds almost too good to be true.”

He furrows his dark green brows and crosses his arms. “The catch? Something about this arrangement you wouldn’t agree with? I’m really not sure there is… oh, I suppose there may be one thing you might not like.”

You tense and curl your hands into fists. “And? That is?”

“I can’t guarantee you will be planted right here, next to your wife. Where you sprout depends on your spirit’s compatibility with the soil. Your soul could be drawn to your wife, but once I separate it from your body, I can’t control where it goes. It’s a bit of a risk.” The boy leans back onto his heels, resting against the forest air. The grass glimmers in the soft green light that surrounds him, while the rest of the woods is shrouded in darkness. 

You look back at your wife and stare into her wooden eyes. They aren’t green anymore, but they’re still soft and open, drawing you in like the gentle ripples of a pond in the heat of a summer’s day. As long as she exists, as woman or tree or anything else, you know you’ll always be drawn to that openness, to her soul. Pulling the winter jasmine flower and book from your pockets, you rest them at the base of her trunk, a thank you to your wife and an offering to the forest. You stroke the bark of her tree one last time and face the boy.

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take.”