Bright and Shadow

"Dead," the landlord droned, "Been dead for years."

Jack stared at him, then looked again at the apple tree.

"It isn't dead", Jack thought, "At least not in the way you mean," he glanced at the landlord, "It's more alive than you," he thought.

He started to speak. "Yeah, well �"

"It's sort of fascinating ...," Leda piped in, "You'll leave it alone?" It was more a statement than a question.

The landlord looked disappointed.

"Uh, well, okay. The missus likes it too. Has the crazy notion its special somehow ~ superstitious crap, if you ask me!"

He peered suspiciously at Jack, who'd been absently fingering his sigil-shaped earring, while simultaneously, though unintentionally, flashing the ritual tattoo on his wrist.

"You ain't any of them New Agers are you?"

"Course not!" smiled Leda, "Far from it!" "I'm a painter and it interests me as a subject."

"Yeah, of course not," Jack thought wryly, "We're Magical, which is about as far from New Age as you can get." He wondered when Leda had decided to take up painting.

The landlord, a retired pastor, believed that otherworldly things had no business in God's good world. They always seemed wild and upsetting and obscured the word of the Lord.

Jack looked at him sadly. He seemed basically decent and well-meaning ~ well-meaning, yes, but not harmless. Jack saw things, and at that moment he saw how there used to be a grove of apple trees here, but when the landlord had bought the plot, the trees began to die. He saw that the landlord had a vendetta against the land. He'd killed the trees and now that they were gone, he ruthlessly hunted the wildlife. Squirrels, gophers, birds, snakes ~ all were prey to an obsession to cleanse and purify the land. There could be no wild things here. Too much like sin.

****

Jack and Leda gave little thought to the landlord or the tree over the next couple of days as they moved their things into the house.

They arranged their furniture in several ways at first, as people do, adjusting to the feel and layout of the place. Initially they put their bed facing away from the windows, but a few days later, Jack came home to find Leda had repositioned it so they could look out over the valley in the morning.

"Hey, that's a great idea!" said Jack as he dove onto the bed, locked his hands behind his head and smiled.

"I can see the tree from here . . ."

"Stop rumpling the sheets!" Leda chided, then threw herself on the bed too and rolled onto Jack. They kissed, laughed, rolled again. They made love until the sun set, then fell asleep, limbs entwined, breathing softly in unison.

Jack opened his eyes. He was bathed in moonlight. Leda moaned softly beside him.

He lay half awake, gazing through the window at the tree. "It looks different," he thought dreamily, "There's leaves. . ."

He slept.

The next day he awoke to Leda's calling, "Jack! Get out here! You won't believe it. . . the tree . . . ." her voice trailed off.

Jack jumped out of bed and looked through the window.

"Holy shit!" he breathed, as he threw on a pair of jeans and ran outside.

He hadn't been dreaming. The tree had burst into leaf, but only on one side. The other side was leafless. The sun was rising behind the tree. It made a strange sight ~ the one side all green and grey with glints of gold, the other silhouetted bare and dark against the fiery light of the sun.

A couple of weeks later, Jack dreamt of light whirling round him like a twister, alternately enveloping and releasing him. He woke up in good spirits and full of energy.

The next evening while Leda was bathing, Jack turned off the bedroom lights and sat looking out the window. There was no moonlight now, only the bright stars shining through the branches of the tree.

He fell into vision, and saw two beings emerge from the tree. One flowed out of the branches and was bright like starlight. The other rose from the roots and was dark like shadow.

They always appeared together, and their forms were always indistinct until they came close to him, within a few inches or so. Then their features became vivid and defined, as if chiseled from starlight and shade, and their presence was greatly intensified. Bright always approached from the front; Shadow always from behind. Bright spoke in clear tones, looking Jack directly in the eyes; Shadow looked over Jack's shoulder and murmured into his ear.

And so they spoke to him and he to them and they taught him many things. They taught him of the Three Realms and their relations and interactions. They taught him the meaning of the stars, their patterns and their turnings, and about the Milky Way, which they called the "True Tree." They showed him the Light within the earth and the central star that is its source, and spoke to him of the "Mystery of the Riven Sun" that made the one light seem like two. He learned of the immortal Dreamers and the beings of the land. And they told him the secrets of the trees and spoke to him of the rhythms of birth, life and death.

All these things he learned at these brief visionary meetings in the deep of night, when the moon was dark and the stars shone brightly on the land.

In those months the birds and animals returned, much to the annoyance of the landlord, who dug up their homes, destroyed their nests and set traps for them, even as he uprooted the saplings that seemed to have sprung up everywhere. Jack and Leda pleaded with him to let things come back, but to no avail.

Finally, he brought in great loads of gravel and wood chippings and covered most of the land surrounding the house.

Then the visions stopped.

The tree stayed half in leaf until the autumn.

When the leaves dropped, the landlord's wife died, and he came to say he was selling his big house and moving back in here. Jack and Leda moved out a few weeks later.

Every Sunday, when the landlord was at church, Jack would drive by the old place to see the tree. Until one day when he got there, the tree was gone, uprooted, its trunk cut and stacked against the house as firewood, its branches in a pile nearby.

He wept then, and drove away.

Leda got home just before Jack and was unlocking the door when she heard him pull up. She watched him turn into the driveway and raised an eyebrow when he just missed striking her car with something sticking precariously, and somewhat dangerously, out of the passenger-side window of his jalopy. It took her a moment to realise what it was.

An apple branch....