Kendra Fortmeyer | 21
Kendra Fortmeyer
The Pencil-Maker's Gift
I.
When she first became a tree, she spent her days in grief. There was so much lost to her: autonomy. Breasts. Winter mornings with lemon tea. The tree-woman stretched her roots down into the soil, thinking, despite herself, water table, thinking nutrients, thinking sap, and groaned into the wind.
In her bodily days, in those blurry, waning hours when the cup had been offered, the tree-woman had considered her predecessors. Considered Daphne, fleeing the lascivious arms of golden Apollo and finding refuge in bark and stem. The tree-woman simply could not relate. To forsake the life of the flesh because one had simply been loved too much! Some problem, the tree-woman scoffed. (This was in the early days, when scorn had been a difficult habit to forget.) Even her name: Daphne. A beautiful name! A foolish thing to lose. The tree-woman’s name had not been romantic: had been Karen, or Maude. Something beginning and ending with hard sounds, bespeaking a lifetime of stout ankles and affection for game shows. Sometimes when the wind rustled her leaves, she listened for the sound of her old name: Gertrude? Janet? It was becoming difficult for the tree-woman to remember. She had no tongue, now, no delicate eardrums. She understood things in cellulose structures and the slow accumulation of rings.
Her first night was the most frightening. Not because of the loneliness. But because it was cold, and she realized then that it was only going to get colder.
Don’t worry, she imagined a red oak saying from the next grove over. She gave him a deep baritone voice and a Southern accent. Not in a Nascar way, but like a kindly old gentleman: an oak who would remove his hat when there were ladies present. You get used to it after a while. We all do.
It is a noble thing we do, isn’t it? the tree asked. Her voice was more feminine than