Day 13 – April 13 – The Far-side of the Tree – NaShoStoMo Challenge

I really wish I knew where ideas came from and why stories sometimes turn out very different from the way you though it was going to turn out... I actually do love baobab trees! I hope you enjoy today's piece for the NaShoStoMo Challenge!

Day 13 – April 13 – The Far-side of the Tree – NaShoStoMo Challenge

Damian scratched absentmindedly at the bark of the baobab as he sat and read. Every now and then – the moments when his brain seemed to realize for a few seconds that his body was in another reality than the one it was living – he glanced to where the train tracks disappeared from sight. How he wished and prayed that the next train would show up. It has already been three weeks without any train passing the station aptly called Tussen-hier-en-nergens.

Sometimes he would leave his book for a moment – not long enough for the white ants to find it, mind you – and crawl over to the tracks. There he would crouch down like a cowboy, place his ear to the warm iron and close his eyes. Then, for another moment he could imagine hearing the clack of a train coming. Perhaps even a whistle will sound and his father would come out of his office. Perhaps he could even go to the Wild West for a few moments. But then the iron grew to hot, or a bead of sweat will tickle his neck or cheek and he would open his eyes. The only thing left to do then; was go back to the baobab and pick up whatever book he was busy with and forget about the absence of the train for another while.

Some people from the dorp said that the trains would never come again and that they will all have to move somewhere else to make a living. “Might as well rip up the tracks and sell the scrap,” Twee-oog said one day outside the pub. He probably would have done it too if he had a wagon and more than one horse. These days people were only drifting towards the pub; drifting away from the station house and the counter there that served as a post office. No mail came now. No people travelling up north. No one travelling back south. Damian couldn’t remember a time when he had been this bored or when last he had seen his father smile. Even his mother and siblings seem to keep to themselves. They didn’t even look which book it was that he took off the shelf as they usually did – he was, after all, a laatlammetjie and ten years younger than his sister, Klara, who was the fourth child.

Damian only stopped reading long enough to walk across the tracks, go into the house, get another book from one of the trunks and walk back to the tree. His tree. It looked like a giant crouching next to the tracks with wild hair sticking into the air. It felt ancient. Damian imagined it to be the guardian of Tussen-hier-en-nergens. It was still alive – he was sure of that – but the tree never bore any leaves. It only stood there next to the tracks looking as if some larger being had ripped up a tree and planted it upside down so that its roots and not its branches reached out to the sun. Sometimes the wind sang strange songs when it blew through the root-like branches and Damian stopped reading to listen if he could understand what the wind was saying. Sometimes the tree made a hollow sound like when you blow across the top of a bottle, only much louder. He had an inkling that the hole on the other side of the trunk led into the middle of the trunk and that the tree was completely hollow. But since Thomas – the man who’s books he read – went missing after climbing into the hole, he had not ventured there again. If it wasn’t for the train staying away so long and everybody having other things to worry about, he probably would not even be permitted to sit under the tree.

No trains came for four weeks. His father didn’t even bother dressing properly in the morning anymore and he seldom went into the office. Barely anyone looked up the tracks anymore. It was as if the whole town had forgotten that the town was only built because of the trains. But word had come that there were very bad rains to the south. Apparently some of the tracks were beyond repair and had to be rebuilt – along with couple of trains – before the track will be used again like before. But Damian could not hear how long the trains would still be away. It was a lot more difficult to eavesdrop through a door in real life than in books.

On the day news came of the rains, Damian went again to the Baobab. He walked slowly around it to where the hole was where Thomas had crawled in. He bent down and peered inside. It was large enough for him to easily crawl through… And he would take a flashlight and not a lantern like Thomas did. And he would tie a rope to the outside of the tree and around his waist, just like in the stories. He would find out whether the tree was really hollow. Maybe it would even lead him down into caverns where the baobab grew leaves in the light of a million glittering crystals. Maybe there would be a whole other world down there with dinosaurs and a great lake… But he also remembered the day Thomas went into the tree. He was gone within minutes and even when the men lighted lanterns to try and see inside, they could see nothing. For months after that no one went near the tree and people said that there was something wrong with the tree or that the tree was angry at all the people moving there and building a town.  Damian felt his heart restrict at the thought of his father stopping him before he could venture inside the tree himself. It was his tree after all. He spent every day with it. It wouldn’t hurt him.

He sneaked into his father’s empty office and took a torch and rope from the cupboard. Then he sneaked back to the far side of the tree. He tied the rope around his waist and then to a sturdy rock nearby. The rope was at least fifteen meters long – long enough to circle the tree trunk nearly twice. He put on his flashlight, got down on his hands and knees, took a deep breath and crawled inside. He had never felt so alive before. Inside the tree was hollow after all and he could stand upright. But the torch’s light seemed not to be able to reach the trunk. Beyond his circle of light it was black as pitch. He glanced back and could still see the opening in the trunk and a small piece of the sun-baked ground. He went farther into the tree. Still he could not see the trunk. The whole in the baobab’s trunk slowly creaked closed and the rope snapped. 

THE END

A Baobab tree - a strange beauty

(With thanks to the source of the picture)

Some translations for the curious few:

Tussen-hier-en-nergens = Between here and nowhere (This is a fictional town. I have no idea if there is a real town of this name in RSA.)

Dorp = town

Twee-oog = Two-eyes (A nickname, he has an identical brother that wears glasses while he does not.)

Laatlammetjie = an informal way to refer to a child born much later than his/her siblings.