Keeping, Not Hoarding
For all his life, Niles had been an early riser, greeting each day with a mind brimming with ideas and plans. After Orren’s departure, he struggled to fight his way out of bed before noon. His days stretched, endless and empty, and he could think of nothing to fill them with.
The library, once his pride and joy, no longer brought him comfort. His work, full of the challenges and excitement his busy mind needed, felt flat and stale.
Without his trees, he might have stayed in bed and given up.
But he remembered what Orren had taught him and refused to condemn his trees to loneliness and isolation.
The connection to their larger world was gossamer-thin, and the information flowing to them from the few old trees left in a town that had been nearly overtaken by new housing estates was but a trickle.
It was that, more than anything else, that drew Niles from his bed and his house to spend his days in the glade, picking leaves, raking gravel, talking to the trees, touching them to listen to their memories.
It was small comfort, but trapped under the heavy shroud of Orren’s absence, every drop of comfort was welcome.
When he finally unlocked the door to the library, a fortnight after Orren’s departure, the air in the lofty space smelled dusty and stale. And Niles thought that neglecting what had once given him joy was not a fitting tribute.
On the reception desk lay two books he hadn’t seen before, each one topped with a message-inscribed leaf.
Missing you already, one of them read. Counting the days until autumn.
The second message was shorter. Don’t stop living.
Niles struggled to swallow the lump in his throat. He’d been doing that, hadn’t he? Crawled away to hide like a wounded animal just because he couldn’t have what he wanted.
People grieve what they lose, a thought whispered through his mind. But Orren is not lost.
Niles clung to that. Repeated it like a mantra until it broke through the shell he’d let grow up around himself.
“Orren came here every autumn, even before I was aware of him,” he said aloud, startled when his voice echoed. “I have no reason to doubt his promise to return.”
He straightened his shoulders, brewed coffee and hot chocolate as if he were still sharing the space, and with the familiar scents weaving through the air once more, he set about dusting, tidying, and restoring the library’s welcoming vibe.
That night, Niles fell asleep reading the first book Orren had left for him and dreamed of additions to his glade—a broadleaved evergreen for continuity, and a witch hazel to share protection duties for the glade with the rowan.
The book, titled An Education of Trees, would have made little sense to anyone but a memory keeper, but it cemented Orren’s lessons in Niles’s mind.
If sharing information was so vital to the health of all trees, then maybe there was work for him here, even without Orren beside him.
He walked through the town after breakfast, taken aback when people nodded greetings and stopped him to ask where he’d been. Was his patient book round finally starting to pay off? But then… why were the people stopping him people he’d never met?
Niles set the questions aside to ponder later.
He hadn’t come out to chat, but to seek out the town’s oldest trees, touch them, and listen.
And listen he did. By the time the afternoon light faded into dusk, his mind brimmed with enough images and stories to make him forget about a raging headache and an empty stomach.
His trees soaked up the new stories and let Niles feel their excitement.
Soon, Niles didn’t just spin around town to deliver and collect books once a week.
He adjusted the library’s opening hours and spent every morning outside, listening to trees.
Winter had seemed a strange time for such an endeavour, but when Niles touched a drowsing tree, its awareness was right there, strong and vibrant.
I didn’t know trees didn’t sleep like humans, unaware, he wrote to Orren and as one year slid into another, he found a reply on the library’s reception desk one morning.
We are memory keepers, not hoarders, it read.
Orren had signed his missive with a wink and a kiss, but the small sign of affection, while warming Niles’s heart, didn’t keep him from pondering the meaning of Orren’s admonition.
Niles wasn’t just collecting memories to share with the trees in his glade, he shared the stories he collected between them all.
Was Orren suggesting Niles share the trees’ memories with people?
Niles cringed. He was a researcher, a software and app developer with non-existent people skills, and storytelling was so far out of his comfort zone, it was ludicrous.
If he went around claiming he talked to trees, the locals would call the men in white coats.
There was a reason he was eternally alone.
He just didn’t connect with people. Not even when he built a library to provide a helpful resource to the town.
He was nearing the end of his book round when it came to him.
He was a researcher. He knew how to collect, organise, and present data. He’d built a library. And Orren had brought him old folklore and history books as well as the esoteric ones Niles kept on his bedside table.
What if …?
Niles ran home, not caring if he made a spectacle of himself. Out of breath, he skidded into his glade and fell onto the bench.
“Do you think people would be interested in the memories of trees?” he asked.
The rustle that answered his question—like a breeze ruffling a heavy canopy—shouldn’t have been possible with all the trees bare. Nor should the wash of excitement and joy coming his way.
“Right then.” Niles raced into the house and returned with a notebook. “Let’s see what we can do.”
He sat in the glade, sketching and muttering, brainstorming and discarding ideas until he was cold to the marrow, and his trees finally succeeded in shooing him inside.
His mind didn’t stop spinning.
Not while he wallowed in the hottest bath he could stand until his skin wrinkled.
Not while he cooked dinner and ate it.
And definitely not when he unlocked the library just before midnight to start his new project.
The empty expanse of the reception desk glowed golden in the overhead lights. A message from Orren would have been welcome right then, reassurance that he’d chosen the correct path. That he hadn’t misinterpreted Orren’s words and was causing harm.
But how could Orren judge his efforts if he knew nothing of them?
Niles wanted to write Orren the kind of long, rambling letter his late aunt used to send him, keeping him apprised of the lives and loves of a whole village.
Shame he was useless at that sort of thing.
Technical reports were more his line. Besides, Orren never sent him more than a few words.
Maybe only leaves could pass whatever barrier separated them.
He had collected the leaves his trees had shed, and he found the notebook that kept them safe and selected a maple leaf.
Thank you for giving me hope, he wrote. I can’t wait to see you again. Then he drew a tiny heart, never mind how silly it made him feel.
Niles left the leaf on the reception desk and settled at his workstation, where his computers hummed and his projects took shape. Many hours later, when he raised his head to contemplate the pearlescent grey of an early morning, the maple leaf had disappeared from the reception desk.
An autumn-hued rose had taken its place.