Chapter 40
FALLEN TREES
I had almost told her everything. The words had been right there in the dark, so innocuous, yet powerful enough to turn Trix’s world upside down.
In the cold morning light, surrounded by debris, I was relieved not to have said anything after all. Words may come more easily when the walls between worlds grow thin, but they also travel further. To the listeners who lie in wait for such confessions.
The aftermath of what was later named the Great Storm took us both by surprise, for very different reasons.
While Trix was preoccupied by phone lines and performance schedule disruptions, I paid my respects to the fallen trees.
I did not know those particular trees, but to see so many uprooted at once – all those years of hard work to grow tall and offer shade and oxygen, shelter to birds, scaffolds for fungi – was deeply upsetting.
The fact that I could not communicate this to anyone made it worse.
Trix would have comforted me, had I confided in her. But how, how do you explain to a mortal that most of your first cousins are trees?