The Dryad and Her Tree

 
It is true that the dryad was sleeping deeply when they cut her tree down.  She awoke in a foggy panic and groggily tried to make sense of things as her tree was dragged through the snow across the field and into the house.  By the time she fully shook herself out of hibernation, her tree was already clamped into standing position inside a pot of cold water, bound with constricting ropes of lights, its branches painfully pinched with dozens of dangling weights.

For a day, she sat warily watching as people came and stared at her tree without touching it.  The cat was the only one that attempted to touch the tree, sending the people in the room into gales of laughter when it ran away yowling after she viciously shoved a pine cone in its ear.  They mocked it for getting an electric shock from clawing one of the strings.

The second day, a young child in a long gown crawled on its hands and knees with a pitcher of water.  The dryad let it approach because its posture of obeisance suggested it had proper respect for the tree.  She was relieved when it filled the pot with a sweet, tangy water that the tree gratefully sucked up through its trunk.  The child crept out backward and in doing so knocked free two of the torturous weights on the tree’s lowest branches.  It stared glumly at the broken glass while an adult came racing into the room. 

“Did you break some of the ornaments?” The adult screeched.  The child sadly lifted the pitcher. “I thought I was helping,” it said tremulously.  “Don’t help!” the adult snapped, and the child hurried from the room.  The dryad winced and decided this human was not allowed near her tree anymore.  When the adult returned with a broom and a dustpan, the dryad waited for the adult to bend over and then swatted the human’s head hard enough to break three more ornaments.  The adult leaped back even faster than the cat and stood staring dumbly at the tree before shaking itself.

“Okay,” the adult whispered, “That was clearly my imagination. I must have stood up a little faster than I thought” even though the adult had not been in the process of standing up when the dryad hit it.  The adult faced the tree and cautiously slid the broom under the branches to pull the glass shards toward it.  The dryad waited for her chance.  Eventually the adult relaxed enough to stop avoiding the branches.  The dryad flung a spray of needles in its face.  The adult covered its eyes and ran swearing from the room.

It took several of these bouts for the humans to respect the tree’s space.  They seemed to have trouble learning that they truly weren’t allowed to touch the tree.  The dryad was amazed at their tenacity.  Scratched hands, stabbed backsides, debris-filled eyes, smashed ornaments, they attributed it all to their own clumsiness, refusing to believe the tree was fighting back.  It was the night they tried to slide brightly wrapped packages under the tree that finally convinced them.  There was no pretending clumsiness when several adults saw the tree angrily bash and fling the packages back at them.

They retreated to the doorway of the room and whispered at each other.  “Is it possessed?”  “Where did you get that tree?” “What do we do about this?” “Maybe we could burn it.”  “You can’t burn it without burning down the house, idiot.”  “I told you it hit me deliberately.” “You did not.  You laughed at me when I said I thought it had something against me.”  They grumbled like this for hours before they gave up and trudged away.

The child woke up early and crept into the dawn grey room to find the room in disarray.  It seemed sad, and the dryad motioned it to come closer.  It tentatively reached for a package wedged deep beneath the branches when one of the adults appeared in the doorway and began to shriek.  “Help, help, the tree is eating Jenny!” “No, it’s not,” the child called. “Jenny, get out of there,” the adult screamed hysterically. The child sighed, “I’m fine.  The Christmas Angel likes me.  Have you guys been naughty?  She doesn’t seem to like any of you.”

 

Year after year, the tree stood in the corner of the room.  Its needles dropped and branch after branch became brittle and snapped under the weight of the ornaments, but the dryad held on.  She guarded her tree with a guilt-laden ferocity, determined to never let anyone do it harm again.  She extended that same protection to the child, who learned to crawl under the tree’s branches whenever one of the adults or even one of the other children was chasing it with malicious intent.  The adults would just shrug when the child hid under the tree.  There wasn’t a single one of them willing to get close enough for the tree to touch them.

Author: Beth Avery @violetgrendel
Word Count: 836 words
Genre: Speculative Fiction
E-book: Yes