Willow

"She's going to die."

At first it was like a blow to the heart. No, she couldn't die. She'd always been there. She was the one constant I could count on in my life, the one I could look outside at and see her standing there, waiting for me. She was always so sad, I thought, so sad, but it was her nature. If she was anything but sad, she wouldn't be Willow, she'd be...well, I wasn't sure what she'd be. Certainly not herself, though. She couldn't die and leave me here alone. I'd spent countless hours with her, sitting next to her, her shadow keeping me cool when the sun was beating down and trying to bake me into the ground, her whispered words of comfort, the way she always knew exactly what to say. There was no way Willow could die.

But as the days passed and I discovered there was nothing I could really do about it, I stopped caring. Yes, she would die. Yes, this happened all the time and it wasn't something she deserved but who was I to try and change the course of fate? It was Willow's time to die, and they were going to make sure it was done in the most humane way possible.

Apathy is poison.

*

It was when they actually began work on Willow that he showed up.

None of us knew where he'd come from, if he went to school here, or if he was even from this country although I was pretty sure he was considering he knew how to speak English and had a pretty obvious Midwestern accent. Of course he was completely quiet at first. He spent his days sitting on the campus, eyes turned up to the sun, watching as nature unfolded around him. Silent, almost telepathic conversation passed around the college: Aren't the professors going to do anything about him? Why is he just allowed to sit there for the entire day without getting chased off by security? Why the hell is he wearing that stupid wolf hat?

I liked the wolf hat. It was different, and that was what we all needed although none of us knew it yet. I'm sure he knew it. He looked up at me once while I was watching him during the week and his green eyes told me he knew everything.

*

I sat down next to him one day during lunch.

"Hey."

He didn't say anything back, although he did give me a nod of acknowledgment. I wondered when he had last eaten and decided it would be best to play on the safe side; I handed a raisin bagel to him, which he took with a smile. I started to offer cream cheese (I'd never met anyone who didn't like cream cheese on a bagel) but he shook his head fervently.

"No cream cheese?" I asked in surprise.

He took a while to answer me; so long, in fact, that I wasn't expecting it when he finally spoke after eating half of his bagel. "I don't eat animal byproducts."

That was the first sentence I ever heard him speak. Interestingly enough, it did describe him; everything about him, actually. I wouldn't realise it until later, when things began to move faster and I understood who he really was.

"What are they doing to that tree?" he asked, and pointed up at Willow.

"Oh...cutting it down." Somehow, as I said it, it felt like the whole thing was my fault, like I was the one cutting Willow down and not the construction workers. I could feel him stiffen next to me, almost as if he'd gone numb. I turned around to see his entire face pale. "Hey, are you okay?"

He got up and ran until he disappeared over the horizon.

*

I was afraid he wouldn't come back at first. After all, why would he? He apparently had some kind of emotional connection to Willow, and the news about her had to have spooked him. I didn't expect to see him the next day, sitting where he always did, watching Willow with the purest look of love and adoration on his face. And, just like yesterday, I went down during lunch and sat with him, knowing enough to bring an extra bagel for him. He accepted it and it was like nothing at all had happened.

"So..." I started when we'd finished lunch. I had to approach this carefully. "...what happened yesterday?"

I watched as sadness filled his eyes, turning them from light green to an almost black-green. Contacts? "They can't really be doing that. They can't. Are they really going to cut her down?"

I nodded. No use hiding the truth.

"No, no, no." There was torture in his voice, like someone was cutting off his left arm. He looked at me with pleading eyes. "They can't, they can't--what's your name?"

"Willow."

He blinked.

"No, really," I said, "it's Willow. My parents met under Willow -- the tree," I clarified.

"See?" He took hold of my hands. I couldn't help but notice that his hands felt like they were made of leaves; soft, cool, with the slightest sense of delicacy to them. I wasn't aware of any lotion that could do that. "You have reason to protect the tree, Willow. It's where your parents met, right? And where you got your name. So if they cut it down...please tell me you won't let them."

*

That's how I found myself sitting up in the tree with Christofer on the day Willow was scheduled to be cut down.

"This is stupid," I told him.

He was sitting about two feet away on a neighboring branch, his hands behind his head and a lazy grin on his face like he was suntanning at the beach. "So? We're doing something that could potentially save the world. Fuck sanity."

"How could this save the world?"

"Simple, simple Willow." He shook his head in disapproval, eyes still closed. "You never heard that sayin' about the butterfly in China that can make a tornado in America just by beating its wings?"

"This is different."

"How?"

I remained silent.

"Exactly. If this tree stays up...who knows? Who knows what will happen? It's important to somebody. Hell, you should know that, Miz Willow." He opened one eye and used it to wink at me.

The machines powered up and began to make their way over to Willow. Christofer's grin just got wider. "They know we're here," he said. "They don't know what to do or how to get us out without hurting us. It's time for the adventure, Willow. It's time for us to live." He dug a cigarette out of his pocket and put it in his mouth without lighting it. "It all comes down to this."

*

I am twenty-eight years old now. It has been seven years since I've seen Christofer.

I changed my major after that day, as stupid and childish as it sounds. Lovestruck, maybe, except that I did not love Christofer. At least not the way a person would expect. I'd like to believe that I cared about him, but with the years gone by...a person's heart can only hold out hope that someone will return so long.

I went on to work in a neighboring highschool, the one I'd graduated from, as an Environmental Science teacher. The kind of class that is only picked when there's a choice between something like Oceanography and Trigonometry, and Environmental Science is the only one that even remotely sounds passable. I like to think, though, that this field trip changes peoples' worldviews every year, but who can know for sure?

"Now what's so important about this tree," I say as I lead them across the campus, nodding at the professors on their way to morning classes, sharing a smile. I am supposed to be here, I send through my thoughts, and it has a double meaning. "What's important about this tree," I tell them, "is that--"

"It's cut down," says a student from the middle observantly.

The poison arrow digs just a little deeper into my core. "Yes," I tell her, "but listen. This isn't what's supposed to happen. This tree was cut down for spacing purposes, because it was getting too big. I'm not going to point any fingers or make any accusations. That's not why we're here today. Someone tell me how old trees have to be before they die of old age."

Several hands go up. I smile. This is always my favorite part.

"Fifty years," someone answers.

I shake my head, smile still present.

"One hundred."

"One thousand!"

"Five thousand!"

"Twenty thousand!"

And each time, my smile gets bigger. Because in a second, I'll tell them the true answer, and they'll go slack-jawed even though they don't mean to. The wonder will consume them for just a moment, maybe at most a day, before they go back to succumbing to the poison of apathy. I slip my hands into my coat pockets; to warm them up, to an outsider.

I gently take the leaf there into my hand and run my thumb over it, feeling the inscribed initials. CD. Christofer Drew. In my backyard there is an acorn with the same initials buried deep underground. I try not to make it apparent that I rush home as fast as I can every day to see if maybe...

I feel his arms around me as I say, "Old age doesn't kill trees."

"Apathy does," he says from behind me. "And boy, oh boy, Willow, you don't got none of that."