Unremembered History of the World, part four-B

SHORT STORY MONDAY

If you have not been following along, que lastima. A prophetic utterance three centuries ago has led to an altered history, a world without war, where humankind is a human family. This segment brings us within ear shot of the story's conclusion.


Unremembered History of the World, part four-B

Judith Remington-Olney stretched out on her back beneath an enormous oak tree. She studied its wrinkled hide and asked it questions. Her eyes traced the knots and gnarls that make an old tree fascinating. She pondered the questions she might ask the tree, and it was then it happened. A reverberation in the earth had begun, so subtle that had she not been attuned to it, she would never have felt it. But there it was, and it made her fearful with excitement.

She, too, trembled and, standing, went near to the tree to feel its fractured and furrowed bark. As she put her arms around the trunk, her fingertips discovered and caressed the scarred X which had been carved into the tree's side twenty-five decades ago and she remembered a story which had been told to her in childhood about an Indian that had been turned into a tree. It was a fable, a tall tale, she had been led to believe. Her parents always said it was something like the stories of Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill and all the rest of those early American mythologies that evolve with the frontier.

Now she wondered. These were the blue hills. Could this be the place?

She tried to remember how she had gotten here. One day she would return to this tree and unfold its power.

For two years she gathered together all the family stories, trying to understand her roots. She read with great interest the many books about Olneys in history. She was especially interested in their motivations. Why had her family gone so far in making a mark on the world? What event could have transformed a frontier family into one of the leading families of their time, in every time in which Olney were found?

Judith Remington-Olney re-read the old diaries, and weighed the words carefully.

For another five years she researched the rituals and myths of every culture seeking any and all tales of transformation, and especially transformations pertaining to trees. And as she uncovered the buried histories of our earliest ancestors she found echoes in each of the tale of trees. Even the Holy of Holies in Yahweh's Temple was engraved with cherubim and trees. "I am like a green palm tree," the Psalmist wrote.

Like the story of the flood, which is repeated in a hundred different traditions, so she found the image of the tree as a core image in nearly every culture.

But even still she was not satisfied. She must release the man in the tree. And for this, a deeper ritual would be needed. And so it was that she beneath a stack of books at a library sale she unearthed that rare volume of prophecies called Flight of Gypsies.

Judith became dizzy and lightheaded when she found it. Though she opened it with care, the binding broke when she opened the book. The page before her was titled, "Spell For Turning Trees Into Men". The book nearly dropped from her hand.

In very large letters there had been printed a warning:

"History will revert
to the moment
the man became a tree.
Beware:
This is a Fifth Circle event."

The story concludes here

NOTE: If you have not been following along and wish to begin at the beginning, you may wish to start here and when you catch up to this section, you will either be stoked to continue to the end, or wish you'd experienced a different history.