I Tree

Tendrils led from this organ to all parts of the tree. Did this organ perhaps direct growth, control storage of food, direct the roots to sources of mineral and water needed for growth and survival? No one could prove it did without destroying a tree. Among humans the trees were scarred. The one grove was all that could be found on the planet. This made it special.

For many years rain did not fall in the valley. All over the world there was a terrible drought. The crops the humans depended on refused to grow. Their animals died of thirst. The river in the valley dried up. The world got closer and closer to its sun causing the temperature to rise.

The trees could have told the humans this was a natural occurrence and was about to reverse itself but the human didn’t ask. They didn’t know how to ask. They packed up their belongings and huge ships came and carried them away. For many centuries our world remained empty of intelligent beings. The plants and animals that had always roamed the world went about their ways. They knew where to find water in time of drought and where to take shelter in time of cold.

The world of the trees lived on a twenty thousand year cycle. Once every twenty thousand years it had a wobble in its orbit around its sun. It would move in close to the star then move out away, past its normal orbit. Every twenty thousand years there was a hundred year time of heat and a hundred year time of cold. Then the world settled back to its normal orbit and the climate was warm year round. Most of the beings who had come to the world had done so in the time of pleasant weather. Their civilizations had lived and died without ever experiencing the bad times.

A ship came. It had been ten thousand years since the humans left. The ship contained three humans. They explored, took samples and analyzed them. They camped in the valley where they had fresh water from the river.

It this time in the world’s cycle there were sometimes storms. While the humans camped in the valley a huge storm came, destroying their ship and killing two of the humans. The third was carried far from the valley and deposited among the trees. The trees had been uprooted and broken by the storm. Usually the storms followed the valley but this storm was far to large to be contained by the valley. It spawned thousands of tornadoes which destroyed the land for many miles either side of the river.

The trees would not survive this storm. They were all broken, twisted from the soil by their roots. Their branches stripped away. The most ancient of the trees lay on the ground, its trunk shattered. The organ the humans had so puzzled over eons ago was exposed. The rain filled the cavity and it floated in the water. The tree knew that once the water was gone it would die.

Wait! What is this? Something new has been added. The human lie across the trunk of the tree. Blood from his wounds flowed into the hollow of the tree. The organ soaked it up. It must preserve life. Its life. Any life.

The organ made a seed. One lone branch clung to the trunk. The organ put all its energy into that branch and at its tip produced one seed. This seed fell to the ground and was lost in the soil where the uprooted trees had once stood.

For many years nothing happened. The ship the humans came in decayed and was turned to the soil.

High on the hill overlooking the valley a small sprout appeared. It struggled against dry seasons and gasped for breath in wet seasons for it stood in a depression left by the trees that once stood there.