Every day she would walk the same path to see the wise old dwarf who lived in a brick hovel at the center of the forest. And every day she would ask the dwarf the same question - the one question she was permitted to ask - in fact, the only words she was entitled to speak to anyone in the world. And every night she would return home disappointed at the answer the dwarf had given.

 

Willow wept because - for as long as she could remember - she had been cursed. If there had been a childhood before the curse, she could not recall it; parents, siblings or friends, had she none. For she spoke only to the dwarf and she only ever asked the same thing: “Has the Palace at the End of the World been found?”

 

Today, the fourteenth day after HarvestSeed, Willow trudged along the path cut by the sparkling stream, deep inside the Tangled Forest and to the rainbow bricks of the dwarf’s hovel and peered inside. 

 

The dwarf, Dinkly, was cooking up some stew. Willow came and sat inside in her usual seat (an old toadstool) and asked her question:

“Dear Dinkly,” she began, glumly, “has the Palace at the End of the World been found?”

Dinkly sat across from her and with a smile passed her a bowl of his delicious stew.

 

“Yes,” he said finally. “The Palace has been found! 

“And you, my dear Willow, must go. 

“Make haste, make haste, 

“There’s no time to waste. 

“You must travel through ice and snow.”

 

Willow rose and kissed the dwarf and set off at once following the directions that Dinkly also gave her. It would be a long and arduous journey, that would take many days and cover many miles of ground. But at the end of it she would be free of her curse.

 

The journey began on a desolate, dark plain where rotten trees and dried up streams left no life. But this environment was where her last hope was beginning.

Anxiety stabbed at her heart. But she took a deep breath and stepped along the lonely path.

 

By noon the sun began to burn like a flame. With each step she took, she was tempted to abandon the journey. Yet she went on and on with the intention of escaping this barren plain. She quickened her pace and crossed the plain partly. 

 

After a while, she came across some little children running after butterflies.

How nice it would be if I could stay like them, Willow thought. Stay as a child forever.

As she went further she could hear the sound of people talking cheerfully about their crops and yields this year.

 

Willow realized she had arrived at a village. She roamed around the village looking at people doing homely chores.

She swam in the sweetness of childhood when she saw parents lovingly petting their children. 

 

She found a playground amid the village where the children were having fun.

"Oh! My dear, come and play with us,” a cute little girl invited. 

"What is your name?" she asked Willow. 

 

But Willow couldn't speak a word. The villagers gathered around Willow. They acted graciously towards her.

An old woman carrying a shining floral dress in her hand appeared. 

"Look, what I have for you,” she said.

     

Willow's face glowed with indescribable joy. She was mesmerized to receive so much affection and love at the same time for she never had before. 

The whole village spent the evening dancing and singing gaily. They circled the fire to the rhythm of the harp and the violin.

        

Willow hid her happiness in the deepest part of her heart, wondering if she would ever be able to keep that feeling with her forever.

        

Willow sat with the villagers as they sang their songs and burnt their logs and danced around the fire until the embers of the day died away and night’s inky blanket drifted downwards from the sky.

“If you have no place to stay,” the old woman cried, “come and stay at my house, dear child.”

 

But Willow knew she could not, for Willow knew what nighttime brought. She shook her head and rose to leave.

“Wait,” cried the little girl with whom Willow had been playing. The little girl grabbed Willow by the hand and tried to pull her back towards the warmth of the fire.

 

“Ouch!” cried the little girl, and looked in pain at her hand; the villagers looked with injurious eyes at Willow.

Where the girl had pulled her hand away from Willow’s, tiny slivers of wood, little splinters, pierced her skin. There were dozens. So many that her hand wept with them.

 

But it was not drops of blood that fell from the little girl’s hand; not scarlet that stained her floral dress, but sap. Thick, amber-colored, tree-sap. And where it touched the girl’s clothes, flowers began to bud and grow. But where it touched her skin, it burnt and blistered and withered. The little girl held the fingers of her hand, but Willow could not hold the girl’s accusing gaze.

 

“Truly,” the villagers cried surrounding the little girl, “this visitor is cursed!” And Willow knew that she was. The villagers closed around the injured girl like a gateless fence; the logs crackled and spat and twisted in the fire; WIllow burnt with shame.

 

WIllow ran through the mud and growing darkness away from the village. She ran until she felt her limbs become heavy, her legs become long and pointed, her arms become wide and cumbersome. And - when she could run no more - she stood and let her curse come entirely upon her.

 

If the trees of the forest could speak like us, they would tell of Weeping Willow. The little girl cursed at night to put down hairy roots and throw up sinuous branches. The little girl who stood under the moonless night, clutching at the sky with her bony, branch-like fingers, transformed from flesh and blood to bark and branch.

 

But trees do not speak.

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Part 2

 

Willow stood still, still as her curse forced her, still as the frozen wood of her trunk and branches made her. She was petrified. But inside: she was wailing. 

 

People loved me in the village for the first time in my life. 

I ended up being a disaster for them.

I hope that little girl is all right. 

What should I do now? I don't want people to be scared when they see me.

 

With the first beam of the sun, her branches and leaves disappeared and she reclaimed herself as a human of flesh and blood.

Birds who were resting on her branches frightened and flew away.

 

Dinkly's directions began to echo in her head. 

Through Impassable Swamp and icy peaks.

To the Frozen Mountain you must go.

For there is the witch,

Known as Beatrix,

Who makes her castle amidst the snow.

 

Her should you seek,

Her counsel should keep,

But listen well to her words.

She will say you a sooth - 

A most terrible truth - 

That will lead to the Palace at the End of the World!

 

The words rang in Willow’s head. She was strong. And no truth, no matter how terrible, could be worse than the incident yesterday. What she had done to that girl had terrified her. She set out on her journey with unwavering courage and confidence. She vowed to bring her curse to an end.

 

*

 

Long was the road and arduous that led through the Impassable Swamp, and well it deserved that name. Willow trudged alone, through mud and slime and filth, sometimes waist high in the muck of centuries. 

 

In the distance, the joining horizon sewed the earth to the sky, rising up towards the Frozen Mountains like teeth. Snows came and went at their tips, and when the frail winter sun rose, what it melted washed effluent down into the long stretch of valley that Willow made her tortuous way along. The route was cold and bitter.

 

The only time Willow rested was at night, when her curse forced her to transform, and remain still, and inwardly scream for change. She ate nothing on the journey, for nothing grew in the swamp that could be eaten; she drank only at night, when her long roots delved deep into the folds of mud and sucked up dirty, thirst-quenching water.

 

It was a wretched existence that made her long for the Tangled Forest where birds would drop berries from her nighttime branches that she could use to sate her morning hunger.

 

Day-by-day, kilometer-by-tedious-kilometer, she ate up the distance between her and the jagged, tooth-like horizon. Until eventually she stood, exhausted but victorious, at the feet of the Frozen Mountains.

 

Ridges of rock rose up out of the ground like the crumpled back of some huge beastly behemoth. Sheer cliff faces greeted her on all sides. If ever there was a place that better deserved the name ‘Impassable’ than the swamp she had just conquered, it was this place. But conquer this she must, as beyond it lay the witch and the Palace at the End of the World.

 

The blizzard was severe. Willow climbed the craggy cliffs coping with the stone cold. She arrived at a tumbled-down fortress.

Dinkly said this should be the fortress of Beatrix, the witch, she thought.

 

Willow stood in front of the large old fashioned door as it groaned open, seemingly by itself.

Her eyes caught something glowing at the far end of the hallway.

She was astonished by the view, and a sea of questions washed over her.

 

A mirror! she thought. A gigantic mirror! 

Why does a fortress like this need a massive mirror? 

Is it Beatrix's?

 

Dusk was falling. As the moonlight on the mirror dispersed the silvery glow around the chamber, Willow dipped her roots and stretched out her branches all around it. Ice drifted down the walls, shaking them with the friction of its descent. Suddenly a strange figure appeared.

 

The woman was old and hunched and wore a nest of gray, matted hair on her head, inside which at least one bird was living. The woman shuffled along towards the tree. Surely, thought Willow, this must be Beatrix, the witch. Does she know who made me so miserable? 

 

“I do indeed know who made you miserable,” a voice called out to Willow. “But things are not always what they seem.”

Willow could not move, could not run, could not speak, though had she possessed the ability to do any of those things, her shock would have rooted her to the spot. For the words were not coming out of the old woman’s mouth, but from the bird’s beak!

 

The bird in the old woman’s hair fluttered across and perched on one of Willow’s branches. "Look here Willow,” it said. “I am Beatrix the witch. Do you want to know the truth?" she asked.

Willow was amazed to hear from Beatrix because no one before now was able to hear her voice or her thoughts..

 

Was it you who cursed me? Willow thought at the bird-who-was-the-witch. The creature pecked with its beak at Willow’s bark, digging into her sap and trunk.

“Far have you come,” the bird-witch replied, “and farther still you have to go. When you get to the Palace at the End of the World, you will find out who you truly are…” 

 

Willow found the witch’s words most frustrating.

I want to know now! she thought at her. Beatrix-the-bird sighed.

“I will show you what you wish,” the witch replied, “but beware, as things are not always what they seem, and happiness and truth are restless companions. 

 

“Look into my mirror and you will see who you truly are…” the witch informed her, and the room began to spin.

Willow did not know by what magic the witch had done it, but the massive mirror that had been on the other side of the chamber was now right in front of her, though she had not felt her roots move at all.

 

Reflected in the mirror was a lush tree with flowers and fruits. It sat in a green meadow surrounded by others of its kind. But the tree was restless. It longed to know what was over the hill and in the next valley.

 

Willow watched the sun rise and set on that meadow a thousand times. With each rising, the lush tree grew thinner, its branches hung lower, its boughs bent groundwards. While its fellows grew up and stretched out for the sun, the tree turned inward, pulling its limbs towards the browning earth around it.

 

Until eventually it did not resemble a tree at all, but a little girl, who set out when the sun next rose to see what was in the next valley. 

Willow stared in horror at what the mirror showed her.

 

“There was a girl,” Beatrix the bird began, “who dreamed she was a tree. But she was not a girl; had never been a girl; is not a girl now. She ran far from her meadow. All the way to the other end of the world. As far as her fleshy little legs would carry her.”

 

Beatrix hopped from one foot to the other while Willow gazed, transfixed by the vision in the mirror. 

“And the further she ran, the more she forgot who she was,” Beatrix continued. “But the birds and the animals of the Tangled Forest in which she found herself knew,” the witch proclaimed. Then uttered the final truth as though it was a sentence handed down by a judge. 

 

“They knew her by her real name, for they knew what it was she really was. And every day they tried to remind her, and every night she would forget. That is why they called her Weeping Willow…”

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Part 3

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Willow awoke in the morning and there was no crevice deep enough in which she could hide her shock. Not a girl but a tree. Never a girl. What am I? she thought to herself.

 

The fortress and the witch; the bird and the mirror in which she had seen such ungainly truths, was gone. She was alone in the Frozen Mountains with only the awfulness of her truth as companion.

 

Before her stretched the snow-covered ridges of the mountain’s peaks; she wondered as she trod them how long they had remained hidden by snow, and if even they remembered what their rocky faces looked like underneath.

 

By day she trudged, her legs near-turned to ice; by night she thawed, her bark unbothered by the bitterness and the cold. Until finally, opening itself out in front of her like a summer flower, Willow saw the meadows and the grasses from whence she came. Her erstwhile home…

 

The gentle breeze comforted her soul as she walked through the trees that sprung up into little, clustered families there, listening to the chirping birds. 

Is this the freedom we feel when we are in our own place? she thought. My Home? 

Willow emerged through the trees from the other side of the woods. 

 

Beyond the woods, the trees were more space out and the land dipped down to a deep precipice. On the edge of that precipice there was the Palace. The so-called Ruler of Life. The Palace at the End of the World. 

 

Between the Palace and the woods there ran a river. It bristled and bubbled with crystal waters that yielded up rainbow-tinted spumes. It led down to a rippling moat that ran around the Palace trickling and tumbling and diving down into the pitch black precipice. Between the two, a gilded footbridge connected the other bank and the Palace Entrance.

 

Now Willow stood on a cliff glancing at the deepest point of the precipice. 

Where does this water go? Does everything embrace its doom after reaching there? she thought. 

 

“Welcome back, young Willow,” a low voice from beside her rumbled through the ground. It was a tree. The tree was speaking to her. The sensation was odd, for trees are long-lived and slow beings and when they speak it takes an age. Their words elude the mind of human beings, but WIllow - as she now knew - was not entirely one of those.

 

As she focused-in on the words of the tree, her feet tingled, for it seemed to be through the ground rather than the air that the timber spoke. The world around her sped up. The river became a raging torrent; the rainbow foam a gushing blur of white.

“Is this my home?” the girl replied, then held her hands to her mouth in shock. “I can speak!” she proclaimed.

“You always could,” the tree replied through its roots. “But you needed to slow down to listen to the sound your voice would make… Others, these fleshy-beings, are too hasty and impatient to hear when trees speak. But speak we do. And listen you must.”

 

The little girl sat upon the grass and watched the clouds race past and the river disgorge itself over the edge of the world and into oblivion.

“Do you know what that river is?” the old tree asked Willow.

Willow said that she did not.

 

“It is the River of Dreams,” the tree replied. “Dreams once dreamt and now discarded. They flow, from the minds of men and women, boys and girls, beasts and birds down past the Palace and over into the nothingness beyond.”

The girl-who-was-a-tree looked on.

 

“Your dream must take that river too,” the tree explained.

“My dream?”

“The dream of a tree who would be a girl,” the tree clarified. “Far have you traveled and wide and much of this world have you seen. And for all that adventure, your route has led you back here. To us. Your friends. Your family.”

 

It was at this point that Willow became aware of the rows-upon-rows of trees in the forest and leading up to its approach. They were all heaving their branches wide in welcome.

 

“There is a choice, young Willow,” the old tree explained. “You have crossed the threshold to the world of human beings and returned with knowledge of what it is to be a person. If you wish to return to that world you must unmake your life as a tree. 

 

“Cast yourself into oblivion and you will be reborn as the child you see now. Or else change one last time and remain here with us. Dip your roots into the rolling river and let go…”

 

With that, the tree said no more. The choice, like the route, lay before the girl-tree, Willow. She approached the dark precipice and pondered. Long, Willow stood at the end of the world, overlooking the cascade of dreams that fell into the abyss below. Far below the edge of nothing, vast leviathans swam in the spray, gobbling up what was and what might have been...

 

 

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Part 4

 

Standing beside the Palace at the End of the World, Willow might utterly unmake herself. The girl-who-had-never-been-a-girl might never be at all. Her potential recast; her life reborn in flesh and hope and dreams. Hard, she looked into that ending and deeply she pondered oblivion.

 

She thought of the Tangled Forest, and the birds - her friends - who had tried to tell her who she was. She thought of Dinkly. Sweet, kind DInkly, who must have known (or at least suspected). What would become of all those memories if she took that fatal plunge?

 

Willow embraced herself and willed her legs off the edge of the cliff.

I am falling, she thought. Falling into the deep spray where the scariest creatures, leviathans wait for their prey. 

Willow shut her eyes. She felt like her soul submerged beneath the thick air. Her body weakened. Her breath held up. The whole world stopped.

 

Every second of her life unwound; every particle of her being unmade; everything that she was in that moment was not. 

 

And then darkness. And then a voice. A child’s voice.

 

“Sister? Sister? Where were you? I have been searching for you for a long time. Come, let's go, granny is calling us back." 

 

It was the girl Willow had hurt. The girl from the village. It was her sister.

 

Oh! She is my younger sister, Willow remembered, and the memory of it was so real. But she doesn’t seem hurt now. She seems totally fine.

“I’m coming, sister.” Willow's voice cracked. 

 

"Sister, why are you crying? Did someone hurt you?”  the younger sister asked. “What happened?". 

 

"No. It’s nothing. Let's go", Willow said, and wrapped herself in the warmth of family.

 

They don't remember me as a cursed unfortunate girl, Willow thought. And - in time - will my memory of that will fade too? Gobbled up by leviathan monsters? Food for fish at the end of the world? This woman is my granny; this girl my sister; this place is my home! How is this possible? 

 

But magic is subtle and magic is quick and magic deals in the impossible, and it had dealt with Willow as fairly as she might imagine. The tree-who-would-be-a-girl got to live the life she chose.

 

In the mornings, she would rise with the sun and feel the aromatic fragrance of the flowers blooming by the window. Sometimes she would put them in her hair. They made her elegant. She would cook daily with granny over a fire that burnt only fallen wood. 

 

She taught the villagers how to abandon their axes and live in harmony with the forest. And the forest, like her story, began to untangle. But the memories never left her.

 

In age, Willow unfolded her life as a fairy tale for children who passed it down to their children. Her story became a legend for every age. The tree-who-grew-into-a-girl became eternal. And Willow had never known such happiness.

 

But magic is subtle and magic is quick and magic deals in the impossible. And there is another tale that is sometimes told. Of a child called WIllow who did not jump, did not cast her body like dice into an uncertain future. Who chose another happily-ever-after.

 

Deeply, Willow looked into that ending darkness at the edge of the world, and pondered hard on oblivion. Stepping back from the edge, she traced the line of the river back to where her feet felt most comfortable. And there, she sat and dangled her toes over the edge of the banks, towards that stream of dreaming.

 

As she dipped her toe into that river, she felt it pull from her the dream. The dream that she had been a girl. With a sister and granny. And a house that cooked on the fire from fallen trees. For the human world is cruel and painful and men can seldom be taught to put down power. The dream was washed over the edge with all the others. Food for giants.

 

She stretched up her hands towards the sky, and with the dying of the light behind the Frozen Mountains, gave up the ghost of humanity. And the tree-that-had-been-a-girl was a tree again. Happy and contented, surrounded by the others of her kind, never again to venture from the pastures of the Palace.

 

But do not think that is the end of the story. For where the tree’s root dipped into the water, where the wash of possibilities and dreams pulled themselves along towards extinction, every night the girl drank of a thousand, thousand worlds, a million dreamers with a million stories to tell. 

 

And safe, with others of her kind, Willow lived each one.

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The End.