Creaks of Wonder

“I feel like something’s there”, she said in a somber tone. At an hour unknown to her, sometime between the midnight toll and morning’s dawn, she heard whispers from the top pocket of her wooden suitcase. The day before this unknown time, she put her brush away in this same pocket, the same brush she used every evening, the same brush her mother used, and maybe even her grandmother, too. Her grandfather was a carpenter, his hands grizzled and chipped as if he had made them himself on his spindle. Though he never spoke of his wooden works, customers would often say they spake for him. All kinds of people would line up, one and two alike, waiting hours to have conversations with the grandfather’s creations.

The grandfather learned to carve wood at such a young age, and to this day she cannot say whether his origins were true, or simply a fairy’s fable. When the grandfather was in his ninth year of autumn, the not-yet grandfather fell beneath a tree. The tree’s roots uprooted and trapped the boy’s legs, looking for nutrients to survive the coming winter. The not-yet grandfather took the zipper from his coat and began to cut and carve the roots entrapping him. Like those roots, the grandfather grew into a fine sapling; he kept pieces of the tree and made the tree his home.

The mother often told her that the grandfather created each work of art from that large tree, but she never understood how it could be both a home and dozens of new creations. He made bookends that would be read more often than the library’s book collection, and he made combs more fine than the hair they put teeth in. He built chairs that were comforting; however, no man would dare sit upon such magnificent works. From picture frames to bed frames, to window frames, to the delicate frames of the mother’s glasses, the grandfather made many things from that tall, tall tree.

Before it became subdued by the grandfather’s hand, she was told the tree stood long in a valley not far from where the grandfather once wandered. Its trunk was marked with the blood of two lines of war, each country wanting the land as an inheritance for their children, and their children’s children. They worked tirelessly to mark the soil with stone and oath alike, but titles often fall faster than the tree’s hair come winter. The tall, tall tree received prince and peasant alike, as its roots swallowed their nutrients, growing so large you could not see the highest branches.

The two countries marched with banners that tore upon the tree’s branches, and its bark bore the scoring of their spears, yet the tree remembered quieter times in that same valley. The men who carved those marks were once children scratching their symbols upon its bark. They laughed together, climbing into the crook of the tree’s bough, reaching as high as their arms could carry them. The tree had held them as easily as it held the birds nesting above, chirping for warmer days to come.

One of those children grew into a general whom many would fear, the general led many battles in the tree’s valley. The tree knew him before his first inhale of life, as his mother had once laid upon blankets tied from its hanging mane, beneath its shade, resting in the shelter of the tree’s arms. There she prayed softly, whispering words of peace and hope for the child she carried. Years later that same child stood beneath the tree’s branches with steel meant to kill, not to produce the bountiful harvests his grandfather once gathered in its valley. The tree remembered that father’s father too, and his father before him, for it had given comfort when the fields were too large to plow in a single morning.

The tree stood through many seasons after those wars were gone, watching the valley slowly quiet itself once again. Snow would gather along the tree’s long arms, and seasons would smooth the scars left by the general’s sword. When the boy first wandered into that valley, he saw only a tall tree and a wide sky above. He could not have known the stories of his future home, nor the dull memories his coat’s zipper would bring the tall, tall tree.

Perhaps it was from this same remembering wood that she now holds close to her heart, as her mother once did, and her mother’s mother did, too. The grain carried their quiet touch through the decades, as though their hands still lingered within it. Each evening she drew the brush through her hair the way they had, a motion familiar, like a memory or a strong case of déjà vu. She could not say whether the tree’s origins were true either, or simply another fairy’s fable her grandfather used to share.

She had been told the wooden suitcase that she traveled with was shaped by her grandfather’s grizzled hands, and perhaps the brush she used each night was carved by them, too. When she brushed her hair, she could almost feel his palm resting gently on her head, steadying the strands as her mother once had. And when she closed the suitcase beside her bed, its joints creaked softly in the night, and she said goodnight to the slow wooden groans as if they were his voice answering her.

“I feel like something’s there”, she said in a somber tone. At an hour unknown to her, sometime between the midnight toll and morning’s dawn, she heard whispers from the top pocket of her wooden suitcase. Were they whispers of grief from the tree she heard tall fairy’s fables from, or were they words of comfort from her grandfather’s chipped hands? Were they memories of the mother, as she said goodnight to the creaks each night too, or were they her own creaks as she grew older and less frightened of the whispers in her room?