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Annabelle's Pond

and the Base of Libert[r]ee

By M. Michael TRARPPublished 3 years ago 8 min read
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They called it Yggdrasil. Alternatively, the Libertree. And it grew on an island in the center of a large body of water referred to(apparently it was too small to be called a lake) as Annabelle’s Pond. The story goes, a child, a couple of centuries ago, found an unusually large acorn along the banks of the pond. She took the seed, placed it into a used cardboard berry carton, and covered it with earth. She stuck a pencil in the center of the dirt, tied a makeshift paper sail to it, and placed the carton into the water. And from the shore, she watched as the little boat floated to the center of the water.

No one can explain how the tree grew so large, or at all, really, from what could have been a mere two handfuls of dirt. But, one can see from the shore a towering oak emerging from a modest hillock almost smack dab in the middle of the water. Some claim the island moved around in those early days, bumping against the shore, knocking loose soil that accumulated around the roots of the tree as they dangled in the water. Others have said the tree is sentient, that it can move its roots as easily as people move their legs, and it swishes them back and forth, treading water. But everyone seems to agree, the island moves around on its own.

People have taken rowboats, and kayaks, and canoes and rowed to the center of the pond, never seeming to get any closer to the tree than the shadows cast by its overhanging branches. As the vessels inch closer to the far shore, the folks propelling them come to the realization the island is now behind them. Everyone who has attempted this journey tells the same tale: as they passed under the outermost branches, they heard voices, and music, and felt as if they were being watched. When they looked up, all they could see was a dense canopy of leaves.

The only time people can remember anyone coming or going from the island occurred a hundred years ago, during one of those storms of the century. It’s also the reason the island is afloat in Annabelle’s Pond. The newspaper had a picture on the front page. Mrs. Annabelle Jensen stood upon the frozen pond, halfway between the island and the shore, a police car driving on the ice towards Annabelle. Behind her, a figure can be seen running to the island. Despite it being winter, and a particularly cold one, the oak tree in the picture still had a thick layer of leaves on all its branches.

The accompanying story told of Mrs. Annabelle Jensen. She worked as a low level bureaucrat in city hall. Her husband passed his time in the same building in a cell in the basement, serving a sentence on a charge of drug smuggling. Arthur Jensen had been found guilty of bringing pharmaceuticals from Canada and distributing them at a nursing home where he worked as an orderly. Annabelle maintained that her husband had been encouraged by the home administrators to find a cheaper source of the medications used by residents. When the insurance company became aware they were paying more than they needed, the home administrators found a scapegoat in Arthur, who was soon incarcerated.

Annabelle continued to work in city government, but often stayed late to research her husband’s case. While she never found a direct way to exonerate her husband, she did find evidence of collaboration among a pliant judge, the retirement home, and the insurance company. Annabelle copied the files to a USB drive one evening before driving home. She noticed the lights were on in her house and a number of black sedans were parked around her neighborhood.

Annabelle steered her car past her house and onto the state highway just outside of town. She turned off on an unmarked dirt road that led deep into a wooded area. Pulling off the path, she abandoned the car and walked deeper into the woods.

At the time, no one knew what had happened to her. When police followed her trail into the woods, they eventually arrived at the banks of the pond.

The story picks up a couple years later, to the winter of the century storm, when on the coldest night of the year, a jailbreak occurred. Somehow, Arthur Jensen had been freed from his cell in the basement of City Hall. Police tracked him to the same unmarked dirt road, to the same copse of trees where his wife had abandoned her car, to the same side of the pond.

The story told by reporters on the scene said Annabelle Jensen stood upon the ice, blocking the oncoming police car from seeing her husband slipping towards the island. Just as it seemed the car was going to crash into the woman, it collapsed into the water. Witnesses described it as a circle of ice that cracked and caved in leaving a thick ring of ice around the island, and another along the perimeter of the pond. The police car sank to the bottom and lodged itself in muddy sludge.

The next morning, Annabelle’s body was found on a rapidly melting chunk of ice that bobbed at the shore. Investigators dragged the corpse over several yards, during which, the USB drive must have fallen from a pocket in Annabelle’s clothing. The reporter of this story claimed to have found the flash drive on the ground near the edge of the pond.

The librarian keeps that edition of the newspaper loaded into one of the two microfiche readers. She says I’m the only person in town that actually uses them, another relic from a different time. There are hardly any books here anymore. Computer screens provide more light than the overhead fluorescents. And the library itself is relegated to a few rooms in the basement of city hall. It took over the three jail cells once the county outsourced its penal system to a corporate corrections facility.

I show up at the library nearly every day. I walk there, damp and sweaty from working the dish pit at a local eatery, cursing the government under my breath. In accordance with federal regulations, the restaurant paid me a maximum wage. With no compunction to compensate for unlivable wages, most restaurants stopped offering free meals to employees. I don’t even make enough to eat there. I barely make enough to purchase enough groceries to feed myself. I’m glad my wife was spared the sight of me like this.

She passed, must have been five years ago. She caught the flu. Even buying over the counter medicine cut into our food supplies. The consolidation of corporate farms made purchasing staples expensive. The pharmaceutical cartel kept health out of reach for a majority of people. When my wife finally succumbed, she was so thin I could wrap the fingers of one hand around her upper arm.

For the past three years, I’ve started my nightly excursions to the library reading the long article about Annabelle Jensen and gazing at the picture of that elusive island. What did she find out there? What was so important she risked death to get her husband to that tree? Was she running from something? Or towards?

I began researching the weather for the hundred years before Annabelle stood athwart an ice bridge to Libertree, and for the hundred years since. I looked up the temperature of over 73,000 days, writing down patterns of seasonal variance, trying to predict the next century storm.

All the while, my face took a sallow turn. My apartment seemed to be slowly caving in on itself. Cabinets began drooping, pulling out the screws and nails used to secure them to the walls, sagging by their own weight. The wooden doors contracted, creating gaps in the jambs to let in the cold night air. And each evening, I sat in an old stuffed chair, close to the window despite the chill, to watch the outside thermometer creep ever closer to 32 degrees.

Today is the day. The temperature remained just below freezing when I woke. I dressed with a sense of urgency. I put on every item of clothing I could and walked out of my building. I headed in the opposite direction of work, out towards the highway. It would take me all day to walk to Annabelle’s Pond, and I had to be out of the city before my shift started. Employers had been deputized to settle their own truancy issues, but generally wouldn’t pursue someone past town limits.

The snow started while I was walking along the shoulder of the highway. It came down first as large wet flakes, but turned sleety by the time I located the old dirt road through the woods. It was when I finally made it past the trees and caught a glimpse of the pond. Ice began building up on the slushy snow. It took me nearly an hour to slip and slide my way to the edge of the water. Just as I’d hoped, the pond had frozen over.

I gazed out at the center of the pond, and there it was: Yggdrasil, the living tree, even in the cold of winter, its branches were full of leaves. Even in the dark of night, it seemed to give off its own luminescence. Even as I confronted my fears of an oppressive civilization, I stepped onto the frozen pond, and took my tentative first steps to Libertree.

Short Story
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About the Creator

M. Michael TRARP

Citizen of the Universe, Rock & Roll Poet

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