Don't tell your Secrets to the Jacaranda tree.

I return often to sit beneath the great old Jacaranda tree, it's vibrant purple flowers shamelessly proud of their cultural significance. The Jacaranda mimosifolia is brilliantly lovely, with striking purple-blue flowers and fern-like bipinnate leaves.

It is mostly peaceful here, as one sits musing, lost in thoughts of the tree's global ornamental appeal. "Jacaranda"/ Tupi - Guarani "fragrant" aromatic wood...with large panicles of trumpet-shaped flowers and fruit in the form of flattened capsules housing numerous seeds.

Yet...there is a strange history beneath its beauty.

.............................................

🌑 I. The Origins of the Jacaranda

Long before the town had a name, the land was a crossing place - animals, storms, and people all passed through, leaving little behind. The only thing that stayed was a woman called Daru, who arrived with a tiny bundle wrapped in dusk colored cloth.

Some say she was fleeing. Others say she was following something only she could see, hear or understand. No one knew for sure where she lived...Daru was said to reside in a cave somewhere near the river, but it was just speculation.

What is known, however is that she planted a seed where the crossroads now lie.

...She watered it with river water, diligently carried by her loving hands.

...She spoke to it at night, in a language no one recognized.

And she warned the early settlers...

“Do not ask this tree for what you are not prepared to lose.”

The settlers laughed. Trees were trees. What would this peculiar woman know of such things.

And so they sat and spoke of their lives beneath the tree...they spoke of happiness, love, loss---of unruly children, of hardships, of happy times and disappointments.

The tree leaned in close when they spoke of the children. The people did not notice, or if they did they kept it to themselves, for fear of being branded crazy, or worse...a witch like Daru - or a wizard.

But the first time a child went missing - Daru walked to the sapling, placed her palm against its bark, and whispered, “Not again. Not the children”.

The next morning, she was gone.

The sapling was noticeably taller. ..and no one ever found the child.

Was it Daru...did she take the boy...will she bring him back?

The villagers built their homes around the hope of the return as people always do. They told themselves stories about Daru - witch, wanderer, saint, liar - anything to make the unease manageable.

But the tree kept growing.

It grew... it bloomed early. .. bloomed often.

And never stopped.

🟣 II. The voices of the Village Speak

If you listen- not to one villager, but to all of them at once...you hear a kind of collective confession, though no one would call it that.

The Baker

“I pass it every dawn. I don’t look at it. I don’t need to. I feel it watching. The blossoms stick to my apron even when I sweep them off.”

The Schoolteacher

“The children draw it without being asked. Always with too many roots. Always with a hollow in the trunk. I don’t tell them to stop.”

The Old Woman Who Sits by the Window

“I remember when it was small. I remember when Daru warned us. I remember when we laughed. I don’t laugh now.”

The Hunter

“I’ve seen foxes circle it and then lie down as if listening. I’ve seen birds refuse to nest in its branches. I’ve seen footprints appear beneath it that do not match any creature I know.”

The Mother Who Lost a Son

“When children vanished, I knew the sound of that silence. I knew it in my bones. Is it the tree that takes and never answers. Or is it something else? There is such mystery without that knowledge.”

The Village, All Together

“We live with it. We live around it. We live despite it.

We only speak of it if we must.

And when the blossoms fall, we sweep them away.

And when they return, we sweep again.”

.........

But now. Beneath the Jacaranda Tree - Something else is unfolding.

The tree had bloomed early this year - too early, everyone said. Its blossoms fell in slow violet drifts that clung to the soles of shoes and the hems of skirts, staining everything they touched. Children used to play beneath it, but not anymore. Not since the day Emara stopped coming home.

People still passed the tree, of course. They had to. It stood at the only crossroads leading in and out of the village, its branches reaching wide like a warning or a welcome, depending on who you asked. But no one lingered. No one sat on the low stone wall the way Emara once had, swinging her legs, humming tunelessly, waiting for her brother Tomas to finish his errands.

Tomas avoided the tree entirely now. He took the long way around, even when it meant adding an hour to his walk. He told himself it was because the path was smoother, or because he liked the quiet. But the truth was simpler: he could not bear the sight of the blossoms anymore.

They reminded him of the dress she wore that day.

The search had lasted three weeks. Long enough for hope to thin into something brittle. Long enough for the whispers to start - about the stranger seen near the river, about the old well in the hills, about the jacaranda itself, which some swore had always been hungry.

When the search ended, nothing was found. Not a ribbon, not a footprint, not a scrap of fabric. Just the blossoms, falling and falling, as though the tree were shedding evidence no one could read.

Life went on, as it must. The market reopened. The school bell rang again. The jacaranda bloomed a second time, then a third, each season more lavish than the last, as if fed by something richer than rain and the nutrients of the soil.

Tomas grew older. His mother’s hair silvered. The house grew quieter, its rooms holding their stories. People stopped asking how he was doing. They stopped mentioning Emara at all.

But the tree kept blooming.

One evening, years later, Tomas found himself walking the old road without meaning to. The sun was low, the air thick with the scent of dust and flowers. He saw the jacaranda before he realized where his feet had taken him.

The blossoms lay in a perfect circle around the trunk, undisturbed by wind or passing animals. Too perfect. As if arranged.

He should have turned back. He knew that. But something in the stillness held him. Something in the way the branches leaned, heavy and expectant.

He stepped closer.

The petals muffled his footsteps. The air grew cooler. A faint purring rose from the ground - so soft he thought at first it was his imagination, or grief, or the way twilight sometimes plays tricks on the mind.

Then he heard it again.

A voice.

There were no words, exactly. More like the shape of a voice he had once known. A cadence. An inflection.

Her modulation. His sister's pulsed meter.

He knelt, pressing his palm to the earth. The soil was warm. Too warm.

The voice rose, clearer now, threading through the roots. A plea. The words unintelligible - the voice unmistakable. He closed his eyes. For a moment - just for a moment - he let himself believe.

When he opened them, the blossoms had begun to fall again. Faster this time. Thick as rain. They clung to his clothes, his hair, his hands. They covered the ground around him, erasing the shape of his footprints.

He stood slowly.

The voice faded.

The murmur stopped.

The tree was silent.

Tomas stepped back onto the road. He did not look behind him or run. He simply walked home, petals dissolving under his heels.

By morning, the circle beneath the jacaranda was smooth again. No sign of disturbance. No trace of anyone kneeling there.

The blossoms kept falling.

And the town, as it always had, learned to live with what it could not fully understand.

Still, they waited.