Lost voices

Walking alone at night through the blight of concrete and glass, he first felt the whispers of the trees.

But he did not hear them.

Trapped in the web of tar and bitumen that held this industrial labyrinth together, he felt their sorrow. Their loss.

But he did not recognise it, and mistook it for his own. Amid the towering grey walls of dead concrete and sand tortured into glass, it was an easy mistake to make. That feeling of loss must surely be something internal. Something personal. Something belonging to you.

But it belonged to the trees.

He finally recognised it, only after he met the witch.

__

Bent and withered, huddled under an ancient black blanket, thinned to grey from the wear of time, she almost escaped his notice as he walked by in the dark. He almost walked past her, as most people did.

Instead, something made him stop. He could never, as long as he lived, tell you exactly why, but he stopped. He fumbled around in his pocket and retrieved his wallet. He fished around and was somewhat surprised to find the dull glow of coins. He didn't use cash much anymore, coins especially, but here they were in his wallet, totalling exactly $1.75.

With a defeated clang, the coins dropped into the old woman's beggar bowl. Old, dark eyes darted to his face and kept him locked in place. An old, dark voice sent roots down into his soul.

"My thanks, boy. It is a long, long time since any soul showed me any sort of charity. Perhaps I deserve it...or perhaps not. Who can say the punishments or rewards life bestows are just, this side of death?

In return for your charity, meagre though it was, I will tell you something. A story. A secret. A truth that might save your life, or might simply kill you for sheer despair.

It is not much of bargain, granted, but then again, never in my long, long life did I ever make any pretence to being a good witch."

__

Everything alive can become a ghost when it dies, did you know that?

Just because everything can, however, does not mean that they will. Most things don't. Most things become nothing. The greater your level of sentience as a living creature, the greater the chance you have of escaping the clutches of death in the form of becoming a ghost. Did you know that?

It's why you don't hear a lot about amoeba ghosts, for example. Or virus ghosts. Or (to get to the point), the ghosts of trees. You find the ghosts of trees more readily than the others, of course. Trees are a lot more sentient than you think, no matter where you are in the world. But my forest was truly alive. I made it that way. I gave the trees of my forest the gift of thought beyond life. I taught them to speak.

All these years later, I couldn't tell you why, exactly. At the time, I told myself it was for effect. My forest was the deepest, darkest, most dangerous of all the deep, dark, dangerous forests in all the world. Of course, lost travellers should hear the trees whispering in their ears as they slowly succumb to panic, stumbling around the labyrinth of shadow and shade.

To be honest, that particular reason never really rang true, even to myself. It was a lot of effort to go to, just for effect. Perhaps I was bored.

Perhaps I just wanted someone to talk to.

Perhaps I was lonely.

For a while it helped, having so many new things to talk to. And it certainly helped with the ambience of the place. My hut, mortared with the blood of my enemies, standing in the middle of a talking forest. Every witch in the land was envious.

Unfortunately, the trees had minds of their own. They didn’t have much interest at all in doing what I wanted. They talked amongst themselves about the things that interested them, not me. They berated me for chopping firewood and protested my cookfire. Eventually, they fell silent whenever I walked through my own forest, and I heard them whispering behind my back after I passed.

When the angry villagers came with their axes and their torches, looking to burn down the talking forest, I did nothing to stop them.

I let them burn.

But the trees never stopped talking. They died, and eventually the village became a town became a city, but the trees never stopped talking. Their ghosts haunt these streets.

They haunt me.

I gave them their voices, and now I will hear them forever.

__

After the witch told her story, she shared with him the secret she had promised. Then he walked away through the dark of the city.

The witch thought that the feeling of loss that permeated her city was down to the fact she had given her trees sentience, and taught them how to talk before they died. But eventually she realised her mistake in thinking that this was unusual. Her error in thinking trees needed her interference and forced sentience in order to become ghosts when they died.

Have you ever wondered why cities feel so lonely? So full of loss and sorrow? Have you ever felt the fear creep up on you from behind? Felt it looming over you as you walk amongst towers full of greed and empty of life?

Have you ever wondered why cities feel so haunted?

Because they are.

Would it help you, on those nights as you walk through the dark, to know that it is not something internal, something personal, something belonging to you? Perhaps, said the witch. Or perhaps not.

Once, there was a forest here. You walk on streets crowded with the ghosts of trees.