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On the Branches of the Great Tree

In a fantasy world, all of society lives on the branches of a single enormous tree. But when a power-struggle changes the political landscape, someone has to find out what the true landscape looks like.

By Littlewit PhilipsPublished 3 years ago 5 min read
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On the Branches of the Great Tree
Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

The Cult of the Ancient Mother claims that humans weren't made to live in the branches of the Great Tree, but I don't buy that. Believe me. I've seen most of the Great Tree, from the upper canopy down to the lowest branches. At the risk of implicating myself, let's say that I've been around when people got forcibly removed from the lower branches of the great tree, and when they fell they just kept falling until they disappeared in the swirling grey sea that billows around the great tree's trunk.

Where did those unfortunate bastards go? I figure it's the same place the sun goes at night, but I'd rather not find out for myself.

The Cult of the Ancient Mother says that there's a whole world below the grey sea. It's a place as solid as the Great Tree's branches but as wide as the sky. It sounds crazy, but what do you expect from the cult?

"If there was such a place," I asked one particularly outspoken cultist, "why would we be up here?"

"Because of the terrors."

"The terrors?"

He lowered his voice. "Their true name must never be spoken, even up here. It would be too dangerous."

He went on to paint a picture of monsters so vile that humans retreated up into the Great Tree. The Great Tree took pity on us, and when the terrors came the Great Tree shed all of its lower branches so that we couldn't be followed. The terrors could still smell us, so the Great Tree grew tall until the terrors lost our scent.

"But we have to return," the cultist told me. "Because someday the Great Tree will die, and when it does..."

I've seen lesser trees fall. They catch the wind, and their willowy trunks bend until they snap or their roots loose their grip on whatever crevasse they've grown from. I've seen pear trees fall, cherry trees turn to splinters, and so on. But that couldn't happen to the Great Tree.

"It will," the cultist said. "And when it does, anyone who is still up here will go down with it."

I dismissed him, and when he offered to pay me to help him put together a voyage to the world beneath the swirling grey sea, I told him to take his offer to someone with as tenuous a grip on reality as himself.

If I'd had my way, that would have been the end of my association with the Cult of the Ancient Mother. After years of scraping, I'd earned the position as the chief bodyguard to the head of one of the Tree's big families. Of course you don't get a job like that with clean hands--remember what I said about seeing people get tossed from the lower branches?--but I was ready for it to pay off.

Now, you need to understand that I am a bastard. I don't officially belong to any of the big families, so I knew I was never going to earn a place at the table, but a well-respected bodyguard carries some weight, doesn't he? I was living in someone else's shadow, but it's still cool in that shadow. So I carried my bowstaff, and I cracked the right skulls, and I clung to the Tree's branches. I expected to spend the rest of my life watching the Great Tree's leaves fade and fall from my master's shadow, and if he'd trusted me with his confidential information, maybe it could have worked out that way.

"This cult," he said to me once. "You've had dealings with them?"

"Yessir."

He didn't even bother to glance at me while he spoke. He was sucking the meat out of an egg and watching the sunrise over the grey sea. "What was your impression?"

"They're a cult," I said. "Bunch of paranoids."

"That's just about how I feel." He tossed the empty egg away, and we went to work.

Only when the attackers jumped us did I realise that he'd known more than I did. It turned out that the cult had warned him that the other big families had gotten tired of our branch and decided it was the end for us. They fell from higher branches like acorns or the fruit from the lesser trees. I fought, well, like a bastard, but I could only fight so hard.

You ever seen a pear splatter?

Well, they tossed my master, and he collided with a branch well-down the Tree's trunk, and his head burst open like a pear falling from a tree. Gross stuff, but at least his end was quick.

The other families had decided to exterminate the cult too, and the cult had been looking for allies. Maybe if my master had taken them seriously he wouldn't have split open like a bit of fruit, but there's no point in thinking about that now. The family I worked for was being pruned, and the cult would be next, so I made a run for it.

So how did you catch me?

Where's the cult now?

I don't know.

See, I got to the cult's headquarters down in the lower branches, and I saw the supplies they'd gathered. Ropes, baskets, all that stuff. When I told them that the pruning had begun, they got into motion. They said they'd need muscle down below the grey sea, and they offered to bring me.

Maybe I should have gone.

But I saw those ropes swinging down into the grey sea, and I saw your bastards coming, and I had a choice to make. I could face the bastards I knew, or I could go down beneath the sea and see if there really was a world of terrors and all of that. Me, I think the Great Tree is all there is. I expect they descended, and they kept descending, and eventually they realised there was nothing, but it was too late. That's what I think.

Still, I haven't slept since I saw them go. I'm sure your jailers told you that already, but that's why. Because like I said, I've seen the lesser trees die, and if those crazy cultists were right, maybe someday the Great Tree will drop too. And if it does, the squabbles between the big families? That'll be nothing. We'll all be toothpicks, and the Cult of the Ancient Mother can pick through the lumber and find our bones.

Fantasy
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About the Creator

Littlewit Philips

Short stories, movie reviews, and media essays.

Terribly fond of things that go bump in the night.

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