The Host of The Enchanting Tree

I barter with my words daily. I can only speak into existence a limited amount of things. All other words are ticked against my life. They shatter the time that I have left. So I learned to remain silent for most of the day. I have run true and trial through this vortex of silence that I learned to simply observe.

I am telling you this story as it shaves days and months and even years off of my life. Each word that I exchange with you is a message, a symbol marked with multiple meanings. At times, it may seem like I am contradicting myself. But life is full of contradictions that stump us and slump us and bunch us and throw us down a raging river.

I wasn’t always this way. When I was younger, I would always look out from the balcony attached to my mother’s room and see the sharp tips of the evergreen trees. I would look as far into the distance and possible and take expansive inhales. Though I wasn’t allowed to go into The Forest alone. My mother would warn me of strange women who would lure young women like myself into their homes. My mother used to understand these things, but I didn’t pay it much attention. I wasn’t as concerned with the women. I wanted to eat the fruit of The Enchanted Tree. The Enchanted Tree bears fruit every ten years. This fruit when eaten by a youthful woman receives the ability to wish for whatever they want.

So I went to find the only woman who could do something about this. She is The Host, The Keeper of The Enchanted Tree. The people turn to her when the tables turn on them. As tables do. She keeps the moments, souls, time and words of the people that barter with The Enchanted Tree. This is the brief story of how meeting her changed the course of my life.

When I walked into the structure that just beneath the hill from The Enchanted Tree, The Host was sitting there mixing herbs into a healing tea for her next customer.

“Hello?” I said.

“Come in,” she responded.

As I walked in, there were all different kinds of clocks. Some round. Some square. All moving at different ticks. I could feel Time itself. I knew right then that I could wish for whatever I wanted. So, I wished for something anyone would. I wished for a magical notebook that I could write whatever I wanted and it would appear in my life.

“What can I grant you young woman?” she said at ease.

“I want a book that grants me endless wishes” I requested.

“Well, I’m glad you asked so politely. I have something special for you,” she reached her hand from behind her and pulled out a black book. “This little black notebook changed my life and it will change yours as well. But not before you give me something in exchange for it.” she said.

“What did you have in mind?” I asked.

“Well, we often think about life as though we are novelists, set in as characters and narrators, at once. It is an observation of self. An awareness not easy to come across. It is this way of that life works that makes you and I so deeply entrenched in understanding how everyone else isn’t like us and how we can’t seem to find people who will see us. I think your deepest desire is to be seen. But by being seen you have thus broken character. I am the same. At least in these distances found between us, when I am living, I pause to reflect on myself and know that you are doing the same.” said The Keeper of The Enchanted Tree.

“How do you know these things about me?”

“It is simple. I am The Keeper of The Enchanted Tree. Anyone in possession of this little black notebook, can write their wish in one moment only to receive it in the next. Doesn’t that sound enchanting?”

“Ok, but what’s the catch?” even at that young of an age, I knew better.

“Ask yourself this ‘what is the difference between fantasy and delusion?’” She said.

I knew what she meant and I was ready to bite, “I’m ready. What do you want in exchange?” I asked.

“Nothing major. Just $20,000. Time is money after all,” she responded sweetly.

And with that, The Enchanted Tree took my Time on this earth and gave me a finite number of words. Every word I spoke would be a tick against my time here. No longer were my days counted in minutes or seconds, but the weight of the world was in the number of words.

With silence filling my life, I learned to find pleasure in what others call the mundane. In the last sip of coffee. Or even the first. In the lint that collects on my black hat that I bought from a street vendor in New York because just earlier that day I misplaced my other black hat.

That’s why writing became my way of life. I disciplined myself to write. I can write as much as I want, but not in my little black notebook. That notebook is only for when I want to make dreams come true.