Blind Oak Speaks

Blind Oak was the oldest of the Treebeards, and one of the quietest. The others often discussed his words and their meaning in his presence, as if they were unwilling to disturb him to ask. And maybe they were. Perhaps they should have been - he never volunteered any comment to settle these disputes, and when asked his responses were so bare and indirect that they often intensified the debates rather than wound them down.

Blind Oak was older than anyone we knew, even Grandma Jay. He was older when the slippage started, so he may have understood it better. In any case, he probably mentioned it less than the other Treebeards. Blind Oak was not in the first group that began to gather our People together during the Slippage, but he was one of the first to join them. He got his name in the early years when he was still a young man, and many of the People were dying of lung rot. He went on a spirit journey to seek help. Broad Oak (his name then) was not prepared for such a long, difficult journey, he lacked the experience and guidance of a seasoned traveler, but there was no to teach in those days. He brought back the knowledge that we needed, but was not able to complete the return journey. It some way that even the Treebeards don't understand, his eyes did not completely cross back over. After a few months he began to see in our world again through a monochrome mist, but not the way we do. During the day he is almost completely blind, but in complete darkness he sees better than most.

Many people remembered his infrequent interventions at the Chats, but I always remembered a different event, long ago, when I was a young girl. He and I were mending fishing nets on the high rocks overlooking the water. For every twisted bit of fiber that I untangled, three more wrapped themselves together behind the backs of my hands, and I spent the morning cursing in frustration and working through the same pieces time and again. Eventually Black Oak rose and motioned for me to take his hand. It was like old wood - smooth and dry.

"Allie, show me the path to the tide rocks", he said.

We walked down among the slippery pools, where we cooled our feet, and he pointed out the hiding places of the grumpy crabs (he does not actually see them, he explained, but the eddies of color that mark their sudden state of alarm), ready to battle any who dared to pass. We gathered handfuls of sea snails to boil for lunch in the sun-oven. He told me stories about how he had tried to raise crabs in his home as a child, making me laugh describing his attempts to hand-feed his inflexible little friends. We sat for a while, listening to the waves on the rocks, tufts of grass clinging to the crowns, and he handed me my nets.

He said, "Sometimes, when everything we taste is bitter, the problem is in the tongue", and he smiled so broadly that I could not help but laugh again.

Blind Oak only spoke once about the Slippage at a Chat, as far as I can remember. It was a warm night, and the People were camped on the coast to collect lobsters and crabs. His voice was soft and deep, like far-off thunder on a summer afternoon. His creased ebony face shone darkly in the starlight, as we gathered around the chatstones, warmed all day by the summer sun and the sunlight concentrators Grandma Jay and Pop had designed for our People (because there could be no fire in the Temple Grove). Sometimes his words were run across by the sharp cries of the restless gulls in the rookery on the sea rocks, but I don't think anyone who was there that evening forgot what he told us.

"The Slippage was the second part of the process. It really started years earlier, with the Triple Flu. Perhaps it was a bitter pun, or a warning. Three was the number of protective serums that could be administered at once, to prevent the flu sickness. And three was the number of the scourges that swept across the earth, and for which we had no protection. In the end, the streets were choked with the dead. But that came later, first I will tell you about the origins."

Blind Oak lapsed into a long silence, unbroken except for the cries of the gulls and the hush of the waves and the slurry of the breeze in the leaves over our heads. His silences were as deliberate as his movements; direct, heavy, unhesitating. He looked out beyond the ring of the Grove, and nodded deeply into the darkness. My sister Willow followed his gaze, and smiled like the autumn moon. Blind Oak continued.

"The Spirit People tell this story: When the Dominion of Man had reached its apex, Cat came down from the hills with a message. She entered the House of Man in the darkness, to carry the message to His thralls, Bird and Pig, for they too were to be part of the message, and the reckoning. They were both distrustful of Cat - especially Bird - but after a time she convinced them of her purpose, and that she spoke the truth. And she conveyed to them the message she carried within her. We know this because Rat was there by chance, unseen, terrified to move lest Cat see him, and his people kept this knowledge for many years, until it eventually passed, some of it, to the Spirit People.

Even the Spirit People are ignorant of what the message entailed, or who devised it, for Rat did not understand it well even then. We know that Cat told them that the the time had come to end the Dominion of Man, that He had burned his wounds too deep into the earth for too long. And that they would all pay a terrible price for bringing this about, but Bird and Pig would pay even more dearly for toppling the columns of the House of Man, for their people would perish within the avalanche of stones. And they must pay this price of their own free will.

We do not know how long they contemplated the Message, or what they thought; how Pig lowered his shorn head, so unlike the glorious stiff coat of his wild brethren, or how Bird stretched her flightless wings to seek guidance from her noble ancestors. But we do know that they agreed to pay the price asked, and so are honored among all animals, even above Cat, for their sacrifice. And so was born in each of the three the virus that would bear their name, and would sift silently from one to the other, until they rose again, together, like a torrent to overwhelm the House of Man, and pull it down.

We knew some of the story, even then. My father worked each day in one of the great Palaces of Learning, and helped to place the name to each of the three scourges, although it was already far too late. Although the powers of Man would not be enough to understand the message in time, or the sender.

When the dead were finally put to rest, we believed that the worst had passed. We did not understand that we were now too few to live in the world of our fathers, and thus the Slippage began, slowly, gaining speed like the dark soil falling into the hungry sea. The magic we inherited carried onward, but there were not enough left to guide its power. Some of the wonders faded, bleeding slowly into the Spirit World, others lost their way, drooling gibberish or clever lies, a different one for each listener. Some turned upon us with pitiless ferocity, burning whole cities to the ground, or burying them in poison. And so we struggled onward, each year less. The voices of others across the earth became more distant, we were slowly blinded and deafened as our enchanted eyes shattered, and our mighty ears grew dumb, one by one. We were unprepared for the lung rot, the poxes, the fevers that came among us and laughed at the medicines we could gather. Our children did not have the serums to protect them, and died of things we had never seen, and could put no name to. The hypercanes came, splintering our cities and swallowing the coast..."

Black Oak paused, as his voice skipped and faded. He swallowed and did not speak again for many minutes. The cries of the gulls in the darkness, warnings from scattered ghosts come too late, skittered across my skin and down my back.

He coughed, and drew a slow breath.

"The responsibility of our People now is to the earth, and to the forest that shields her. This is the work that falls to us, to heal the scars of Man, and pay the debts our ancestors have left to us." He said nothing more, but rose quickly, and left the Grove for the evening. He never spoke again about the Slippage to us. Two years later he was killed in a fall on the coast, during the berry gathering. Grandma Jay buried him at sea, with the necklace Willow had made for him years before, and kept watch over the restless waves for two nights, alone.