The Forest Gardens

At spring planting in the forest gardens down by the river, where the summer fires had cleared a big patch near the beaver falls, Ash and I were fixing the irrigation systems, while the others planted. It was mostly bamboo piping and drip irrigation that Pop had set up to keep the gardens fed easily. Every spring we had to fix it - patch leaks, clear the tubing, get the system running again. It was not unpleasant, down by the river with a small fire to keep the pine pitch hot, and Ash, although he seldom spoke at length, was someone you could talk to. I held the bamboo steady while he tarred the joints.

"Ash, where do you think people go when they die?"

"Spirit world."

"But the Treebeards visit the Spirit World. Wouldn't we hear from... people?"

"Hear from people?"

"To let us know that they are all right. That they miss us. That they didn't want to... Just to say something."

Ash looked at me strangely. He had started to do that, and it was irritating.

"Anyone would do that, Ash." He could be so dense.

"Maybe when you are dead, those kinds of things don't matter as much. Not like they would to us."

"Well, I don't think they would even be themselves if they didn't want to say something to their... to people left behind. Besides, it doesn't make sense because wouldn't the Spirit World would be crowded? They say half of everyone who ever lived died in the Slippage. That is a lot of people."

"How could it fill up? It is a whole world. Endless."

"No one un-dies, Ash. Here things die and they rot and are reborn from the earth. If not, we would all be standing on top of each other."

"Maybe spirits get recycled, too. Reborn. I have heard that before."

"As what? They say there were thousands of people here once", I thrust my chin at the mounds of  rubble across the river, overgrown with green and dotted with flowers, the humped ruins in a row. "Where did they all go? Are they here now? In the trees? Where?"

Ash was quiet for a long time.

"I think I understand. Let me show you." He put down the piping we were working on, and picked his way along the riverbank to the low falls where the bamboo pipes were fed from the beaver pond. A bamboo pipe that needed fixing gushing water back into the river, spitting an intermittent spray out of a crack in the side. Ash put two fingers over the leak.

"Spirits are like clouds, right? Like vapor, insubstantial. Maybe, like clouds, they can be squeezed into something like water, that takes up less space." I didn't understand what he was talking about.

"Listen, Allie, you hear the water rushing through this pipe?", we both leaned close to the dripping bamboo, to hear the gurgle of water flushing down from above. "Like spirits, they move through our world, but we can't see them, can't reach them, just hear their presence. They don't take up space, it is like they are not there at all." I leaned closer. Ash covered the the open end of the pipe, and the sound of gurgling water stopped.

"And sometimes you can't hear them, but they are still there, somewhere." I nodded, even though it still didn't make any sense. Condensed spirits?

"And sometimes, at just the right place and the right time, the right person can open their eyes..." Ash leaned closer, and finished in a hoarse whisper, "... and find something that takes their breath away!" He moved his fingers off the cracked wood, and icy water sprayed out into my face.

I was trying so hard to understand what he was saying that it took me a moment to react, and I was drenched.

"You idiot!", I bellow, and shoved him as hard as I could with both hands. He was laughing so hard he simply toppled to the ground, doubled up with delight. I was furious. I almost kicked him there on the ground, but instead grabbed his leg, and dragged him toward the river.

"Allie- wata- spirit- ". He really couldn't speak. Even after I rolled him down the bank and into the water, he came up laughing, shaking his long hair down his back and wiping the water off his face.

"Allie, that was the funniest --"

"You are such an asshole! I was serious. I thought you were trying to tell me something important!"

Ash looked somewhat sheepish as he waded out of the shallows, dripping. "I'm sorry, Allie. I have no idea what goes on in the Spirit World, and I really don't think anyone does. You get too wrapped up in these things. Besides, you should have seen the look on your face!"

"Just like the look on your face the next time we go hunting, and you get an arrow in your back!" I snorted, and back toward the garden without waiting for a reply, determined to never speak to him again. The rest of the day he seemed apologetic, though, and told me story he had heard once from Aunt Maggie, when he was a child. Aunt Maggie wasn't really anyone's aunt, but we all called her that, and she knew more about plants and growing things than almost anyone. The story was called The Cave in The Mountain at the Top of the World. It seems that during the Time of Dreams, there were a few wise men who dedicated their lives to the wisdom of plants, such as it was in those days. And some of these understood that there were things that even they could not understand, and dangers their technology could not undo, and these men traveled to the top of the world, where it is always cold and the sun is tiny and far away, and they dug a magic cave in a frozen mountain, deep into the earth that never thaws. And they brought seeds of every plant and fern and flower from the whole world, and worked their magic on them so they would sleep forever in the icy darkness, and they sealed the cave, and burned all the maps and never told anyone how to find the magic cave. They are sleeping there still, curled tight and dreaming, the seeds of the whole earth, waiting.

The story was so interesting that I completely forgot to be angry with Ash.

"When I was a little boy, when we were always hungry, I used to pretend that I would go and find the magic cave, and bring back seeds for the People, so that no one would be ever be hungry again. Maybe someday I will." He laughed, as if to say, 'Who could be so silly?', but I knew him better than that, and I could see that he still dreamed of the far north, and the search for the secrets of life. At that moment, I though he was the most beautiful person I had ever known. Just for a second.