Rooted
Excerpt from an afro-surrealist short story.
…
She laid her hand against the bark of the tree closest to her. Cool to the touch, its ridges velveted with moss, it seemed to grow soft and spongy beneath her palm. A tingle started at her fingertips and buzzed up her arm, similar to yesterday’s shock but different: subtler, more persuasive — an invitation.
She placed her other palm on the trunk, and it was as if a switch clicked, completing the circuit. Warmth enveloped her. She could feel the sap, thick and sweet, rushing through her veins. She could hear the earthworms munching the soil, their castings cool and moist against her roots. And as she stretched up towards the sun and down into the earth, her heart filled with an unfathomable longing, the wind sang — its voices legion — of change; of melting icecaps and expanding deserts; of poisoned water; of kindred, gone; of the circle, broken.
Her brothers and sisters sang too, the wind’s message thrumming through their branches down to intertwined roots.
“Home,” they sang. “It is time to go home.”
Sap welled up, filled her heart to bursting. Yes, it was time to go home.
She could see him in the eternal night of space — the white star, his dwarfed brother throbbing blue at his side.
But her roots could not get free, no matter how she strained towards the sky. Her brothers’ and sisters’ song turned to wailing, even as her own voice cracked and broke, ravaging her throat.
…