Love Thyself Last
Opening Chapter

One

            Out of the corner of his eye. Something written in the bark. He turned to face the tree. Looked closer. No, there was nothing. But looking away, what was that?

            He faced it again, then approached the tree, searching for letters. Touched it, no, nothing there. Took two steps back to get a different point of view. Played his gaze slightly out of focus, looking into the bark, beneath the surface, probing the bark with his eyes. No, no. Still nothing. Strange illusion, though. He could have sworn.

            Looking away again: letters. Or could very well be letters. This time he did not shift his gaze, held the spot, approached the stocky trunk again, the letter still there, and then placed his finger on what seemed the first of several letters. It was almost wholly obscured by bark. Buried. And very old.

            But now he could see it, as if the tree finally consented. The first of four. It was like an old wound, a welt, buried in years and years of subsequent bark. He traced it carefully with his finger, the bark rough as sandpaper. A vertical line, then, at the bottom, angling to the right, half again the distance. An L, then. Could be. He looked closer, searched the fine crevices, the miniature landscape, and in the depth of it saw the foot of the L quite distinctly now. Yes. An L. The stem clear enough, now that he knew what he was looking for—or how to look for it, rather—and there, the foot. An L-shaped scar, well camouflaged, but definitely an L, faintly, as if it had once grown itself into the brown skin, then thought better of it and done it’s best to vanish.

            He stepped away again, farther this time, taking in all of the tree, all seventy feet of it, at least, soaring above him into the overcast sky, still mumbling about rain. Brother, it must be ancient. Took in the huge lower branches, giant arms carved in rock. Ancient, he thought again. He looked back for the L. For a moment he thought he’d lost it again, but there it was. And so were the other letters. He stepped closer again, to about an arm's length, the right distance, the right depth. Looked. The second letter was a D.

            Or an O.

            An L, a D. Capital letters. No, he looked again, that was an O. LO. And a V. And an E. LOVE. That was the first word.

            There were two more, or their shadows, underneath the first. Seven letters, then four again.

            A very short poem, he thought. Or a message. And he read it—letting the letters come to him, as if on their own volition, on the tree's terms:

               LOVE

            THYSELF

               LAST

            He backed away from the tree, five, six feet, stepped on a twig which didn’t as much snap on the moist underground as groaned. He looked down, briefly thinking it had been alive. Saw the twig and just about apologized.

            Looked up again. Now that he knew what was there he could see it well enough and it spoke to him quite clearly. Love thyself last, it said. Then something odd stuck him. The words LOVE and THYSELF—except for the F—were efforts, that was the only word that came to mind, like hard work. The F, however, was slightly different. As if, yes, effortless, poured, smoother. And so was, now that he could discern the difference, LAST. It was as if the writer had finally found his tongue.

            Love thyself last.

            He knew those words, or had known them. They smacked of boarding school. English Lit. The verbatim kind, his growing up kind, rapped knuckles if you didn't. Love thyself last. Milton, was it? Blake? John Ruskin? The Bible? He read the words again. No, he could not place them. Then he wished he had brought his camera.

            He leaned his head back and took in all of the tree again, looking up through it. This oak—it was an oak, wasn’t it? Yes, he was pretty sure—was indeed very old. How old do they get anyway, oaks? He wasn’t sure. He looked around for others, to compare, to get a sense of relative age, but noticed instead that the clouds had begun to softly keep their promise with a fine, almost misty drizzle. Not cold though, warm for September, pleasant. The kind of rain that makes the ground give up all its secret smells. The faint musk of dead leaves, not quite mulch yet, but well on their way. The fresher scent of things alive, of moss, of berries. The scents of stones, and lichen, and earth, they all mixed and rose into the falling mist and added dimension to the forest, and for a moment he felt as if standing in a strange room, some sort of museum.

            A pleasant drizzle. It would come down harder soon though. He looked again for other oaks, brother trees. A few, but not many. What there were a lot of were beeches. And ash, and willow, and what looked like a birch or two; and, yes, there and there, one, two, he could count five oaks from where he stood, his messenger included. Loners each, outcasts almost, pushing the neighbors away, and none of them all that happy with the company.

            He looked back at his oak on final time.

            The rain, due warning now done with, began in earnest, heavier drops. One found his nose with almost a splash. Time to retreat. In a second. He returned to the words. Ran his fingers over them one last time, as if to commit their hiding place to memory. Off in the distance he could hear a lorry's horn. And from the same direction, faintly, like a river, other traffic on the not so far away motorway. Time he headed back.

Copyright © 2005 by Wolfstuff

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