Sometimes, if I’d been bad, or even when I hadn’t, Pa would lock me up inside an old oak tree deep in the woods. A proud and terrifying tree it was, with a deep, hollow trunk and an opening like the mouth of a cave where someone in the olden times had fixed a barred iron door. For hours I’d sit in its damp, musty belly, itching and shivering as a hundred tiny legs crawled about my ankles and neck. If you were to ask me now, I could tell you what’s creeping across my skin just by how it feels – whether spider, beetle, or woodlouse; but not then. You see, in the beginning I was afraid of the other things that shared the dark with me. 

My first imprisonment was just after Ma died of the White Plague. With her gentle, calloused hands and scent of garden herbs, she placed a halter on my father’s rage and sadness; but when she died, the animal in him chewed through its tether. I don’t recall my crime, but I do recall that when Pa let me out me an hour or so later, he found me sobbin’-like with a stain down my trousers. For my shame, I got a thrashing. 

By my third imprisonment, I no longer felt such terror, tho’ I dared not let my father see. I learned to act afear’d, yet never so much as to unman m’self in his eyes. I was so good at it, I might have joined a troupe! From time to time, I believe I saw remorse in his eyes, and for a few hours he’d speak low and kindly-like before self-pity and the whiskey took over and his temper returned. Then round and round like a maypole dance he’d go, in ever tighter circles till loathing closed a fist around his humour. You see, no one was allowed to suffer more than Pa. Anger was his privilege, and I was the vehicle for his justice. No doubt he’d have carried on in this way till I became an image of his rage, authored by him against the world; only the oak tree had other plans. 

In the village where I went to school, which is to say while Ma was still alive, there were stories about how the tree came to be the way it was. To listen to the blacksmith’s boy, it’d been struck by lightning during a terrible storm. After that it was used as a prison for poachers, highwaymen, and other scoundrels. The minister’s daughter told another story. If she were to be believed – and she claimed to speak God’s honest truth – it was meant as a prison for the Devil himself. The wood, she said, had been sealed with spells and the bars blessed by Thomas Beckett, so the only way the Devil could escape was to burn his way down to Hell. 

Either way, it seemed a fitting place for a boy such as m’self. Of course, it didn’t help to think of the Devil and his journey down to Hell, not while I was locked up, but for the poachers and highwaymen I felt a soldierly kinship and played at trading stories with them as the tree listened in silence. I played other games too. Once I’d gotten used to them, I’d gather up insects from the wet and wormy leaves and make little armies, calling this the army of Crumbwell and that the army of the headless King.   

None of which is to say I enjoyed my prison, but I learned to understand its ways and found I could bear them. That is until the second year after Ma’s death. 

Ma died in the Autumn as the leaves were first browning, and all the changes that came upon the land afterwards seemed to me a consequence of her having left it. Two years later, as the earth turned again towards that season, the fields and the forest began to rust; the days darken’d, and my father’s mood turned likewise. For months he’d been like a bawling infant with a whiskey jug for a tit; only instead of filling him up, the bottle had deepen’d his hunger. Now he became a howling brute, longing for escape from whatever rags of humanity still clung to him. Night after night, he’d come home with bruises like an evil blossom on his face. I’d find him insensible, slimy with snot and tears, and I’d think about locking him up in the tree, or sometimes darker notions. Yet pity always got the better of my disgust. 

I’d have left him to it, only with the winter approaching, we barely had any victuals. Pa worked with his hands any way he could, whether wood or metal or in other men’s fields, but given as the only things he’d used his hands for of late were lifting a flagon or punching men’s faces, our cupboards were empty. Usually, he kept me busy with whatever lowly tasks he didn’t want to do, but I knew the men he worked for, and it was easy enough to go knocking. And so, while my father was drinking or passed out on the floor, I was out working to keep some small nourishment in our bellies. What little I earned, I hid under a floorboard to keep him from drinking it. I should have been more careful. 

I don’t know where he thought the stale bread was coming from, but I s’pose he had an awakening. After an afternoon’s gleaning, I came home to find him dangerously sober, which is to say drunk, but with enough wit to catch ahold of me. He was sat at the table with eyes like burning flint as I placed my sack down by the door. A few dirty coins lay on the table, and to see how he glared at me, you’d have thought they were the silver pieces of Judas himself. 

I took my seat like a condemned man. Pa’s knuckles strained white, and before I could flinch, he’d dashed the table aside and knocked me from my chair with a blow so hard it flashed across my peepers like fire sparks. 

“D’you take me for a fool?!” He growled. 

“No Pa,” I said as earnest-like as I could from my new place on the ground. He stood over me with his knuckles at his side like white conkers all strung together. 

“Thieving little bastard!” He snarled, hauling me up by my shirt. 

I shook my head, as powerless as a hare in a fox’s teeth. “No Pa. I an’t, honest…”

“Don’t lie to me!” He said, lifting a hand threatenin’-like.  “Where’d you get them coins?”

“I gone and worked for ‘em,” I squeaked from my puffy red face. 

“I said, don’t lie to me boy!” He bellowed, and I could smell his breath, already rank from the bottle. “Filthy thief. Your Ma’d be ashamed.”

She’d have been ashamed of him, but I didn’t say so, valuing my life as I did. 

“I worked for it,” I said. “Honest Pa. Ask in town.”

“Oh aye?” He scoffed. “An’ who gave you this work?”

I told him and he loosened his grip as he chewed the news over. I could see the ropes of his neck twitching and I knew the respite wouldn’t last. 

“So it’s that way, is it?” he said, low and mean-like. “Goin’ behind my back the first chance you get…” He took a breath, gathering the rage up in his chest.

“We’d nowt to eat,” I said desperate-like. “We needed the money…”

“I s’pose you’re the man of the house now?”

I bit my lip and kept quiet. 

“Don’t think I can’t see what you’re up to. Thought you’d run away, didn’t you?”

“It’s not like that Pa.”

“Ditch your ol’ man and piss his good name up the wall while yer at it?” He gripped my collar roughly.

“Dun’t need me for that,” I mumbled and the words were out of my mouth before I could think. I was as shocked as him, and for a heartbeat we hung motionless, like we’d plunged together into freezing water. Next moment I’m flapping and kicking like a man on the end of a noose as he drags me out into the evening. 

“You little shit-sack!” He roared, pulling off his belt as I tried to squirm free. “How dare you speak to me like that, an’ after everythin’ I done for you!”

The first lash struck with a hot white light and half a dozen more swiftly followed. When he’d finished, he picked me up and dragged me into the forest. “Ungrateful little turd. I’ll show you what we do with a turncoat who don’t have no loyalty to his kin.”

My face was swollen and slick with tears and snot as he threw me into the prison oak and slammed the gate shut. 

“You mark my words, boy,” he growled through the bars. “If work’s what you’re after, work’s what you’ll bloody well get. Meantime, I hope you like your lodgings for the night, cos you’ll be needin’ your strength come mornin’.”

I shuddered. He’d never locked me up overnight, and tho’ I was glad to be rid of him, I was heartily fright’d of the woods after dark, what with all the stories they told about them. 

As my father stomped off through the twilight, I slumped into the tree’s belly with my body desperate sore-like. The longer I sat, the more those little flowers of pain bloomed across my body. Already the shadows were creeping out like goblins from the trees, but I was too exhausted to be fearful. Resting my head against the old oak, I closed my peepers and sank into a bottomless sleep.

When I awoke, it was black and cold. My body hurt and my face felt big and clumsy. The trees looked like people whispering in the dark, and except for a few stars between the leaves, it was like staring into the black of a well. Shivering, I hugged my knees and listened to the woods, trying not to think of the story the minister’s daughter told. Terrible noisome it was, full of creaks and hoots and shrieks that made my heart leap. But what came next was worse: a shambling-like, not of anything as walks on four legs but of something more like a man, creeping and moaning as it went, with a ghostly light like a will-o’-wisp.

Till then I’d never been glad to see my father, but when he came stumbling through the trees with a lantern, I was close to joyful. He was moaning and burbling with his face wet from sobbing. I feigned upset, tho’ truth be told, I didn’t have to pretend all that much. 

“My boy,” He slurred. “O my boy! What have I done?” He staggered into the clearing and the light sent up all manner of shadows. I thought I saw one large one slip across the light behind him, moving in a funny way not like the others. 

“A wretched swill-belly is what I am!”

“No Pa,” I lied. “You’re not as bad as that.”

“No, I am. I am.” He took a slug from a bottle he had gripped by the neck. “When I wakes, I says to m’self, you are no Christian man. This is not how a Christian man conducts hisself. But I gots the devil in me, just like me own pa. But not you. You’re a good lad and I don’t blame thee for wanting to run. But can you bring yerself to forgive me, lad? Can you forgive your old father even tho’ he dun’t deserve it?”

“Aye Pa,” I said, pretending I meant it. 

“Please don’t go,” he said miserably. “I’ll be a better man. I’ll be a Christian man I promise. You see I loved her, I did. An’ I an’t never had nothing good before her. Not one thing.”

He belched and staggered, forgetting himself. 

“Can you forgive me, boy? You’re a good lad. Not like your old pa…”

He was reeling now, and he must have hit a tree root because the next moment he was tumbling back with his arms flailing. He landed hard, with a thump and a terrible groan, and then he was still. I called out, but he just lay there like a sack of taters, and I could do nowt to rouse him. 

Sitting back, I stared at the shape that was my father as the lamp guttered and the shadows gathered like hungry dogs. As I waited in that black hour, still so far from morning, I recalled the shadow I’d seen crossing the light behind him and found m’self troubled by an evil thought, that whatever it was had come for him, to collect on a debt long-owed. 

It was the longest night I’d ever known, and when dawn cracked like an egg o’er the treetops, my father hadn’t moved from his resting place. Now as the light seeped slowly through the branches, I saw that likely his moving days had passed, for his face had a waxy sheen and neither yelling nor the stones I threw could prove otherwise; all they did was stir up the flies already burring around him. I s’pose the fall had done him in, or else some apoplexy from drinking. 

Seeing him that way, I felt some modicum of pity, even regretful-like, but no great sadness. Truth be told, I’d often imagined the day when I’d be free of him. Yet the mirth of it, whether God or the Devil’s, was cruel and bitter, since the key to my prison hung on his belt many arms’ lengths away, and whether by arm or stick, or by using my breaches as a rope, I could do nowt to reach it. 

Once I’d given up on the key, I shouted till my throat was raw and the sores that’d outlived their maker split anew. But it was useless. Deep in the woods we were, with no road or byway and no farm within earshot. I tried picking the lock and levering the bars, but nothing could budge that dungeon iron. Likewise, though I could scratch at the earth beneath, I soon hit tree roots, which proved as hard as brick. And so, with nowt left to do, I set m’self the task of surviving till luck, God or the Devil should deliver me. 

So my life in the tree began. 

By now I was spitting feathers with thirst, and the only drop to drink was my father’s rag water, which lay where he’d dropped it a short way from his person. There were no branches long enough and so I tried my breaches rope-wise, but even with my shirt and coat tied together and me shivering almost naked, the end just flapped against the bottle. 

After setting m’self to pondering, I hit on the notion of using my shoes like a grappling iron. I tied the laces fast together, secured the rope to the middle and flung them out as far as I could. First and second time, they fell short, but on the third they landed past the bottle, and when I tugged, the boots nudged it along with them. A slow, tedious business it was, but after much effort, the bottle came within arm’s reach.

Any relief I might have felt was snuffed out as soon as I caught a whiff of those awful dregs, yet I forced down a mouthful, and tho’ it did little for my thirst, with its burnin’ o’ the guts, the liquor at least distracted me. It also went straight to my head, so that by my third sup I was talking to the tree like an old pal, lolling against it as I rambled and sang all the rowdy songs I knew, my heart filled with a peculiar affection that crumbled at last into tears as I cried like a babby for all that’d come to pass and for all that might have been: for my father and his failures, for my mother, and lastly for m’self, who’d come to such a sorry end as this. 

I cannot say how long I lay like that, but with the drink and the length-some business of the day, my peepers grew heavy and I slipped into a dreamless sleep. When I came to, it was dark and dreadful cold; my head was pounding and my mouth as dry as coffin dust. I needed to pass water, but thinking on my situation, I drank what little remained of the horrid liquor and emptied m’self into the bottle instead, thinking it a frank improvement. Terrible bleak I felt now. Along with the cold, hunger gripp’d my guts, but not seeing any fix till morning, I drew whatever old leaves I could find around me and let the last of the poison send me back into a stupor. 

I awoke with the early light shining into my prison and leaf shadows flapping like wings against the rear wall. Stamping against the cold, I tried my luck again at hollering before sitting back to watch the day clamber from its sheets. To distract from the ache in my belly and the dryness of my throat, I carved my name into the wood and took to gabbing with the criminals who’d shared that place in the olden times. 

Time passed with no bettering of my expectations, so that by the afternoon, I was rummaging through the leaves for anything I could find to eat, from sour little ants, to grubs and crunchy woodlice. I even munched on an acorn or two from the ground outside the bars, but they were terrible-bitter. On top of all that, I felt a dreadful melancholy, and desperate as I was, I even took to praying. But no answer came, only the whispering of the leaves; and so I called out to the oak tree instead, pleading for whatever help it might offer. 

Up till then, I hadn’t the guts to drink from my piss bottle. I was thinking hard on it when I heard a tippy-tap outside and saw that the sky was slatey grey with rain. Eagerly tipping out my bottle, I placed it to catch such drops as came from above and used my shirt to soak up water from the trunk before wringing it out into the bottle. As soon as I had enough, I slugged it all back as if ‘twere the finest ale any man ever brewed. 

By the time the rain stopped, I’d filled my bottle and drunk my own fill as well. I felt much improved, tho’ my shirt was too damp to wear, so that when night arrived, I was shivering in my bones, dreaming of crackling fires as I pulled the leaves around me as best I could. Fixing one problem, I’d created another, but at least I wasn’t thirsty. I thanked the oak tree for my deliverance, and as I slipped into a shivering slumber, the leaves whispered in my ear like my ma’d done when I was a wee thing. 

The day and night that followed were filled with hunger. As my father sank further into the weeds, I lay starving in the belly of the tree. Desperate as I was, I munched again on the acorns, forcing them down in spite of their bitterness. Along with the hunger, I was bored to the point of madness, and suspected that if I ever got out, they’d have to lock me straight up in bedlam. I daydreamed of the girls in school I’d a fancy for. I thought of what few friends I had and the games we’d play. I wandered through all manner of daydreams, but always they came back to food and fire.

Towards the afternoon, whether from the rotgut, the cold or something I’d eaten, my guts were twisting, and I had terrible times seeing to my business. Shivering cold I was, with beads of sweat on my brow, and my thoughts didn’t feel like my own. As the evening began to settle, I looked out from the bars and it seemed to me that the trees were all gathered around, peering at me like a babby in a crib. It was the queerest thing, and as my mind raced with fever, I swore I heard my father’s voice on the breeze, crying out painful-like. 

Even as the voice fell away, something came stepping beneath the trees on the far side of the clearing. I wondered if it might be my father, awaken’d in spite of everything, only the sounds were too hard and heavy and I s’posed that whatever made them had hooves, tho’ for certain it was no ox or horse. Hiding my face, I prayed that whatever it was might pass me by, but when it drew near, I couldn’t resist a peek through my fingers. I looked just long enough to see something big and dark outside the door before I hid my eyes again, praying to the tree for deliverance. 

After a time, when nowt happened, I ventured another peek, holding my breath as best I could so as not to draw attention; only with what I saw, I whimpered like a babby, for it looked to me as if two sharp white eyes were peering in through the bars. In a fit of terror, I clutched at the walls, and it seemed that the old tree drew me close, swaddling me in leaves and soil and soothing me with the sigh of its branches. Still I dared not open my peepers, and lay there damp with fever sweat till I fell into a haunted sleep filled with violent and noisome dreams that seemed as real as waking. I dreamed of wild animals thundering through the dark overhead, panting, steaming, and bellowing, with a clamour of whooping and baying that followed in their wake. 

When I awoke, a mist clung to the trees and I’d never heard the world so silent, as if all had turned to stone. Nothing stirred in that grey yonder but the leaves falling through the mist, as grey and silent as fire ash. It was hard to tell, but I s’posed it was right before dawn. Nothing remained of my night-terrors, and most peculiar of all, I found my pain and thirst no longer troubled me. Something had changed while I slept. Time no longer passed as it had before, but like water, quick and easy-like, with none of the boredom I’d felt before. I watched the leaves tumble through the mist; and when the mist had cleared, I watched the sunlight lance through the leaves; and when the sun had set, I watched the stars pierce the sky; but when darkness came, I must have fallen again into a slumber of sorts, because what I saw was not of the waking world. 

The moon was a bowl of sour milk between the branches when I heard the great stamping again, not from any one place but many at once, and looking out, I saw the trees churning in all directions as a river of infernal shapes charged through the sky, steaming and snorting with what looked like wild riders and their hounds in pursuit, all whooping and howling, so low they brushed the tops of the trees.  

I watched in dreaming wonderment till something caught my eye on the far side of the clearing and I fell back in terror. It wasn’t the beast I’d seen the night before, but something tall and powerful, man-like in shape and movement only unlike any man I’d seen on this earth. He was as tall as the lower branches, with antlers like the stags on the lord’s land up-country, and tho’ I couldn’t see his face, he was dressed in heavy furs and his eyes were white like the morning star. 

With a groan, my gate swung open, and fright’d beyond measure I was to have nothing now between me and the giant. Yet he didn’t move; he just stood, as if waiting, in the dark of the trees. I’d only to step out to be free of my prison, but I found I couldn’t move. Till then, escape had been all I’d wanted, only it seemed treacherous now after all the oak had done for me. The tree had been my church, my salvation when God and the Devil had made me their plaything. 

Would I join the hunt? The giant waited for my choice. I recalled the beasts of the sky and wondered if whatever had come for me in my fever rioted with those same beasts; my father too perhaps, as tormented and beast-like as he’d ever been in life. Now I beheld that only time might separate hunter and hunted, and seeing in this light, I knew my choice was made. And so back into the tree I stepped and watched as those royal antlers turned slowly away and were swallowed by the dark.

I do not recall waking from my dream, but the time that followed was as peaceful as any I’d known. I fed on the acorns from the tree and drank the rainwater from my bottle, which seemed never to run dry. Since the gate no longer barred my way, I climbed the trees to watch the birds and the clouds, or to see the moon rise in the evening. Nothing troubled me, till one afternoon two men in workers’ clothes appeared in the clearing. Back into the oak tree I ran and watched as they paced back and forth, inspecting the place where my father lay and conversin’-like in solemn tones. Next they came peeping into my tree with their brows all fretted; yet by some good fortune, they did not see me. Serious-like, they left, and sometime later the minister arrived. He said some words I couldn’t hear, waved his soft minister’s hands and had the men take Pa away, ragged and skinny-bones as he looked now, no longer Pa but something more of the woods. Afterwards, they returned to my tree, and using Pa’s key to open it – locked as it now seemed – they removed a ragged bundle, tho’ I could not rightly tell what it was. At last, their business taken care of, they bothered us no more. 

In the days that followed, I watched the trees stripped of their leaves till the branches were like bones against the winter sky. Then nowt stirred in the winter wood till the first flakes of snow arrived, tumbling like the leaves had done, as if the sky were shedding its own summer skin. Silent, dark and cold the woods were now, and I slept in their frozen arms, dreaming of Ma and the quiet of my nursery.  

I cannot say what stirred me or how long I’d been slumbering, but when I woke again it was evening, with a powdery light that coated the forest like bronze dust. In this light, the trees no longer looked like mouldering bones but like something on the edge of waking. That was when I caught sight of her moving on the far side of the clearing. Fearful I was at first, only there was no monster or antlered giant. Truth be told, I cannot not say what I glimpsed, but when I turned to look, it was gone from the clearing in a single graceful movement, leaving only a trail of greeny-black that twisted and curled behind it. Clearing the crusts from my eyes, I hurried to the edge of the clearing and spied a distant woman, or so she seemed, strange and graceful in the coppery dark of the trees, with a long garment trailing behind. I called out to her, but she continued on her way.

Tho’ I strongly wished to follow, I turned to regard my oak tree, which stood contented-like in its cold ground with its branches still bare from the winter. After all the time I’d spent escaping it, I felt grieved now to be leaving. I had loved it, and, in its way, it had loved me too. This prison had been a home, and tho’ some part of me would remain, I had a notion that I was becoming something different to what I’d been before. I no longer felt like that boy, but like something born from his bones, which had burrowed into the soil like tree roots. 

With a sad farewell to my tree, I turned to the woods and saw movement in the gathering dark. Hurrying after her, I glimpsed a woman in mossy-green with what seemed like small horns atop her head. Always ahead of me she stayed, stepping lightly and swiftly on sinuous limbs. Something in her movements was old, familiar-like, tho’ I could not place it; but most remarkable of all, was that wherever her feet touched the forest floor, leaves and flowers sprang from the frost-hard ground. So too as she slipped past the trees, the branches burst into leaf like skeletons reskinned.  

On my own light steps, I followed her through the forest, neither losing nor gaining ground, yet ever on the verge of both, till the trees thinned and I came to the edge of a field filled with high grasses that churned in the cold moonlight. Tho’ I’d followed her to the edge of the field, I could not see the woman of the wood and guessed she’d continued into the grasses. Everywhere I looked, the land seemed to be waking, as I too had awoken, as if reborn, from the belly of the oak tree. My limbs felt long, my chest full as I walked out amongst the rioting grasses, a child of the woods now become a man.