Weather Tree

Image "Seasonscape" by The Artists at Romantically Apocalyptic or see it on their Deviantart page

When the tree sprouted it was clear that it was a special tree. By the time it was six months old, the weather on one half of the tree was a full month ahead of the other side. The trend continued, but slowed as the tree aged, and the time differences approached six months, and by the time the tree was three years old, it was half a year difference as near as anyone but Old Man Tom could tell. He said it had a couple weeks to go yet, but very few listened to Tom in those days. The weather effect dimmed by distance, till everything was normal, but that didn't stop it from ruining Bill Rendik's field.

Before long, Bill, he blamed the tree, figured if he cut it down, all his problems would be gone. So Bill had his son Frank, the one they used to call Franklin before he grew up so big and decided  Franklin wasn't a man's name, which in all fairness, did you ever know a man called Franklin? Anyhow, Frank went and he broke two axes and a saw on it, but then he realized, it was just a sapling, it didn't have roots that deep, and he just ripped it straight out of the soil.

Then they ran into the problem of where to put it. No farmer wanted it, it'd ruin fields. Any town square became impossible to stand in on half of it. If you tried to lay it on its side, The Tree just righted itself. Stood straight up and after some time had passed, started taking root. For a while, the farmers took turns, and that caused an absolute shortage 'cause it ended up killing every part of every field they put it in.

Then they put it in the forest, but when the Duke rode through on a hunt, and his best horse broke it's front legs? Oh no no no. He didn't even give them the meat he was so angry. He took an extra ten percent of their yield.

It was a good year, a very good year, and they barely survived between the punishment from the Duke and the damage to the fields. Most of them made it, but a couple of the older or younger members had rough times, and they lost Old Man Tom's wife. They tried to bury it, and they tried to trick it, point winter into the ground, but it rose up through the soil, and it got stronger and stronger at righting itself until it broke whatever restraints they put on it. Walls didn't help, the weather went right through them. A traveling merchant bought it, but his cart stopped halfway to the next town. Horse simply couldn't move it. When he tried a second horse, the tree ripped itself out of the cart and the horses ran a full three miles before he could get them unspooked. He spent several more days trying to figure it out, but ended up leaving it in the road.

By the time the tree was done with the road, the ice made it impassable. There was simply no crossing, no trade. It was too expensive to visit the poor little town. By the time they realized what was happening, it took them a week and a half to move the tree, just like the first time. But the ice melted and the road was passable again, and the merchants came back. They ended up putting it back in the hole in Bill Rendik's field, which he wasn't all too happy about, but it was his tree so it couldn't be helped.

"The Tree" Flash Fiction © Ben Clardy V

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.