#aspen tree

Autumn in Coyote Creek

Autumn aspen leaves along the Coyote Creek Road.

Populus tremuloides

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It may seem a barren thing, the range of mountain balds that stretch from Efferet to the mouth of Ely’s Creek, and it is. For there, above the tree line, one may only find the occasional squeak or scurry of the smaller northern muskrat, the sombre whoops and sighs of the wind brushing against the pockmarked limestone and slate, or the rare call of the warbler or—rarer still—the goshawk riding upon the singing wind in search of a home in the stone or a snack that squeals; that is, save for one bald, unassuming in its stature, utterly empty of life, unwilling to announce itself unlike its neighbors, who vie to reach to the sky only to be cast down by the eroding force of their greatest want: to be with God. But it is that very mound that interests us, for on its top visits the last great beast of the ranges—the last mountain god. 

To find it, one must simply search for crests that would appear so plain as to almost evade seeing. But countless eyes watch it like ours watch our God, eyes of blackened wood, knotted and unblinking. The Aspen Tree, the watchers for the woodland wise—vicious, magic things that used to guard the wilderness: snarks and grolls and berry snatchers. Their white trunks dotted on all sides with dark eyes that seek vainly for their old masters. But these days all the magic has dried up, replaced with the clanking of mines and the hissing of steam and the clamor of men cutting down other, thicker trees, and so their eyes watch nothing but us, knowing us as doom: the thing that raped the mountains magicless. But on that one bald, the treeline stands in rapt attention, all of them Aspens who do not have eyes on all sides; their eyes watch the top of that one crest; they watch and wait for their final master: The Seearog.

Though many will tell you of seeings its marks—a breathy wail in the sky on a windless day, a trail left by two tails side by side and too wide and deep to be any reasonable creature, an outcropping of three tall, dead trees in the distance that shudder and reveal themselves as horns—only one has ever truly laid eyes upon it. He was a lumber man, surveying a stretch of woods on behalf of Derymanst and Co., the very same that owns that bank and the bar and the doctor and the camps and trading posts that stretch from Ely’s creek down to Junction. He walked clumsily through the woods, stomping and marking trees for reaping with bloody red paint. It was in a stretch of Aspens that the signs of the Seearog came to him. In shaky words written on the margins of a map, he detailed his concerns that a gale was coming: heralded by the protracted moaning of the forest and the sound of wind scraping the mountains flatter still. He made to pitch a tent under an outcropping of boulders, but he noticed then that eyes of the wood were all upon one side of each trunk—directed towards the nearby treeline— and that there was no wind, nor any cloud in the sky, and that the watcher woods did not bend for some coming storm. They groaned as they bowed. Curious and more than a bit frightened, he left camp and set off up the hill to see what drew their wooden gaze, or so his journal ends.

Days later, a search party sent out by the company found him standing tall upon one of the boulders near his camp: arms outstretched, skin burned by the sun almost into leather (which may or may not have accounted for the cuts made on his body like Aspen stripes). As they pulled him down, he muttered all we know of the Seearog:

Seearog, see me God

Take from me this manly fog

That would the woods see burnt and cut

Cut me instead with horn and tusk

To gaze upon your majesty

The way you are the mountain breeze

For your legged tails and your one eyed head

I’ll stand and watch until I’m dead.

commission of fannon for @elkieselkiewrites

Chapter 30

Ghost Orchid

Aspen Tree

Chapter 1 Plants Chapter 2 Plants Chapter 5 Plants Chapter 7 Plants Chapter 8 Plants Chapter 10 Plants Chapter 11 Plants Chapter 12 Plants Chapter 13 Plants Chapter 14 Plants Chapter 16 Plants Chapter 17 Plants Chapter 18 Plants Chapter 19 Plants Chapter 20 Plants Chapter 21 Plants Chapter 23 Plants Chapter 26 Plants Chapter 28 Plants Chapter 29 Plants