#blaac

“Tree. Later, he learns to distinguish this tree from all the others. He learns its particular name. He plays under the tree. He dances around it. Stands beneath its branches, for shade or shelter. He kisses under it, he sleeps under it. He weds under it. He marches past it on his way to war, and limps back past it on his journey home. A king is said to have hidden in this tree. A spirit may dwell within its bark. Its distinctive leaves are carved onto the tombs and monuments of his landlords. Its wood might have built the galleons that saved his ancestors from invasion! And all this, the general and the specific, the national and the personal, all this, he knows, and feels, and summons, somehow, however faintly, with the utterance of a single sound.”

— Professor Joseph Wright. Tolkien, 2019.

:

It was a quiet and peaceful evening in the countryside. 

The summer sun, not setting in yet, was still a golden orb of ethereal light hanging nicely on the west end of the clear sky, casting a warm glow over the lush pasture and the orchard next to it, quite the scenery provided for the back porch of the Blake’s. A young boy was sitting on the steps, bouncing a younger boy still that was sitting on his knees. 

“D’you know we came from tree nymphs, Tom?” the older boy asked, earning a smile and a hearty laugh from the younger one. 

“Whatsa nyph, Joe?” the younger boy, Tom, asked. His teeth hadn’t quite settled yet, and he couldn’t say the word properly. 

“It’s a tree spirit. Nice kids that play around in the trees,” Joe said. 

At this, Tom’s eyes  sparkled as he turned around to face Joe. “There’s kids playing in the trees?”

In less than a second, Tom leapt off of Joe’s lap and began running towards the orchard, giggling uncontrollably as he did so. Joe followed suit quickly after, not wanting Tom to hurt himself as he sprinted faster than what was safe for him. 

A feminine call was heard from inside the house, sounding concerned. “Where are you going? You’ve just had your bath!” 

Tom was already a long way ahead of Joe as he heard the latter calling back to their mother. “Won’t be a moment, Mum!” 

Tom loved running around through the pasture and climbing the trees in their orchard, but this time was different. Joe just said there were other children hanging around the trees and he was excited to meet them. He never saw anyone there, had he missed something? He’d be thrilled to play with them. 

A few paces next to the cherry orchard led directly to the woods and Tom already lost himself among the trees, calling for the nymphs that he wanted to play with. He could barely hear Joe calling after him from the other side of the orchard, “Tom! Where are you?”

And then—

His right foot caught on a protruded root and little Tom lost his footing. He let out a small ‘oof!’ as he landed on his knees, skin scraping the earth. Joe must’ve heard it, because he appeared from behind one of the trees in the woods before sprinting towards Tom, worry in his eyes. 

His knees hurt and the breaking skin began to throb in rhythm with his racing heartbeat, Tom was on the verge of tears. 

“Oh, no, are you hurt?” Joe asked, already on his knees as he hugged his little brother, brushing off dirt from his hair and his shirt. But then—

Tom was caught off-guard, an expression of confusion written all over his chubby face. Upon running  a hand through his knees, he found no scratch. No cut, no throbbing, nothing, they were alright—

“But I fell,” Tom said in a small voice. 

He looked up to see Joe smiling. “Maybe it’s the nymph!”

Tom gave no more thought of it as he followed his brother back home, eager for dinner. Both of the boys were unaware of a heavenly figure standing just a few stones’ throw away, her scraped knees slowly healing.

:

Tom grew up to be a very playful boy. 

He was vibrant, energetic, and bright. He was boyish in every sense of the word. He came home dirty every evening with leaves on his ruffled hair and dirt on his pants. He got embarrassed and turned the deepest shade of red when his mother hugged him in public. When he smiled, a sweet smile with a hint of mischief underneath and with just the loveliest hint of rosy tint on his cheeks, he lit the whole house up. When he ran through the fields, he was almost as fast as their dog. He was quick to get angry, but he was also quick to forgive. 

But despite his boyish personality, there was something about the quiet nature that seemed to call to him. 

He might never admit it, but there was a reason why he loved rolling through the beds of grass down the hill, why he could climb trees quicker than his friends and reached the impossibly high branches, why he loved lying on a pile of dry leaves in autumn. 

Why he and Joe were not an ounce tired as they took the whole day picking up the cherries from the orchard in the middle of May for the first time, even though they were only small boys, while Emmeline Blake, a grown woman of two sons, looked like she was ready to collapse to bed. 

The woods, the trees, the grasses that danced softly to the evening summer breeze. There was something in it that seemed to be calling him, whispered through his fingertips as he ran his fingers through the rough bark of the highest branch of the oak tree in the woods, far from anywhere his friends dared to climb, vibrating through his bones, whispering through his veins, something—

Something that calmed him down when Joe accidentally broke his wooden sword and he ran to the woods to cry, sheltered and hid him when he ran as fast as he could from the seething pharmacist because he had to steal a vial of medicine for Joe who was sick at home, wiped his tears when they decided to put their old dog down because she was in too much pain—

When there was news that Mr. Blake would not be coming home from the African War, something cradled Tom’s head as he sat against a tree, hidden in the woods, his legs curled up to his chest to ward off the biting chilly November air.

:

His dreams began that very night. 

It was something that always evaporated the moment he woke up, not even a figment of it clung to his memory like his regular dreams, but sometimes something would trigger a strange and unknown feeling in his gut, and Tom would know it was a piece of his dream. But no matter how hard he tried, he could never call it back. 

Sometimes he would catch a young couple kissing under a tree, or his teacher would read to them the story of the great warlock Merlin who was trapped inside a tree by a sorceress, or he would play pirates with his friends, imagining they were sailing the seas with the mightiest galleons, and an echo of name was heard in the back of his mind, a sound was forming at the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t remember it—

“Joe?”

A creak was heard in the dark room. Joe shifted from where he was lying on his bed next to Tom’s in their small and humble shared bedroom. “Hmm?”

“Do you ever—”

Several moments passed. Tom raked his brain for the right word, he didn’t quite know what to ask, but then upon the lulling sound of Joe’s slowing and steadying breath, he drifted off to sleep as well.

:

A man was standing on his back towards Tom. 

He looked smart with his uniform. He looked like he was in his mid-twenties, and with his strong jawline and broad shoulders, he was quite dashing and handsome, if only not for the melancholy on his face. He looked as though he was trying to sport a brave face, but Tom could see the underlying hint of sadness on his mouth and fear in his eyes. 

He was kissing a young woman before he kneeled down to kiss her swelling pregnant belly and a boy next to her. She looked disturbingly familiar to Tom that his breath was knocked clear out of his lungs. She was, she was—

When he blinked, the man was already walking through him. 

Tom tried to scream, but not only did he fail, he was also faced with a different scene as he blinked again. 

The same man was walking towards him now, but his steps were heavy and uneager. He looked as though some ten years had been cut from his lifespan. He still had his strong jawline and his broad shoulders, and he was still handsome, but his eyes were empty and he looked as though he could hear things that were not audible to other people. 

And then—a boy, a boy came into his vision, running to hug the man, and then a woman, with a baby on her arms—

Tom woke up with a start, his nightshirt drenched in sweat, too panicked to notice that, in his dream, he was one of the cherry trees in their orchard.

:

The dreams slowly began to recede as he reached his early teenage years.

Following Joe, he got a job of helping around with Mr. Evans with his horses after he finished his minimal school. It took every scrap of his energy to deal with the equines and the moment he touched his bed, he drifted off to dreamless sleep almost instantly.

Joe told him not to be such a girl the first few weeks he kept complaining, which prompted the younger Blake to shoot back about his job in the bakery, earning him a playful punch.

He worked in barns and stables and fields now, and if the trees were still calling to him as he took the shortcut through the woods on his way home every evening, he was either too tired to pay attention or he had lost the ability altogether. 

He slowly left that piece of childhood behind, until—

It was in the middle of the summer festivity in the village, one they always had every year. Leading a life in a small village in the countryside, one was bound to know every other soul in the neighbourhood, and Edith Falkner—Tom hadn’t exactly thought of her in that way, but that particular night, it might just be one too many glasses of cider that he had, or the way that her red hair looked as though it was burning with the roaring bonfire behind her, or the way she smelled like the apples, sweeter than anything he could resist—

It was quite embarrassing, and both of them were quite sloppy that night, but it was his first kiss.

:

They came to their senses quick enough, and it was an amiable conversation, but Tom and Edith decided it was something that they would never speak of again. 

Life returned to its usual rhythm. 

Tom grew up into a handsome young man, quite the talk of the neighbours. Sure he was still a talkative boy, but the girls seemed to pay more attention to his charming wit. He hadn’t quite grown out of his chubby and rosy cheeks, but he took after his father and Joe quick enough in terms of his broad shoulder and strong jawline. 

Of course, being who he was, Tom was aware of this, but although he had kissed quite a few girls, he had never broken any hearts and he had never touched any of them. He had done nothing but respect them. 

Besides, after his first kiss with Edith, something didn’t feel quite right—as though he was afraid that the next girl he would kiss, the next girl that he thought he was really connecting with, was just him being too intoxicated and not thinking straight. 

Until he sat down against one of the cherry trees that particular evening. 

It was a quiet and cloudy evening, aside from the slowly dimming sunlight, there was no telling that the sun was reaching the end of the horizon. It had been quite an uneventful day. Mr. Evans successfully sold one of his horses for quite a rewarding price and he had finished his work rather early. It was truly one of the rare days when he got to enjoy a few moments of stretching his legs in relaxation, surrounded by trees, just like how he remembered it when he was a boy, not drowning in too much strenuous work for a change.  

Only, this time, he got some company. 

A slightly older boy with a rather lean posture was sitting next to him, listening to him talking excitedly about Myrtle. 

Henry Cooper was the son of the vet that he and Mr. Evans liked to go whenever one of the horses was not well. Sometimes he would visit him with his mother when Myrtle was ill as well, and Henry would go into his father’s office and told him that Tom was his friend and the kind old man would free them of any charge. Sometimes, when Tom was not feeling well, Henry knew all the right advice to give. 

He was telling him about how Myrtle liked to do all silly things when Henry laughed, one of the most beautiful sounds that Tom had ever heard, and it registered to him. 

It was like putting a missing piece of puzzle, the last piece falling easily into place without any second thought. 

When Tom kissed him, it rained cherry blossoms.

:

Not that he would remember it in the morning, but that night, Tom had another one of his dreams, but this time, it was different. It was more powerful, more magical, more ancient. 

Someone was standing under a cherry tree. Tom was inclined to say it was a young woman, but she was clearly more than that. She was not any ordinary maiden. Something about her, something about her told him she was not quite human—her beauty was both ethereal and frightening, her presence commanded respect and fear, her poised elegance was striking and intimidating. 

But then, the way the air hummed melodiously around her, the way the trees bent as though to gather her in an embrace, and then, as a man slowly walked down the lined trees that Tom realized was decorated like an aisle for a wedding, and then, the way she took him in her hands ever so gently—

A warm feeling bloomed in his chest, in his stomach, on his toes and his fingertips—as though all the beautiful things under the sky bloomed into existence and he could smile until his face ripped. And all of a sudden, she was not terrifying anymore. She was still frightening in her heavenly beauty and respectable presence, but she was no more an other-worldly being of fearsome predilection, an ancient daughter of the Earth spewed out of myths of inspire awe and strike fear. Instead, she was a lovable bride. 

He pieced it together—they were in love. 

And then, something formed on the tip of his tongue. Her name—he knew her, he didn’t know how, but he knew he was supposed to know her—and her name, her name was—

Tom didn’t remember any of it in the morning, and he didn’t know that it would be the last time he would have the chance to glimpse into the lives of his far ancestors.

:

They announced it the next day. England was at war with Germany. 

Everything that used to revolve around Tom’s life dwindled in a matter of days—Joe signed up, Henry was called for his expertise, and they took all of Mr. Evans’ horses. 

So it was only natural that Tom, being who he is, went early to the city hall early the following day. 

Besides, he wouldn’t be complaining after he heard how they were going to pay these soldiers—with more than what Mr. Evans could, with glory, with a more meaningful life than just mucking out stables and horse dung, and with a chance to go on parade and charm a few girls. 

They said the boys had to be at least nineteen to be taken in, but no one had to know he was still sixteen years old, was there?

It was quite sneaky to avoid Mr. Evans on his way to the city hall, so he took his favorite shortcut—through the small path in the woods. He knew the woods and the grasses and all the individual trees like the back of his hand, before—

He took a turn to where he knew there was a gentle slope to descend, but he could’ve sworn he had passed that part of the woods—

He wasn’t—he mustn’t be thinking straight, which was to be expected, he thought, he was filled with excitement for the prospect of joining the forces—

Wincing, he landed on his backside as he slipped on the perfectly solid ground, which would’ve embarrassed him to no end if it wasn’t for the fact that he was barely thinking of anything other than reaching the city hall as soon as he could to sign up—he would be with Joe the entire time and they got to watch each other’s backs in the Front, it really was the best idea—

But then Tom decided something undoubtedly weird was taking place, because he could’ve sworn he had crossed that stream just a few minutes earlier—

And he had passed that crossroad, and he had passed that slope, and he had crossed that bridge—

It was a deeply unsettling feeling. He had never been lost in this particular  woods in his entire life. He knew all trees and all the rocks and all the broken twigs, all the nooks to curl and all best trees to bear fruits, all the corners where the rabbits lived and all the bird nests sitting on the highest branches—but for the first time in his life, all of it felt foreign and unknown to his touch—

He hissed as his right foot caught on a protruded root that he knew wasn’t supposed to be there. When he tried to stand up, he swore at the pain shooting from his foot to the top of his head. He broke his right ankle. 

He hadn’t felt it for years, the last time he had felt it was when he was no older than an eight years old boy, but nonetheless he knew the feeling—the trees were trying to tell him something. So he stood up and turned back to face the trees, and hissed under his breath, “What the fuck do you want?”

A gust of wind, that which seemed to flow in rhythm with his own heavy, angry breathing. 

When he turned to the other side, the edge of the wood was there, with the houses in sight.

:

Tom tried to hide his limp. 

But even as he pulled a brave face, large drops of sweat forming on his temples as he held the pain, lying through his teeth about the year of his birth, the officer managed to find out that he was too young. 

When he exited the hall, not bothering to hide his limp anymore, a familiar voice called, prompting him to turn around. 

Henry stood by the door. 

They didn’t say a word. It was the last time either of them would see each other.

:

Life was quiet for the next two years. 

The village was quiet, the town was quiet, Tom’s days with his new job went on quietly, the summer festival was quiet. 

His mother was quiet, and though Tom still wanted to join the fight, he never brought it up again. Instead, he would let his mother hold his hand when they had a quiet time, and even would hug her in return longer than usual, even though he used to be embarrassed about it. 

:

The window on their kitchen faced the cherry orchard at the back of the house, and Tom was helping his mother with the dishes when the question jumped out of his mouth. 

“How did you meet Dad?”

This earned a hearty laugh from his mother. “Did you meet someone?”

Tom let out a small chuckle, although there was a nice hint of blush creeping up his cheeks. It was good Joe was not there to see it because he would never let him past it. “No, I’m—I’m—I’m just curious.”

Emmeline Blake smiled and stayed silent for a moment, as though she was gathering all the sweet memories in her heart, before she replied, “he gave me flowers.”

Something about the statement called out to him, as though he knew it to be true, deep in his bones, as though a lot of pieces in his life just aligned themselves to make sense. 

But his mother didn’t seem to register what her words had done to him, because she continued casually, “violets. Reminds me of your grandmother every time I see it. I don’t know how he found out. Your Dad always said it’s the Blake charms, but I think he'd just been watching.”

:

Tom knew the train was coming before the chugging sound was even heard. 

Something about the blow of the wind and the dancing of the grasses. 

When the train came to a stop and Joe climbed down the platform, his mother practically jumped at the young man before gathering him in a hug, but Tom noticed something else. 

Something about the way that nothing changed with his broad shoulders or his strong jawline, but that he looked like some ten years had been cut off from his lifespan, and like he could hear things that other people couldn’t hear.

:

If it happened with winds and dancing blades of grasses with Joe, it happened with flowers with Tom. 

There was a bill passed about getting all the men that were fit to fight to join the Front, and May 1916 saw him finally saying his farewell to his mother on the train station even though he was still eighteen. 

To untrained eyes, nothing would seem out of place with the gust of wind trailing behind the slowly accelerating train, carrying the fragrance and flowers of late spring. But to Emmeline Blake, as she slowly realized it, she knew. 

It was her boy.

:

If he thought taking care of Mr. Evans' horses was tiring then, life was even more exhausting at training. 

They put them through a lot of marching, crawling in the mud, running, climbing walls, handling rifles, and carrying bags full of rocks jogging for laps the entire length of a running track, but for a young country boy, even by military standards Tom rose to his specialty quickly enough. 

In just a few months, he was already specialized in navigation. 

But of course this record didn’t escape the attention of his superiors without raising suspicions. 

The first time he completed his navigation mission in his training, locating four chests of grenades in a forest with nothing but a compass and a knife, and finishing half a day earlier than their fastest record, he was rewarded with ten laps of jogging with a sack full of rocks as a punishment. 

“But, sir—”

“Is that you talking back to me I see?”

“No, sir, but I—”

His sergeant let out a deafening bellow to tell him to get running, and Tom nearly jumped out of his skin. 

:

But no matter how hard the next tasks they threw at him, how treacherous the next forest would be, and how well-hidden his next salvage would be, he kept finishing his missions earlier than their fastest record, by days. This baffled his superiors because they figured he couldn’t have cheated and kept getting information about his missions every single time. 

The night they were sending him with the rest of the new boys to the Front, his sergeant came to him, a genuinely curious expression written all over his face. 

“How did you do it?”

Tom knew what he meant without the older man having to explain himself. “I don’t know sir, I just know my way around trees, I suppose.”

:

Tom was sent as reinforcement for the 8th battalion at the end of the year. 

It was in the middle of winter, and no amount of training could prepare him for the actual sight of the Front, of the sounds, of the smell, of the feeling of death wafting from the earth that walled the very trench itself, of the biting cold and lifelessness of No Man’s Land that stretched on the far side of the horizon, far from his first station as a new recruit—

He thought about the glory that he would get once the Great War was over, and pulled on a brave face. 

:

Like everything that life threw at him, he adjusted to his daily routines quickly enough—even made a few friends within the first day. 

Sure he was aware that his talkative nature earned him a few frowns from some of the men, and a few warnings from his new superior, but it wasn’t like he could turn it off like a tap of water. But his personality was hard not to like amidst the ever-present gloom of the Front, and he was great company to be with when they were bored out of their minds in the back line. Within the first month in the trenches, he already knew the names of almost all the men in his company, some of their wives, and a lot of funny stories from the next regiment that some of the lads passed on to him. 

And he liked his company too. Some of them were funny and had even more hilarious stories about their superiors in store, some of them looked grumpy and battle-worn but they had all the right advices about life in the trenches, some of the were quiet but they know all the right words to say to even the darkest jokes and they didn’t mind helping out a lot with the boring digging, some of them were even loud and not unlike himself. 

One of them was Lance Corporal William Schofield.

:

At first, Schofield was no different than the majority of the men in the trench. 

Quiet and reserved, with a sad and longing look stealing its way on his face when he thought no one was looking, or it might just be his resting face. He made minimal response to his chattering when they were huddled around the fire and complained when Tom kept talking in the afternoon, he did his work diligently and went about his business without saying a lot of words. 

But he also liked to share his food with him, tucked in one of the inner pockets on his uniform neatly with a handkerchief. When it stormed, he was the first to scoot over to give some room in his hideout for Tom to take shelter. And no matter how frequently his stupid self forgot to duck a little lower when they were sent to fix the wires, Schofield never failed to remember to gently pull him to duck by the shouder.

They were huddled around the fire that evening, and he was just telling the men around him about Myrtle when Schofield laughed, a melodious and rich sound that Tom could spend forever listening to. 

In that exact moment, a breeze of wind blew, carrying the unmistakable smell of cherries, which baffled Tom a lot because they were still in the middle of winter and no one else seemed to notice.

:

That night, he slept across Schofield, far from the Front line. 

The next morning, no one paid any attention to it, but Tom could’ve sworn they didn’t fall asleep on a bed of moss the previous night.

:

He didn’t mean to do it on purpose, of course, but sometimes, when he knew Schofield thought he was asleep, he would catch a sad expression playing on the older man’s face. 

In the afternoons, when all the men around them were trying to steal winks of naps. In the evenings, with the dimming sunlight casting a warm glow on his face. Early in the mornings, when no one was awake yet and the early spring sky was still a lovely shade of faint blue. 

Sometimes, Tom thought of asking what the long face was about, an attempt to cheer him up, but every single time he was about to do it, his tongue failed him. For all his cheery personality and his bubbly disposition, he couldn’t find the words to do it, couldn’t gather the courage—it wasn’t right, it wasn’t life back at the countryside where the hardest thing to happen was failing crops or a sick herd of cattles—he couldn’t poke around people’s lives like that—

Tom didn’t do it often, but he reserved to just look at him from afar, hoping that he wouldn’t turn around and catch him staring and stumbling over his own words in a poor attempt to make an excuse. 

And, every time, the wind would blow gently so that the grass next Schofield’s person would caress him. When he played with the tiny yellow flowers, there was a gentle tingling on Tom’s fingers—

As though they were holding hands. 

And then Tom would allow a small smile on his lips.

:

One time, they were advancing a couple of miles east, their next station. They didn’t have any vehicles to bring them, so they walked on foot. They were crossing a few hundred yards of forest when it happened, just like every spring back at home. 

It rained cherry blossoms like it was snowing. 

A few men complained as a few petals found their way to their faces, swatting them off like flies, but Schofield, who was walking just a few paces behind Tom, looked at the raining flowers with a gentle expression, as though it reminded him of everything that was soft and beautiful and bright in the world. 

He looked up, admiring them as though every single one of them were falling stars, and Tom let out a soft chuckle.

:

It was well into the spring when he heard of Joe again. 

“You have a brother, a Lieutenant, in the 2nd Devons?”

His eyes widened. 

When they exited the dugout, he was ready to climb the parapet to cross No Man’s Land himself. Not even Schofield could slow him down.

:

He couldn’t decide which one was more terrifying—being trapped underground with the earth roof collapsing above him, or the sound from underneath the rubble, buried in the white dirt, screams that slowly receded into faint shouts—

God, god—

It was different than being shelled outside. With no sunlight and no sky and no bloody anything but chalk and rocks and dead dirt all around him, Tom was suffocated—he couldn’t—he couldn’t think—he was good at surviving outdoors, bloody good if he could say so himself, as long as he could see the sun and smell the faraway scent of life and sense the dormant seeds of the grasses, but underground—

“SCHO!”

God—

He pushed himself, through the white dust swirling around him, scattering the light from his torch into blinding beams, his hands digging the fallen rocks like a feral canine, swimming through the earth, sweeping it away—he had to, he had to—

“Scho? Scho!”

He kept on calling his name, despair rooting in his voice as his calls became more and more guttural, his fingers working their way through the rocks, until—

There was no mistaking the tip of Schofield's helmet, and then his forehead, and then—god, oh god, his face was caked in white chalk dust, with his mouth open—

“Scho! Wake up! Wake up!”

When he pulled Schofield by his webbing, he finally coughed. Heaving, gasping, rasping, all the horrible and painful but the most relieving sounds Tom had yet to hear. 

Were it not for Schofield’s hand, holding him tight by the shoulder, his own fear seeping into his own person, he wouldn’t have managed to navigate their way out.

:

He only slowed down at Schofield’s remark. 

“No, you didn’t—you never know. That’s your problem!”

Tom looked at him for a long time, trying to come up with an explanation, only to fail miserably. 

“Alright then, go back. Nothing’s stopping you,” Tom recoiled, hurt. “You can go all the way bloody home if you want—”

“Don’t. Just don’t.”

Bloody dust stinging him on the eyes—

”I didn’t know what I was picking you for,” Tom said. He was trying to explain that he didn’t know picking Scho with him would result in them barely escaping being buried alive in the German trench, but there it went again—”I thought they were going to send us back up the line, or for food, or something.”—all his words and all his wit, slipping away from him, leaving him stumbling over words that betrayed how he was actually sorry that he didn’t know, because, if anything, he was lashing back at him—”I thought it was going to be something easy, alright? I never thought it would be this—”

And then he went silent. He didn’t want to sound sad, so he could only manage it in a small voice. “So, do you want to go back?”

They looked at each other for a moment. 

“Just fire the fucking flare.”

:

Naturally, Tom didn’t know how else he could make it up to Schofield beside talking. 

He had never been good at other approaches. 

So he started talking.

:

“Jesus.”

Tom felt it before he saw it—death. 

Not just the feel of ordinary death, of trees getting cut down to be made into furniture or fields catching fire after getting struck by lightning, of fruits rotting or fallen logs decaying or any other ordinary deaths that were part of the cycle of life. 

“They chopped them all down.”

There was something evil in the fact that the cherry trees were in flowers when they were chopped down. It almost felt like murder. 

He couldn’t help it. He came forward and touched it. 

They weren’t supposed to go yet before they bore their fruits later in the season, so he prayed for them. They would still come back in more trees than before, he had learned since he was a boy that nature was unstoppable that way, but he still prayed for them. When he said their name, it was to pay respect for their family, a sign that he recognized their clan, a prayer to wish that they would come back next year to continue their bloodline—

“Lamberts.”

—but then he felt Schofield’s eyes on his neck, so he caught himself.

“They might be Dukes. Hard to tell when they aren’t in fruit.”

:

He asked Schofield to tell his mother that he wasn’t scared, but of course he was scared. It hurt when he took a breath in and everything was getting colder and colder and it scared the living daylight out of him to contemplate the possibility of Schofield not—

“Talk to me,” he begged. It hurt, his abdomen hurt like a thousand knives and the only thing keeping him from crying was the fact that his lungs hurt so much, but he had to—he had to make sure. He searched for Schofield’s eyes, he had to be sure. “Tell me you know the way.”

“I know the way.”

His breath was becoming more erratic. 

“I’m going to head south-east until I hit Ecoust.”

He gritted his teeth, closing his eyes as he held the pain. He needed to hear it, he needed to hear it—

“I’ll pass through the town, and out to the east, all the way to Croisilles Wood.”

“It’ll be dark by then,” Tom’s reply was barely more than a rasping sound as he shivered, cold. 

Everything was so unimaginably cold, but there was warmth when Schofield said, “that won’t bother me.”

Schofield was saying something, but he couldn’t make anything out of it, it was getting fainter, and fainter, and fainter—

And fainter.

:

“Come with me, Corporal. That’s an order.”

He wanted to touch Scho, tell him it was alright, probably joked to him that he got his bearings right this time, considering the man was clueless about navigation and couldn’t even tell in which part of France they actually were. But it was different when he was already dead. 

The grass—he wanted to extend his fingers through the blades of grass, hold his hands through  the tiny yellow flowers, but it was feeble—so feeble. 

And then he realized it. It was true.

He was of tree nymph blood.

:

And that was when he saw her. 

The maiden. Striking and majestic and courtly, her silver hair flowing to the ground and dancing in the wind as though in water, her beauty staggering and ethereal, her presence breath-taking and magnificent, but also—

Warm. 

With her smile gentle and welcoming, and her steps followed by the flowers shooting out of the earth, and her eyes the most tender shade of hazelnut. 

There was a queenly air around her, as though she was ancient and was older than the human race itself, but her touch—Tom was already on his knees when he laid his eyes on her regal appearance, all his breath knocked clear out of his lungs even after he died, but her touch—her touch was so impossibly human—

And then he remembered. 

The maiden under the tree, and his groom, the young man walking down the lined trees, and her name—her name—

His head spun impossibly fast—all the memories, all the dreams he couldn’t recall, all the history of his ancestors, bleeding into his dreams in his sleep, all the kings and all the knights, all the poets and all the bards, all sorcerers inside the tree and all the ships that fought the Romans, all of it caught up to him—

“We are named after you,” Tom breathed. 

She was the tree nymph, who married a mortal. 

Her name was something that his human mind couldn’t wrap itself around and a sound his human tongue couldn’t pronounce. It was like the sound of the rustling leaves and the whisper of the forest in the middle of night. His own family name was probably the closest thing a man could get to her real name. But escaping his human body, Tom understood it now. 

She smiled and gathered him an embrace. 

“My name is Blaac.”

:

From behind Blaac, a man was walking towards him. Tom would’ve been too young to remember his face when he was alive, but somehow, escaping his mortal body, he knew. He recognized him. 

They could almost be the same age. 

Tears welled up in his eyes and he lost his voice as he collapsed into his embrace. 

“Dad!”

:

Time flowed differently when one was dead. 

One was separated from the mortal world, yet sometimes one could sneak a look beyond the fog. Most of the time it didn’t make sense. 

But something kept on calling back at Tom. Something was filling in his lungs and he couldn’t breathe, as though he was drowning. 

Someone—

He knew it before he saw it. Schofield. 

It hurt to look beyond the fog. It wasn’t supposed to happen, the veil between the living and the dead was not supposed to be ruptured, but Schofield—

He was drowning. 

His name jumped out of his mouth before he knew it. 

“Schofield!”

Tom gasped as Schofield emerged from under the surface, gasping for air. He could feel Schofield’s strength waning— 

“Schofield! Scho!”

—his mind numbing, his breath shallowing—the heat of his body slowly being replaced by the biting cold of the water—

Tom could feel his own breath slowing, so he could only manage a whisper of a name that never escaped his lips outside of his dreams. “William—”

:

And then he looked up. 

A breeze. 

And with it, a rain of cherry blossoms. 

When he saw Schofield bring up his hand to scoop some of the fallen blossoms from the water, Tom could feel his hand on his fingertips. 

:

“Is that you?”

Tom spun on his heel to turn around, the veil closing itself behind him. Blaac was looking at him with a gentle expression. He didn’t need her to explain what she was asking about. 

Tom blinked, gathering his thoughts before he said, “yes—yes, I think so.” 

Blaac was silent for a moment. “Not a lot of Blakes can do that beyond their death.”

Tom didn’t know what to make of it. Like all the strange occurrences in his life, he didn’t quite know how to do it, it just sort of happened. 

No word was exchanged between them for a long time and Tom thought it was merely a warning not to rupture the veil again, but then Blaac’s next words shook him. 

“You must’ve loved him very much.” 

Tom froze. 

He hadn’t—he hadn’t exactly—

He couldn’t move, the idea had rooted him on his feet. Loved him? He couldn’t have loved him—sure Schofield occupied his mind more often that could be considered friendly and there was a surge of ache in his gut when he thought about him, about his sad face and how Tom was too much of a coward to comfort him, about his melodious laugh or about the tiniest chuckles that he liked to let out that was the gentlest sound in nature and were one of the things Tom treasured most in the world, about the fact that he was ready to go through falling rocks just to get Schofield out of the collapsing trench alive—

“Thomas.” 

Tom looked up, his lips sealed. 

“Do you love him?” 

And it was when the walls broke.

“Yes. God, yes, I love him.”

:

And so Blaac walked towards him. 

When she put her fingers on his forehead, everything turned blindingly bright. 

:

Tom Blake was munching on his breakfast as he sat on a bench. 

London was a very busy city, but at least in the middle of the city park, he could get a bit of fresh air and a break from his stressful schedule for a change. His first class was not to start for another hour. 

It was a nice morning in the middle of the spring. 

A gentle breeze of wind caressed his cheeks and a single, solitary petal of cherry blossom sneaked its way to fall on his lap. Above his head, it looked like it was snowing—blossoms everywhere. 

He chuckled, as though remembering something from an old life. 

His eyes landed on another young man, sitting on the bench opposite him. Tom had never seen him before in his life, but for some reason, he felt like he knew him. 

He smiled. 

Fin

:

A/N: OH MY GOD I FINISHED THIS YAAAYY! If you’re here, thank you so much for bearing with me through that thousand words of angst, I mean, man do I love writing those!

So a little sidenote: I don’t have any background in Old English whatsoever, so really it’s not actually my place to say that Blake really came from Blaac (Old English) n. pale hair, or pale skin. My only backup is the internet, so I’m sorry if I get some of the things wrong.

And yes, of course, I can’t help with the reincarnation, I’m weak for that trope, especially in this fandom!

I’m sorry if I didn’t nail Blake’s personality right, I did my best but I think I must’ve missed some things. ALSO sorry if the idea is a bit strange, I don’t know why this idea came to me, I suppose it's because of the "and then in May, we have to pick them, me and Joe. Takes the whole day." time of the year, but I had to write it.