In My Own Little World.
By Elizabeth P.
Obviously I should have known better.
Two hundred feet below me the river swirled and plunged, sounding like a happy monster on a holiday. All around me, “my world” of forest and flowers twirled in a dance of deep green and Easter blue. I call it “my world” because the woods and creatures therein seemed to belong to me; they were my home. More specifically, the Trunk was my home.
This was years ago. I would never think of living in a three hundred foot tree abandoned by elves in the Dark Ages unless I was young, ignorant, and immature. Which I was. Back then. Now, I flatter myself, I uphold at least the appearance of maturity.
It was a time of pure foolishness, a time infused with childish verve. Coincidentally, the times I enjoyed in the Trunk – and roundabout – were some of the best times of my life.
Anyway, the Trunk was big. What made it seem bigger were the various toadstools popping out sporadically from its base. Some smaller ones {some the size of large ottomans, others with roofs like round couches} made their way UP the Trunk, but they kept clear of my “living quarters” above in the branches. Have you ever imagined sleeping on blossoms at the tippy-top of some peach tree? Who knows what variety of deciduous the Trunk was, exactly – I only know there were plenty of blossoms all year round, even in winter, when they turned dark purple and black, but bloomingly magnificent – and that I not only slept on top of them, but have a garden inside a yellow one. Even the raspberries in that garden turned yellow…but I’m getting off track here. Yes, the Trunk was huge. Big. A towering – well – tower. Etched in its bark were all sorts of writings and approximations. Most of them were reminiscent of squirrels. “Mr. Chatty, is two today; Height: the same as last year” accompanied a rather intricate drawing of a father squirrel proudly brushing his tail while brandishing a piece of carrot. Eventually I met Mr. Chatty, along with most of the animals in the wood. {Some of them were hired as servants. For instance, Luna the ant-eater was an extremely frightful personage, but she proved wonderful sucking up all the red ants. All in all, I had about twenty servants, all very obliging, especially the hummingbirds. They cleaned the flowers with the butterflies. I know you men of little faith don’t believe me, but have you ever been intoxicated in the Trunk on Cleaning Day when the hummingbirds are taking advantage of all the nectar-wine and spreading it about with their quick little wings? I thought not!}
My favorite servant was Doubtee, the most skeptical Burmese tiger this world has ever known. He helped construct my water-wheel and wind-mill, {both very useful for all sorts of things}, but too often got his claws caught on the silk scarves with which I decorated. From tree to tree those scarves fluttered and the sunlight would glimmer orange or pearly pink or turquoise. My Trunk was bouncing with colors.
I slept in one of the blossoms. It smelled like a plum blossom, but in spring was totally white except for the turquoise stamen – one of the millions clustered at the tippy-top of the tree. These flowers were special, for instead of closing at night and opening at day, they remained unfurled for the moon and the sun constantly. That is why, in fall and winter, I moved my room to one of the lower blossoms. It can get dreadfully wet in the throat of a flower. Every morning, the sun shone in and reverberated off the walls of my room with a golden splendor. I’d stretch, then slide down the tunnel of the blossom. Once I reached the stem, beyond the sun’s light, my way was lit by the lightning bug jars which sat in little carved out spaces in the walls. Polished and gleaming, the inside of the stems was like part of a rich library or study. I had a library, in fact, but no one wants to read first the morning unless they have something important on their mind.
There are fifty-four different ways to scream delightedly, and I hit them all on key while sliding down all four hundred twenty-two different tunnels. Not all my tunnels were closed from the light; some “halved” branches worked wonderfully as water-slides after a good spring rain.
I needed a refreshing drink of water every morning, and what better way to reach the river than to swing there? My swing was not crude and wooden, as swings are apt to be. Nor was its rope brittle and hurtful to my little hands. Oh, no. They must have been cords of velvet holding that swing, but they were green and moss-like. The swing itself was my invention: of orange plush and firm, not an empty sack to fall into and become instantly squished. My swing had to rotate down the Trunk, beginning past the branches of my living quarters, swooping out in a wide arch, so I could view the whole forest and beyond. Way out in the distance I saw a land starkly attired in what seemed to be realism. That land always has annoyed me, and may have been the only flaw in the landscape, but I usually looked on the lake called Lily. Its waters were rainbow-hued, of course, for the sky was always that way, except for rain-storms. Then it turned completely white-gray and the lake looked like liquid snow. Anyway, once my swing reached the soft grass below, I rushed across the stepping stones by my water-mill and made for Lily. There my swift kayak carried me out to the very center, where I leaned in to drink. This idea has come to me the first day I saw Lily, but as I leaned over excitedly to dip my mouth into the waves, the whole kayak tipped over and I fell straight down to where the water turned violet. Needless to say I repeated this mistake again and again every morning for all the years I lived there. A morning swim never felt so rejuvenating, and the water, unlike the best swimming pools, did not sting my eyes. Rather, I could see even more brilliantly after diving into the soft simmering colors.
After that, I would sun-bathe by the huge rock over-looking the river, a mad rushing torrent which I listened to while reading book after book, usually poetry about life, love, happiness, and occasionally how to make the fluffiest cake in creation. I studied all my life how to make the perfect cake, but never succeeded in Trunk, because I could never bake anything, except in my solar oven. I always forgot about cakes in that oven. I had to constantly watch, or else Furtive the hamster would sneak them to his lair underneath Trunk’s roots. I grew frustrated, Furtive grew fat, and the solar oven far too steamy. {How do you turn off a solar oven, anyway?} I contented myself with an apple for lunch and a handful of almonds from the almond tree. Lunch-time was fun, since I got to promenade past the fruit trees instructing them to retract any pokey twigs because I was about to climb up and find the perfect apple. {The only reason little children are poked by sharp twigs when they climb trees barefoot today is because they never ask for retraction.}
All afternoon I did a variety of things, but all of them have to do with swinging and climbing and swimming and searching and exploring and daydreaming and reading and occasionally eating. None of the rabbits ever liked me because I appreciated their carrots far too much. I felt like an outcast sometimes, living all alone in Trunk without anyone. I mean, the hummingbirds cared, and the butterflies, but they couldn’t stay forever. They came, they cleaned, they left. Luna was a dear, but as I said frightful to look at. I always felt so guilty, staring from my left big toe to my right big toe while trying to carry on a conversation with her. And I never could learn the language of the river. {It just ROARED.} Doutee was the best chum a person could want, but characteristically silent. Squirrels are squirrels. They chatter, they gossip, they worry their tails off about chestnuts and acorns and their whole life is spent twitching and jumping from tree to tree. They never take naps, and die young. I must have written a hundred books, complete with illustrations, of twenty different squirrels’ families living in those woods. All at different times, of course. Finally, “it” got to be too much. What was “it” exactly?
I don’t know. But every night as I climbed up to bed, I’d stare for a while at the hollow face of the whitest flower of all, that mystery moon, and try to figure out what was etched on its skin. Those writings proved far too complex for my weary eyes. And every night, I’d gaze out on the world, and my world was dark. There was that structure in the distance, that brown place. Evidently it wasn’t lit with lightening bugs; the lights there did not flicker, but remained steady. I wondered if it was at all like my world. If it was, then there must be one of me there, too, someone who had already learned the dull Brown language and someone who went to sleep at night and gazed up at the same hollow flower and woke up at the same time every morning and went swimming in the same brown…Oh, that poor person! I thought. It never occurred to me that more than one person would live in a place. After all, this was my place, my wood, my world, my tower, my haven of security, and everyone else must have one unique to themselves as well.
But what a dreadful lot of security. Even if the Brown language was dull, my curiosity was suddenly hungering to know what it sounded like. I talked to myself in twenty-five different languages {not counting the woodland dialects} and I didn’t know which one was the first one I started off speaking when I first arrived at the Trunk.
How did I arrive here, anyway?
Things were a blur in my mind. I went to sleep and during the night rolled into one of the stamen and ended up with blue dust sprinkled throughout my hair. Without thinking I rolled down the tunnel with a shameful lack of grace and grabbed tingingly for my swing. I opened all the windows on the way down the Trunk and said hello to the butterflies and hummingbirds who were all working cheerfully and efficiently – and quietly. I started singing at the top of my lungs and instantly the squirrels’ chatter began. Faster I swung on that silly old swing, till I stood up on it and squinted my eyes.
Two hundred feet below me the river swirled and plunged. Jumping up and down on the swing, I pushed it to the limit. Suddenly the velvety moss snapped away, and I was borne through the air – that butterfly-filled, rainbow-hued, shifting heaven of exquisite delicacy.
I used to live in the Trunk. My home, my wood, my world. But I saw Brown in the distance. I needed to know how the distance looked like from the opposite side of the horizon. You what I discovered? There wasn’t just one person out there; there were a lot of people, but only some talked to me. Some were silent as Doutee, some squirrelish gossips. And not all of them stared up at the moon each night and wondered what life was like in the Trunk. Apparently it just looked like a rainbow to the people in Brown, {and they have a twisted foreknowledge that no one lives in rainbows.}
Turns out only one person in Brown ever did wonder about me. His language was very hard to learn, but learn it I did. I can speak it and write it now, though heaven knows neither of us live in Brown anymore. This narrative of my past is written in Brown for your benefit. Funny thing is, we tried to visit the Trunk, just so I could show off some of my favorite things, like the kite you can actually fly on top of and the horse that can run across Lily Lake – but we couldn’t access it at all. We even tried diving through the rainbow and ended up with a nasty sunburn.
Obviously I should’ve known better.
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