Return

Her body undulated with the current, minor waves bumping her softly against smooth rocks embedded in the sandy bank. Long blonde hair, turning green with algae, sifted through submerged detritus, as if seeking sensory input, but her eyes had glazed over days before. She was empty to the world.

Tiny river fish kissed their meals from her flesh, and more gathered to show their affections as the evening progressed. Sunlight slanted then shuttered, leaving Melody to the night creatures once again. Her skin had swelled and split, logged with water and internal gasses. Blowflies and beetles had excavated her body, had delved inside the wide gash across her temple, and a crow alit upon her breast to investigate further.

In the rising moonlight, resting on the bank beneath the swaying branch of a willow tree, a shimmering outline sat and watched. Pinpoints of light caught and reflected along seven distinct junctures, the brightest at its crown. The glow expanded, reaching the upper willow boughs, and then retreated. As if it breathed, the ethereal figure pulsated in a steady rhythm marked by its shifting attention to the young woman’s corpse. Most of its time under the tree, the soft outline emanated sorrow, vibrating with loss and anger. It folded in on itself, shuddering as time passed, as Melody’s body became waxen, became foreign. When the scavengers took their due, it cried out a jagged crystalline fall, echoing the clear water rushing over the rocks, absorbing the moonlight.

When the silence landed and the forest held its breath, the outline turned to the willow. The branches still swayed, tips of the leaves carving epitaphs on the water surface, but the figure paid no attention. Its white light reached the slender foundation, caressed the rough bark. After a moment, the light penetrated, surrounding the arching column, spreading to its branches, overtaking its leaves.

The crow settled to feast, after tilting its clever head in twitchy deliberation for several seconds. Narrow strips of rubbery flesh dangled from its beak as it stopped after each gouge to check for intruders. The shimmering figure hovering under the nearby tree didn’t register as a threat on the crow’s radar, and it continued working at the corpse’s left ocular cavity.

The ill-defined glow shifted closer to the tree, leaning into the foundation and reaching toward the upper branches, and the light at its crown burst forth again, splashing the blue-black night with its white clarity. Birds quieted and creatures rustling in the brush slowed, their ears pricked toward the low hum of energy. The light soaked slowly into the bark, the wood, ring by ring, the leaves, seeped down into the roots of the weeping willow, and etched its glow into each fissure. The tree became sorrow, became loss, became peace.

In the cool night air, fresh with river water currents eddying at its base, tickling its dangling leaves, the willow tree stood. Melody lingered in flesh only.