“Limbs” by Lenore Butcher

Nobody ever thinks of how the tree feels.

At night when the lights are off and the room is dark except for the faint glow of the night light, I can still see the distant hills where I came from.   I can remember the feeling of the wind sweeping through my glory, bringing with it tidings of the weather and scents of the meadow.  I was naked then, and unknown.  One of the many standing sentinel in silence as the thick snow coated us in icy layers year after year, then kissed by the spring breezes and baked by the summer sun blazing away above.  In the fall, our fellow dwellers shook off their rustling adornments to stand naked, reaching proudly out into the chilly air while we stayed cloaked and cozy year-round in dark green and brown.

I’m adorned now and adored.  At least I think so.  The ones who live in this stone and wood place seem to spend a lot of time admiring me.  I keep hearing them say words like, “lovely” and “radiant.”   Even though my limbs sometimes tremble from the effort of holding the gaudy baubles aloft and my base aches from the unkindness they visited upon me, there’s this new sensation I feel when they gaze at me.  Inside I feel warm and welcome, like a birdling in a nest. 

I’ve seen others taken from our rows, usually a couple of them every winter and now I wonder if this was their ultimate destination. If so, shouldn’t they have been here to greet me?  The receptacle where my tortured end rests bears scrapes and stains that might indicate the passage of the others – but where have they gone?

There is coldness in this place where I stand.  It laps around my nether end, almost like the streams that swell and run by us when the snow melts every spring.  It provides me some sustenance, even though it tastes of the flat chemical smell of the walls that surround it.  It isn’t as nourishing as the rains that fall from the sky, but it is enough to slow down the inevitable. 

There is one exciting night where the family gathers around me.  The larger ones read a story to the smaller ones.  A captive audience, I listen.  It’s a story about a man with reindeer and something called a ‘sleigh’.  The cadence of the words is soothing and my limbs sway and rustle in response.

After the story, the wee ones open brightly coloured boxes to reveal new sleeping foliage.  They squeal in delight and run to put them on.

When they come back, they make a big show of putting out a plate with some round discs on it and a receptacle half-full of white creamy liquid.  Then the littles leave again.

After a while, the biggers pull brightly coloured boxes out of the closet and pile them around me.  I try to stand up straighter, proud to be receiving even more decorations.  One of the biggers takes several bites of a disc and the other drinks half the liquid.  He makes a face and says, “Yuck, lukewarm milk.”

They laugh as they leave the room and let me have my thoughts. 

It doesn’t seem to be very much time before the family comes tumbling back into the room again.  The littles tear open the coloured packages and shrieks and squeals rend the air. 

The whole day is a confusing blur.  After the littles have calmed down, the family welcomes other people and there are more boxes, more tearing, more shrieking.  A lot of the new people compliment me – how full I am, how green and how lovely.  I preen and stand up straighter.

The next few days after that one are quieter.  The littles spend a lot of time playing outside.  My water replenishments start coming slower with longer spaces in between.  The inevitable begins to happen. I can feel the dryness rustling, the slow rot spreading through the green.

One night the biggers put the littles to bed and sit staring at me.  Finally, she sighs.

“I think we’d better get it done.”

To my shock, they spend the evening taking all my lovely ornaments off.  I try hard to hold onto my favourite – a bejeweled cardinal that reminds me of the gracefully boisterous birds that flitted around us, twitting their songs proudly.  He tugs harder, dislodging a brace of my needles to retrieve my prize and put it carefully in a box.

When they are done, I am slumping in the corner, naked and ashamed.  I bristle with rage, but they ignore me.  Did the rest of mine come to this ignominious end?  Were they this devastated and deplored?            

“I’ll put it out tomorrow for the garbage truck.”  The light goes out, leaving me in total darkness.  Not even a bit of a shine reflecting from my ornaments.

They left the cord that provided the glow of my lights out.  I can see there is a spot that is frayed away – where I can almost see the spark and thrum of the energy contained within.  I have a dry needle just hovering over the bare spot.  It can be released with but a thought.

If I’m going, they’re coming with me.

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Lenore Butcher (she/her) is employed in health care administration. She lives in a small town, just around the corner from the house she grew up in. When she isn’t writing stories about very bad things happening to nice people, she volunteers for the local theatre, where she has directed and stage managed several plays. She has previously been published in several anthologies, as well as having one book (now out of print) published by a micro-press many years ago.

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