Music on the Wind

Drip… Drip… Drip…

Blood fell from the tree.

It pooled beneath the swinging legs of a man who was dead.

The others did not bleed; their bodies hung dry and desiccated, swaying in the breeze. The ropes that held their necks creaked in time with the limbs of the tree as they swung.

Wet rattling coughs were remembered in the glade that surrounded the hanging tree. The weeping of widows echoed in the branches, dancing to the tune of the steady drip of the blood, the windy creak of the rope, and the rustle of dry leaves.

Drifting on the wind came a song, a song that sang of the hanging tree. There were people who sang that song still, who whispered in the dark around the dim fires about the old tree in the forest.

An ancient song remembered in hidden fears of its singers. It was a part of the history of the singers, a part of their present too, though a part they chose to ignore. As though ignorance would protect them.

Still, they would whisper about the tree when shrouded in their hidden places. About the songs that scared them as children. About the thing on the wind, the half-heard words and promises, that drew them into the woods. Drew them to the tree where ancient people had strung up a man for murder.

An innocent man, some said. A guilty man, others whispered. A woman, some few insisted. But the tree was old, and the story was old, and they were all right.

Strange things happened there. Or so the stories claimed, stories whose memories flowed through the sickly glade like clean rainwater, parting around the tree even as it drank them in. Children would go into the forest and never return. But such was the way of forests from Peter and his wolf to a trail of bread crumbs leading to a house made of candy. Children were always warned away from the depths of the trees, away from the shadowed places.

And the tree had nothing to do with them, at least.

Even when the old fears about elves and witches and trees were gone away, shattered by reason, the fear of the woods remained. The people replaced the terrors with things they could understand. With humans playing at being monsters instead of beasts playing at being human. Child stealers and murderers and other, worse things.

But the tree remained.

Drip… Drip… Drip…

The tree shuddered as though it felt the chill of the wind. Leaves fluttered down like early red and yellow snow, gathering at its sunken feet. Some few caught in the blood, there was never very much of it. But still, the bodies hung from the tree, suspended on loops of supple young branches since the offerings with rope had long since stopped.

Again the song drifted to the tree on the wind. The song that asked if one would join another at the tree. A song that invited the listener to don a hempen necklace. The tree remembered when the first man had been hanged from it. It remembered his screams and the weeping of his widow and children. The tree remembered the chanting glee of the watchers as the man choked. It remembered the capering dance as the mania of crowds overtook them, matching the gallows jig of the dying man.

Words drifted in on the wind now. Not half-remembered words from a song long since sung, but fresher words. Words with breath and joy behind them.

There was prey in the woods. The sounds of laughing children.

A new song began. The tree did not sing; it had forgotten how long years before. But it listened. It heard the song calling out to the children. They laughed louder, an edge to it as they perceived something on the very edge of hearing. The song would not be words to them, it would be feelings. The tree understood this, and it rustled its branches in anticipation.

If there were children in the wood, there would be minders with them.

With its branches and leaves, blown by a wind that was suddenly cold, the tree added its own music. A song without words within a song that could barely be heard. In its own way, the tree called out to the minder of the children, adding its enticement to the sighing temptation of the other song.

Come to the tree, was the message. Where they strung up a man who murdered three.

Come to the tree, where a damned woman called out for her wife to flee.

Come to the tree and don the last necklace you would ever wear.

Come to the hanging tree.

Drip… Drip… Drip…

The cadence of the blood was different now as the tree danced in the cold wind, its leaves falling in a mad kaleidoscope of colour. Some caught in the falling drops and plummeted, stained a fading red beneath the swaying bodies.

Still, the first song called the children into the deep and secret parts of the forest, still the music of the tree called their minder to itself. Once the tree was discerning, once its offerings had been many, once… but no more.

Fallen branches snapped under booted feet. Piled dead leaves rustled as the man walked past them.

The tree exulted.

In the distance now, the other song faded, drawing the children in. Promising to take them away from their pains and their sorrows. Blissful eternity in a land of enchantment. It was a beautiful lie.

Beneath the tree’s dancing, swaying branches, the man stopped, gazing at the tree in awe. In a wind they seemed to create, the branches twisted and writhed, the hanging bodies seeming to dance at the end of their ropes.

Resonating in the back of the man’s mind as he let his pack drop to the ground, as he let thoughts of his children be drawn towards the song, he fell to the song. The children left his mind, dancing away from a life that murdered beauty and passion.

The man raised his arms, eyes blank and staring as they watched the leaves swirling around him, rippling as though they drifted downwards through thick water. Slowly, carefully, he climbed into the tree. Pulling himself hand over hand among the swinging bodies of those who are dead without seeing them, he climbed.

The song in the distance faded to silence, gone with the children into a garden of shadows as a thin, supple branch coiled around the man’s throat.

For a moment he stood on a thick bough, transfixed by the swirling leaves. The blur of red and yellow almost obscuring the forest around the tree’s clearing. Reaching out, blind to the world, the man tried to catch a leaf and fell. The branch around his throat caught him as the music of the tree on the wind asked its final question, and he answered with a spluttering choke. His heels danced the ancient dance as the tree took him into its embrace.

Eyes bulged. Tongue protruded. Veins stood out. A rictus of pain emerged on his purpling face.

Drip… Drip… Drip…

The music died.

The wind grew still.

The leaves stopped falling as new green spread across them.

The branches ceased their dancing.

Drip… Drip… Drip…