Dreaming Trees

It was five days since she last saw the green rush of trees beyond the highway. Somehow the vision receded every time she sought it. Something to do with the sun’s reflection on rock, maybe. Every bit of green had been sucked into a vast vault of nothingness since the cataclysm, but that cluster of green had been there. It was no fleeting mirage. She’d stared at it for many long minutes and the urge to run toward it had gripped every part of her thin body. But no, too much risk of being seen and robbed of her few precious tools.

Staying clear of intense settlements and the wrecks of roads and cars, she lived in the shadows of whatever stood tall, careful to stay invisible. Yesterday grey rain fell mercilessly for hours, though she did stay dry in the shelter of an old bus, probably deserted even before the shifting quakes split the world apart. No rotting bodies in it, just a few noisy rats rustling around under the seats. Not enough to disturb her deep sleep, and she slept like the dead for hours, protected by the blanket of rain, lulled by its steady beat against the bus’s rusty shell.

That was the thing – sleep. So little of it. Here and there a snatched hour, then she was up and moving on, ever-vigilant. Her sleep was never deep enough for dreaming. Nightmares of the quakes always shoved her awake, ruthlessly overseeing her erratic path through the ever-twisting terrain.

But the bus-sleep was different. She dreamed. She was in a forest, surrounded by trees. They were like old friends, their branches heavy with leaves and ancient stories. And their lowest limbs were easy to climb; she climbed high, feeling the rough bark beneath her fingers, finding forks to rest in, surveying the ground beneath. Recalling the dream made her think of her early days before the quakes when she was a little girl. Maybe that’s where the dream came from… but no, it likely rose from the sighting of trees and the excitement of seeing green life again.

For sure she’d inch her way closer to them and watch for any sign of life coming and going. Wait for the right time. If the absence of movement of people or animals paved the way, maybe she could live there, at least until someone else found them. They were definitely big trees, she was convinced of it. She judged them to be about a kilometer away, yet they were a substantial smudge on the surrounding landscape.

Allowing her memory to guide her, she traveled in the general direction of where she’d seen them, her steps forming a meandering path through the archipelago of abandoned debris stretching before her. By early noon she reached the other side of what was once an outlying settlement of the sprawling city she’d escaped months earlier. Her food supply was low. Cursory searches of the distorted buildings revealed a battered supermarket with a cache of bottled water and canned sardines fallen behind contorted shelves. She crammed as much as she could carry into her pack and made a mental note to come back for more if it was safe.

Feeling hopeful from this discovery of precious sustenance, she crouched inside the supermarket’s crooked entrance. Last time she’d found food, she’d broken the handle of her knife. It was still usable, but another one would be better. Preferably sharp. Directly opposite was a collapsed sandstone building. Rusted remnants of its signage punctuated the rubble with jagged parentheses. Rapidly assessing the array of sandstone blocks, she spotted an archway and scuttled toward it.

Scattered rays of sunlight illuminated a few sections of the dark interior beyond the archway. A mixture of items had tumbled onto the tiled floor and her heart skipped a beat in anticipation. She waited for her vision to adjust to the dim interior and then carefully plotted her way through to the largest pile of debris. This must have been a pawn shop, she guessed. Astonished at her stupendous luck, she recognised the red handle of a Swiss army knife and quickly stowed it into her cargo’s pocket. This was definitely a site for return visits! She grabbed a pair of stout working gloves from one of the smaller piles and returned to the archway to check the street.

All seemed okay, though she was sure the wind had picked up. Rolling debris and wayward litter clattered a staccato concert, ominous in its persistence. She knew these winds well. They always materialized suddenly and reached terrifying strength within a few hours. This cache of treasures might be buried when she next visited, so she returned for one last scan of its contents. Noticing a small, tan colored pouch perched atop the ruins of a glass cabinet, she carefully reached for it, wondering about its precarious position. Looking up, she saw that it must have fallen from above, where a wooden shelf dangled at an alarming angle overhead.

Grabbing the pouch, she picked her way back to the arched door, convinced that a more thorough search wasn’t worth the hazard – too much danger of injury from sliding blocks and glass fragments. She didn’t bother checking inside the pouch – whatever it contained could only be a useless luxury, since jewellery was no longer valuable in the berserk violence of this post-cataclysmic nightmare. Unsure why she’d taken it, she stuffed the pouch into her shirt pocket.

It was mid afternoon when she got her first glimpse of the trees. If the wind didn’t drop soon there was no chance of getting to them tonight. Between the screaming wind and the need to conceal her movement, her progress had been tortuously slow. But there they were! – maybe three acres of trees, bordered on all sides by a huge stretch of tawny sand. Ah – that’s the reason they were disappearing, she thought - dust storms.

For the moment she was cocooned under a rocky outcrop, almost safe from the wind, waiting for stillness to return. Though these mini-hurricanes built slowly, they often dropped very quickly. Remembering the pouch in her pocket, she withdrew it and pulled it open, upending its contents into the palm of her hand.

As she’d suspected, it was a piece of jewellery – a heart-shaped locket on a delicate chain, no less. It had a burnished look, a kind of pink-gold with raised red, white and blue enameled letters, RAN, on its lid. Prying her thumbnail along its edge, she was absurdly pleased to see the locket spring open easily to reveal tiny, faded sepia photos inside each half. A man in uniform and a smiling woman. Reflexively she smiled back at the woman, abruptly sensing the strangeness of her own expression. When was the last time she’d smiled?

And then the wind stopped.