Mother Maple’s Children

by Crystal Sidell

I.

The trees seek revenge. We
keep to ourselves—bolt doors, cross shoulders, mouth no
when the rotting ones rattle our panes. The hours stretch; night is longer
without the cicadas’ lullaby. Voices carry as if spoken through a tin can
strung across property lines, faint and static-filled. We squint our ears to hear.
At dawn, we see what remains: the cockiest of the
murderers, armless; their seedlings’ vocabulary simpler than a cuckoo’s.

II.

The trees communicate through millenia-old song—
branches bending, reaching until the topmost leaf skims the
ground. After the marauders strike, they cast their leaves into the rivers,
collect water to nourish their thirst. The time has come. Sighing, crying: no,
we will not sacrifice ourselves any longer.

III.

It is seven minutes after the thirteenth hour. We are 
waiting for the clouds to part, patience fixed upon the ghost-silver
above our bed. We are waiting and wanting, hungry with
the flavor of vengeance. We fling up our green-veined fingers to catch fish
raining from the sky; they close-open their depthless eyes and
shed their slimy-sharp scales. The time has come. We have all we need to punish the
ax-wielders. We release our anger into the wind.

IV.

The trees orchestrated their revenge; there is
no other way to describe it. I was a pup then (it’s true), a 
child-witness to their anger, their determination, their brute
force. Their sap-breath infected the guilty, sent old and young thrashing
and screaming into their own hearths. Unable to tamp down
their hysteria, they suffered as the Great Mother Maple had suffered, until the
Great Forest had de-rooted them and flattened them like unwanted heather.

A native of Tampa Bay, Crystal Sidell grew up playing with toads in the rain and indulging in speculative fiction. She draws inspiration from the natural world, travel, and all things spooky. A Pushcart Nominee, Best of the Net Nominee, and Rhysling Finalist, her work appears in 34 Orchard, Apparition Lit, Eye to the Telescope, F&SF, Frozen Wavelets, Haven Spec, On Spec, The Quiet Ones, The Sprawl Mag, Strange Horizons, and others. You can find her on various social media platforms @sidellwrites.