There was a man who lived just outside the village, in a small hut on the coast. He lived alone, and had a small boat, and a net, and every morning he would go out fishing, and in the afternoon he would eat some of his catch, and smoke some for the winter, and if he had any left he would sell it in the village. None of the other villagers liked him much. He had no possessions, except for his hut, his boat and his net, and so none of the men would let him marry their daughters.
One day he went to sleep in his boat, forgetting to tether it, and the tide carried him out into the sea. When he woke up he was out of sight of land, and could do nothing, except wait to see where the tide would take him.
By the time the boat found land, the sun was beginning to set. It grounded itself on a small isle, which had never before seen any trace of man. It landed with a bump, and woke the man who had fallen asleep again. He found that he was on a white beach, and that the island was inhabited not by men or wolves, but by tall, thin, dark trees, that clung close together, and spread their leaves wide to catch the sunlight.
The man had an axe in his boat. He took it, and cut down three trees, from the centre of the island, then dragged them to his beach, and cut them into logs. He managed to fit half of one tree into the boat, and tied the other logs together with his net, so that when he cast off again they bobbed along behind his boat. He fell asleep, because by now it was night, and the tide carried him home again.
He dried the wood, and rolled the logs into the village the next day. Because there were no trees on their island, the villagers were willing to pay him well for the logs. Some helped him build his hut into a larger house, some gave him chickens, some suggested that their daughters might be ready to marry soon.
The man returned to the island many times, and brought logs back to the village, each time in a larger boat. He never told the others where he went, or how he acquired the wood. He became wealthy, but was still not respected. He still lived alone.
One day he returned to the island, in his newly carved boat, with a bright new axe with an iron head. He was about to cut down his first tree when he heard a voice, and a woman emerged from between the trees. "This is strange," he thought, because he had never seen any other living creature on the island, in all his visits.
The woman looked at him, with sad eyes, deep green like the leaves of the trees. "Please do not cut down the trees," she said. And the man said, "Why should I not? There are many trees here, and none on my island, but there we need wood, here there are none to need it."
The woman shook her head, and he saw that her hair was raven black, and glossy, hued in parts bronze like autumn-shed leaves. "If you swear to me not to cut down the trees, I will give you whatever you ask." And the man said, "What can you give me? This wood is more precious to my people than gold. With it we build fences, and cages, and rafts and trinkets. This wood makes me rich. I want for nothing."
The woman knelt before him, pleading. Her skin was a rich tan like the polished flesh of a tree; she was naked. The man said "But I live alone. There is one thing that I want."
The woman went with the man back to the village in his boat. There was no wood in the boat that day, but with what he had left drying outside his house, the man bought a flock of young sheep, and killed one of them to celebrate his marriage.
The woman let the man take her, lying still as a log, then writhing like the wind-kissed trees in feigned pleasure. The villagers thought her strange, but she talked, when pressed, with the other women, and learned to gossip and bitch. She cooked for her husband, and kept his house, and skinned the animals that he brought back from hunts with his friends.
One day her husband went away and a day passed and he was not seen. She sat on the rocks, on the shore near his house, and would not speak to the people. The night her husband came back, she gave him one cold stare, and would not acknowledge him again. Four days passed, and she sat unmoving, gathering dirt, growing pale and lean. She would not cook for the man, nor keep his house, nor skin his animals. She did not share his bed.
On the fifth day he went to her, and offered her water and flat bread, and she accepted it, but did not speak. Then he said to her "You are my wife. You are not behaving as a wife should behave." And she did not look at him, but replied. "You lied to me. You have cut the trees, and brought their bodies back to burn and mutilate. You are not my husband."
"No?" He asked. "Then I owe you nothing, and I shall
return to your island with many men and cut down all the trees, and
burn them all, and you will watch. Do you want that?"
"No. I will agree to be your wife again, but this time you must
promise me, by whatever you love, never to return to the island, and
never to take your axe to another tree. There is driftwood for fires;
use that."
He smiled, and agreed, swore by his mother and father, and took her hand, led her back into the hut. She slept with him again, but this time did not even feign to enjoy it, and curled up with her back to him when he was finished. She would dream, of tall, thin, dark trees, that clung close together, that spread their leaves wide to catch the sunlight. And she would wake, without crying, and do the things a wife should do.
Soon it became clear that she had conceived, and her belly was swelling like the waxing moon. Her husband was overjoyed, and he made a sacrifice to the god at his shrine in the hills, and she was led by her self-appointed friends to the shrine of the goddess in the cave, and made her own sacrifice.
As the end of her term neared, she was confined to her bed, bulked out with great furs and cushions, attended by her overeager peers. She slept often, and at other times chatted half-heartedly with the other wives about naming her child, or about the strange tastes she would suddenly crave. She did not notice her husband's disappearances at first, and when she did, and asked where he was, she was shushed. But she knew, though she did not cry.
The man was there, though, when the baby arrived, a big, strong, beautiful boy that screamed heartily when it was born. The midwife cut the cord, and showed the child to the priest, then gave him to his mother. She kissed the babe, and fed him from her breast. The father drew close, and knelt, and said soft words to his wife and son. The woman looked at him, curiously, through her green eyes, and for the first time ever, she kissed him, but there was no love in that kiss, and when their lips parted, she died.
The years pass. The man bought new wives, and women, with his wealth, and visited the island again, every day, without fear of discovery. He was tired of shepherding. These girls looked after his boy, minded him as he grew up. He was a tall child, and by his early adolescence he was the tallest in the village. He was handsome, with eerily beautiful pale green eyes. There was much of his mother in him, and little of his father.
The girls of the village loved him. The daughters, the mothers, the wives all watched him from the corners of their eyes, his strong tanned arms and chest, his bewitching smile. Sometimes his father would catch him with some maid in the hills, and reprimand him, but beam with pride behind his stern frown. Sometimes it would be one of the wives, and he would laugh at the husband behind his back. Then one night he was woken by splashing, and he looked out his window, saw a pair of sisters pushing a raft out into the sea, and letting the tide carry them. He got up, and saw that his own boat was gone, and his son too. In the morning the boy was back, but he did not ask any questions.
Six nights he stayed awake, listening to the stealthy tread of his son leaving the house, and then watched as his boat carried the boy away. He watched the womenfolk of the village follow, in vessels of their own. But in the morning, it was as if nothing had happened- the boy slept sound in his bed, and the boat was there, and the women went about their business in the village. He wondered if it might just be a dream.
One night he resolved to follow his son, and as the boy's boat rode out of sight, he leapt into his own, and the tide faithfully took him to the island, where the tall, thin, dark trees, clung close together, and spread their leaves wide to catch the sunlight. In the dark, he saw the beach covered with the villagers' boats, and quietly walked between the trees.
In the centre of the island was a clearing. Years before, there had been no clearing, but his axe had hewn a wide circle of dead stumps over the years, and the grass had grown over their graves. In the circle were the women of the village. They stood still, in concentric spirals, naked, their arms stretched out to the sky like leafy branches. Only their faces moved, showing emotions, anticipation, jealousy, delight, and their eyes all followed the shape of the boy, darting between them, dancing.
In his hand was a knife, and he teased them with it, dragging the blunt over their bellies, their shoulders or their breasts, eliciting giggles and sighs. With the sharp end, he cut their hair, letting it fall to the ground like autumn-shed foliage. He danced through them, and the man realised that there was a pattern to his movements, and wished that he had realised this earlier, so that he might have seen what the pattern was.
When they were all shorn, the daughters, the wives, the mothers, he stopped in his dance, and they watched him eagerly, longing for his attention. He turned, and strode over to his father, hiding in the bushes. He said a few cheerful words, and kissed the man who had taken his mother. There was no love in that kiss. He went down to the beach, and reached into his father's boat. In it was the axe, and he returned with it to the grove.
The man watched as he felled the women-trees. They did not run, but each waited her turn, at first with yearning, then, as it came, with mute terror. They all died there, the mothers, the wives, the daughters, their blood black in the night, unmourned by the tall, thin, dark trees, that clung close together, that spread their leaves wide to catch the moonlight. The boy killed them, and without a word gave the axe to his father. On the beach he burned all the boats, save one, which he rode back to his father's house, and slept soundly that night in his own bed.
In the morning, the men saw that the women had gone. They went to the house by the shore, and saw too that the boy's father had gone. They asked him where the man was. The boy replied that he did not know, but offered to show them where he often went, and where he found the trees to fell. He took as many men as would fit in the boat, and it was a large boat, for his father was a rich man. The tide carried them to the island.
The villagers found the man, and the women, felled with his axe. They hanged him from one of the trees, and buried the bodies of their loved ones.
Without women, the village died out, the last men living in loneliness among the tree-less hills.
On the island, the trees grow still, tall, thin, dark trees, that cling
close together, and spread their leaves wide, to catch the sunlight.