The Lady in the Tree

She grew with the rest of the tree, part of its wooden trunk, content to support the limbs and leaves above and suck up the sap from the roots below.  She was tree, mindless and free.  Bugs crawled over her belly.  Birds hopped over her, scouring for the bugs, but she felt no tickle.   Winters came and passed while she felt no chill, and spring with its new leaves brought no joy.

Yet all that time, her shape was forming.  She was gradually separating from the rest of the trunk.  Her arms came free, her torso began its supple twist, and her legs tensed, ready to take a first step.  For ages she was caught that way in expectation, not free but no longer mindless tree, either.  She had no way to guess what she might become.

Then, one day, a human child passing through the forest paused to ponder the tree.  The lady inside absorbed the power of the child’s gaze, and felt the parallel amazement when the child’s face lit with discovery.  “There’s a lady in the tree!”  For the first time, the lady recognized the human shape that mirrored her own, and in that instant, she glimpsed the awful, wonderful truth: she was not tree.

Then her true prison consumed her as it never had before.  The child left the forest, and the lady was unable to follow her.  Her arms extended higher to sprout into more branches.  Her legs, never fully formed, stayed locked in the stubborn cells of wood, while her face, just when she was trying hardest to breathe, closed its mouth forever.