Hornbeam
Will Carter
Hornbeam. Vector Stock.
I imagine, as much as I am able, that if I’d been a step out of place in either direction, I would not have found this. I’m in a forest, and on a smaller scale, nestled under the awning of a hornbeam tree, in a spot no greater than a metre wide, containing only a twisted root emerging from the soil, and myself. I stumbled into it; an afternoon walk, stomach still full, mind chewing on the morning’s problems, following one footstep into the next and arriving quite by accident at this point, finding some change in the nature of the world in this spot alone. There is peace here, I think, and pause at the thought. Beneath me, below a bank of vegetation, is the river – a stream here, only a tributary, a smaller part of a greater whole flowing steadily towards the sea.
I let my hand wander from the body, reaching out, and can feel on the tips of my fingers that the air is different there; like pressing softly against plastic wrap, cling film, or dough, then breaking through. The air isn’t colder, nor warmer, and there is no difference in temperature. Not weight either, the air no heavier here nor lighter there; I inhale, and find no tangible difference in purity, deciding that this is no pocket of cleaner air, but something deeper, more profound. Something quantum. It’s like the aliveness of the thing is detectable here, the pulse of my heart in time with the pulse of the wind, the pulse of the trees, as water is drawn up the xylem to the leaves, where it creeps out the stomata and evaporates like oxygen diffusing into my cells, drawn in by the motion of my chest.
It’s a tone of clarity, then. A recognition of the truth of this place, without judgement or disturbance, emotions left in the step before and simple untainted existence in this one. There is mud beneath my foot and birdsong in my ears – and beyond them too, the vibrations in one throat arriving at the membrane in my ear, a back and forth of anunciation and reception. There is communication, nothing else, and that is all.
And then a breeze, rippling through the white fabric of his t-shirt, cutting through his jeans and making the legs bubble like the plucked skin of a goose, and wondering… when did it become ‘his’? When did it stop being ‘mine’? The loss of ownership is no bother. I will reclaim it in time, when this heavy body marches forward, compelled by need and hunger, by desperation and longing. So often I have felt in my body the desire to move, the tensing of the muscles in the thigh and the itching of the skin atop the feet. The need to piss, the need for water, the taste of coffee keenly anticipated and the scalding of the tongue requiring its protrusion from the mouth. Those needs are known here, unforgotten, felt but accepted; the desire for change as fulfilling as the change itself, the need to breathe met at the moment of its conception.
And then the coldness, starting in the tips of the fingers and rising up the arms. Not cutting, but caressing, a gentle coldness that is just another part of this being, crossing from the shoulders to the skin of the pectorals and grazing the cheekbones and the tips of the ears and then a shudder –
and the shattering of the illusion, the autonomic response of the body to cold, and the place of peace beneath the hornbeam becomes just a part of the path in a forest of oaks and hornbeams, the regular air closing in and clinging to the skin like static.
Then a breeze, and the wrinkling of the t-shirt, and the peace spreading from within as the heartbeat hits in time with the receding of the wind, and I put one foot in front of the other and take my next step.
Will Carter is an aspiring author living in North-East England. He graduated from the University of Manchester in 2019 with a degree in English Literature, and primarily writes short stories, with pieces upcoming in Poetically and Litro. He is also working on his first novel. You can find his fledgling twitter account at @author_carter.