Fairy Door
by Jacob Austin
Arboreal scar tissue webs the air in a fountain’s frozen spray above the dark stump. Invisible, but there. It rises up in a solid trunk high above our backyard, and up there, far above our heads, explodes into a network of branches, reproducing itself fractally in a labyrinth of lines and leaves. Shannon, our daughter, cries as we stand in the backyard after the men have left, surveying their devastation. Jules picks her up, tries to comfort her as I wrap my arm around her shoulder.
The tree’s ghost hovers there above us. I wish it would go off to that northern forest where the trees rise and fall like waves, the forest floor a sea of mixed nutrients, each new tree a fresh combination of tree spirits, growing as high as they can before diving back into the moss pad to be hugged into the earth, again and again, an unbroken forest, the eternal paradise of trees, but this one will not leave us. It has one root still caught in the yard and will not let go.
We stand for a while as the sun sets on the opposite side of the house. As the fireflies begin to appear, I steer us inside where I try to cheer everyone up by putting on The Beatles and making Shannon’s favorite dinner, grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. She sits glumly at the window bench and stares into the backyard.
None of us wanted the tree cut down. Never. We loved that tree. A live oak in the full glory of its life. Over two hundred years old, according to Jules’ brother. Its limbs had grown so heavy that some drooped to the earth, and then, with the added support, sprang back towards the sun. An overturned bowl of a tree. To stand near its trunk was to be enveloped in shadow. A vegetal hug some ten degrees cooler than the yard beyond.
What we refer to as our backyard is not truly our backyard. We had simply been early homesteaders in this new subdivision. The vast field behind us is to be the final tract they develop. Shannon was born in this house. She grew up with that unfenced field as her domain, but we have no right to it. We could not stop the men who showed up to take down the tree.
After dinner, none of us feel any better. Shannon goes to sleep early, and I make drinks for Jules and myself, but they offer no relief, and Jules goes to bed not long after. I make another round and walk with it out to the trunk, hoping to shoo away the lingering spirit, but I cannot convince it. Heavy sadness like a cartoon rain cloud has permeated the area. The stench of freshly cut wood is nauseating. I step through the new mulch, but my heavy feet sinking into the bouncy turf is obscene and I must excuse myself. Ducking away, I make my way back inside and sit down with my computer in the den.
The internet is entered into much as a dream. A dream takes us to the underworld where it requires lucid concentration not to become disoriented. Almost immediately, the blue glow begins working on my brain, the sea lapping at edges, ocean glass shorn of its sharpness, the deep melancholy of whales…Holding my family in mind, I fortify myself against it and continue my search. In that way, I manage to surface with something useful still in my grasp. I immediately shut the laptop before it can suck me back in and go to the kitchen where I write down my idea on a piece of paper and stick it to the fridge, then go to sleep.
There are many routes to the same places.
Fairy Door, the note reads, and it had been all Shannon needed to go on, apparently, for, when we awake, we find her in the backyard, already busy with the work of its installation. We decide not to disturb her. Instead, Jules makes coffee while I fry a couple eggs, and we sit at the kitchen bench and watch. It is nearly lunchtime before she finishes up and heads inside. Beyond her, in the far reaches of the field, large machinery is at work tearing up the earth. She looks tiny against their backdrop. She comes in smudged with dirt, hungry as a fiend, and puts away two PB&Js and three dino nuggets before she is ready to discuss her work.
“What were you up to out there?”
“Building a fairy door,” she beams.
“What’s that?” Jules asks.
“It’s a door for fairies. They just need someone to put in the door,” she explains, panting between gulps of milk. She runs a grimy forearm across her dairy wet lips and continues: “Once they get inside the tree they can set up the rest.” More milk and a mouthful of stegosaurus: “I don’t know why, but they need help with the door.”
“Ooh,” Jules coos with interest. “How do you know so much about fairies?”
“I dreamed it,” she says, biting a t-rex in half. “Dad was there. He told me.”
“I told you this in your dream?”
“Yeah,” she says with a you-were-there-dummy-don’t-you-remember tone that is cute for now but will find its true expression in a few short years. I look towards the fridge and see the note still clipped where I left it. When I glance out the window, towards the tree, the great shadow is folding inwards, inverting itself to enter its own trunk through the recently installed sunflower yellow door at its base.
Jacob Austin moves boxes in a supermarket distribution center. His published work is collected at jacobottoaustin.com.