Having chosen to stay behind and work on her tinctures, Sister Heely waved from the back porch as Penelope set off for the forest, followed by Sister Rosin, Steph, and Marmalade, with Marmot scampering along behind them.
Penelope skipped along in glee, tugging on the straps of her pack as she strode. As they crossed the threshold of the cottage garden into the first copse of dense woods, Penelope felt a fleeting ripple through her chest. A wintery brush of something in her mind that felt like recognition. Like welcome.
Penelope hummed as the group wended the narrow paths deeper into the woods, boots crunching over snow and icy twigs. Marmot squeaked occasionally, sounding alarmed as he encountered small critters chasing through the thickets. He was soon seated about Marmalade’s neck, front paws flopping over the top of her head.
Though the trails narrowed further, ferns parted easily for Penelope as she forded the way through the underbrush. They stopped every now and then as Penelope spied some herb or other she wanted to collect, or Marmalade wanted to harvest some variety of vibrant mushroom. Prizes of the forest tucked safely in jars or linen pouches, the group would continue on.
As Penelope’s fingers grazed the tops of ferns, she felt once more the beating pulse of the woods. She felt alive with it. Her own pulse thrummed with the magic charging the air, her heart and mind reaching out to the sprawling magnitude of the Faewood. Her senses felt taut, heightened in dazzling awareness of all the life surrounding her. Penelope breathed it in, feeling almost giddy.
“These woods are quite different to the ones I’m used to,” Steph remarked in awe as he spun slowly in place, taking in the trees and tall grasses surrounding them.
They had come to rest by a small stream. Sister Rosin was refilling her gourd, while Marmot splashed water at her. Penelope was gathering flowers from a nearby bush. She had, of course, asked permission first. As was only polite.
Marmalade was watching with keen interest as Penelope huffed a warm breath over the flower heads, turning them from a burnished, hostile silver to blushing pink. Nodding in satisfaction, Penelope tucked them into a soft pouch before placing them gently in her pack.
“Different how?” Penelope asked, stepping over the hard ground to stand beside Steph, craning her neck to see where he was looking.
“Well, I’ve never seen anything exactly like that before.”
Through the branches of the trees ahead, the glimmer of tiny, shining lights could be seen. Like pebble-sized moons, suspended amongst a cluster of leaves the colour of winter plums.
“Oh, we’re here!” Penelope exclaimed, skipping across the narrow stream to the bank beyond. Stepping lightly over ancient tree roots furred with moss, Penelope twisted her way through narrow gaps between gnarled trunks and knotted brambles. The way opened with ease as branches shifted and roots snaked beneath her heels until she was standing in the clearing beyond.
The Ticklish Oak stood before her. Truly, the Oak was two trees wound around each other, twined like ribbons into one behemoth rising into the crystalline sky. One of the trunks was a rich raven black, the ridges of its bark glinting like a beetle’s wings. The other’s bark was the colour of fresh cream and streaked with shades of honeyed amber.
Its foliage was a mass of plums and mauves, golds and teals and pinks, immune as the tree was from the changing of the seasons. The glow of tiny lights glittering amongst the boughs came from hundreds upon thousands of opal-bright acorns, glinting with rainbow iridescence.
Fallen acorns littered the base of the tree, their shells cracked and dulled to an earthen bronze. The insides of their shells were coated with a black pearlescent sheen.
Penelope had stepped over to rest her palms on the bark of each trunk when the others crashed into the clearing behind her. Sister Rosin and Steph were both panting and sweaty-faced while an amused looking Marmalade brushed leaves from her tunic. Marmot, seated about her neck once again, helped pluck wayward ferns from Marmalade’s hair.
“Come see!” Penelope beckoned. To the tree she whispered, “Hello! Are you awake? I’ve brought some friends to visit.” Beneath her palms, in the depths of the trunks, Penelope felt a dozy sort of awareness stirring. The upper branches rustled, like a cat shaking itself awake.
“Hello Elsie, hello Antoin.” Marmalade crossed the soft carpet of moss to place her own palm on rough bark.
“Oh, you’ve given them names?” Penelope asked, delighted.
“They have names, but I was not the one who gave them.” Marmalade smiled and traced her fingers down a vein of treacle sap.
The treetops rippled and the acorns chimed with soft, childish giggles which echoed about the clearing.
“When you said the Ticklish Oak I should have realised this was who you meant.” Marmalade smiled and stepped back.
Penelope turned to see Steph staring at the tree in gleeful astonishment. Sister Rosin had drawn her knife, shifting into something of a battle stance while glaring up at the tree’s boughs.
“They won’t harm you, Sister Rosin, you can put that away,” Penelope chuckled.
“Why do the acorns look like that?” Steph asked, reaching up to touch the glittering lights hanging from a lower branch.
“Oh, I’ll show you!”
Penelope tapped her fingernails gently up the trunk of first one tree trunk, then the other. The rippling peals of giggling grew louder, and several acorns fell to the earth.
The shells cracked open, spilling their multi-hued contents. Ghostly wisps of sparkling colours formed into the shapes of beetles and hummingbirds, mice and butterflies. They flitted about the tree before the lights dissolved, misting into the bark. Lines of light flared within the twisting trunks, racing up towards the boughs, and were gone.
“Incredible!” Steph exclaimed at the same time Sister Rosin shuddered, mumbling something that sounded like, “Creepy.”
After long moments, the giggling subsided though the boughs continued to sway in the breezeless air.
Marmot gambolled about Marmalade’s legs as she hummed a lullaby to the twin trees. Steph examined the fallen acorns with fascination. Penelope helped him gather several of the pearly shells from the soft earth, tucking them into her pack for safe keeping.
When they were done, Sister Rosin sheathed her knife and blew out a breath. “Shall we continue on then?”
Penelope nodded, stepping once more to the tree. “Thank you! You can go back to sleep now.” The tree seemed to hum in sleepy contentment and the treetops stilled to silence.
