| Short Story trees that surrounded their property, all trees, were alive. They were not alive like humans or even animals, but they could think and speak to each other, and move, wrench their roots from the ground and lurch like giants. For three generations the family of woodcarvers had lived among the trees, harvesting their bodies for craft. The trees hated the human presence, but they were powerless to remove them. They slept through the day and through the winter season, and could only move when it was warm enough for their roots to slip away from the soil. But they were deathly afraid of fire; they feared it more than even the axe or the saw. They feared the heat, which could chew away at their innards, and the light, which curled their skin. The carver revealed all this to his son. He told him that their family had been able to stay deep in the woods, for many years, but that the trees would always both fear and despise them, and
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for that reason they must be careful to keep the torches lit at night. The carver looked at his son and asked him if he believed him. The carver’s son looked at his father and said that he did. They embraced, and the son was left alone. The carver’s son believed his father. On the first day of his absence, he marched along the boundaries of their property, spying into the faces of the trees beyond the fence. Thousands of them gazed back at him with dead and wrinkled faces. Evening arrived and he broke flint on one torch, using it to ignite the pitch on the others. He spent the night with his mother, held awake at her bedside, wiping her face with cold water when she cried out and keeping his eyes on the forest wall. He did not sleep on the first night, but did so the following morning, waking at noon from dreams of wooden hands and teeth, tearing his mother in half. He spent the second day as he had