Kiojah grew in a clearing without many other trees. At first the rain would come often, and the tree’s leaves grew lusciously green and wide. The trunk grew thicker and birds would come to nestle in its branches.
Then the winds came. Because Kiojah was young and not very strong, the harsh winds would beat upon the tree, causing it to grow crooked. Since there were not other trees near to help endure the blows of the wind, the tree withstood it alone. Kiojah was now slanted, and its branches began to curl into twisted contortions. But the rains still came and the birds still flew to the top of the tree.
One day a grizzly bear came to Kiojah. He was enraged, furious from some dispute with another forest animal. His eyes glinted burgundy at the edges and his fur stood up at the back of his neck. The heavy bear took his claws and grated them into the white bark of Kiojah. His fury tore deep into the tree’s phloem, exposing the inner wood.
Kiojah hurt. But the tree accepted what the bear had done, because it had been told all along that its purpose of living in the forest was for the animals. Kiojah’s bark was now scarred. The cambium that had healed the slashes had grown in black.
The crooked tree with its twisty branches and blemished trunk continued to grow and stand in the forest. Its girth had widened and its arms had expanded. Other trees had grown in near Kiojah, and the height of their bodies quickly overtook the size of the tree. Kiojah’s place had become shadowy, and it had to fight for a chance with the sun.
A group of people lived in a town nearby, and they would come to the forest to hunt or to swim in the river. Men and women would walk past Kiojah, and instead of carving their initials with a heart around it as teenagers in love might, they withdrew their knives and carved into the bark their secrets and lies. Sap oozed from the tree like dark blood from a wound, for their cuts were deep and their secrets grave. Why were the people so drawn to Kiojah? So determined to reveal their betrayals? Maybe the tree’s bent body and twisted limbs reminded them of their gnarled hearts, their pockmarked souls.
Instead of displaying these etchings of truth clearly, Kiojah scarred over in bumpy knots, closing in over its wounds and concealing its secrets deep within the trunk. When Kiojah tried to heal itself of the many cuts, the new bark grew in the color of black charcoal, as it had when the bear inflicted his wrath. Because of this, the once white tree now turned ebony. Moss grew over it to disguise some of the ugliness, and the pain was well guarded.
Kiojah grew old. The shadowy place had become nearly as dark as a cave, for the other trees had long choked Kiojah out of the sun. Instead, the tree grew in the moonlight, for no one else cared to compete for the faint lunar glow. The blackened tree grew more gnarled and twisted, its bark forever scarred, its branches eternally crooked. The birds and butterflies had long forgotten the tree, landing instead in more pleasant places. Kiojah became a home for dark things—the bats of the night, the beetles with their hardened shields, the secrets and lies of hearts gone by.
The leaves of Kiojah whispered softly, asking for a miracle. Years passed as Kiojah stood there in the darkest part of the forest, where the sun hardly shone and where butterflies became a myth, their existence so rare. Parts of the tree had begun to rot; fungi overtook the crevices.
One spring a lumberjack walked through the forest and stopped in front of Kiojah. He wore a puzzled expression and stared at the tree for a long time. The tree looked down at the man and thought, “Maybe he sees a part of me that is still beautiful. Perhaps there is a patch of bark on me that is still white and unmarred.”
But the lumberjack left without a word.
He came back a few months later, a chainsaw in hand. He started the machine, which screamed and threatened Kiojah.
“Please!” The tree cried. “Please, no. I don’t want to die. Don’t cut through me, for then you will see all that I am hiding.”
The tree weeped.
The lumberjack began to saw through Kiojah, a sharp pain in the side. He thought the rain started to pour because he didn’t realize it was the tree’s tears falling on him.
It was nearly the end, for the man only had a bit more left to saw. “This is it,” thought Kiojah. “I am about to fall.” Kiojah glimpsed its death with fear.
The man finished sawing the last inch of wood and the great tree crashed to the forest floor, dead. Everything was over. All of Kiojah’s pain and suffering, secrets and lies, were revealed in the rings of the trunk. It could be hidden no more.
The lumberjack took a step toward the stump of Kiojah, surprised at what he saw. Though the bark of the tree had been slate, the core of the tree was a soft white. What amazed the man the most was the shape of the rings. Because Kiojah had closed in on itself so much to heal all of the pain, the rings had twisted out of a circle and instead formed a perfect heart. Heart ring upon heart ring, surrounding Kiojah’s core.
Kiojah did not know, could not know. The dead tree had forgotten how it had started and could not see what was truly inside itself. But the white heart was there. It had been there all along.
The man stepped back silently and smiled. Kiojah’s beauty had been revealed at last.
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