The Piping Tree

by LEAH BARTLESON

Come away from the window, boy. Bring the candle. The ghosts can’t get you as long as you’re wrapped in your mother’s quilt.

I want to see them, Papa.

Then your Papa’s not told you enough ghost stories.

I’m not afraid.

That’s because this one’s an ordinary storm, little ghostling, with thunder, lightning, and rain. But I’ve seen the other kind of storm. When all the people shut their doors tight on the night, when all the little girls and boys sit on their Papa’s knee wrapped up tight in their mother’s quilt, that’s when the ghosts come out. They’ll soar on a northbound gust with their rags flying behind and a mad grin on their face. They’ll grab hold of a lightning bolt and ride it across the sky. If you listen close, ghostling, you can hear them laughing out our window.

I heard them in the trees across from the schoolyard.

You should not play near that forest, boy.

Where does the storm carry them, Papa?

To the town where the sun never rises, little ghostling, the town where the dead refuse to stay dead. To Adeling.

Few ever find it, disobedient children or lost travelers who found a fourth fork in the three-forked road. Some are led by the sound of wooden flutes on the wind. If you ever hear the flutes, little ghostling, you run straight home and sprinkle salt in front of the door.

When the wind plays the piping tree, the folk of Adeling hurry to bring in the hay and shut their windows tight. At night they pray for a southerly wind, because they cannot leave until the wind blows from the south.

Why not, Papa?

Because, little ghostling, the north wind is the devil’s breath. The north wind carries the storms, and that is why on blustery days your uncle will tie down his boat and fold up his nets.

Wind to the north, do not go forth. That’s what my uncle says.

And he is right. Because the north wind is what brought the ghosts. And Old Man Sun is what made them choose Adeling, because even ghosts need a place to rest after a long night’s mischief. Old men have bad eyes, and that one is even older than me. And everyone, not just old men, has a blind spot.

Every day just before dawn, the ghosts gather in the only town where the sun won’t rise, because daylight burns the dead away.

What are the people like, Papa?

The folk of Adeling wear hoods and wooden shoes. They work in the fields until their backs are bent, their hands gnarled roots, and their clothes full of holes. No matter how hard they work, the ground yields just enough to survive. They eat moldy porridge every morning and stewed turnips every night.

Papa, I think I saw one. An old woman wandering in the woods, calling for her son.

Child, only one of us can tell stories at a time.

Yes, Papa.

Now little ghostling, I want you to think of a weathervane on a barn roof. A rusty rooster weathervane that no one looks at anymore because it always points north. Little ghostling, no one looks at that rusty rooster, but I tell you that rooster sees everything.

What did it see, Papa?

***

The weathervane squeaked in the wind. Far below in the boggy northmost field, Edward Cross scraped the last fistful of seeds from his scrip.

Winter’s last frost had melted that morning, and if he was lucky, if Jack Frost didn’t see under Edward’s deep hood, his seeds might sprout into something worth eating. Ghosts are hard to trick. They prosper off tricks of their own, mostly harmless mischief for their own amusement, but when they grew bored of Adeling, they would take a fancy to one of the townsfolk. They could make a person run loose in the woods on all fours like a dog, or climb the church steeple in a storm and refuse to come down, or stand frozen in a field all day. Edward kept his eyes down so he wouldn’t see Neighbor Wright’s skeleton where the scarecrow should be.

As his gnarled hands patted soil over the last seed, he looked up at the sound of strange whistles and moans coming from the woods. Every time, he remembered the first time.

Once, he had been Edward Cross the silk merchant, on his way to Fairwick for the market. Halfway through the morning, his horse bolted at nothing and threw him off its back. When Edward’s head stopped spinning, he could not relocate the path through the forest. He wandered in circles, calling until he lost his voice.

That’s when he heard the music. A piper ahead, piping in the woods.

He walked towards the sound but found no piper there, only a tree hung with all manner of pipes and flutes. Crude wooden flutes, bone flutes, painted, new, and old, all played by the wind’s mischievous breath.

When he turned to leave, he realized it was almost dark. He must have been lost longer than he thought. When he looked up for the sun, the thick overstory blocked out the sky.

A howling swooped down from the trees. Several small, ragged figures flew around him, ripping his coat, picking his pockets, and scratching at his eyes until he fled screaming toward the only shelter he could find, a wretched little village where all the houses leaned with the wind. 

He tried to escape only twice. The first time, the ragged people clung to his ankles and gnawed his legs bloody. The second time, a tall and crooked figure came to him in the dark and stood there facing him. Under the hood, he saw the blind staring face of his horse.

***

Papa, I heard the pipes today.

Where?

From the trees across the schoolyard. It was beautiful.

But you did not go to them, ghostling. You did not follow.

No.

You must never go there. The forest is a dangerous place. Ghost stories are never only ghost stories, after all.

***

Now the tree was piping again.Lightning flickered behind the clouds and the wind blew hard enough to make Edward stoop. Everything in that town leaned with the wind. The trees leaned north, the houses leaned north, even the people leaned from the wind.

Out of habit, Edward looked at the weathervane atop the city hall. As long as he had been there, it had always pointed in the same direction. Wind from the north, do not go forth. A twister was coming. 

Leaving the rest of the seeds unburied, Edward trudged home. The town was wrapped in eternal dusk, never fully day or night, but the gathering clouds brought on artificial nightfall. He squinted through the murky, yellow-brown air, aiming for the flickering lamp hung beside his door. Around him, the townsfolk worked silently, closing the shutters of their homes. They had to hide before the wind picked up. The ghosts loved to ride the twisters, and anyone who saw them in their glee might forget their own humanity and join them.

The wind would not let Edward close the window. Beck, the stable hand, joined Edward, and together they latched the shutters. Without a word they moved through the motions, latching doors, putting away the plow, releasing the livestock. Beck knew what to do without needing to be told. 

Edward made it inside as the first raindrops hit the roof. Beck left for his own house. “Clarice?” Edward called, but he knew where he would find his wife, kneeling by the empty cradle, praying, as always. She ignored his pleading, head bowed over the cradle. With each passing day Edward watched the living world grow less appealing to her, in Adeling, where only the ghosts laughed. Finally, Edward had no choice but to pull Clarice into the closet after him, where they would be safely hidden.

Outside, the ghostly horde took flight, rushing through the village, riding the twister to the clouds. The closet door blocked out the light, but not the noise. Behind the thunder and howling wind, the ghosts added their own harmony, cackling on the backs of he-goats and hounds. The forest echoed with the voices of Adeling’s poor, mad animals: screaming horses, baying dogs, squealing pigs. The church bells clanged discordantly. The pipe tree was piping.

Then the horde was gone. For a moment, silence returned.

Outside the closet door, a baby began to cry.

Clarice stiffened beside him. Edward’s face went slack. He held Clarice tighter, frightened by her thinness. Every day she seemed more like a ghost herself, but he would not let her go to the ghost of her child.

She had been here longer than him. They met in his first year, when he needed a wife and she needed a husband. Since then, he grew to love her the way a lost man loves the hole in the ground where he sleeps. For a time, they were almost happy. Then one morning, Edward woke to her scream. In the crib, in place of their son, lay a rotting gourd with twig limbs and a wrinkled apple face.

***

Papa, I heard the baby crying.

You’ve been playing in the forest again haven’t you, little ghostling? You’re still searching for the old woman’s ghost. I told you to stay away from there.

I had to follow the crying, Papa. I found a baby on the edge of the schoolyard, made of rotten fruit and twigs.

The dead are hard to get rid of, child.

***

The people of Adeling had tried everything to make the dead go away. Six feet of soil and a locked coffin could not keep them underground. Stone cairns could not contain them. Carts could not carry them far without being beset by men with pumpkin heads or wrinkle-muzzled wolves.

Burning made everything worse. The ashes scattered on the wind, infesting everything with their wickedness. Objects moved of their own accord. Scarecrows woke and walked away, empty kettles whistled, tools turned on their owners. Sometimes the trees came to life and used their branches like hands with too many fingers.

Animals too were seized by the madness. Dogs dug holes until their paws bled. They dug up the dead from their graves and carried off their bones to gnaw and bury elsewhere. Sometimes a snake would creep in and lie on the bed. Once, a wolf dressed in the mayor’s silk waistcoat.

The folk lasted a little longer, but in the end the ashes of the restless dead always found a way inside them. Edward had seen his neighbors digging graves for no one. Edward had seen them break clay bowls and mix the shards into soup. Last month, he had watched the young widow Alice drag a wolf by its tail into the village square, supernaturally strong, heedless of its grievous bites and scratches.

With a final whimper, the baby on the other side of the door fell silent. The storm was over.

Edward released his grip on Clarice. As soon as he let go, she burst out of the closet and ran to the cradle. She tore through the blankets, searching for the son who hadn’t been there after the last storm, or the storm before that, or the storm before that.

Edward leaned against the doorframe, feeling the weight of twice his years. There was no point telling Clarice there was no point. She had to see for herself.

This had been Edward’s life for however long he’d lived here. So it would remain until the day he died. Break his back in the field for just enough food to survive. Milk the cow if he could catch her for a few sour strippings. Trudge from field to table to bed with his head down and no energy to spare even a grunt to his neighbors. His son was a ghost. His wife was half a ghost. No one could count the years here, in a town without a sun, where autumn lingers but never prospers. Still Edward felt his age in his bones. When he died, his body would return to the dust he worked all day long, another layer of soil on the ground. Even then, he would not rest. He would join the flocks of restless dead and howl among the living.

So he left Clarice, surrounded by discarded blankets, elbow-deep in the empty crib. Edward could not bear to see her lose their son once more. The door slammed behind him.

***

Little ghostling, why do you hang your head?

The children in the schoolyard won’t look at me.

They fear you.

They hate my old clothes and pale eyes.

They hate how deeply you look into their eyes. People are like ghosts. They don’t want to be seen.

I told them about the baby I heard in the woods, Papa. They didn’t listen. They don’t believe in ghosts.

Do you, little ghostling? Do you?

***

The windmill spun too fast in the ever-present squall, its canvas blades torn to shreds. The collapsing barn by the eastern field watched him through two black window frames. Edward strode down the overgrown dirt road, his heavy coat whipping. He didn’t know where he was going, only away. If he had to spend another minute in his dark, stuffy house with the mumble of Clarice’s prayers and the ghost of his ghost-child’s screams, he would go mad.

When the road gave way to woods, Edward didn’t miss a step. Leaves crunched under his boots and he ducked when the trees tried to sweep off his hat. Today would be his third escape attempt. What worse torment than Adeling could the ghosts send to stop him?

Dead leaves hung from the trees like sleeping bats. He had forgotten how dark Adeling’s forest was. Since his last attempt, Edward hadn’t ventured more than a few steps inside, where the twisted trees grew close enough to choke out the sky and the livestock wandered in their madness.

Maybe the forest once had a name. If so, it was long forgotten. Maybe Edward Cross the silk merchant had known it, but its name became lost with him.

With every step away from the wretched town, fear lodged deeper in Edward’s chest. He walked stubbornly faster. Send your worst! he dared the forest, but even in his head his voice trembled.

It was quiet, too quiet. No word from the crows or sparrows, crickets or toads. Even the distant moans and mumbles of the broken-minded had fallen silent. Edward felt half-mad himself. Shouldn’t the ghosts have come by now? Though unable to judge distance within the forest’s living maze, he felt certain that he had passed the point at which he had turned back last time. If not for the closeness of the trees, it might have been any other forest. Roots clung to his boots, tripping him. Branches tore holes in his clothes and swept the hat off his head. The sound of his own crashing footsteps echoed until a whole army pursued him, all the mad men and women and beasts of Adeling.

A glance to the side revealed a misshapen, too-tall creature running beside him, ducking in and out of the trees. For so long Edward had lived in shadow, he’d forgotten the shape of his own. Was it true, that ahead the eternal dusk was lifting? Hope clung to his pounding heart. Were the trees thinning? Every breath filled his lungs with fresher air. The smothering weight of Adeling’s forest lifted. He no longer stooped and hobbled, but ran straight and strong. In the growing light he glimpsed his hands. All these years, he had been a young man.

A distant moaning came from deep in the woods. The piping tree. Another storm was coming.

Clarice.

Edward stopped running.

One more dash would bring him to the forest’s end, freeing him of Adeling at last. A few more steps would leave behind misery, mournful church bells, clouds of crows, the ghost-child’s screams, the piping tree. He would burst into sunlight and keep running until Adeling lay far behind. He would build a house and sell his silk, and never, ever forget the town where the sun never rises.

Edward hunched against a tree. It was too unfair, that the place he had tried so hard to leave was the very place he was needed most. Wind howled through the twisted branches, harmonizing with the pipes. The forest was chasing him back to Adeling; no need for monsters or pain. The years had not passed harmlessly over him. Without his knowing, Adeling had looped a rope around his ankle. Not love—love has no place in that sunless town—but duty. The duty of shared misery. He thought of his wife sitting all day in her rocking chair, rocking her empty bundle of blankets. He pictured the hunched townsfolk picking moldy oats out of the mud, unable to meet each other’s eyes. He couldn’t save his wife from her grief or his neighbors from their torment, but nor could he live with himself if he left them behind.

Stooped under the weight of twice his years, Edward turned back. With its many hands the wind beat at his back, pushing him toward Adeling’s arms. When the forest spilled him back into the eastern field, the wind shrieked in victory.

He had been away too long. The storm had already begun.

He hurried down the rugged path, stooped against the wind. Rotten apples danced on their branches. The skeleton scarecrow’s hand flapped in the wind, waving to Edward with a frozen grin. All the townsfolk had locked their doors. Only a few scrawny dogs roamed the empty streets.

Edward burst through the door of his house. “Clarice?” he yelled over the howling wind. The bedroom was empty. He flung open the closet door. Empty.

He stumbled back into the storm. “Clarice!” he called. “Clarice!”

Overhead, three witches rode on broom twigs. Growls came from the edge of the woods, deep earth rumbling. Somewhere behind them, a woman’s hoarse laughter.

He pulled his coat tight and leaned into the wind. Past the church with its mournful ringing bells. Past the well, the broken bridge, the southern pasture.

At the edge of the forest Edward met a black goat standing taller than him on its hind legs. Adeling’s warden, he thought, and opened his mouth to plead his way. Then he saw that the goat’s rear hooves failed to touch the ground. They dangled in midair. The goat was not standing. It hung by its neck from a noose.

Behind the goat, Clarice’s faded blue dress whipped in the shadows. Edward followed.

A ghost hurtled headfirst toward him, skimming the ground, rags flying behind. Glee stretched its wrinkled face into a knife-wound smile. Edward froze.

The ghost held a baby. It wore his wife’s face.

***

Was it, Papa? Was it Clarice?

Either that, or some other ghost mother reunited with her child. I imagine this is not the only story of its kind in Adeling.

As for poor Edward, I never heard what became of him. Maybe he escaped in the end to a sunny town far away from there and built a house and sold his silk. But most likely, I think, he’s in Adeling still, picking oats out of the mud, plowing fields that will scarcely yield. And when the storm comes, he locks himself in his closet and listens to the crying of his ghost child and ghost wife. And he wonders if today will be the day he joins them.

***

That was the last Edward saw of his little ghostling. When he rose the next morning, his son’s bed was empty. No one could tell him where his little ghostling went, but Edward already knew.

–

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Leah Bartleson attends Georgia College and State University. She enjoys hiking, biking, and exploring abandoned places.

© Leah Bartleson