Invisible Gifts

Silver pushed absentmindedly into the earth and rubbed their fingers together, measuring the moisture content of the dark, fudgy soil without registering it consciously. There were still nagging worries squirming at the edge of their thoughts, but as Silver surveyed the scene before them, they were mostly relieved. The sound of small humans laughing together and shrieking at full volume was nearly irritating but Silver was grateful to hear it. The low murmur of relaxed adult voices drifted into the mix, perfecting the soundscape. Closing their eyes, Silver thought back to their childhood, when the earth did not feel like this and the sounds were different. Silver was different as well. Inhaling the balmy air, the scent of soil transported them back to their childhood in the garden…

Silver had always seen the world in a glorious technicolour kaleidoscope, so beautiful that they were often wholly absorbed by the sheer intricacy of the display. As a young child it felt as if there were no boundaries between Silver’s aliveness and the vitality around them, everything was pulsing together. Their skin felt permeable and temporary. Silver’s preferred way to spend time was outside with the vibrant greens, deep mottled browns and bright splashes of flower or insect, fighting hopelessly against the breeze. After it rained, the mineral smell in the air called to Silver desperately until they finally burst out of the back doors and inhaled wildly. Silver danced with the plants and giggled with the foxes before they could even conceive of themselves as a separate being. Recently, however, it seemed the garden had lost its lustre. It was a dull and lifeless spring, much of the greenery was dying and Silver hadn’t seen any bumbling bees in a while, let alone sleek amber foxes. The next season had forgotten to arrive. When Silver ran barefoot over the ground it felt dry, sandy, and barren.

Silver’s parents hadn’t noticed the changes in the garden, aside from that the lawn was patchy. Their preferred solution was a concrete patio as this would look much more symmetrical. Someone on the street had just installed a neat artificial lawn and told them that the upkeep was very simple. On the morning of the first gift they were particularly preoccupied by a boundary dispute with the next door neighbour. At the bottom of the garden there was a meandering brook through the woodland area the property backed onto. Silver had spent their childhood exploring this trickle of life. Now, there was a towering and shoddily constructed wall, blocking their access to the brook. A ruddy-faced woman with pinched features and a pained expression patrolled her newly acquired plot of land, searching for weak spots in her defences. Silver’s parents disagreed with the placement of the wall and were involved in a lengthy legal battle to get it moved one metre over, running directly through the brook and requiring the removal of a tree stump. On this particular morning, they were reviewing the original deeds of the property and arguing about the dangers posed by an old oak tree that had dropped a branch on an unsuspecting surveyor once already.

Silver was digesting the sensible porridge they had been given for breakfast. For Silver, digestion felt like a deliberate process that required concentration. Nobody understood why, after eating, Silver would sit and screw their face up like sitting a torturous exam. Except Silver had never, and would never, be sitting any exams. The thought was almost comical to their parents. Silver felt each pulse of their guts squeezing the soggy oats down hidden passageways. They could feel everything, but most people treated Silver as if they were numb and void. 

A soft light emanated from a crack in the wall by the back door and this caught Silver’s eye. This wasn’t the first time they had spotted something that their parents didn’t seem to notice. Silver shut their eyes once more and tried to focus on extracting the nutrients from their food. The light was starting to burn their right shoulder and their right eyelid was glowing red as UV beamed in through the window. Silver turned and faced the wall so that their left arm and left eye received equal treatment. Their parents observed their child seemingly choose the view of peeling paint from plaster and looked on, bemused.

Silver was barely aware of their presence, distracted by internal processes and temperature regulation. Silver sometimes spent entire days like this. Navigating sensory landscapes like people hiked across mountain ranges. As their parents cleared away breakfast, Silver followed the clinking, tinkling, clanging of the silverware, glasses, pots. Silver danced with the daily music, wiggling their toes and tilting their head side to side. The glow in the corner twinkled once again in their periphery.

They approached the boundary point and traced the strange opening gingerly. The light that spilled out was a new colour, it was like it was all colours and none of them at the same time. Silver shyly inspected what appeared on the other side, heart beating ferociously. The beauty of the place they spied through the gap brought them to tears but they still could not bring themselves to push through the overwhelming waves of terror and enter the gateway. Silver didn’t understand much about the world their parents inhabited and cared so much about, but this was a transgression outside of it. This was something their parents were incapable of comprehending.

The glimmer beyond the vale seemed so promising in that moment. As if all of Silver’s questions would be answered at once on the other side. As if Silver would be finally understood without speaking. The yearning pulled Silver heart first across the threshold in a movement that wasn’t conscious or muscular. 

The light was bright and the colours and shapes overwhelming in their variety. Silver squinted like they did during every dreaded supermarket trip and tried not to disintegrate internally. Eyes widening slowly, they realised that they were just in the garden and not a terrifying extra terrestrial land. Half way relieved and somewhat disappointed, Silver paused, observing the overflowing abundance of greenery and the peppery, botanical breeze dancing in their nostrils. This was a garden but not the garden they had grown up in, or at least not the version they had wandered through yesterday. 

A fern waved frantically in the corner of Silver’s eye, despite the breeze dying down. Reaching out to greet the merry fern, Silver’s fingers brushed the moisture on the surface of the cool green fronds and sudden understanding flooded through this connection point like electricity. The fern greeted Silver gratefully and urgently, conveying a set of baffling instructions. Silver drew their hand back, confused and curious. The fern bowed and unfurled a speckled frond. Silver tilted their head to one side for a moment, understanding the fern’s instructions but still unsure. The tiny spores gathered on the fern’s delicate leaves were a gift. 

The fern showed them drifting on the wind like fairy dust, nestled inside snowflakes and perched on the wings of birds as they travelled, eventually journeying back to the ground. An ancient and sacred ritual that had been going on for millions of years. The spores would grant Silver protection and help them find unique insights. Silver brushed the tiny specks into their palm in awe and immediately received a message.

“These spores are specialised for your journey, they will only begin the next stage of their life cycle in the right balance of conditions. Keep some spores on you at all times for protection. You must find a precise location for six. Only you will know where they should be placed to prosper. The next gift will bring you more answers than I can, this is my part, now you must do yours.”

The fern bowed deeply once again, and then abruptly shook all over, as if to dismiss Silver.

They ran back through the herb garden and searched for the wall they had tumbled through. Panic began to rise up from the soles of their feet in waves as they looked desperately to no avail. There wasn’t a wall on this side. How would they get back? Eyes squeezed shut, Silver focused on their breathing as they had done many times in the past. This time, however, it was as if Silver could still see. Overwhelm washed through them rapidly, but was replaced by a swell of calm as they felt the enchanted specks rolling in their palm and observed the portal vibrating right in front of them. The spores had done their job. Without opening their eyes, Silver returned home.

Silver awoke to voices outside their bedroom window, which looked out over the garden. They pushed their nose against the crisp glass, streams of condensation forming with each breath. Their parents were stalking about the scruffy lawn, pointing and bellowing to one another. As Silver surveyed this pantomime, they spotted a cat strutting deliberately across a lifeless patch of grey earth in the corner of the garden, next to the neighbour’s offensive wall. Silver began to consider this might be the cat’s preferred toilet area, but just before they averted their eyes out of politeness, the mystery feline looked up, gazing directly into their eyes. This cat possessed esoteric knowledge.

Silver was staring at the cat intently and approaching slowly. It paced on the parched ground, each movement conveying disdain and disapproval. Silver was considering placating the silky creature with a stroke when it turned its nose up at the earth and flounced away, disappearing through a nonexistent hole in the wall. They grabbed a piece of soil and it crumbled to dust. Surely the fern spores wouldn’t bloom from this barren ground? Why did the cat not tell them what to do? 

Silver searched around in desperation but the garden truly was in a sorry state. It couldn’t be more different than the garden where the friendly fern resided. There had been a spectacular herb garden where the house was now, and a pathway leading to where Silver was currently standing. The bracken kingdom had ruled over this currently unimpressive terrain. Silver reached into their pocket, painstakingly separating six spores from the rest and willing them to be ready for the next stage of their life. They conveyed a hopeful message to each seed as they placed them, marking the area with a splitting plastic plant pot.

Silver returned to check on the spores the next morning, considering moving them or planting some more elsewhere just in case. The nearby oak tree was bent mournfully to one side and seemed smaller somehow. Silver felt a pang of concern for their old friend and regretted listening to their father about the dangers of falling branches. Still, they approached carefully and apologetically, stroking the rough bark. Silver felt an odd sensation of being embraced and a single tear pooled in the corner of their right eye, threatening to tumble downwards. The droplet fell and joined the many others that had made a much longer journey on their way to the roots of this majestic oak. Silver saw the tear join with long lost siblings from the sky and sighed deeply, wondering whether they contained any fern spores. 

The oak groaned in acknowledgment and Silver looked more closely at the spread of roots beneath their feet, a glow of another unknown hue was leaking from a burrow at the base of the tree. Silver stared into the growing cavern, helplessly aligning themselves with the rhythm of the pulsating light. The oak tree pulled Silver close and whispered a knowing into their gut. Silver’s heart beat stayed steady as they were enveloped by the tree and brought deep down into another foreign territory. 

Blinking a few times, Silver realised it was almost pitch black, aside from dots of fluorescent mushroom forming a pathway ahead. Crawling slowly alongside the stretching tree roots, they could hear a crackling frequency akin to radio static. The oak was sending messages. Silver pressed ear to root and hoped to understand what they heard but pulled away when they registered a distress call. The oak was old and damaged and desperately hoping for help. But this call was not for Silver, the message was being sent out into the Wood Wide Web. They could see the pale wisps of a far extended network entangled with the oak’s hairlike root tips. Silver stroked along where the small fibres intertwined in a firm handshake and the knowing in their gut grew stronger. 

The Old Oak shared the story of the woodland. As a sapling, the oak was raised by a much larger Mother Oak and part of a considerable and extended family. Silver felt the strength of this network and how it had nourished the life blossoming around the brook. The suckling oak had lost some wayward siblings, too eager and impatient to grow straight and steady, and others due to human intervention at the edges of their community. Reaching maturity, the oak had hoped to raise many saplings of its own, but the web was depleted and damaged. Besides, the oak was pumping most of its spare sugar reserves underneath the brook. Curious, Silver continued to crawl through the root system. The brook babbled above their head and the earth was cool and moist as the tunnel began to tilt upwards again. Silver could see a root limb reaching towards the surface and used it to pull themselves through the slippery clay. 

The root tip was grasping another gnarled branch belonging to an immense tree stump. This stump was firmly within their neighbours plot of land and, biting their lip, Silver realised they had crawled under the disputed wall. Pushing this worry aside, Silver clambered onto the stump and lay across it, feeling the crackling static of an alive being. Silver understood why Old Oak was still sending so much nourishment to this elderly stump. This was the original Mother Oak, matriarch to this modest woodland.

Why had they been granted the privilege of an audience with the remains of Mother Oak? Silver pawed at the craggy bark and prayed for answers. The Mother Oak’s spirit nourished Silver’s mind with information, as she had fed her sapling long ago. 

The Mother Oak was more than three hundred years old and possessed the knowing of a much older network of trees and fungi that once stretched across most of the land. In the Mother Oak’s lifetime most of this network had been cleared for agricultural land, sawn for timber, or used to sustain humans through bitter conflicts. Silver felt the pain of this loss in the depths of their bones.

Slowly, their arms hardened into branches and reached desperately towards the fading sunlight, their legs extended through the stump and deep into the underworld. Silver was flooded with chatter and chemical signals that were so rich in information it was almost unintelligible. Rooting lower limbs grasped onto several miles of fungal filaments and they felt the long history of the land and its creatures seeping through their being. Silver was the Mother Oak and the Mother Oak was Silver. They could feel themselves teeming with life, housing an entire community of tiny and not so tiny critters. Expertly syphoning the correct chemicals this way and the right hormones the other, all whilst expanding the all important web of connections with the mycelial networks. The cycle of life was cycling relentlessly as they experienced the passing of great swaths of time. 

Until it stopped. Everything began to retreat back away from each other. The network became quieter and so many of the creatures perished or moved on. They could literally feel the soil drying up beneath them, the cycle grinding to a halt in this hard earth.

Rain sploshed generously onto outer leaves and an ecstatic crack of lightning struck nearby, followed swiftly by a roll of thunder. Far-reaching branches retracted instinctively but the knowing whispered that the lightning would bring another gift. Extending above the other tree tops, they braced for the impact of the bolt. It was white hot, electric and invigorating. Silver felt themselves shrinking back inwards, human arms falling by their side as they stood on the old matriarch. They checked that their feet were feet and saw something coiled around their ankle. There were remnants of root and a strange gnarled object attached to it that Silver had never seen before. 

“Good late afternoon, it’s so good to meet you!

It is a gift to be in your presence.

How do you do?” 

Was this an aberrant piece of root or a small, strange animal? The truffle huffed and, as if reading Silver’s mind, answered their question.

“I am a treasure of the forest, and a friend of the trees, 

They could not exist on these lands without me! 

You have snuffled a truffle, I bring you health and good fortune on your journey.

Go on, try a piece!”

Silver grinned for a moment in disbelief, but then this wasn’t any stranger than becoming Mother Oak.

“Observe how I grow in harmony with the oak, 

Interdependent, if one dies, the other will croak. 

Plus most of everything you see around you…”

Silver pondered the wispy networks of the Wood Wide Web they had observed beneath the surface and brought the truffle to their nose. A heady scent of their father’s secret tobacco stash and their mother’s hidden chocolate bars intermingled incredibly. There was something else too, earthy and forbidden like the garden from Silver’s first adventure. It was as if all of the family secrets had slunk away and buried themselves, forming this poetic little creature nestled in the dirt.

“Well I suppose that does make sense, 

I am here to share the secrets of the soil, 

After all.”

This was a mind reading, sentient mystery of a specimen, and Silver was overjoyed.

“You spent some time as matriarch, 

Felt the rain and lightning spark.

But did you note the drying soil,

That will be your world’s final downfall?”

Silver nodded in acknowledgment, eyebrows crumpled together in concern.

“I wasn’t joking about nibbling a piece you know, if you want to truly understand it’s the way to go! It won’t hurt me, if that’s what you’re worried about, although I’m not sure it is…” 

Nose scrunched in trepidation, Silver carved a miniscule fragment with their front teeth and licked hesitantly. It was as if the truffle was feeding the knowing in their gut and the flavour was even more complex than the impossible aroma. Silver could taste the healthy soil that this wondrous, dark being had sprung from. 

“Now you understand!”

And Silver did.

“Take me back through the passageway to your world, so we can spread the secrets of the soil. We are always whispering them to you, you just need to listen carefully, and maybe not with your ears.”

Silver crashed through the back door, covered in mud. Silver’s mother’s face dropped and she recoiled from the foul object caked in dirt on the dining table.

“What on earth is that! And what have you been doing?!” She squeaked in horror.

“A bath and an early bed time I think,” Silver’s father piped up from the kitchen.

A slightly damp Silver paced their bedroom, pondering all that they had discovered and the impossible task at hand. How on earth were they supposed to share the secrets of the soil? Exhausted and confused, Silver collapsed on the bed, searching for a restful doze. Instead, they drifted into yet another novel plain of discovery.

“I’m sorry child, I know you are tired.”

Silver gazed open mouthed at the angel before them.

“Take my hand, I have something to show you.”

Silver rubbed their eyes, hoping to wake up. They were tired. Tired of trusting and trying and reaching out into the unknown. But they also knew this had to happen, and there seemed no point resisting at this juncture. Silver clasped the hand of another new friend and followed them into the light.

“Don’t worry, you have been here before.”

Silver felt as if they had arrived home. 

“I am you, and you are me. I know you understand the oneness of all life, but I mean this literally.”

Silver squinted up at the being, bewildered.

“You grow up, sowing the secrets of the soil everywhere you go. People start to understand when they see the bounty that follows your footsteps across the Earth. You succeed, you break the spell, and humans rejoin their family again, to prosper together. Look around at the garden where it all begins.”

It was truly glorious. Silver recognised the luminous herb garden, with the wild patch of bracken. They hadn’t noticed before, but the walls and fences in the original garden had crumbled away beneath rampant growth.

“This is where you planted the six special seeds and nurtured them into being, see how your children have grown! They have broken down the garden walls and now the secret is out in the world. Whispered on the winds and propagated beneath our feet.”

The ferns danced together in the breeze joyfully.

“Take the rhyming truffle and plant it with the spores, they should already be in their next stage by now, brimming with love for their caretaker I’m sure. There’s one more present for you.”

Silver looked back at the ecstatic bracken, wiping flowing tears from their cheeks. When they opened their eyes they were in bed, pillow damply spotted. Knowing what to do, Silver pulled on their dressing gown and crept into the kitchen. The sun had not yet fully risen from its own slumber and the dawn was spilling sluggishly into the inky night. The truffle was still sitting proudly on the table, as if their parents had given up on deciding where to put it. They quietly opened the creaky door and slipped into the cool outdoors.

The memory of the spiky chill in the air that morning awoke a wiser Silver from their reverie. There hadn’t been a deadening frigidity like that since. There was a reason that they were recalling the lead up to this day. It was time.

Silver strode carefully through the now extensive bracken patch from their memories. This was the fern’s turf now. Hallowed ground. They bowed down in reverence, stroking the thriving mosaic of life and silently asking if they could borrow a handful of blessed earth. As the path opening before them neared the crumbled remains of the boundary wall and the Sacred Six, there was a moment of uncertainty. Silver had to trust in the world around them as proof this would work. The community of plants, microorganisms, animals and everything else that had all worked together to get Silver this far. This warm feeling of being held allowed Silver to make an assured step across the pile of bricks. On this side of the wall they would be able to find a doorway into the past, the fern seeds had never let them down.

As a young Silver was kneeling down, burying the truffle deep down without disturbing the now heart-shaped seedlings, they heard a rustle in their left ear. Hoping the cat may have returned, they looked up, but instead locked eyes with a paradox. A much older version of themselves was reaching out through a trembling doorway in the garden wall, eyes twinkling. 

“This is for you, dear one.”

They began to scatter a handful of rich, loamy soil like fairy dust, and laced the remainder in Silver’s more delicate hands.

“I’m sorry I can’t stay longer, you know what to do. I am so proud of you. Remember, the future is already happening and it is so beautiful.”

The swirling pearlescence of the other dimension collapsed in on itself and Silver was left alone but not lonely, the whole world in their hands.