July 23, 2025

They Said It Was The Trees
by Matt Smart

Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai podcast.



It’s dark.  Evelyn is not sure where she is.  She knows she was sleeping.  There are unfamiliar shapes in the room, then she remembers, this is her new home.  The family moved in Spring, and she does not yet know her room’s patterns and habits.  That pale light from the tall window, the angles of sounds when they echo off walls and furniture, or the mysteries lurking in shadowed corners.  She goes to the window and looks down onto the garden, spread out below in the moonlight.  A silvery lawn, dotted with fruit trees, stretching away to the forest’s black edge. 

There is a glow in the sky above the nearby town.  Her papa told her that, out here among the trees and grass, there used to be farming.  She sees the glimmer on far fields, where shreds of determined wheat scratch upwards, wild among weeds, as if the crops wouldn’t give up after the folk moved away.  Evelyn gazes across the garden toward the remains of the abandoned houses along the track.  A beaten line of timber shells. 

She unfastens the window and opens it wide.  Fresh air drifts into the room’s mixed scents of old beams and young paint.  The daisies on the lawn, which seem to smile during daytime, are unseen now, quietly dreaming.  There is no breeze.  It’s mid-summer, approaching the new school year, and she thought she might hear an owl in the evening’s heat, but the land lies silent. 

Evelyn is not yet used to this re-built house.  When she looks at the painted walls, they tell her nothing.  If a door creaks when no-one is there, she cannot interpret what it says.  She often feels that the house is trying to reveal something, but she doesn’t know its language.  All she can do is watch and guess.  For instance, there is a tree in the garden there, down near the forest’s edge.  She’s sure she hasn’t seen it before, even though it’s tall: what Grandpa would call “a mighty oak”.  She waves at it.  A branch moves, as if waving back.  She chuckles then closes the window, and goes back to bed.

In the morning, before her parents wake up, Evelyn runs outside to meet the new tree.  She cannot find it.  She lines up her arm with her bedroom and squints along her finger, pointing at the dark rectangle of window.  She is in the right place.  A big tree cannot hide on a lawn.  A proud oak wouldn’t want to. 

She looks into the grass.  The sun-licked daisies are bright as stars.  “Were you real?” she asks, as if the oak were there beside her.  “Did you come to see me? Why?”  

At breakfast Evelyn’s mom laughs.  “Honey, you’re just remembering what those old folks said when we moved here.”  Evelyn frowns.  She doesn’t remember any old folks.
 
Papa puts down his mug and tells her there were about twelve of them, all waiting by the front porch when they first arrived.  A mass of cotton hair and warm coats.  They all shared friendly smiles, but their eyes quietly professed worry.  “Those smiling folks told us that, ever since the area was first lived in, children have gone missing here.  Some adults too.” 

Evelyn’s mom adds “Don’t worry, honey.  They were probably meaning a long time ago, when people didn’t look after their kids as we do today.  You must have been listening in.  They said trees come in the night, and people vanish.” 

Evelyn doesn’t remember any of that, or even that any old people visited at all.  Her mom laughs again.  “Well, obviously you heard, sweetie.  Where else would these dreams come from?”

Evelyn frowns.

The following night the moon is brighter.  Through her window she spots another tree freshly appeared in the garden.  It looks like a quaking aspen.  It shimmers.  And the mighty oak is back.  It’s closer this time, half way up the garden.
In the morning, when she looks out, they are gone.

“But mom!” Evelyn huffs.  “It’s not dreams.  I saw them!  And supposing they’re right, those old visitors!  How can you say it’s nothing?”

Evelyn’s mother holds her daughter’s tense arms, and speaks down, from a high stony plateau half way up the hill of years.  “Listen, baby.  I care about your happiness - which includes you not upsetting yourself with things you imagine.”  Her mom strokes her hair.  “Honey, I know it all feels real.  When I was younger than you my papa read ‘The Hobbit’ to me and my sisters.  For months I saw goblins in the garden, and wizards and hairy-toed hobbits under the stairs.” 

Together they stroll down towards the forest.  Evelyn’s mom waves an arm across the lawn with its tiny flowers.  “You see,” she comforts.  “No new trees.  No Hobbits, no wizards.  Honey, most of what we worry about isn’t real.  Now, come with me into town.” 

Evelyn squats down and touches the smooth, empty grass.  Walking back to the house she blinks.  It felt as if a leaf brushed her eyelids.

Chairs are full in the hairdresser’s shop.  It’s busy.  Evelyn’s mom wants a cut and color.  Evelyn guesses it’s for her parents’ night out at a party they’ve been invited to, and her mom is trying to entice Evelyn to come along too. 

The place smells of shampoo and heat and swimming pools.  It’s clamorous with young and old alike, from the splashing sinks to the hands bustling with scissors.  When Evelyn mentions moonlit trees, her mother says that, if she keeps thinking about trees, it’s only natural she’ll see them more.  “You really should come out with us tonight.  There will be other children there.”   Evelyn interprets this as ‘If you’d make more friends you’d dream of happier things.’

Luckily it’s her mom’s turn to have a plastic sheet around her neck.  The trimming begins.  It reminds Evelyn of those tidy hedges they passed in the town’s small gardens.  A town haircut.  Evelyn goes out into the street before anyone suggests she get a cut too.  Evelyn likes her hair.  Likes its wildness.  Free in the wind, open to possibilities, and ready to connect in all directions.  Of course her mom wouldn’t believe that trees move at night.  Town haircuts are as if your thoughts are cut into a simple smooth shape.  Someone else cuts it for you, taking away your points.  Mom has never embraced the thoughts of the land.  Why did mom and papa move here?

As Evelyn thinks this, a lady stops next to her, awkwardly close.  Then another lady stands the other side of her.  One says “You’re from the track,” and it’s not a question.  Their coats, oppressively close to her nose, smell like rugs and broth. 

The women step back and hold out their hands to her, like aunts offering woeful flapjacks.  Evelyn’s not about to hold the hands of strange folk on the street.  “You must leave, child,” murmurs one of them.  “Your family must leave.  The trees always come.” Their faces show kindness in wrinkled eyes above smiles dusted with fear.  Evelyn tells them about the mighty oak and the quaking aspen.  One of the women grabs her shoulders.  “It’s not safe around harvest, child!  Not until the forest begins its autumn rest after the Hunter’s Moon, before winter’s sleep.  If your heart is pure, they will take you.  You will be lost to the forest.”

The other looks in her eyes.  “Long ago, it began.  The first woodcutters, among the settlers, learnt the lore of the forest…  Trees and crops and Man alike: we harvest, and we are harvested.  The trees know, as they grow in the circle of life and lives taken.  Forests know this fate, and are at peace with it.  They bear no grudges.  But this forest is different.  It’s not at peace, child.  Folk never should’ve settled in that place.  To the trees, the ground there is sacred.  But no-one knew.  The forest seeks payment for what was done.  Thousands of trees cut down for houses, chairs and tables and fires and fields.  Young branches taken for our first woven baskets, and wood burnt for the baking of bread.  It is a place of remorse and revenge.  The forest takes the first born, if of pure heart.” 

“The woodcutter did what he could to save them.  He cut back the trees that came for sweet souls, but there were too many for his axe.  This was long, long ago, when that place was only a line of simple shacks and a thin dirt track.  Many houses have grown there since, and many have fallen, abandoned through the loss of loved ones.”   

Through the window, Evelyn watches the hairdressers’ movements, precise as a ballet.  Her mother’s haircut, and the trimming of the curly blond locks of someone she recognizes from school.  Snip snip snip.  Like chopping trees.  She loves trees, with their branches in all directions, like her hair, but she feels that she understands these women and her mom.  Sometimes a cut can be for protection.  Evelyn cannot ask her folks to move somewhere far, simply to be protected from ghost trees.  Her mom would laugh, protecting her only from dangers she understands. 

Snip snip snip.  A blond tangle of twigs silently hits the floor.

Her mom will not let her go away while the moon drains and re-fills, to become the Hunter’s Moon.

That night there is a cracking sound from the garden.  Tiredly stumbling to the window, she sees many new trees.  They are so bright that they glow.  They are much nearer the house now, and waving in a phantom wind that the calm fields do not feel.  Then she sees a man. 

She leaps back.  There is a huge man in the garden, standing next to the mighty oak.  He holds an axe.  She creeps to the side of the window, to not be seen, and peers round, through the barrier of glass. 

The tall man, like the trees, shines under the moonlight.  He wears furs, like those wax models of early settlers in scenes in a museum.  The man lifts his giant axe and swings it into the trunk of the oak.

Branches sway like seaweed in a pool, slow and silent.  Seaweed that drifts in a wave, coming toward the house, towards her.  The huge man swings again, and the tree shakes.  He lowers his axe, looking down and getting his breath back.  Suddenly he looks up at her. He stares straight through the window's shield and the years between their times.  Evelyn gasps.  He knows she is here.  The man is grizzled, with a rough beard.  He wears thick cloth tied with animal skins.  His boots are clogs, knotted with fur.  A fur hat clings round his head like a couple of cats.  Everything about him looks like mist.  So well padded, with that furry head, he reminds her of a toy bear.  A big protector.  He seems almost transparent in the colorless moonlight.  His eyes are dark.  Then he looks back at the growing woodland.  His enormous axe cracks into the trunk.  Evelyn grips the window-frame tightly.  The oak creaks, as if it knows it will soon fall.  Then the man and the tree start to fade.  There is a splintering sound.  The oak topples.  Before it hits the ground, trees and man are gone.

Not sure if she is breathing, she puts a hand to her heart.  She is still there, awake, she thinks.  She breathes heavily onto the window glass, leaving a thin mist.  With a finger she traces the forest.  The mist evaporates, and she breathes again and dabs where the trees were, and where she saw the woodcutter.  The image fades.  She breathes again and the picture reappears: a trace of being, and of vanishing.  A proof she will be able to show to herself, if she wonders whether this was all a dream, and proof for her mother.

When she wakes, desperate to tell her parents, she hurries to her door, but something isn’t right.  It’s still dark outside. 

There are footsteps downstairs.  It doesn’t sound like her papa.  Mom and papa are still asleep after their party, and there is someone else in the house.  These are hard, slow boots, treading heavy through the kitchen.  She rushes to the window.  The garden is a forest.

Hundreds of trees.  Branches scratch at the house.  Downstairs the footsteps stop, then climb the stairs.

The thuds approach her room.  Evelyn presses back into the corner, against the wall.  Where are mom and papa?  Don’t they hear it?  There is breath by the door.  She closes her eyes, squeezing them tight, and tells herself “This isn’t real. This isn’t real!” 

She hears him in the room now, though the door didn’t open.  A smell of shacks and billy goat hair, and brown leaves, twisted and blown to settle on damp earth. Bootsteps scrape the floor.  They echo from the walls.  She opens her eyes.

The woodcutter stands over her, tall and pale as moonlight on a lake.  She can almost see through his feint figure.  She feels frozen, too afraid to run.  Deep, empty eyes stare down at her, through her, as if in a void.  She feels something slide past her ribs.  It’s a branch, then another, piercing through the wall.  The branches, like vines, twist around her, and he raises his axe and swings, shattering the cage that is forming around her.  More branches splinter the walls, dragging her away, and some twist toward him, as he hefts his axe again.  Evelyn is pulled back, towards the window, towards the dark forest.

 “It's too soon,” she whispers.  “I won’t be taken!” 

The woodcutter advances, striking at her thickening cocoon, and branches fall.  He pauses, puffing through his beard to catch his airless breath, and in this brief moment the trees hurl Evelyn toward the door.  She sees wooden vines grasp for his wrists, but he bats them away easily, and in the darkness of his eyes she understands.  The trees are not trying to take her.  She swings the door open, and runs.

Evelyn’s bare feet dash over familiar wonky floorboard ridges under the hallway carpet.  She runs down the stairs.  Behind she hears heavy footsteps, and her mind flashes to her, pictures of people she has known. 

Parents, teachers, friends: they want to help you grow up, telling you what you should do and how to behave, like it’s a game of climbing a mountain, where they focus on the pathway they’re told to, and don’t stop for the view.  But the view is why you climb mountains!  None of them are with her, to help her.  No wonder she feels alone.  They don’t see the things she sees.  Why climb like they do? 

She hears the trees whisper “Yes!  Why climb?  Stay with us in our forest.  You don’t need to tread the hill’s pathways.  Not yet.  First you have to be.  To feel.  Stay with us, where you are safe.” 

Down by the front door she sees the woodcutter’s pale shape descend the staircase; a beast aglow with cloth and fur, and centuries broken.  Those ladies with their warnings: they were kind, but so confused, lost in clouds as white as their hair, barely able to see the ground where they once played, or their final stone so near.  We harvest, and we are harvested. 

Evelyn opens the door and rushes outside, into the sparkling sea of trees.

It is as if the woodland has returned to the way it was before people came.  Before the first woodcutter.  Centuries past, when he came here among the settlers, and the village was built, he began to hear the trees speak of their desecration.  He couldn’t stop hearing them, and he knew.  Fearing for his soul, he brought them the first-borns among the villagers who had called for the trees to be cut, sacrificing the forest to make their homes and comfort.  His soul was not released.

Evelyn senses, as she walks, that it is not the trees that seek the souls of the good and innocent.  The vanished are his unseeing penance: this revenant spirit who perpetuates his own purgatory through the unwanted offerings he brings to their feet.

Stepping among the spectral lustrous trunks, Evelyn feels that the trees do not want to take her.  See how they curve and bend, bowing to her with care.  They cherish the cycle of passings and re-births that they share with us, and all living things.  She feels them welcome her.  As she walks on through the trees, she feels their delicate, gossamer shapes caress her face. 

Behind her, she hears the woodcutter snarl as the twisting branches hold him back, like a tethered dog.  Thick vines wrap, then roots pull him down.  But Evelyn, alone now, doesn’t hear the world behind her any more.  She is drawn into the shining leaves all around, and she hears more clearly their embracing rustle.  She feels protected, at peace.   

In her nightgown she sings, stepping onwards, onwards into the forest.

They said it was the trees.

                                                                💀💀💀

Aged 9-10, Matt Smart traded silver in London and Essex, England.  In his teens, Matt began sculpting, using materials for car bodywork repair that he learned when his mother’s agoraphobia led her to drive recklessly, often crashing during panic attacks.  He ran several research funds at Oxford University, and is published academically in psychiatry, and governmental technology investment.  Matt ran a London gallery representing artists diagnosed with mental health conditions.  He was also in the archaeology team that found the burial site of the missing Romanovs in Russia.  See MattSmart.org for his sculptures.  Matt loves art, music, writing and dancing!
​
​