ARE YOU WEARING TOE OF NEWT?

 

Are you wearing toe of newt?

Is it part of a witchy spell?

Is it the witchy version of GHB?

I’m so smitten I cannot tell

Uncanny Tales – (044) The Interesting Tree of Tree Sprite Wood

 

The Interesting Tree stood in the centre of Tree Sprite Wood, and it had stood there for a very long time, in fact it had stood there long before there was a Tree Sprite Wood.

It was called the “Interesting tree” for a very good reason, because whenever people walked by it, they would say “look at that interesting tree”, and very many people did pass by and whatever their reason for being there in the wood, whether they were daily dog walkers, occasional ramblers, courting couples, families groups with exasperated parents trying to tire their children on a Sunday afternoon or middle-aged couples out for their daily constitutional’s, they would all say “oh look at that interesting tree”. 

It was a strange stunted tree, lopsided and misshaped with a trunk that varied in girth and was all gnarled and knotty and its branches were irregular in size and shape, and protruded at odd angles from the trunk with no symmetry whatsoever, and its overall appearance earned it its reputation as “interesting”, although it could equally have earned the name “odd”.

People also imagined they could see a face among the knots and gnarls, which of course they could, because the tree was alive.

But not in the conventional sense, where people talk about a living tree, all trees are alive, but the “Interesting Tree” was alive in a very real sense, it had a consciousness, and not only could it think, but it could philosophize, and talk at length on many subjects, it could also feel, laugh, cry, and it had friends.

 

Among exalted circles in the natural world, he was known as “The most noble and erudite, ancient sage tree of wisdom and enchanted dwelling place of the Rainbow Fairies”, but he prefered to be called Wilf.

Wilf was the oldest tree in Tree Sprite Wood by some considerable distance and only Witch Hazel came close to his longevity, but she wasn’t a tree.

Hazel moved to the wood when it was still young and it was only after the wood had been thriving for several centuries that the Rainbow Fairies took up residence.

Had the 21^st Century passers by known that the interesting tree was inhabited by Fairies they would have found that very interesting indeed, but people don’t really see, they look, they look all the time but they never see, but that’s not the reason that they couldn’t see the Fairies.

 

They didn’t of course notice the Fairies because Rainbow Fairies can mimic every colour of the rainbow, which was why they were called Rainbow Fairies and they where in fact like chameleons and they could blend in with their surroundings perfectly, so they were always there, sometimes only a few feet away, but they could never be seen, unless of course they chose to be.

 

Apart from being an “Interesting Tree”, Wilf was also a very happy tree, because he loved Tree Sprite Wood and in particular he loved being home to the fairies.

The wood thrived over the centuries and everything in the wood was perfect, but one day someone walked through Tree Sprite Wood who didn’t think Wilf looked like an interesting tree, because as he approached he thought it looked old and ugly and completely out of place in amongst the young and healthy trees that surrounded it.

The man was a tree surgeon who wore stout scuffed boots, a yellow vest that didn’t cover his belly and a silly white hard hat perched on his head and he walked right up to Wilf and sprayed a big blue cross on the trunk of the “Interesting Tree” and that sinister blue cross meant Wilf was to be cut down.

After marking Wilf’s trunk he continued on through the wood looking for other likely candidates for the axe.

 

After completing his inspection of the wood he returned to his truck and had his lunch and then he filled in his worksheet before he headed back to the “Interesting Tree” with his chainsaw.

However what the Tree Surgeon had not bargained on was the protector of Tree Sprite Wood, Hazel the White Witch.

Hazel was a very beautiful witch, but she was also very old and even White Witches are suceptable to the ravages of time so her beauty was now confined to the inside.

So it was necessary for her to transform herself into a beautiful Enchantress when the Tree Surgeon returned to kill the “Interesting Tree”.

The moment he saw her he was completely mesmerized and forgot why he was there and then Hazel lured him away from Wilf and took him deeper into the wood while the Fairies removed the blue paint from Wilfs belly and as they scrubbed and scrubbed at the paint they tickled his bark so much that he laughed and laughed until tears rolled down from his knotty eyes and he was the happiest tree in Tree Sprite Wood.

 

The Tree Surgeon in the scuffed boots, yellow vest and the silly hard hat perched on his head was sitting next to a babbling brooke when Hazels enchantment had worn off and when he awoke from his dream state he had no recollection of how he got there.

After a few confused moments he got up and then spent an hour searching for the ugly twisted tree with the blue cross on its trunk, but he couldn’t find it again as the Rainbow Fairies had disguised it as a young perfect specimen of treehood so the man gave up his search.

When he got back to his truck he picked up the worksheet and his pen from the passenger seat and put a tick in the box marked “complete” and then he drove away.

 

Hazel, Wilf and the Rainbow Fairies had faced much more dangerous adversaries over the ages and bested them, so an overweight tree surgeon was no more than a diversion so when he had driven away everything was as it should be and always would be in Tree Sprite Wood.