There was a faery place, deep inside the tree, far down the forest path, behind vales of flower and fern. It was a quiet place, where the noise of the cars and the people faded away.
She used to sit for hours there, simply listening to the silence, the silence that would never ask anything of her. When the world pressed in and the noise and the questions and the never-ending answers threatened to drown her, she would walk to the faery tree, and talk, contented in knowing she would never hear an answer.

“The sky’s blue, you know,” she said one day, listening to the rough bark eat up her words, “but it’s not. Not in the morning, when it’s purple, or at night, when it’s dark blue, or dusk, or when it’s cloudy, or stormy. I think the sky’s not-blue more than it’s blue, really.”

She never stopped to think who she as talking to when she sat there in silence, if it was the tree, or the faeries that obviously lived there, but it didn’t matter. She didn’t want an answer.


To get to the faery-tree, she used to walk for forever down the winding path that cut through the forest like an open wound, interspersed with hikers going to see the waterfall at he end of the path, or bikers winging by on the “foot traffic only” trail. She used to try her hardest to ignore them all, telling herself that when she reached the faery-tree, they would all disappear, and she could talk where no one was listening, and in the silence and speech find out who she was when no one was watching. She could forget time, in the silence. That was why she loved the faery-tree.
In the real world, you only talked to real people, and it is very hard to figure out who you are if you only see yourself as you wish others to see you. In that faery-place, down the winding path, where the woods re-asserted their superiority over man and where a word is no sooner spoken than lost, the girl found herself. She spoke her name to the faery-tree, over and over. More than anything else. And finally, it began to have meaning.

Opal.

Precious. Giving. Eager.

“I like watching people when they’re happy,” Opal told the faery-tree one day, “it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I don’t know why.”

Only in the faery-tree was Opal allowed to say those words:
‘I don’t know why.’
Admit she didn’t understand. Admit she wasn’t ready. The world didn’t like questions without answers, but the fairy-tree couldn’t tell the difference between answers and questions, and besides, it didn’t count as part of the world. That was why it was the faery-tree. The world didn’t have that kind of silence.


As Opal grew older, she visited the faery-tree less and less, though she didn’t call it the faery-tree anymore, just ‘the tree’ or ‘the secret.’ Being a teenager left no time for silence, and certainly no time for questions without answers, not when there were so many that needed answering. When she finally did go back, it was only because she wanted to see the waterfall at the end of the trail, and why not visit the tree on her way past?

Shoes on, hair pulled meticulously back, a quick glance in the mirror, and she was back out on the familiar trail, something like unease but less sharp pricking at her neck. The path would round and round, behind trees and groves of yellow-flowered bushes, up hills of forget me nots and vales of violets. It wasn’t until she reached the waterfall that she realized she hadn’t seen the tree anywhere.

On the way back she walked more slowly, taking care to spot each potential landmark and flip through her metal dictionary, checking each for a match. It wasn’t until she was almost home that she finally spotted a group of dandelions and realized she had found it.
She stepped off the path to inspect them, trailing behind a slew of grit and dirt off the trail, finding beneath the flower’s roots the remints of another trail, long since fallen into disuse and covered over by the dandelions eager for another foothold. Behind them, she found the grand old redwood.
It seemed time and a multitude of feet had re-shaped the road, cutting across the shaded little glade instead of winding around it, the old, forgotten track like the grandfather no one listens to anymore, covered in layer upon layer of fallen leaves and flowers, without the steady stream of travelers to wear the path again. In the time Opal had been away, the trail had forgotten her way, forgotten the tree, forgotten the faery-place, and forgotten silence.

She nearly ran to the redwood tree, wondering if the faery-place had forsaken her as well, but it was still there, though what she remembered as a gaping hole into a cavernous sitting area had become a decrepit little slit into a tiny room just wide enough for her to stand in. it was impossible to tell if the tree had grown or she, but she was inclined to think the latter. It was easier that way.


The faery-place was gone as if it had never been. A younger girl would have wondered desperately where the faeries who had lived there were now, but then, she was old, mature and responsible, so she simply wandered back to the path, reminiscing comfortably about the days gone by before pushing the entire mess into a neat little mental box labeled ‘secret,’ storing it away in the unlikely event that it was needed.
But, as is the way of the world outside of silence and faery-places, it never was.