Pine and Birch

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Here’s your next story request! When I picked ‘pine and birch’ at random I panicked a little. How could I turn a prompt so abstract into a fully-fledged story? The possibilities were almost too endless. I thought I’d write a philosophical piece based around the old Gaelic alphabet, where each letter is named after a tree but as usual my subconscious had other ideas, and I’ve stopped trying to resist it. Hope you enjoy the result…

Nearly seventy years ago, I travelled east to west to guard the great pine tree at Loch Ewes. Every Sunday I row to the island in the middle of the loch and splash a drop of ale under its branches, for the tree’s fate is linked to the fate of my family. Where the Ewes Pine stands tall, no Loughty shall fall.

In 1561, our enemies tried to destroy pine with fire. They failed but my great-grandfather perished shortly after, burned for a warlock.

A century later the King’s shipbuilders came, demanding pine’s wood for masts and spars. My complexion and the Loughty’s arcane history unsettled them. The chief builder declared that it would be taboo to cut wood from a fairy’s tree, he claimed the ship would sink. They left and never returned.

Some say Auld Hornie plays his pipes under pine’s shade. Older minds recall that the music comes from a doorway close by the roots.

In the past I’ve nailed a dog to pine’s trunk in offering and begged for an end to loneliness. Now, in the age of motor cars and steam, one can’t go around the countryside crucifying dogs. Pine lives and so must I, the last Loughty.

One day a letter arrived from a doctor. She was a folklorist, collecting customs and stories from the west of the country to compile into a book. May she examine my tree? Her name was Kerr, so I didn’t see the harm.

Dr Kerr arrived on a warm, windy day. She took long strides to the boat, scruffy, brown hair escaping the bun knotted at her nape. I was in no doubt that she’d publish her book and make a lot of money out of it.

An easterly ruffled the water as I rowed us to pine’s island. Dr Kerr shielded her eyes from the sun’s hard glint.

“He’s a giant,” she said.

That he is, the tallest and oldest in the country. I drank pine’s sap in childhood and here I am, many years later, rowing the doctor across Loch Ewe, as if only twenty years had passed.

“It’s the human sacrifices we make to him,” I said.

Bright-eyed, she looked over her shoulder. “You joke, but last week my colleague discovered human bones under a cairn in Glen Isla.”

We reached the desolate spot. Pine tree towered above us. Dr Kerr paced around the tree and my skin prickled; she’d walked against the sun. Dr Kerr picked at the blackened part of the trunk with an impudent grin. Perhaps she expected me to flinch.

“There’s a legend attached to this tree and your family, isn’t there?” she asked.

“There is.”

Conversation dried in my throat. I hadn’t let anyone near the tree in years. She straightened recited my family’s history to me.

“Where Ewes pine stands tall, no Loughty shall fall,” she concluded with a smile.

I’d heard the phrase a thousand times, even boasted it myself, but today the saying didn’t comfort. Perhaps it was the way she said it, a stranger standing beneath pine with the sun at her back. I crossed my arms and faced the loch. “If your degree was worth the paper it was printed on, you’d know about the second part,” I said.

She troubled the dusty earth with her foot. “Second part?”

“Where the Ewes Pine stands tall, no Loughty shall fall but when birch comes to pine, the Loughtys will have had their time. Put it in your book.”

I don’t know why I told her; it seemed my mouth worked independent of my brain. Her cheeks pinked, she scurried back to the boat.

“You have to take me back,” she said, clambering into the boat. “Don’t just stand there.”

“What’s wrong?” I demanded.

Pine’s shadow cooled; I’d stepped from its protective pentacle.

“What’s the matter?” I asked again.

Water slapped the boat’s side. She would capsize it carrying on like that.

“My name,” she said.

I came to the shore and tried to steady the rocking boat, but my own hands trembled. What could she mean? “Kerr? You said your name was Doctor Kerr, didn’t you?”

“I did, but my maiden name—it was Birk.”

Birk. Beithe. Birch. The second symbol of the old alphabet, second after pine. Birch—my family’s curse.

“I’m sorry, if I’d known the second part of the saying, I’d never have come,” she said.

We rowed back, against the wind. She made the journey harder with continuous apologies.

“I wish I hadn’t bloody come.”

“Aren’t you a doctor?” I said. “It’s against your nature to be superstitious.”

“It’s against my principles,” she said.

I thought on the rumoured fairy blood from my father’s side, and how when a fairy is close to death it will return to the place of its birth. We reached the shore and returned to my house in silence.

There was time to take a cup of tea before Dr Kerr’s train arrived.

“Unless you have something stronger?” she asked.

“It’s not your nerves that need steadying,” I said.

By the time she’d finished her tea I’d decided to leave with her. A sudden longing for the Sidlaws and Angus glens gripped me. We took the train together as far as Glasgow.

Before I alighted she said, “You never said goodbye.”

She meant pine, lonely and decaying upon Ewes Loch.

“It’s only a coincidence that I’m travelling today,” I lied. “Good luck with your book.”

“You’re not trying to outrun fate, are you?”

“Quite the opposite. Send me a copy of your book when it’s finished.”

Dr Kerr continued south while I turned east. Clearer than the crowd before me I saw the craggy slopes, a steep prow above the world-reflecting loch. Brown trout wheel the sky and louping the watery ridge a witch-hare speeds to its coven. A breath of pine suffuses the air.