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The hallway was silent except for the chirping of birds as they flit from branch to branch of the great tree, now overgrown after so many years. It pressed against and stretched its limbs through the walls of an abandoned house like a burly man in a dollhouse. Its trunk at the center of a small courtyard was slick with summer humidity while thick, unruly, ever-growing roots protruded up through the hardwood floor, buckled and bucked.

Indeed, this tree stood out among ten thousand trees. It stood tall and strong amidst the encircling walls, the very framework which kept the house from collapsing altogether.

Along the hall, wild, lovely blossoms hung from vines that were stout and deeply green, converging like a garden canopy in a room down the hall where holy love had once made its bed.

For many years ago, in the middle of this dense, green forest with gleaming leaves and ancient twisting trees, a man and a woman planted an infant tree as a symbol of their love, new and young. They buried their secrets, their woes, and their imperfections amidst the roots of olden trees and put their hope in this single new sapling.

They swore that as the tree grew, rooted in the rich brown earth, so too would their love, enduring the storms of life that were sure to come.

To be certain, they built for themselves a small place around this tree, made from the surplus of the generous forest. Their home was modest, but their own.

There they lived for the first years of their union. As time and seasons passed, the infant tree grew with burgeoning liberality, not unlike the young couple. In fact, it grew astoundingly so that the young couple marveled and worried that they had not built a big enough place to accommodate the thriving tree.

In the evenings when shadows fell through the windows, they’d come together beneath their garden canopy in their suite fit for royalty. There, he’d slip a silk strap off her shoulder, then another, and watch as her nightgown fell to the earth leaving his bride bathed only in the moonlight, milky white and luminous. She’d tug at her lip and glance up at her husband. He’d brush his thumb across her flushed cheek and then her parted lips. He’d kiss her and she’d press into him with a familiarity and comfort that set free within her a passion. A passion that forged them into one body, one mind, and one spirit.

But that passion, like a flame unattended, raged with frightening greed in each individual. As it stormed within him, it demanded and hungered for parts of her she never intended to open. Likewise, she wanted to move deeper inside of him. But though he lavished her with love and care, he would not let her in to do the same. Each wanted to give, but neither was willing to receive in the torrent of their own desires. She was hesitant to bear her scars. He was too proud to divulge his weaknesses. The secrets they’d hidden in the forest, like ghostly dreams, haunted and threatened them as they lay sleeping.

Fear rose from the desecrated grounds to taunt them as they struggled against the provoking desires between them and the bygones those desires called forth. The demons were getting too close.

He headed out into the forest where he’d buried his demons’ years before. Though he was strong, and able bodied, he knew he could not complete the task alone. He called upon a friend; together they would conquer. At first sight, the demons assaulted him with high pitched cries. He clenched his jaw tightly. As he wrangled them, they tore at him like cloth. He dug deeply into the earth, muscles and mind straining with the effort while his brother prepared wood for a fire. When the earth had been dug, and the fire set, a final thrust relinquished the demons to their end. Finished, he returned his friend to his home and he to his wife. He would tell her to do the same.

She was nervous, but he assured her it was light work, hiding from her his wounds.

The next day, she went out. He offered to come, but she shook her head vehemently. He told her to take a friend. She refused. It was something she must do alone; she wanted no one to see what lay buried beneath the earth. The morning passed by as she searched for the tree wrapped with seven vines. Her eyes found the tree, now grossly blackened and engorged from the secrets she’d embedded in its soil. The tree seemed alive to her, draped in the blackness, looming over her.

The wind taunted her, moving the branches of the tree with menacing motion, speaking in a voice dripping with poisonous honey. She felt a lethargy pass through her body, making her sway on her feet. The voice called her forth to sweet darkness, sweet oblivion. But she remembered her husband, the task. Tense and shaking, she took a careful step and kneeled in the dirt. The menacing voice moved closer. She felt the warmth of its breath at the back of her neck. Eyes clenched shut, she furiously clawed at the ground, desperate for the deed to be done.

But the deeper she clawed, the more swooning the voice. The forest writhed and cackled along with her tormentor. Visions filled the air, weakening her. Memories did swift work, sending clenching pains shuddering through her body. Small sounds of anguish left her lips. And then a scream as she threw herself away from the tree.

Then the forest grew quiet.

She lay heaving on the ground, still wrought with the disillusionment of her memories. A cold, numbing calm came over her as she stared at the carnage of herself undone. Pieces of her lay unearthed all around the tree. She stood up from the dirt and evenly brushed herself off. She walked back to their home with placid calm. He was waiting for her on the porch, eyes expectant.

She stopped at the base of the stairs and stared through him, glassy. He asked her if she’d been successful. Was it finished?

Something coiled and sank low within her. Something insidious and cunning. She stood before her husband, a man unaware of the terrors set free within her. They became her constant companions day and night.

He sought to rekindle the flame that once burned, but she had hidden the embers too far within her for him to stoke.

“Come, be my bride,” he’d say each morning and night beneath the garden canopy, wanting the memories of their love to rouse her. But her gaze only fell to the floor, steely, jaw set in fierce determination while her hands hung lamely at her side. Her tongue was like acid when he tasted her.

Frustration built up in him like a dam. He stopped trying. He became a façade of stoicism, all the while raging and torrential beneath with dangerous anger, casting blame like arrows.

Their bond, once thickened with boisterous hope for a future beneath the paragon of the great tree, weakened until it was but a fragile thread. The first real storm that came snapped the thread in two.

The great tree became a mockery to both, a painful reminder of what they’d lost. Their only salve was anger and bitterness. That tree- glorious and rich with branches that wrapped through the halls of their home like strong able arms became nothing to them. They were lost in themselves.

Then one day, he could take it no longer, living with a woman colder than winter itself. He left, guided only by the foolishness of his bullheaded anger. And she might have mourned, had she opened herself to feel. But all feeling had gone with her passion; passion, staunched by fear of her pasts’ exposition. Without passion, feeling was as foreign as the embrace of her husband now.

Tortured by the barrenness of the home and the jeering of the great tree, she found her solace in solitude.