The Lifting of the Curse

Our story so far:

The Tree Son falls in love with the Starmaiden and learns to sing to her.
But the Father of Trees hears, and is angry, and curses the Tree Son.

When he saw that his son had not become a pine or fir or spruce like all the other trees in those forests of the land of winter, the Father of Trees was struck with sorrow in his heart. He fled from that great young oak with bare branches between which one could see the sky.

But not matter how far he fled, the wind carried the sound of the whistle between those bare branches, which sounded like gasps and sobs.

He came back to the bare-branched oak that was his son and looked up through the branches at the stars and remembered his own youth. His heart was moved and with a great gesture he broke his spell.

But the anger that forged his spell was strong. Though the spell was broken, it was broken only in part. The Tree Son had never been wholly a man, but now he was almost altogether a tree. He stood there knotted, rough-barked, knotted, branching, and twigged; only something like the shape of a man. The Father of Trees could not speak. Instead he gestured to a nearby pool. The Tree Son moved slowly towards it, creaking, lumbering, one slow aching limb at a time. He moved all afternoon and did not arrive until the night. All that night the lights they call shooting stars fell from the sky, and some say those were the tears of the Starmaiden, who had heard his voice and who saw all these events play out far below.

The morning saw the Tree Son standing in the pool, ice broken and pushed to the side, looking down at himself in the water. Tears of resin leaked from his eyes.

The Father of the Trees wept also. “My son,” he said, “there are three things you must do to become a man who can woo and wed your Starmaiden.”

Thanks for reading.  My goal is to update these every day through Christmas until Twelfth Night.  I will try to include  links so you can follow, but if not please  use the Christmas Fairytale tag at the end of this post.  You can also use the Merry Christmas page on the header bar above to find other writing that celebrates Christmas