The First Quest of the Tree Son

Our story so far:

The Tree Son falls in love with the Starmaiden.

But the Father of Trees was angry, and cursed the Tree Son to become a tree.

The Father of Trees repented of what he had done, but when he undid the curse, the Tree Son was still mostly in the form of a tree.

The Father of Trees had compassion on his son. He told the son that there were three quests that could fully free him. “First, you must retrieve a key. Many years ago a crow snatched it. When I shot him down with my bow, alas, he was over the pit and fell there, where I have not been able to go.”

The Tree Son’s limbs quaked. The pit was a certain place in the forest where nothing grew, a deep place of snow and bare rock, like a canyon with no outlet. A great ogre slept there, while little goblins swarmed. No one dared to venture there for fear of the ogre and because the little goblins had a fearsome secret they called fire.

The Father of Trees gave his son a whistle. He said the he himself did not know how to go down, but if the Tree Son blew the whistle, some help might come.

The Tree Son lumbered to the pit. Around the whole perimeter of the pit was a large cleared area where the goblins had taken the trees they used to call forth their fires. The Tree Son did not dare venture out into the cleared area, let alone the pit. Even now, he saw clumps of goblins scattered about. Strangely enough, he saw one of his father’s reindeer grazing in the clearing, pawing away snow and eating the grass underneath. It was a reindeer with a peculiar characteristic. His nose glowed like the sunrise and the sunset. What was most strange in the moment, though, was that the reindeer grazed unmolested. Far from approaching to burn him with their terrible torches made from the bones of trees, the goblins mostly ignored him. When they approached too close to taunt the reindeer, the fled away when the reindeer charged them. The Tree Son was greatly puzzled by this. He wanted to ask the reindeer his secret but did not dare go out.

Finally he bethought himself of his whistle. Backing well away from the edge of the clearing, he whistled. To his surprise, instantly a great crashing and clattering came from the direction of the clearing and the very reindeer he had saw there came running up to him.

The Tree Son did not know whether to explain his own problem, or to ask about the reindeer’s strange immunity, so in the end he asked both all jumbled together. The reindeer answered patiently. “The answer to both your questions is the same. I am free from the goblin’s fire because I myself am a fire within. That is why my nose glows. What is already burning cannot be burned.”

The reindeer then taught the Tree Son a rhyme but counseled the Tree Son that merely repeating it would do nothing. He must make the rhyme his own. The Tree Son chanted the rhyme as taught him, but added those changes he felt were right.

Strong will of the wisest

The fire that is my life

The sap and sun that rises

The Starmaiden for my wife.

Jingle Jingle Fa-la-la-la

With that he felt a fire start within him and fill him. Already moving more like himself and less like a tree, he stepped out onto the clearing. Goblins ran at him with torches but the torches did nothing. With great sweeping swings he knocked them down. He climbed down into the pit and, on a great rock reaching up from the deepest hole in the pit where the ogre slept, he found the key and returned it to his father.

“Good,” the Father of Trees told his son. “Two more quests remain.”

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