I Used To Be a Park

I used to be a park, and I have seen many things.

Great trees wormed their roots into my soil as they strained toward the sky. The deer and squirrels alike walked under their shade in the blistering heat of summer, and their boughs kept the ground clear from the wet winter snow.

The seasons changed and the ground froze and thawed a thousand thousand times before the first human pressed their foot into my rich soil. By then the rape of my bretherin had already begun, each being refashioned into a road or a house or a farm.

But not me; I was spared, exulted. Was it my gully, or the fresh stream? Was it the hill packed with snow, that the children flew down like the birds soaring above? Perhaps my ground was just too hard or thorny to build upon, but for a reason I do not understand, I was spared.

Men came, wearing suits and hardhats, each with a shovel. They slid their cold metal into me, a single scoop, then posed for photographs. Those men didn’t do the digging, others came and finished what they started. A bit of me was made flat, and structures were installed. The children played there, above a bed of woodchips from foreign trees.

I enjoyed that. They reminded me of the chipmunks which had since grown scarce.

For a blink of time, I was a park to the race of Man. The corpses of my brothers were pushed deeper into the Earth by tons of concrete and metal, never to see the sun again. I waited every year for the decision to erase that metal structure, to place a building atop my body that would scrape the sky. But it never came, and the children continued to play as their parents watched.

But the towers around me grew taller, and eventually they crowded out the sun. The trees died, one by one; some to an alien parasite, others to the darkness that lasted twenty-two hours of the day. My grass grew brown and brittle, my hills became slick and muddy, and the children no longer played upon my slopes.

There was still the winter, when they would come on their saucers and sleds and fly as fast as they ever could, save only in their dreams. The delightful winters lasted for a while longer, even when no one came in the summer. That was fine; the chipmunks returned, and now, pigeons.

But the buildings grew taller again, and more crowded, and I felt myself slip away from the world. I hadn’t realized that I’d become a park, instead of a piece of the Earth, but now no one remembered me as such. I was only an empty lot, and all life had abandoned me. My hold on the rest of the world grew thin and tired, and I felt the void swallowing me whole.

That’s when you found me. That’s when you woke me, with your magics and your potions. When I took my first shuddering breath and the ground heaved, I was given a reprieve, though not for long. In the end, we all slip out of memory. I suppose I am lucky that I’m not trapped beneath one of the glass and metal monstrosities. That I can die in peace.

“There was a girl here once,” you say, and I hear the question in your voice. “She died.”

Are you not a little familiar to me? Let me think on it.

Yes, there was a girl here once. She died. Many things died; deer and squirrels and trees and grass. There has been so much death, and so little life.

“But this girl,” you say. “She was murdered.”

Everything is murdered, by hand or teeth or time. Something comes for us all, whether we know it or not.

“Murdered,” you say. “By another human.”

Ah, now that is a separate matter entirely. Yes, there was a girl. She died, but to the hands of a boy, wrapped tight around her throat.

“A boy,” you ask. “How old was he?”

About the same age as her, as you, give or take a century or two. It’s so hard for me to think in terms of individual seasons, when I am eons old.

You sigh, disappointed, and then I remember. I see your face, disappointed, and the girl, soon to be murdered. I see her on the metal structure, and I sense that you want to be there too, but it is not big enough for two.

You were disappointed. You two look so alike, or is it only the fact that you are both human?

“Yes,” you say. “She was my sister.”

Ah, to know kin. My own kin have been dead for decades now, buried under steel and glass.

“Can you tell me anything else about him,” you ask.

He had hair that was black as blood in the moonlight. He wore a snarl like a wolf’s as he squeezed the life from your sister. He dragged her body into my gully, where her bones weren’t found until spring.

You are crying, but I’m not sure what has saddened you. I remember the children and the squirrels, how they were so happy. I wish that you, my last visitor, would be happy too.

“I’m sorry,” you say. “I’ll try to be happy. Do you know what his name was?”

All things have a name. I know the name of the pebbles you stand on, the name of the tree that fell six hundred seasons ago to lightning. The name of the sun and the name of the sky.

“I know those names,” you say, and you are disappointed again. “I just thought you might know his name.”

Devon Matthews was the name of the boy with the wolf’s grin. The one who snuffed the life out of your sister and left her in my gully. You look surprised that I know his name, but I told you: I know the names of all things.

“Devon Matthews,” you say. “I never thought… he was her friend.”

Tears roll down your cheeks and you begin to sob. It saddens me to be watered by your salt, and I wish there is something I can do for you. Perhaps a ride down my hill, although there is no snow left?

“No, you have given me everything I could have wanted,” you say. “Thank you. Is there anything I can do for you? Is there… some last request you have?”

I wish that the squirrels and the chipmunks and the deer and the trees would return. I wish the steel and glass would stop crushing my bretherin and let the light back in. I wish the children would return to their metal play structure and would laugh. I wish they would sled down my hill in the deep of winter.

“I can’t do that,” you say, wiping tears from your cheeks. I knew, even before I asked, that it would be too much. But you are the one who awakened me, so I thought you might be able to, after all.

I feel my hold on the Earth growing thin, the strands that keep me here snapping to spin in the void. Soon, I know, I will break off like sea ice and the skyscrapers will close up where I once was, forgotten forever to Man and time. I will be gone because no one remembers me, because at some point I stopped being the Earth, which always remembers, and started being a park. I don’t know when that was, or how, but it happened. I wish I could be a park for a little longer, even if just to a single person.

“That, I can do,” you say, and weave your magic. Tendrils move through your fingers, pink on misty moonlight. I feel them cradle my body, even though I am so large and you are so small; although, I have become thin over the years. You lift me, ever so gently, hold me, and sever the few threads that still bind me to Man. The buildings close together where I once was, but there is no darkness, no close of death. Those flapping threads attach to something new. To you.

I am grounded again, and the soil here is rich. I send my roots out, seeking purchase, which I find. I bury into your soulspace and am cradled by it in turn. I feel myself within you, where you were once within me, and I know that as long as you live, I will not die.

I used to be a park, and I know many things. May I teach them to you?

“I would like that very much,” you say. There is both excitement and dread in your soul. I know where we are going now, and I do not begrudge you your vengeance. I would have it on those concrete monstrosities, but alas, I am too weak.

After all, I only used to be a park.