Elsa Cedar

Elsa Cedar’s branches grazed the blue sky. Her long roots tasted the water deep in the belly of the earth. She was taller than anything else, strong and hard as rock. Her branches reached wide and wise, giving shade to some and platform to others. Her voice was a whisper, her song, penetrating.

Elsa longed to dance. But the roots that made her strong chained her to the ground.

The creator of trees and sky, and all things that move, felt her sorrow and came to stand with her.

“Elsa,” He said. “What is it?”

But he already knew. He smiled as her branches reached out to Him. Awkwardly, Elsa had to stoop. God was smaller than she.

“Smaller," she noted with confusion.

God wasn’t ashamed to be short, thin, bald.

“What were you expecting?” He asked the giant tree.

“Something perfect…”

“I am perfect,” God said. He didn’t seem offended, but wanted her to know her idea of perfection was crap.

But she didn’t understand. Elsa stood, swayed, resisted, and held but she rarely, if ever, could bring herself to take it all in and believe. Her creator did not look the way she expected and only seldom said the things she wanted.

Why doesn’t he lift me up out of the ground to dance?

It was the least of her questions, though the one that colored all the others.

The moon changed from autumn to rose, an epoch in the sky. She gazed upward, extending her branches to reach it and pluck it out of the clouds. But even tall Elsa could not touch the moon.

When the men came to cut her down, Elsa was not surprised. She pulled her long roots up into her trunk and held them in. The men thought they were exceptionally strong. They thought they felled the great cedar with ease. They were fools.

They carried her to the woodworker’s shop, chatting the entire way, revealing their plan like comic villains about to meet their end. They bragged and puffed themselves up.

“We are so great,” they said. “We have toppled the tallest tree and now it is in our hands!”

She laughed. For tiny beings they were so proud.

Her end came quickly. She was one then two, a tall pillar of strength with a crossbeam reaching wide and wise. She was a peculiar shape, she thought, her roots still twitching within.

They leaned her against a frail man. He was smaller than the hunters who had cut her down and as thin as God.

“He must be perfect,” Elsa thought to herself. One of the woodworkers heard her, but quickly brushed it aside. He refused to believe it.

They placed Elsa Cedar against the burdened man’s shoulder. He held her tight. She somehow felt secure in his grip. And he began to carry her, to drag her, slowly and with no small effort. His strength was amazing, but it made her angry. Why was he dragging her through the street? She was the greatest, tallest tree, after all. She was a force to be reckoned with. Did these tiny, evil beings know who she was? She churned within. How dare they? And who was this insignificant man, so plagued and vexed that he was even lower than they? His arms were strong, but it was with his spirit that carried her. That she did not understand. Not yet.

The man and the tree moved slowly, a journey of forever in a man’s uncounted steps, through a crowd of onlookers and dusty streets. They called out his name. They laughed. Why were they so happy to see this man suffer? What had he done to them?

She boiled like lava, more a volcano than a tree. It was her pride, maybe, but she began to feel a tremendous sympathy for the man carrying her. She wanted to lift herself up and relieve him. How can he carry me, she wondered and it did not feel right.

“My weight is my own and I can carry it,” Elsa assured herself.

But they went on, the lowest of the low bearing the highest of the high.

She saw their destination from a distance, an ominous hill waiting for them. Two other trees, nearly as tall as Elsa, stood as misshapen as she. Their crossbeams reached far and wide, like hers. Their trunks sliced and battered into columns, colonnades strong enough to support something huge. But all they held were broken, beaten bodies of yet more of these vile creatures.

She could take it no more. Elsa Cedar steeled herself, coiling her rage into one violent thrust of her roots from deep within her core to deep within the earth. She planted herself there, in the street, with a shaking of the ground and a howl from above.

“Stop,” she screamed.

The crowd backed away. An embalming silence engulfed them. The entire planet seemed to halt suddenly and unnaturally. The clouds in the sky swirled, uncertain and confused, and unable to move forward.

All life stood abruptly, awkwardly, waiting.

“Elsa, it’s time,” prompted the man who had carried her this far.

Her eyes darkened.

“But I am saving you,” she said.

His eyes pleaded with her to understand and, though she did not, she reluctantly pulled up her roots and let him carry her the rest of the way.

The crowd slowly assembled, cautious of the tree, but entirely dismissive of the man who was her strength.

He did not fight as they hoisted him up, taking his position as though it were meant to be.

Elsa watched the moon approach and the skies blacken. She kept herself from watching the man, now contemplative and hushed. A whisper, then a shout emerged from his lips. She did not know what it meant, but the people below shuddered and shook and ran for cover as the sky opened up.

The man was dead. They cut him down and left Elsa standing there, the tallest tree on the highest hill. She was enraged. She grieved, beset and despondent, though she still did not understand.

The days passed anyway. The sun rose, the moon and the stars appeared, the heat continued and the cold came, as if nothing had changed. Though for Elsa everything had.

She waited. For what, she did not know. She only knew that she didn’t care to move and had nowhere to go.

But on the morning of the third day, the giant cedar awoke to see the man, the tree carrier, approaching. From a distance she could see the light in his eyes and the life that seemed to pour from them like water. He saw her too. In fact, he was headed her way. Elsa could not believe it, but she did. And routing the forces that held her down and the weight of the hill where they killed him, Elsa pulled up her roots and danced.