Page 29 of Sweet Silver Bells

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

T he warmest, most welcoming colors filled the room. Reds like heirloom tomatoes, yellows that tried to disguise themselves as gold, and oranges that tasted like autumn cascaded over his carpet, the edge of his bed, and into his closet and hallway.

“Is that my tree? From my front lawn?” Hunter blinked at it, knowing that it was the only explanation.

The sugar maple for which he had spent so much time destroying the television for was smaller, its leaves bare from the throes of winter.

This seemed like an entirely different tree that was thriving in the early autumn.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” Olivia beamed, a naked beacon of wildness.

“She?”

“What else did you expect?”

Hunter sighed, “I don’t know how to clean this up.”

“Why clean it up? The tree is perfectly happy here.”

The sound of doors slamming caught Hunter’s attention as he heard gasps and footsteps approaching.

“Oh my God, I hope no one got hurt.”

“Herb, call the paramedics just in case.”

“Knock on the door—what if they need help?”

The neighbors.

The sound of the tree falling, of crashing through roof, wall, and window, must have woken up quite a few people.

Hunter tripped over branches, wincing as he stepped on small, sharp-edged sticks hidden by leaves.

He rushed to his closet to try to recover any clothing that would cover them both before they flashed the entire neighborhood.

The horrifying picture of paramedics forcing them both to sit on a gurney, strapped, nude, played on the screen of his mind.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

“Hello?” Hunter heard an elderly voice croak. “It’s your neighbor Ethel in nineteen-nineteen. A tree fell on your house.”

No shit, lady.

“Are you alright? My husband is calling the paramedics.”

Ethel was yelling so loudly that Hunter was sure the entire neighborhood would be gathering there, if they were not already.

“We are okay, please don’t call for help,” Hunter shouted, throwing a t-shirt and boxers at Olivia. “Put those on.”

“You would prefer this on me?” she challenged, an eyebrow raised and an amused expression on her lips.

Hunter sighed, letting the dark win his internal game of tug of war again.

“If I had it my way,” Hunter growled, “you would never wear clothes again around me.”

“I would prefer it that way, too.” Olivia smiled. “The trees, they agree obviously.”

Hunter poked his head through the wet t-shirt, which he was able to pull and rip from under a different branch.

“Obviously? Nothing is obvious to me about these trees.”

Olivia’s smile faltered, but Hunter’s stress started to subside when she matched his actions by putting on the clothes.

“Hello!” Ethel's voice yelled. “HELP. IS. ON. THE. WAY. STAY. CALM. Oh my God, Madge, is that you? That poor widower might be dead in there.”

“Did you see the containment on Main Street?” Hunter assumed he was hearing Madge now. “People are saying it was terrorists.”

“George, don’t we have his mother’s phone number? She comes to church sometimes. An awful, posh woman.”

“Do not call my mom!” Hunter yelled.

“Did you hear that?” One of them said excitedly. Probably Ethel. “Someone’s alive!”

Hunter heard probably Ethel dramatically clear her throat. “DO. NOT. MOVE. HELP. IS. COMING.”

“Should we go inside?”

“God no, who knows how gruesome a scene it could be. I wouldn’t be able to sleep for weeks with gore in my mind.”

Right on cue, the faint sound of sirens reached his ears, and it seemed to be all that was needed to get the parade of retirees to shut up.

You'll need to get used to that—the sound of sirens.

“I think they’ll be disappointed that you survived,” Olivia said, stepping over branches and leaves barefoot as if she were merely walking on soft clouds. As soon as she reached him, she dove into his arms, nearly knocking him back into the split wall of the hallway.

“Can you see it, Hunter?” Olivia looked at the leaves, caressing what she could touch in the palm of her hand without breaking their body contact. “Can you see what our love has grown? It’s so lovely; these colors are more vibrant than the forest before the leaves frost.”

"Love?" He got tongue-tied on the word.

"When our bodies, when our souls connected," she replied as if it were the easiest thing in the world.

“Why did the tree fall into the house, Olivia?” Hunter asked.

The sirens were growing louder. Ethel and Madge had started gossiping again, though they were no longer yelling.

“You took me away from my body in a way that I can never let go of,” she said. “The tree grew, its flowers bloomed, as I did.”

“Right,” said Hunter, turning Olivia around so that she faced him. “We should walk out front. I expect this is quite a scene.”

Scenes seemed to follow Olivia around. It was just another part of his role as Olivia’s new lover, as her devoted, to cover and shield her from the mundaneness of their world’s laws and ordinances.

Love.

Everything seemed new, all rugs pulled up from underneath him, a stumbling fawn too easily entrapped in the thick vines of the wood, vulnerable and unprotected.

But who did he need protection from? The very person he was trying to protect?

The two stepped out of the opening in the wall and walked into the living room, out the front door. The sky had begun to lighten, the promise of daylight welcoming the firetruck that took up the entire street as it blasted its sirens and lights, another circus for their town to gossip about.

Hunter was in a daze. His vision was blurred enough for him to realize that he had stayed up the entire night, that his body was exhausted, and that his nervous system was slightly in shock.

He gripped Olivia’s hand, his new comfort item, as a firefighter walked up to them, standing outside the front door.

Hunter saw the man’s lips move, but he heard no sound, as if the world had been put on mute. He was aware enough to know that Olivia spoke to the firefighter, that her face lit up with a smile, and that she pointed toward the tree.

What was she saying to him?

“Sir, sir?” The firefighter snapped his fingers a few times in front of his face, getting Hunter's attention. Then, as the world became unbearably loud, the firefighter turned the volume back up.

“You’re bleeding, sir. The back of your head got scraped up pretty bad. Let me take a look at it.”

Hunter was stunned. He didn’t remember getting hit by anything.

“He jumped over me to shield me,” Olivia said, staring up at him, her protector.

“That’s admirable,” the fireman said. “Honestly, this entire situation is crazy. The dirt around the roots is so soft, as if they somehow wanted to come up on their own.”

“It’s almost like the tree wanted to come inside.” Olivia gave a sweet smile as the fireman took Hunter’s arm and sat him down on the ground. More of his colleagues swarmed, testing his vision with lights, checking for a concussion, and bandaging his head.

“I think I just need some sleep,” Hunter said, trying to shoo away the help.

The sound of a car driving up and slamming its brakes caught Hunter’s attention. The violent, panicked slam of a car door was followed by gasps.

“Hi, Mom.” Hunter sighed.