Free The Wishing Trees by John Shors Page A

the middle of the second level. “There. I moved in with her. She found the place first.”
    “Can we go up?”
    “No, luv. I reckon I can’t do that.”
    “Why not?”
    Ian felt his heartbeat quicken, a bead of sweat running down his chest. His thumb twisted and turned. His stomach ached. “Because that little room was our first home. And sometimes . . . sometimes there’s just no going back.”
    “Oh.”
    He wanted to say more, but the power of speech seemed to have abandoned him. And so he led Mattie forward, passing the building, treating it the way he might Kate’s tombstone. He remembered moving into her room, carrying his bags up the cement stairs. She’d met him halfway down and had kissed him, despite a Japanese taboo on such a public display of affection. They had entered her room, set down his bags, and made love as distant trains rumbled past.
    Kate’s apartment had been about five paces across and ten paces down, but its limitations only served to bring them closer together. They had fallen in love in those cramped quarters, brought together by walls and want and a world that had somehow conspired to make their paths cross.
    Ian increased his pace, leading Mattie toward a canal that ran along the base of a mountain. The canal was lined with blossoming trees, and he was reminded of walking alongside it, arm in arm with Kate. Instead of turning so that he and Mattie might retrace those steps, Ian kept on the street, soon veering down a paved walkway. In a few minutes the alley ended, leaving them at the bottom of a mountain, near a bamboo forest.
    He pointed to a trail ahead. “This is it, Roo. This is where your mum and I went on our little walkabouts.”
    “Let’s go.”
    And so they went, following a trail that monks had hewn out of the mountain two thousand years earlier. The grove of bamboo soon disappeared, replaced by a combination of maple and evergreen trees. Rays of sunlight pierced the thick canopy above, revealing ferns, moss-covered logs, and a stream that the trail crossed over back and forth. Moisture hung in the air, as if they’d climbed into the belly of a storm-producing cloud.
    Mattie followed her father, pausing suddenly when she saw how a shaft of light fell to illuminate a series of stone steps in front of her. Above the steps, the forest loomed, lush and almost luminous. “Wait, Daddy,” Mattie said, unzipping her backpack. “I have to draw this for Mommy.”
    Ian looked around, nodding slowly, becoming aware of the beauty that surrounded him, a beauty that Kate would have pointed out, just as Mattie had done. “Good onya, Roo,” he answered, knowing that a part of his wife would always be in his daughter.
    She looked at him, her brow furrowing. “Are you all right?”
    “Let me see you draw.”
    Sitting on the decaying trunk of a long-dead tree, Mattie opened her sketch pad. She used a gray pencil to create the path, three different shades of green to fashion the forest, and a series of other colors to add the sunlight and the stream. Her skill as an artist was limited in that she accidentally exaggerated the contrasts of colors, as well as the features of her surroundings. A fern was too green. Tree trunks were too straight. But, still, a replication of the beauty in front of her began to emerge. And though the rays of her sunlight were too bold and bright, that boldness and brightness brought a sense of warmth to her drawing that might not otherwise have existed.
    Ian watched his daughter’s small fingers guide and discard her colored pencils. He stepped closer to her, putting his hand on her shoulder. “That’s lovely,” he said, bending down to kiss the top of her head. “And she’s going to adore it.”
    “You think?”
    “Since when didn’t your mum love anything you did?”
    “She’ll see it, won’t she?”
    Ian glanced up through the treetops. “I don’t know, Roo. But your mum, she believed that she would. And she was closer . . . to something . .