Chapter One - Before the Beginning

Some are destined for greatness. Some are destined for power. It is the fate of a select few to rise above and become Gods, omniscient and immortal. It was Barney’s fate to be killed by a tree.

Barney’s life had been going downhill since the day he was born. As his father sped through the rain to the side of his labouring wife, the car tyres had lost their grip on the wet road. Barney’s mother struggled through twenty hours of labour alone, and when Barney finally made his appearance, she was given the news that her husband was not, as she had been told, at the side of his dying mother, but was in fact dead himself. She reacted surprisingly calmly to the news, probably because she was too tired to get hysterical, named the baby for him, and dropped off to sleep. The nurse, who was new, and very young, took the baby from her sleeping arms to carry him to his crib, and promptly dropped him on the floor. She stared in shock at the child on the floor, before picking him up and placing him in his crib, brushing him off and glancing about guiltily to check if anyone had seen. It was a busy day for babies, and all the nurses were occupied with screaming women and wrinkly babies. No-one even noticed that Barney’s nose was flatter than before and his eyes had become slightly crossed.

Barney’s mother never grew to love her ugly son, blaming him for her husband’s death. Barney would sit and watch the other children, the ones who weren’t cross-eyed with wonky faces, with their mothers, and wonder why his mother never smiled at him, or played with him, or sang to him. At the age of four, he watched Henry, the dark-haired boy with the large, comfortable mother, fall from a tree and run crying to his mother for comfort. He came up with a plan. He would climb the biggest of the big trees at the back of the garden, and fall from the very top. Then he would run to mother and she would realise how much she loved him, pulling her too him in giant bear hug. So Barney traipsed to the back of the garden. It was a very large garden, and he was rather tired by the time he reached the big trees. He sat down to have a rest, eyes drooping. When he awoke, the light was fading, and he was a little afraid. Trees are scary in the dark. But he was committed to his plan, now. He would just have to do it fast. He scrambled up through the branches of the largest tree, excitement building. His plan would work, he just knew it. Tomorrow his mother would love him. As he neared the top, the branches began to bend and sway beneath him, and he became frightened once more. Flailing about for a way down, Barney’s leg slipped, and his body followed. He thudded and slid and banged his way down for several metres, until he was caught by a V between two solid branches. As he hung there, recovering from his fright, he realised that he was completely, unquestionably stuck. And it was getting dark.

Barney’s mother did not even realise he was missing until she woke suddenly in the middle of the night, remembering she had not given him dinner. She sleepily checked his bed, but he was not there. Taking a torch, she began to search the garden.

The shadows deepened around Barney, as he struggled to free himself. Branches creaked and moved in the dark, leaves slapping him in the face. Twigs became hands, and hollows became faces. The trees closed in on him, the prey they had cleverly tempted into their trap. He felt the one that had caught him shake with laughter, and he began to scream. He screamed until he had no breath left, and everything went black.

His mother followed his screams, finding him shortly after he passed out. She angrily freed him from the tree, annoyed at being forced out of bed in the middle of the night, and carried him back to the house. And so began Barney’s fear of trees.

Barney never again ventured near the back of the garden. In fact, he went out of his way to avoid all trees, crossing the road whenever he had to walk past the big oak tree on the way to school. The other children laughed at him, poking him with sticks and giggling when he began to cry. His mother lost patience with him when his fear began to spread to all tree products, refusing to touch the wooden walls of their cottage, becoming hysterical at night when the woodmen climbed from the walls to get him. She began to ignore him completely, tolerating his presence by pretending he wasn’t there. But Barney wasn’t imagining it.

Walking home from school at the age of nine, the old oak reached across the road for him. His teacher had made him stay to write lines, because he had refused to open his book, it being made of paper. Consequently, he was walking home alone in the late afternoon. The sun was setting, and the long shadows of the oak stretched across the road. Feeling brave, he stepped into the shadow. The old oak didn’t like that. Barney stood frozen, watching as the old oak woke up. Its wrinkled face slowly changed, eyes narrowing, mouth turning down. The tree frowned a warning at him, but he was too scared to move. He stood like a stone as the oak moved with a speed beyond comprehension. Trunk bending across the road, branches slapped down on either side of him and pressed inwards. Barney wriggled out underneath them and crawled on his stomach out of the shadow. The tree thrashed angrily at losing its victim, and Barney ran home as fast as his slightly wonky legs would carry him.

Attacks from the trees became more frequent as he grew older, and he grew so frightened that he moved out of his mother’s cottage at the age of fourteen, taking work at the quarry and building a tiny hut from stones snuck out after dark. By day he worked in the quarry, running the machine that smashed up the rock into pieces for the roads. He was comfortable there. There were no trees in the quarry, and even the woodmen, who had been growing more bold, following him even in the daytime, seemed afraid to venture into the depths. By night, he slept in his stone cottage, empty of furniture and books. He wore only woollen clothes, and took great pleasure in eating the fruit and vegetables left for him by Martha, the woman who bought his food for him because he could not get past the trees that lined the road to the market. It gave him a sense of satisfaction to eat them, knowing that he was winning, because if he was not so careful the situation could very well be reversed.

When he was eighteen, his mother died when her cottage collapsed, and he knew they were coming for him through the people he loved - for he did love his mother, despite her cruel neglect. His love for his mother took him from the quarry for the first time in four years, to her funeral. The entire funeral consisted of him, Martha, who had driven him, and the preacher, who spoke in what Barney felt was an unnecessarily exclamatory fashion about his mother’s path to the gods. When the preacher left, Barney placed his favourite stone on his mother’s grave. He stood, head bowed, for a moment, remembering with sadness her impatient glare.

On the way back, a tree fell across the road, missing the car by inches. Martha slammed on the brakes and wrenched the wheel. They spun off the road, skidding safely (relatively) to a stop in Farmer Johnson’s bull field.

That night, Barney packed his things. He didn’t have many – a few clothes, a blanket, some bread and cheese, and a small sack of money he had earned in his four years at the quarry. He didn’t say good-bye to anyone, not even Martha, or her husband who was chief rock-breaker at the quarry. At midnight, Barney set out on his journey. That day, Barney had realised his fate.

This is the story of how he escaped it.

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