Victims of the Tree

When the tree came for humanity, it was a simple ash tree, growing from the ground in Northern Europe. We thought nothing of it at first, because it presented as a simple ash tree. From the way its leaves grew to the way its roots soaked up water and nutrients, it was nothing more than a sapling meant to help a forest heal after a wildfire.

We only discovered something odd when four male deer gathered beside the burgeoning tree. Red deer in species, it was odd for them to show no signs of aggression toward one another. Rather, they lived in harmony. Any attempts we made to shoo them away resulted in them remaining steadfast. Anything we tried to get around them resulted in them maintaining a protective circle. Any shot we took at killing them, they shrugged off and healed from.

We studied them from afar, watching as the ash tree grew far faster than any other tree of its kind. The ash tree grew tall and wide, but the deer stood strong at its base. Every morning, those stags would crane their necks up and chomp at the lowest branches, devouring leaves while the morning dew gathered in their horns.

The dew never stopped gathering, and it never evaporated. After the first month, it was a little trickle down their antlers and necks, a somehow unending source of water. By the second month, it was a stream that had begun carving furrows through the soil underfoot. By month six, each stag was the source of a river that flowed away from the tree in the cardinal directions.

The ash tree began growing wider far more than it grew tall. Its branches reached out toward other trees, and on contact, they, too, became ash. They, too, became the same tree, an infection spreading through the forest, almost imperceptible from day to day.

The bark resisted our attempts to cut through it. When we managed it, the trees always bled golden water. Not sap, nor water tainted by the tree’s waste, but pure water of a taste holier than any we could’ve imagined.

The first recruits were those scientists who had tasted the water from the trees. A single drop was all it had taken to convert them from noble researches to humans loyal to the tree. They joined the stags in defending the forest, roaming between the trees with spears in hand. They hunted whoever we sent after them, but not to kill them. No, their spears served as an easy way to pierce the trees and produce the water. We soon learned to stop sending people.

The tree didn’t care. It grew, and grew, its roots inching ever closer to the coastline. We considered bombing it from above, torching the entire area and marking it as a desolate wasteland for the rest of humanity to avoid. We considered whether the ecological impact of potential nuclear winter was less dangerous than letting an unknown organism spread its way across the planet.

We didn’t have time to finish the choice. The first root touched the ocean three years after the tree emerged. In a wave, all water turned golden. It rushed across the surface, reached deep into the depths, and tainted even the spray that shot above the surface. Everywhere, from the rivers that trailed inland to the geysers that spewed water up from underground, became the same golden hue as that water which had stolen the others from us.

We panicked. We scrambled to find a way to filter it. We devolved into chaos as even isolated ponds and lakes suffered at the hands of golden rain. Within a week, we were broken, desperate to avoid dying out.

And the tree offered us the solution. It stood there, waiting, tempting us with the most delicious water we’d ever tasted. It said nothing, watching, listening for us as we fought to resist the allure brought on by instinct. It did nothing but exist.

And we fell for it. Humanity as a whole caved to the basest instincts that had been ruling us from the days of our earliest ancestors. We caved, and we tasted the water that we had spent days, weeks ignoring.

It was heavenly. It was divine. It was the ambrosia of the gods that the Greeks and Romans had spoken of, every perfect flavor imaginable. Never the same flavor between people, however. Some spoke of it as tasting like apples, others of it tasting like ice cream. Still others claimed it tasted like the perfect medium-well steak.

With the last of our individual faculties, we realized this was all the tree’s doing. It had played on our curiosity so it could spread in peace. It had drawn on our hesitation so it could reach the ocean. It had toyed with our fears so it could infect us all.

Then, it relied on our desires so we would never remember life without it. It fooled our sense of safety so we would never wish to leave its soft shade or its delicious waters.

Yet, we were at peace. War stopped. Predation stopped. We no longer killed for food. We simply ate of the tree and its leaves, much as the stags had once done. We gathered the dew in our hair, much as the stags had done with their antlers. We stood there, rooted beside the trees, craving more of that which provided us sustenance.

And every morning, we received it. Every morning, we tasted the sweet, delicious ambrosia that kept us rooted in place.

The dew grew into trickles. The trickles grew into streams. The streams grew into rivers. The rivers grew into oceans. Still we stood, neck-deep, reaching up and tugging at the leaves whenever they regrew. Still we stood, blind to everything that we had lost, and knowing nothing that we had gained.

Still we stood, even after the water had filled our lungs and drowned us. Still we stood, nothing more than roots for the single tree that had enveloped our world. Still we stood, nothing more than one mind.