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In the midst of a meadow stood a tree—fruitless—but abundant with green puerile leaves. Yet, the topsides of those leaves were secretly drenched with blood. Raindrops would often beat against the leaves, mixing with the blood like oil. If snow fell, the leaves iced over and were mechanically barred from dancing to the rhythm of the arctic breeze. The sun couldn’t dry the blood away; no wind could whisk its scent. And though the tree trunk itself had somehow remained divine—bearing not a drop of blood—a well-versed eye could have easily detected that even the blackness and shadows couldn’t sheathe the sacred fluid that had long dried up in synchronization with the branches of the tree.
I was twelve years old when I was flying my kite alongside hers, my sister’s. We were out in the center of an open field—clear skies, baking heat. We had been running about, ecstatic, savoring the reality that our paper toys could so easily defy the limits of gravity.
But then…
A remarkable sight caused us to abandon our happiness, a lone tree standing in the middle of complete emptiness. Stupefaction allowed our kites to escape our grips and mindlessly drift into the air to twirl with the heavens on their own. Like any normal children would have done, we ran to see what all the fuss was about.
Lisa circled the tree like a lost puppy. “I wonder what kind of tree is this.”
We glared upwards, curious to know what fruit the tree bore, oblivious to the fact that the tree exuded a particular ray of ungodliness.
“This is boring,” Lisa uttered. She threw herself onto the ground, sat down and leaned against the tree trunk. Confused beyond anything, I sat down with Lisa, my back pressed against hers.
Lisa moaned. “Our kites are gone, mom abandoned us … What do we now, Daryl?”
I couldn’t answer her.
A drop of blood fell from above, landing on Lisa’s arm. She shrieked.
I shuddered and asked her, “What’s wrong?”
“There’s blood!” She was hysterical. “There’s blood on my arm!”
I took Lisa’s hand and tried to comfort her. “Let me see.” Then I stood up and studied the underbelly of the tree, and the sun’s luminosity revealed the dark truth we couldn’t see before; we had been standing in the wrong places all along. I quaked upon the sight of it. “Lisa, t-there’s … blood! The tree’s covered in blood!”
Lisa hopped onto her feet and started weeping, and her cries made something worse happen. Many more drops of blood started falling from above, soaking us, making us look as though we’d been sprayed with wet paint. Lisa screamed my name.
I consoled Lisa and told her we shouldn’t be afraid. And the blood suddenly ceased to fall from above. Contented for the moment, we once again sat down under the tree. Lisa was too terrified to speak; she kept shaking her head in repugnance. Then so abruptly, she confessed the worst things to me. “I hate mom! I hate this place! I hate everything!”
Once again, the tree started raining blood—an endless shower this time—falling onto us, into our eyes and nearly every other crevice of our tiny bodies. We ran from under that tree and never looked back. As we ran off into the distance, more malicious words slipped out from Lisa’s mouth, “God did this to us! I hate him! He’s evil!”
Now, the blood showers stopped and blood started trickling down the trunk of the tree instead, reminiscent of tears. The tree’s entire bark became covered in red.
Thank goodness we eventually found a new asylum—someplace far away from that tree.
“Daryl,” Lisa asked me, “can I ask you something?” Her tears were still flowing little by little.
“What is it?”
“Does God really exist in this place?”
I hesitated for a while. I didn’t know what to say. I took too long to respond before I answered, “No, he isn’t here anymore.”
Lisa was shocked beyond comprehension.
The only thing I could think of to lift her spirit was to say, “…But I’m sure he’ll return someday.”
“But he took mom away from us,” Lisa complained. “And we’ve been stranded here for months. No one cares about us anymore.”
I didn’t know what to tell her this time. I gawked at the bloodstained tree from a distance, upset because of all the trouble it had caused us.
At that moment, the tree did something it had never done before. Something grew out from one of its branches, a fruit—a fruit that was small and shiny like a tomato, except that this particular fruit had been conceived in the distinctive shape of a heart, a bloodied heart.
Lisa and I would sit in the middle of those pastures, wondering how long we could possibly survive alone in the wilderness.
