Our Lady of the Forest

[Note: This was written for the 31st Annual Geauga Park District Nature Writing Contest. It did not win. I happened to like it, but I'm partial. What do you think?]

Just an ordinary traveler leading an ordinary horse by an ordinary rein, walking down an ordinary path through an ordinary forest to see an ordinary statue in the heart of an ordinary wood.

The statue was called Our Lady of the Forest, because nobody knew what else to call it, for it was a copper statue of a lady, flowers in her hair, her hand outstretched, her foot stepping back, as if she was bidding some beau adieu before his potentially fatal battle with a dragon or a war between his king and someone else's. There was no inscription, no apparent signature, and over the years, the elements became as much of a contributor to the sculpture as the original sculptor had. In her hand was a nest, her fingers curled enough to keep the bundle of sticks and straw from blowing in the gentle breezes of the woods. At her feet, flowers grew. Mostly dandelions. Lichen decorated her dress alongside the green of oxidized copper, and leaves and burdocks tangled into the intricate strands of carved hair beside the sculpted flowers. The most interesting aspect was that when the winter turned to spring, Our Lady began to cry. A stream of condensation would well in the corners of her eyes and stream down her cheeks. The streams of water, carrying the nutrients of the forest and bits of copper from the statue, attracted a strange sort of moth. The lachryphagous moths would come and drink the tears for reasons known only to them. They would fly off and hide themselves from the world. Each subsequent spring, the next generation of moths would do the same, and so on and so forth, until Our Lady of the Forest was just what remains when a crying statue is left to erode from the tears she shed for her fallen lover. Long after the people would forget about Our Lady, and maybe even long after people themselves, as long as the statue condensated, the moths would return for their annual sojourn.

The ordinary traveler and the ordinary horse watched, alongside equally ordinary observers, as the woman wept. There was a hushed anticipatory silence across the forest as they waited. Then, like a cherry blossom fluttering from a tree, a moth alighted on her face. Then another, and another, and another. Soon, her face was veiled like a bride's as the moths took their toll, and when they fluttered away like leaves in a fall breeze, she stood there, crying no longer.

It was such a moving scene that many of the ordinary people gathered there had tears of their own. It was almost romantic. Maybe symbolic. Maybe the moths carried her tears to her brave knight, wherever he rested. His shade would be nourished by her love, one drop at a time, and one day, he would be strong enough to return to her. Then she would no longer have a reason to cry. One day in the future, when nothing remains of her, not even the flowers at her feet, it will be said, if people are still around to say it, that she has returned to her lover. Happily ever after.

After a moment of quiet reverence, the crowd dissipated. The ordinary traveler led his ordinary horse down the ordinary path. “What do you make of the story?” he asked the ordinary horse.

“Humans love a romantic tale,” said the ordinary horse with a voice like a summer rain. It nudged a branch aside with the horn sticking from its forehead. “But can't a statue just be a statue?”

The ordinary traveler looked back at the ordinary horse. He smiled; he laughed.

The ordinary horse snorted. “What's so funny?” it said.

“You're such a killjoy,” said the ordinary traveler. He pulled a wooden flute from his pocket and began to play a tune. The leaves and sticks and loam of the forest floor whirled beside the ordinary path, opening a passage to a less ordinary part of the forest. The ordinary traveler and the ordinary horse stepped from the path and returned to their home, their ordinary glamour melting from them like the last bits of winter snow.