Alder - Jude Higgins
One of the Top 24 submissions in our 2022 Urban Tree Festival writing competition.
Alder
After the years of strife and to make amends before her daughter went away, the mother made her a shield of alder, the wood as hard as iron.
But her daughter never used it.
She sewed her daughter a dress with cloth dyed brown from alder twigs, red from alder bark, green from its flowers.
But her daughter never wore it.
She took out the pith from a green alder shoot and made a whistle for her daughter.
But her daughter hardly called.
The years passed; the mother fell ill.
And then the daughter returned. She made tea with alder essence,
but her mother managed only a few sips.
She built a fire with alder logs that burned bright and fiercely.
But her mother stayed cold.
She whittled a goddess figure from alder wood and placed it on her mother’s pillow for the healing.
But it was too late.
That spring, after her mother had gone, the daughter went down to the boggy land where the alders grew. She gathered catkins to make a black dye for her clothes, fashioned another whistle from the alder’s new green shoots. And when she called—one long sorrowful note, full of the love she’d stored up but never voiced—the wind picked up and the alders sighed.
Jude Higgins
Jude Higgins is a widely published flashfiction writer. She organises Bath Flash Fiction Award, directs Ad Hoc Fiction press and Flash Fiction Festivals U.K
