You are a recipient of Coucou Postale, a postcard series designed to engage and delight readers through stories and art using good-old fashioned mail and the magic of the Internet.

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Reread Part Two if you wish to recall where we last left Contessa or continue to Part Three.

Part Three

Contessa’s gaze turned toward the piles of rocks around her. So lulled by the light, she didn’t notice the roots amongst her feet. Loads of them. Twisty ones, gnarled ones. Ones as thick as her waist, and others the width of her pinky. Then she heard another sound. It was fainter than the beat, but also familiar. Was it a spring? She glanced around the cave. Her eyes, glazed with light, darted from crystal peak to crevice. On a far off rock-wall, she spotted a dark stain that glistened above a trickle of water. 

If a spring existed, then perhaps there would also be a way home. Didn't springs always begin and end somewhere? Contessa headed towards the sound of water. She navigated slick, stone slabs, and crystals that soared to great heights above her. The sound of the beat and water merged. Gurgle, gurgle, ba-dum, ba-dum. Contessa quickened her step. Gurgle, gurgle, ba-dum, ba-dum.

At a cluster of the largest and shiniest of the crystals, she stopped. She found the spring. And then she noticed the most wondrous thing. It seemed to flow with the sound of the beat. 

Did you know we begin our lives with a beat? There is the music of your mother’s heart, of course, but there is a deeper beat, one silenced by the noise humans make. It is the beat of the Earth. After you were born, you forgot that beat. You had your rattles and firetrucks, the television, stadiums of cheering crowds at your graduation, then sports and music events, shopping malls — a lavish symphony of sound and nowhere a beat. For a long time, I also forgot about the beat — even longer than Contessa. For when she stood at the edge of the stream in this cavern of curiosity, she remembered it. And she remembered the oak tree. Everything, she realized, had a heartbeat. What did it mean? 

Hours passed since she first appeared in the cave. She heard a low gurgle again, but this came from deep within her belly. She needed to eat something, but the only way she could do that was to find a way out. The water flowed to her left, so she followed it to the right, carefully walking alongside the giant crystals. Each one she passed, she ran her tiny hand across its glassy surface. She felt a rush through her arm, a warm, electric feeling — like the kind you get when someone plays with your hair. She was cold, but the crystals chased away the chill. 

The spring became a stream where the crystals glowed the brightest, and farther along, she spotted something she thought might help: a ladder. This was no ordinary ladder, such as the one Papa used to place the star atop the evergreen on the eve of Christmas. No, this one was made of the same roots she tripped over. It was elaborately woven together with two thick rails, and wide, root rungs. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten... She counted into darkness. Seventeen rungs. If there were more, she would have to climb to find out. The took hold of the rails and stepped on the first rung.

After collecting rocks and drawing, climbing was Contessa’s other favorite pastime. Papa allowed her to climb the oak tree in the back garden under his watchful eye. In the arms of the oak, Contessa imagined herself far away, sailing across the high seas at the helm of a branch. Or flying through the blues skies as high as the red kite, a bird whose feathers she often found on walks with Papa. When Papa would nap, she would take the red kite feather to his toes and tickle him awake. Or imagine it was a wand that could turn a caterpillar into a butterfly. 

"Abracadabra!" she waved the feather above a green squiggle. Except the caterpillar remained, supping on its milkweed meal. 

The point was, trees allowed her to be and do so much. Even below ground, where they were bare of branches to climb and blooms to woo, they were helping her. This time, perhaps, bringing her home. As she climbed the root ladder, she tightly grasped its rungs and pulled herself up higher and higher. Or was it possible the roots pulled her up? She wasn't sure. She pressed on, deeper into darkness. The glow from below faded as she ascended. The beat grew faint. She dared not to think about how high above the crystals she was now. She lost count at fifty-five, the year she was born. Still, it was enchanting. Beneath her, the crystals flickered like birthday candles. 

When she didn’t think she could go any farther, the ladder suddenly stopped. She ran her hands over the top of the rails. It coiled over a ledge and rooted into the ground. Contessa stretched out her hand. Yes! It was the end of the ladder. She pulled herself up, and at last! She could see the faintest daylight at the end of a narrow tunnel. She carefully walked towards the light, dragging her hands along the wall. It was no longer smooth. Instead, it crumbled under her fingers. Plink, clatter, plonk. Pebbles scattered on the ground. She sniffed her nails. Soil. 

At last, she came to the end of the tunnel. She paused to breathe. Contessa could no longer hear the beat. She sucked in the potent perfume around her. The scent of life. Dank, sweet, and wet. Earth. She could see the tunnel now. Light shone through a tangle of leaves. This would be her exit. She looked around one last time. The path was narrow and worn. Other people have been here, she thought. Someone can help me get home. 

Contessa stepped on a platform beneath the hole and shimmied through to the other side. At once, thick leaves stung her face and arms, then legs. They pulled her hair and snagged her clothes. When she freed herself from the vicious plant, she smoothed her dress and straightened her hair ribbon. Then she turned her attention toward her foe. It was a holly bush, placed here for a reason. For behind it, there was a trunk so wide that neither she nor four friends joining together could embrace it. No, it would take ten children hand-in-hand to hug this ancient tree.

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You are a recipient of Coucou Postale, a postcard series designed to engage and delight readers through stories and art using good-old fashioned mail and the magic of the Internet.

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Reread Part One if you wish to recall where we last left Contessa or continue on to Part Two.

Part Two

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It is said that time-travel is a fiction. But if you close your eyes and then open them — yes, go ahead and do it — isn’t that a kind of time-traveling? I believe that the next moment can become a new place if you look close enough. If, perhaps, you believe. 

It would be the same for Contessa. Except that when she opened her eyes, she was certain she was no longer in her room. It was not what she could see — in fact, she could see nothing. It was so dark that were her hands not attached to her body she wouldn’t believe she had them. So how did she know she was no longer in her room? It was the smell.

The autumn before, her grandfather took her on a walk nearby to his home. 

“I’m going to show you something special,” he told Contessa with a hint of mischief in his eyes. “Stones!”

Contessa was on the floor arranging acorns that had fallen from the oak tree into neat rows according to size. “Stones, Papa?” 

“Yes, let’s go.” It was drizzling outside and Contessa was warm by the fire. 

“I promise, you will want to see this. Let’s go.” He handed her a pair of wellies. 

They set off towards a path in the back corner of the garden. They wandered vacant fields where only a few months ago cows grazed beneath a warm summer sun and crossed solemn country lanes. All was quiet except for the patter of rain. The land glistened. A stiff wind blew. It seemed like everyone but Papa and Contessa were somewhere enjoying a fire. They continued on, advancing towards a hill that heaved under the weight of some strange shape. Contessa ran ahead to investigate.

“I told you! The cairns. They’re special stones!” her grandfather shouted after her. 

She had never seen anything like it. These were not like the stones she collected at the beach and skimmed across the sea. No, these were a thousand times more grand. But there was something else about them, too. Now, I must be honest with you. Children often sense things that the adults around them are unable to. It’s not that adults are incapable, it is just they have chosen to forget. Choosing to do something is very different than being unable to. Forgetting, many adults believe, makes everything easier. These stones, Contessa knew in her heart, had a story to tell the way you or I do. 

When her grandfather made it across the field, Contessa was standing in front of a trio of the largest of them. The two smaller ones, which rose up towards the sky, bore the burden of another stone that spanned the length of four Contessas. Together, they formed a kind of doorway.

“Where does it go?” 

Her grandfather placed his hand on one of the stones and closed his eyes,“To people, long, long ago.” 

Contessa watched him. The rain was scant but a drop had formed in the corner of his eye. Maybe Papa already knew their story.  

“Your turn,” he opened his eyes. “Touch them.”

Contessa didn’t reach with her hand that day. Instead, she craned her neck towards the stones, closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply.

The wonderful thing about scents is that they are another way to time-travel. It wasn’t that autumn day with her Papa and the stones when she inhaled this time, but when she breathed in the darkness of wherever she was, cold air filled her nostrils with the memory of the cairns and her grandfather. Contessa exhaled. She was not scared. She knew whatever path she was on would lead her to him. 

Contessa took a step forward. The ground seemed smooth and even. She took another step, and tripped. She reached down and ran her hand across the ground until she felt something thick and familiar, like something that belonged to the oak tree in Papa’s garden. Was it a branch? She tugged on it, but the earth grasped tighter. It was a root.

Contessa continued on. Moments passed but without anything to mark time, and no other roots to trip over, she wasn’t sure how long she had been walking. Then, from out of the darkness, a jagged silhouette materialized in front of her. She stopped. Ba-dum…ba-dum…ba-dum. It was the faintest beat, but she was certain that she heard it. She had a toy that made a similar sound, a drum she fashioned from an old, oatmeal container.

She walked towards the sound until the dark outline gave way to glittery forms. The beat grew louder. Ba-dum…ba-DUM…BA-DUM. She stopped again. Ahead of her, everything was cast in a warm glow, like the late afternoon light that convinced her the sun was made of gold. She looked around. She was in a cave. All around her, squat rocks anchored trunks of crystals that reached up from the ground and down from the ceiling. Closer to the crystals, she felt the beat inside her body. 

“Can you hear it?”, Contessa pointed. But there was no one there to answer. 

∆

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You are a recipient of Coucou Postale, a postcard series designed to engage and delight readers through stories and art using good-old fashioned mail and the magic of the Internet.

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Part One

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This is the way that Contessa would remember it.

There were several cherry trees and yew in her grandfather’s back garden, but the one she loved most of all was an oak. It was a curious tree. Its branches grew from the trunk in twisted mass, gnarled arms holding tight to some secret.

In the summer, when she stayed with her grandfather, he would take her to a weathered bench beneath the oak and tell her stories about places he had been. She would lay across his lap looking up towards a canopy of green as he filled her head with tales of places where trees spoke and people moved like lightening.

In the same way that people might resemble their dogs, they can also look like the trees they love. Contessa’s grandfather was no exception. Like the oak tree, he was ancient, and as long as she knew him, he was stooped low to ground with a warm face that was rough as bark. Unlike the oak, though, he wore funny clothes and used strange expressions.

One day, instead of taking her to the bench, her grandfather brought Contessa close to the oak tree and placed her tiny hand on its swollen trunk.

“Do you hear its heartbeat?” he whispered.

“It doesn’t have a heart, Papa.” She wriggled her hand free and put it on her chest, “Not like me!”

“Oh, but Contessa, all living things have a heart. If you believe this, then the tree will share its secrets with you.”

That night, Contessa made a wish on the first star she saw from her bedroom window: May I hear the great oak’s heartbeat.

In the middle of the night, Contessa awoke to a roaring sound and the smell of smoke. She pushed the drape away from the window. A fire lit up the sky, but what was it burning? Contessa dashed out of her bed, down the hall.

“Papa, papa!” A bell clanged, neighbors emerged from their homes in nightdress and caps. Contessa’s grandfather was nowhere to be found. Contessa began to cry. A crowd gathered near the back corner of the garden. Mrs. Dingle, her grandfather’s neighbor, reached down and wrapped a blanket around her. It was too late to hide from Contessa what she already saw. The great oak was burning.

By midnight, Contessa was safely tucked into bed again. Unable to find her grandfather, she stayed with Mrs. Dingle until her mother arrived. When Contessa awoke, she saw something in the room that wasn’t there the night before. She pushed herself to the foot of her bed where she found a large, lumpy object covered with a white sheet.

She pulled the sheet back. It was a rocking horse! But where did it come from? She ran her fingers down the smooth, polished neck of the still animal. She gently pushed down on its nose. The horse bobbed up and down. Contessa pushed her legs off the bed onto the floor, and then over the seat of the horse. She wrapped her arms around the neck of the wooden beast.

Was it possible? It was the faintest throbbing at first. She pulled back and sat up straight on the stiff saddle. She put her hands to her chest.

Was it a heartbeat? She leaned forward again. There it was! Stronger this time. She eased the horse forward, then back, and forward once more.

If you were in the room, you would have seen Contessa rocking on the horse. Then suddenly, only the horse without its rider.

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