TERRY PERSUN’S
MAGICAL REALISM COLLECTION
By Terry Persun
Collection Includes:
The Witness Tree
Wolf’s Rite
Giver of Gifts
Booktrope Editions 2014
Seattle WA
Copyright 2014 Terry Persun
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
No Derivative Works — You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.
Inquiries about additional permissions should be directed to: [email protected]
Cover Design by Greg Simanson
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to similarly named places or to persons living or deceased is unintentional.
EPUB ISBN 978-1-62015-387-1
Table of Contents
COVER
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT PAGE
INTRODUCTION
PRAISE FOR
THE WITNESS TREE
THE WITNESS TREE COPYRIGHT PAGE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
WOLF’S RITE
WOLF’S RITE COPYRIGHT PAGE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PART I
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
PART II: WOLF’S STORY
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
GIVER OF GIFTS
GIVER OF GIFTS COPYRIGHT PAGE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
ALSO BY TERRY PERSUN
MORE GREAT READS FROM BOOKTROPE
A young man becomes so obsessed with art and nature that he sometimes forgets to live in the real world.
An angry, arrogant advertising executive is thrust into the world of a Native American vision quest.
A man dying of cancer meets with three talking deer and it changes his life.
The three books in this collection were pulled together for their time periods. THE WITNESS TREE explores the lives of twins as they grow up together. The magical realism element appears from the start of the novel, since the story is being told through the point of view of an old oak tree. With WOLF’S RITE, a man finds himself in the throws of a Native American vision quest. In this novel magical realism enters as the main character is fasting during his vision quest. Finally, in GIVER OF GIFTS a man finds he has cancer, but while on a hunting trip he has an unusual experience when he meets with three talking deer.
Terry Persun has worked in the genre of magical realism for years. His novel, THE WITNESS TREE was mentioned in Publishers’ Weekly as a hand-selling favorite when it first came out; WORLF’S RITE has received multiple awards including a Star of Washington Award and a ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Finalist Award; and GIVER OF GIFTS won a USBookNews Best Books Finalist Award.
Praise for THE WITNESS TREE
“THE WITNESS TREE is a unique and engaging novel about the relationship between the creative and the practical sides of human beings and their spiritual and psychic connection with nature, so necessary to being balanced and whole in an increasingly complex world.” —James A. Cox, The Bookwatch
Praise for WOLF’S RITE
“When Persun writes of man/nature, he writes of us—not just to us—and shows us images we can’t simply blink away.” —Robert Fulton, author of But…You Know What I Mean
Praise for GIVER OF GIFTS
“Terry Persun’s gently paced novella offers a thoughtful and measured meditation on fidelity—to life and loves and oneself. GIVER OF GIFTS is a beguiling portrait of a dying man who discovers romance in truth and the joys of living in the promise of death.” —Adrianne Harun, author of A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain
The Witness Tree
Terry Persun
Booktrope Editions
Seattle WA 2011
Copyright 1998, 2011 Terry Persun
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
No Derivative Works — You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.
Inquiries about additional permissions should be directed to: [email protected]
Cover Design: Simanson Design (simansondesign.com)
Previously Published by Implosion Press 1998
ISBN 978-1-935961-12-3
DISCOUNTS OR CUSTOMIZED EDITIONS MAY BE AVAILABLE FOR EDUCATIONAL AND OTHER GROUPS BASED ON BULK PURCHASE.
For further information please contact [email protected]
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011903951
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It is with the utmost gratitude that I thank the following people for their continual support, honest comments, and, in many cases, hard work: Marie for her help in editing this novel; Terry and Mark for their support throughout my life; Jerry Spinelli, Steve Berlin and Kenn Morris for their friendship; and Bruce Boes, Joan Renner, and Willard Rowe for reading and evaluating this novel in manuscript form. And finally, a very special thanks goes to Terry Capuano whose gracious support made this edition possible, and to Cheryl Townsend who held this manuscript until she was able to produce it.
CHAPTER 1
I REMEMBER CLEAR BACK to the first day they began to move the trucks and other heavy equipment in. In the clear, pink morning, at dawn. It was early spring. All the animals became alarmed. Squirrels jumped from tree to tree, chattering and scurrying across branches; grouse fluttered from brush to brush, unable to locate a place where they felt safe; snakes moved too, some very slowly in the cold morning. Everything shook, from animal to plant. I felt it. It moved throughout the common thought. The grass and fields, the saplings, trailing pine, moss, mushrooms, the largest trees trembled inside, unsure of what was about to happen. The disturbance lasted for weeks, until they were finished with the cutting.
A place h
ad been cleared, a hole dug. Many trees were allowed to stand, even though eight squirrel dens were destroyed, the territories of two bird families disrupted. The ripple of territorial changes lasted for months afterwards.
Along with the equipment came the men, laborers of one sort or another. I’ve learned their types by what they do: workers with cement, wire and wood, shingle and siding. The house went up quickly, and by the end of June a human family lived within the clutch of common thought. That’s when I got to know Lewis and Jeffrey. They were twins, but even as the bond between them was strong, they thought in altogether different patterns. Lewis was the much more sensitive one and therefore vulnerable, not just to his brother, but to the world.
They were nine when they moved in, had just finished forth grade in the city and were to start fifth in the fall, in the country school. Day after day for the first few weeks, the boys explored further and further from the house, following the old tractor road, as they called it. In fact it was an overgrown road where the farmer who once owned the land had driven his tractor to the field which harvested oats about a hundred yards north of where I stand. It had been years since he worked the field, and years after his death that the land was sold, a piece at a time, first to the Marshals, Lewis and Jeffrey’s parents. The tractor road was hardly visible by then. It had once passed right by me, but by the time Lewis and Jeffrey moved in, it appeared to end right at my trunk, as though the tractor had driven right up to me and stopped. Early in planting season, he’d head towards the field, bouncing by me in the tractor, wearing a tee-shirt and flannel shirt, red hunter’s cap. His thin hands on the steering wheel, lowering the plow, tilting his cap back. He hummed and sang and whistled while he worked through the cold mornings. He smiled at the silence when he stopped the tractor for a quick lunch. His wrinkled face was like bark itself, his thoughts as easy as wind. He was a good man.
But the Marshal twins, that’s who this story is about. And it’s good to start it that first day they came, loudly, up the old tractor road. Their voices echoed through the thin morning air.
“Slow down.”
“No. I want to see what’s up here.”
“A field, Dad said, “an old field.”
“Good.”
Lewis rushed to catch up to Jeffrey who kicked up leaves and slapped tree trunks as he half ran up the old road, grass growing tall down its center, weeds on either side, some as tall as the twins. Eventually, as the path thinned and the weeds, underbrush, and new saplings overtook the old indentations in the soil, Jeffrey slowed. They had reached the bend in the road. Once they turned it and walked on twenty or so feet they’d be heading straight for me.
“That’s it,” Lewis said. “We’ve been here before. The end of the road.”
“It can’t be. There’s no field,” Jeffrey said.
“So, it’s grown in.”
“No, look!” Jeffrey pointed. “That’s oats or something growing over there, the road must have gone around those three trees there.”
“Hey, I think you’re right. There’s a patch of mud where the tractor wheels must’a sunk in.”
They both walked cautiously through tall briar bushes, holding back the arcing briar stems with thumb and forefinger as they walked around the trees they had spotted at the bend. When they finally glanced far enough down the path, they saw me.
“Boy, look at that,” Jeffrey said.
“Neat.”
“Let’s climb it.” Jeffrey took off as fast as he could through the underbrush, the thinned briar bushes tugging at his shirt.
“Wait up. Wait ‘till I get there too.”
But Jeffrey didn’t wait. He no sooner broke through the weeds then he was reaching for a low branch to hoist himself up and onto. His soft face and hands were close against me. His tiny muscles tightened and tugged, his hands clutching any bump or branch they could. Lucky for Jeffrey, though, Lewis eventually pushed him enough to let him overcome the strain and he was finally sitting on my lowest branch.
“Help me up.” Lewis jumped, reaching for Jeffrey’s foot, but Jeffrey moved it out of the way. “Don’t!” Lewis lowered his head and puffed out his lower lip. He touched my trunk with his little hand. He wanted, badly, to be beside his brother. I could feel the hurt he felt by what Jeffrey had done. There was so much action going on inside their little bodies, so much between them not being expressed that it excited all of common thought. It buzzed with tension and emotion. The power which was exerted when Jeffrey moved his foot away so Lewis couldn’t reach it, the pain Lewis felt, each act between them a movement in common thought, a disturbance. Even Lewis’ pout carried the strength of a hard rain or a strong wind inside him. And it could all be felt by common thought, so close to me, that it was loud, louder than the tractor engine, louder than all the heavy equipment that came in to build the twin’s house.
Lewis looked around and felt trapped. It was like him to feel so. All he saw were briar bushes along the old road, glimpses of puddles, brown dead leaves half rotted from a winter just past. His hand trembled and tears began to fill his eyes. “You have to help me,” he said to Jeffrey, his face still not looking up.
“Okay,” Jeffrey said. To him the view spread far into the woods, down at the weeds and briars, the underbrush. Further to the north, the trees thinned out, and beyond them was the clearing which had once been the farmer’s field, now mostly filled with weeds. For a moment there was no conflict, no competition between them, Jeffrey’s expanded range of sight made him superior to Lewis, so it was easy for him to help his brother. He reached down to Lewis and pulled him up.
Lewis didn’t want to stand at first, but Jeffrey urged him on, slightly taunting. Lewis gave in and backed close to my trunk, twisted his body all the way around, then inched his way up my side, touching the crevices of my bark a little at a time as he ascended. His fingers explored the tiny finger holds just as his mind did. Without really looking, he could see each place his fingers searched with uncanny accuracy and depth. For a brief moment, I felt his mind, felt it touch common thought. It sent shivers through the forest, reaching the overgrown field and beyond.
Once upright, Lewis turned his head and looked out across the wonderful distances just as Jeffrey had done. A sigh slipped from his mouth and his grip loosened. “Wow, this is great.”
“Isn’t it?” Jeffrey had made his way further out on my branch. He started on all fours, but reached up towards another branch that hung down near him. There was a moment between holding my lower branch he stood on and grabbing my branch above him where he stood balanced between the two, not holding on to either. That moment was exhilarating, it was a moment of flight, the letting go that birds do upon liftoff. He actually lingered long enough to become unbalanced, then pushed up with his legs and grasped my low-hanging branch to catch himself from falling. His heart raced for a moment, but he held tight as my branch settled. He couldn’t see any further because he was essentially the same height, but when he looked back at Lewis and saw his brother cowering near my trunk, his shoulders squared and he stood straight. “You sissy, Lewis.”
“What? I’m standing.”
“Look at you, though, squeezing that tree like it’s your mom. You look like a baby scared to take his first step. Are you scared?”
“No. I just have to get used to it.”
“Does this help?” Jeffrey bounced up and down, but there was little movement of the branch close to my trunk.
“It doesn’t matter. I can’t feel it.” Lewis turned and put his back to my trunk. He still held on. His hands behind him, clutching, his fingers deep in the crevices of bark. And his feet were planted close together. He could feel only the slightest movement, although Jeffrey bounced up and down a distance of about half the length of their bodies.
“Come on, Lewis, walk out here. I dare you.”
“Stop bouncing then, and I will.”
Jeffrey abruptly stopped. Both branches trembled for a moment, then stood still. He said slowly, daring his b
rother, “All right. I stopped.”
“Don’t move.”
“You afraid?”
“No. I just don’t want you moving. I’ll fall.”
“So,” Jeffrey said. “It’s not that far. You won’t get hurt.”
“You don’t know.”
“I do so.”
“Still.” Lewis loosened his grip.
“Come on, Lewis.”
“I am.” Lewis let go and stepped. Even Jeffrey hadn’t tried such a balancing act.
Lewis took another step, all the while watching where his feet were placed. For a moment it seemed he was on level ground. It seemed he was safe. He looked up and smiled at Jeffrey, proud of his progress, but his smile quickly turned as he lost his balance. He looked back down at his feet, but there was nowhere he could put them to correct his balance. The branch was not thin, but it was not broad enough to help Lewis. Jeffrey yelled once and reached out. Lewis quickly burst into tears. His knees buckled. He forgot himself, forgot to try to land on his feet, and just toppled over. When he neared the ground his arm went out to break the fall. One arm, against all that body weight, just snapped like a dead twig in the road.
Jeffrey heard the sound loud and clear. He dropped to my branch and lowered himself to the ground.
Lewis lay on his back, his arm twisted unnaturally behind him. His palm open and pointing upwards as though waiting for something to drop into it. He had stopped crying, but his face was twisted in pain to match the twist in his arm.
Jeffrey didn’t know what to do, so he helped Lewis to stand, told him to try not to move his arm, and then led him away, back to their home.
Terry Persun's Magical Realism Collection Page 1
