The Orchard of the Tooth-Sown (Transcript)

Fiction

[Field Recording: Archive 44-B. Location: Oakhaven Peripheral. Date: October 12. Subject: Elder Elias Thorne. Topic: The Sowing Ritual.] Interviewer: Could you start with the preparation of the soil? Thorne: The earth has to be heavy. We use the lowland silt, the kind that holds a footprint for an hour after you step out of it. It must smell of anaerobic decay and old iron. If the soil is too sandy, the memory leaks out before the root can catch it. We dig a hole exactly the depth of a man's wrist, lining the bottom with crushed limestone to keep the tooth from rotting before it takes. Interviewer: And the teeth themselves? Is there a preference for which ones are planted? Thorne: Naturally. The molars are for the foundation. They produce the thick, grey bark and the deep roots that anchor the spirit to the plot. We plant those first. The incisors and canines are for the canopy, the silver leaves that catch the wind. A man with a full set produces a lush tree; a man who died toothless leaves us nothing but a stunted shrub that whispers in fragments. We scrub them with river sand and vinegar first. No blood, no lingering grit. The memory must be clean, or the tree grows twisted. Interviewer: Once the tree matures, how does the communication actually function? Thorne: You do not speak to the tree. The tree does not listen. You simply lean in. You press your ear against the cambium, right where the bark is softest, and you wait for the sap to hum. It is a vibration first, a low thrumming in the jawbone. Then the words form. They are not spoken in the air, but delivered directly into the inner ear through the pressure of the wood. Interviewer: Most people imagine these trees provide some sort of ancestral guidance. Eternal wisdom, perhaps? Thorne: (Pause. Sound of a pipe being lit.) That is the hope of the young. They go to the orchard expecting a map to the afterlife or the secret to a long marriage. They spend hours pressed against the bark, waiting for a revelation. Interviewer: And what do they actually hear? Thorne: The mundane. The trivial. The ghosts are not philosophers; they are just people who forgot where they put things. My father's tree spent three hours last autumn explaining that he had hidden a spare key under a loose stone in the garden wall, a wall that was torn down twenty years ago. My aunt's tree mostly complains about the dampness of the soil and the way the squirrels chew on her lower branches. They don't tell you how to live. They tell you that the soup was too salty in 1924, or that they secretly disliked the color of the parlor curtains. Interviewer: It sounds... disappointing. Thorne: Perhaps. But there is a certain comfort in it. It reminds us that we are not made of grand epiphanies. We are made of small grievances and misplaced keys. We plant the teeth because we want to remember, but we forget that the things worth remembering are rarely the things we think are important.