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            Allan sat down at his desk and pulled the chair in close. Opening a side drawer, he took out a piece of paper and his inkpot. After filling his pen, Allan looked at his paper in the orange glow from the lantern set back in the desk's right-hand corner. His pen cast a forbidding line of shadow slanting across the page, echoing the inky darkness crouching in the edges of the lantern's struggling glow. The only other illumination came from a lurid moonlight filtered through thin branches and clouds, casting its bone-pale glow onto the pine floorboards.
            Allan unfolded another page, this one crowded with ranks of letters in tight formation from left to right. The lines of letters stepped into their divisions, in the shape of a story's outline: the loose, dry skeleton of a tale lay exposed beneath their feet, awaiting tendons, muscle and blushing skin. Allan reviewed the troops, all prepared to disembark, their task to form the tale of a young man returning home from Life Abroad to find his childhood friend a bride to-be, thus upsetting the apple cart of his life's plan, clarified – of course – by his very time away from her he loved best.
            Although the concept was a simple one, Allan thought it had potential. Besides, the public liked a good, simple romance. Perhaps this will be more saleable, he thought and began to write.
            
            They gazed at each other, lost in the rapture of love based so deeply within their hearts that they had never seen it before. "What about Roger?" she asked, knowing that the answer no longer mattered.
            
            This is good, he thought, pausing to raise the low light of the lantern. I'm almost done, and the happy ending is just falling into place. I hardly dare to think it, but – I may finish this story!
            As he thought this, a sinuous wind encircled the house, slipping through the walls to chill him. The papers and the lantern's flame trembled as the thin fingers of a great black willow rapped gently on Allan's window and wall like a stranger knocking on his chamber door. This was no stranger, however; the twisted, ancient thing was older than Allan, its branches rapping on his window since his childhood. Its thin, drawn fingers framed the bloated moon, whose eerie radiation now bathed the room directly. The great, jaundiced eye stared down unblinkingly at the author, who gazed up through his window's tiny frame with trepidation. Allan recalled himself and focused once more on the incomplete page before him. His pen flickered forth, words dancing out from its nib. In the author's eye gleamed the lantern's reflection – or was it a reflection? For while the lantern's spark shivered in the chill breeze, this burn was steady and true as the motion of its owner's pen, scratching out the rhythm of the willow's fingers.
            
            The frenzied writing ceased at last, the author leaned back with a slight sigh as if both exhausted and satisfied by his effort. He held a hand to his forehead, eyes closed and face flushed. I did it again, he thought. After all that – so near the end, to lose control again. His breath returning to its normal rhythms, he dared to look at the page before him. 
            His face soft as if caught between a smile and tears, he draped his loose cape over her shoulders. "Come, darling," he whispered. "Where I am to take you, one need never think of those left behind." 
            They stepped together into his carriage, her eyes wide with wonder as she touched it and felt, conveyed as if through her skin, the unearthly nature of the rails and reins, the wheelspokes. They took their seats within the car and his driver set the horses trotting. For a few yards, they kicked up dust along the roadway; then they raised their hooves and took to the air. She gaped, afraid but knowing that no harm would come to her by his hand. The New England woods disappeared, even the greatest pines shrinking to insignificance as they mounted the sky. Above them, the Milky Way drew near as if the stars themselves could be reached. A magnificent glow infused the carriage as they merged with the sky's glory.
            
            Allan crushed the page in his hand and hurled it at the window. "Damn you," he cried, "will you never leave me be? Shall I never finish a story in peace?" He pounded his desk in vain, cursing the foul muse that drove him.
            
            The next day, Allan sat on a florally patterned chair in a well-furnished parlor. Taking a measured sip of white wine from his crystal glass, he glanced at his host – a cultured man dressed in a light suit of the current fashion and wearing his pale hair with a heavy set of sideburns – who passed him a silver tray. 
            "Cucumber sandwich?"
            Allan took a sandwich between his fingers. "Thank you, Arthur."
            Arthur replaced the tray onto the lacquered cherry table that stood in the center of his ordered chamber. In a manner delicately balanced between somber and genial, he refilled their glasses. "How is the writing these days, my dear Mr. Clemm?"
            "Perfectly dreadful, my dear Mr. Mason," Allan sighed. "I had a perfect story in my pages; my hero returned home and reclaimed his love, I nearly had it tied together before…"
            "Before?"
            "Before that blasted impulse came over me and I started writing like Edgar Poe – though the most recent was not so morbid as my many others, thank Heaven."
            Arthur's face assumed a long-suffering aspect of authoritative exasperation. "I'm not familiar with Mr. Poe's works, but I assume you're referring to your unhealthy penchant for the fantastic."
            "It's far from a 'penchant,' Arthur. This is more like a compulsion, a beast that lies waiting in the dark for the perfect moment, then leaps and takes ahold of me, screaming out through my quill."
            "How perfectly awful." Arthur grimaced at the vivid description. "I'm sure you know that you must curb this behavior if you wish to produce any writing fit for public consumption."
            "I know," Allan replied, "but how am I to do that? You know I do not wish to make my stories thus; but it is my nemesis, confronting me anew at every turn!"
            Arthur raised a critical brow. "Perhaps you could make some headway if you denied your darker side the outlet of the colorful metaphors you so enjoy. Every action you take to deny it nourishment will bring you closer to your goal; and believe me, Allan, you must take every opportunity to quash this uncivilized obsession if you intend to publish. There simply is no audience for fairy tales – no literate audience, at least."
            "It is true," Allan admitted, fidgeting with his cufflinks, "that I would not dream of submitting one of these corruptions of literature to any publisher. I've even tried rewriting the corrupted sections, but once my characters have gone down that road, nothing can recall their former life. My prodigal ink-blooded children simply lose their vitality when forced along the proper road."
            Arthur sighed and sipped his wine. "If only you would restrain this morbid impulse of yours, you might write something really worth reading. It's hard enough listening to your wild speech without seeing it appear in the refined world of print, like a surly foreigner among a genteel crowd."
            Allan hung his head, holding his wine with both hands between his arched knees. His hair was slightly unkempt after his sleepless night, and his clothing had a rumpled look as if, by mere proximity, it had taken on the aspect of his weariness. He scratched the back of his dark-haloed head and blinked bleary eyes. "I would drive it out," he said softly, "but I fear for what would remain."
            "Perhaps you require a rest from writing," suggested Arthur. "You might find that some time in an honest occupation would ground you somewhat, improve your disposition."
            "Perhaps it would," Allan replied, rising and vainly straightening his suit. "I shall consider it; in the meantime, however, I must be off. You have been a gracious host, as always."
            Arthur rose and shook his hand. "So dear a friend is always welcome to my counsel and my home," he said. "I hope soon to see you in better sorts."
            They parted and Allan made his way pensively from Arthur's gate. He walked the wheel-ruts, hands in his pockets and unshined shoes collecting dust. Some quarter-mile from Arthur's gate, he halted, confronted by a halloo. "Nathan?" he called out to the empty road.
            The reply came from above him and Allan turned to see his friend reclining in the fork of a great tree. "I had a hunch you'd be at Arthur's today," said Nathan, "so I thought I'd wait here for you." Nathan's lanky frame, dressed in a loose, tan jacket, fit into the branch like an elegant skeleton. His hair fell loosely across a face that seemed always to have a knowing smirk hidden just beneath its surface, infusing his body with a rakish energy. "So, Allan," said Nathan, unfolding and lowering his legs to the roadside, "how goes life for the quintessential American author?" 
            "I wouldn't know," replied Allan dryly, before continuing in another tone entirely. "I destroyed another story last night, Nathan."
            Leaning against his tree, Nathan shook his head. "You mean, finished another story."
            "Yes, it is finished! Ended! Never again shall it see the rosy-fingered dawn! Nathan, you've read these abominations of mine. You know just as well as I that they have no future, no potential. At best, they are faery tales; at worst, expeditions into macabre realms no healthy mind need ever see."
            "So instead, you would write – what?"
            "Something saleable; something worth reading, worth writing! I want to write as others do: a tale, set in our real world, of characters who might live therein, not citizens of some airy demesne beyond the stars!"
            "Why is that more desirable than what you write today?"
            "People will read such stories; they are worth publishing."
            "If you never finish such stories, how can they be worth publishing?"
            "That is precisely why I must excise this malignant instinct!"
            "Why do you write?"
            "…Why – to earn a living, I suppose. Why do you ask?"
            "You choose to write rather than become a fisherman or a carpenter, though you face such difficulty. Why is that?"
            "I suppose it is because I enjoy my craft. I would not be happy, thus separated from it."
            "So at its heart, then, your writing – as opposed to working otherwise – is for yourself?"
            "Yes, I suppose one could see it thus. But really, Nathan, your queer habits of conversation have reached a new level."
            Ignoring the statement, Nathan continued. "Your writing is for you, Allan, not for the publishers or some imagined audience. Since you seem unable to write 'normally,' why not embrace your tales as they are, leave behind the one unhappiness in the art you admit is a source of pleasure? Your stories strike a chord with the deepest, most ancient stories of mankind, the tales basic to humanity. Tell them, and they will create an audience. You need not pander to what you imagine their wants are; speak, and they shall listen."
            
            Allan crouched over his desk once more, pen in hand and mind blank. He contemplated a story, an outline he had laboriously constructed some time ago. He had filled his pen and raised it, the nib descending towards the paper, before the sound came: the gentle, persistent tapping of the gnarled, primeval willow touching the window with long, insistent fingers. 
            His eyes awoke with a passionate, determined flame, though the only light came from the glutted moon. Allan filled page after page, the words escaping from his mind onto the paper. Where before they had marched in regiments, practiced in ranks and followed their leaders' commands, the words now escaped in their true forms, unhindered by any stricture. He continued long into the night, until the eldritch orb had sunk into the waiting hands of the willow, raised perpetually skyward. 
            
            Arthur looked up from the results of a night’s frenzied labors and looked Allan in the eye.
            "What is this?" he queried, indicating the pages he held in his left hand.
            "I decided that… since I wasn't having much success with more – traditional – stories, I might see what sort of work I produced if I let my imagination go freely," Allan replied, somewhat less self-assured than he had been the previous night. 
            "What in G-d's name could have possessed you to do such a thing," cried Arthur, nearly raising his voice. "After all I said the day before, why have you abandoned centuries of literary progress for some self-indulgent fantasy?" He shook the papers at Allan, raising them like a belt above the head of a disobedient son. "This is nothing but a glorified Grimm's tale, a miscarried child of Stoker, a creation less fit to be published than to be told around an open fire at the hovel of some peasant!" He spoke the last word with such heavy intonation that Allan shrank back before the physical wave of sound emanating from Arthur's throat. "Do you hate the modern system of literature? Do you personally despise the works the Enlightenment or the progress made since Shakespeare??"
            For a moment, Allan could hardly do more than shake his head. "No, of course not… I– "
            "Then why," Arthur barreled on, "do you disregard them all and return to this superstitious babble, this morbid, paganistic drivel? Why do you disregard my warnings, my careful advice given in the best of friendship and designed only to save you from sinking into this very type of corruption, this literary debauchery?" He glared at Allan, eyes impaling him and demanding a response.
            "Could you write decent tales with that willow at your window?" Allan cried out at last, stepping forward and casting his arms open, confronting Arthur with this demanding, pleading interrogation. "Its twigs rap constantly against the wall, the wind always demanding my attention. How could any writer accommodate the edicts of popular literature with the very forces of nature knocking upon his door?"
            Arthur looked down his nose at the distraught author, viewing his complaint with pure disdain scantily concealed by the veneer of politeness that animated the construct that was Arthur Mason. "A tree? A tree forced you to write this, my dear Mr. Clemm? I must admit, this seems far-fetched, even by your standards – even your Nathan might have difficulty believing you."
            "You don't know what this is like," said Allan, shaking his head. "Nathan would understand completely." Even as he said it, Allan prayed that his statement was true. 
            "Very well," said Arthur; "then take your story to that hedonist and let him defend you when no civilized publisher will approach you. If you insist on abandoning me, I shall not hold you." With that, he tossed the papers at Allan and left the room.
            Stunned, Allan slowly gathered up the pages and placed them in order. He then turned and left through the door opposite that Arthur had taken, making his way past his host's doorman without assistance and setting off on foot towards Nathan's residence, several miles away.
            
            Nathan read the package of words in silence, his only motions the steady progress of his eyes and occasional replacement of pages. Allan sat nervously across from him in a chair Nathan had probably upholstered himself, a patchwork design of fabric containing easily more stuffing than any other furniture item of the period. At long last, Nathan reached the end and set down his reading on the table between them. Allan leaned forward unconsciously.
            "It's the best story you've ever written."
            Allan exhaled and leaned back into the chair, his face relaxing in imitation of his thoughts. "So," he asked, "you don't think it's a waste of ink and paper, a futile expedition into morbidity or literary debauchery?"
            "Heavens, no," said Nathan, aghast. "This is one of the strongest works I've read in ages. It speaks to the deepest storyteller's instinct within us all, yet is entirely original. My dear friend, you have done it. Oh, they may rail against you at first; they may decry you as a heathen or a literary savage; but while those in power say such things, others will read your tales and see their true worth. Believe me when I say that you will be read a century from now."
            Allan, though dubious as to that possibility, felt some temptation from the compliment; mainly, it granted him the encouragement he still needed. Nathan promised to show the story to a printer he knew and Allan left it with him, then walked home under the spreading maples with a smile lingering on his face. He felt now that perhaps Nathan was right; although the man was somewhat peculiar, he had both an unimpeachable honesty and a certain propensity for insight. Certainly, it was undeniable that the stories had an originality to them. His mind's strangest fruit had ripened at last, and he found the taste less bitter than expected. These thoughts and others like them filled his head as he walked the long road home.
            It was evening, and the sky burned orange in the west when he neared home at last. Passionate, fiery colors filled the western sky before him, though the sun itself had reached the trees and a few dark clouds circled overhead. As Allan drew closer, he distinguished a new cloud, a pillar rising directly ahead; a road of smoke ascended in the west, its source hidden by the very hillock that concealed his house from the traveler until one had nearly reached its door.
            Allan's thoughts fled as one, scattering on the breeze that scattered the warning plume. He ran the last distance, crested the hill puffing to reveal Arthur below, walking to the carriage parked before Allan's house as two laborers wrapped a great saw in oilcloths and loaded it onto the vehicle's roof. Arthur paused in the door, looking up at Allan for a moment; then he turned and shut the door behind him. The driver snapped the reins and set the horses on. As they trotted forth, Allan's eyes remained trapped by the carriage, following it up the hillock and past himself. The heavy curtains had been drawn across its windows. He watched as the carriage drew still more distant, the horses' hooves still kicking up dust along the roadway.
            When they had gone, he remained, stunned, until the scent of woodsmoke recalled him to himself. He turned to regard the pillar still rising behind his house and ran to see what had been done.
            Rounding the corner, he saw a great bonfire. A mass of flaming wood stood before him, heat singeing him and sparks flying too close to his house. It was a moment before he realized what else had changed: near the wall, beneath his window, was a stump with black and ancient bark.
            In a thoughtless panic, Allan flew to the stream that ran by his house and began frantically throwing handfuls of water onto the pyre. His thoughts were not of the act's futility, nor even of the nights spent tormented by the twisted thing; instead, all that filled his mind was the tree's constant presence in his life, growing with him and beside him, its persistent reminders that he had higher, truer things to write, the simple beauty of the great black tree for its own sake. His handfuls could do nothing to quench the hewn, burning logs, but when the night sky grew dark above him and the fire dwindled to black ashes, tears threatened to spill forth and extinguish the final embers.
            But he did not weep. Instead, he bethought himself of the loss of the tree; considered also Arthur's motivation and whether some good might not come of this, after all. Leaving the circle of ashes, he stood and turned towards the woods, in which it was his habit to walk when in a pensive mood. He stepped slowly beneath the branches, a gust of wind stirring up the ashes behind him in a great, swirling eddy, a burning brand that rose up and dispersed on the winds as though it were the willow's last breath. 
            Allan wandered beneath the trees for a time, thoughts drifting through his mind like great banks of fog, strangely beautiful but impossible to penetrate. He considered Arthur's intervention; considered that it might be better to accept the fog and continue as his lifelong friend had suggested, to write stories that others would read; for after all, what purpose writing if not to be read? And without that torturous willow, he might be free to write whatever he saw fit. Indeed, if he still could not, he could at any time follow Arthur's advice and seek a profession more grounded in reality. Perhaps that would be more healthy for his mind. He found himself along the bank of a low, wide stream and allowed himself to follow its current. As it turned to the deeper woods, elder giants rose above him: a beech, smooth bark a gray-green pennant hoisted on a slope and standing out between the dark, cracked trunks of the nearer trees; great pines, a few magnificent specimens still bearing the three-stroke symbol of the British King; a towering black birch, leaves impossibly high above him. As the stream wound its way through the largest pines, grown so great as to eclipse that feature of the landscape they had once crowded about for sweet water as saplings, Allan continued, slowing his pace to climb across the toes of the slumbering giants. There was hardly enough room for his slim frame between the trunks that overshadowed any fleeting mortal trespass.
            Emerging from between the antediluvian trunks, Allan set his feet softly down onto the carpet of needles and stopped. Before him, roots imbibing the sweet water of the stream, grew a stand of black willows. Fallen trunks lay rotting across the rivulet; the living elders oversaw the grove while younger trees, still small and not yet as knotted and gnarled as their forefathers, sprang up where branches reached the ground. Though the elders' trunks fell and died, their children, first roots grown from the very branches that now lay dead, continued unabated, a continuous line from the most ancient of their ancestors.
            Allan stumbled forward, jaw slightly slack, until his outstretched hands encountered the rough bark of a twisted, three-trunked willow whose waists were each larger than Allan himself. Collapsing at its base, Allan wrapped his arms around the stoic tree and let forth a moan, a cry of purest agony that escaped him as the first tears seeped from the corners of his eyes and slid down his cheeks, falling to the ground and seeping though the fallen leaves and needles to join the water of the stream, flowing through the ground beneath them.
         
      
   
   
