The fading of the Great Tree: chapter 17 of The Story of Aphelos

 

On the following day all the people walked abroad in Aphelos, bidding farewell to the land which they loved, and to the beasts, and the birds, and the fishes of Aphelos.

In the afternoon the leaves of the Great Tree of Aphelos began to fall in a fresh breeze that sprang up out of the West. They fell swiftly until the Tree was bare. And the leaves of all the other trees began to fall slowly, for autumn had come to the land of Aphelos. The flowers faded and closed and the insects fell silent. The people of Ingos were gathered once more around Ingos’s Seat at the foot of the Great Tree.

Then Obrámus the Wise said: ‘This Silver Tree of the immortals was the glory of Aphelos. The maiming of the Tree is the fading of the glory of Aphelos, and the fading of the glory is the hiding of Aphelos. Autumn is come; the summer of Aphelos is over. Now let us take in the harvest. No more fruit will grow on this Tree of the Immortals, its service is complete; it will return to the deathless world, even as Aphelos is hidden from the mortal world, and shall vanish from this place.

‘Therefore let us gather in the golden fruit; so I have been counselled, and so good may come of it. Take each of you a Fruit with you into the middle world and keep it always close to your heart. And understand this: with these Fruits you shall confer strength, resolve, and hope upon the some of the people of Thrâyeldim, when they are weak, irresolute, and despairing; and with them you shall reach one another in thought when you are apart. But their virtue is limited; and when your Fruit has no more strength, your hour will have come to depart from the Midworld.’

Then Ingos and his adopted sons and daughters gathered in the fruits of the Immortals. And behold, another wonder: the fruits had no longer their former fleshiness, but had become dry, hard, and firm, in appearance like burnished golden globes.

Men do not know how many there were: some say but twelve, others a long-hundred. But some also say this: that if Ingos’s people distributed the Fruits, one to each, before they were scattered over the Midworld, then the number of the fruits agreed with the number of that people.

Then the people of Ingos sat together in the twilight and kept vigil. None desired to sleep, for it was their last night upon the Island of Ingos. At midnight they heard a sweet sound that seemed to arise from the very earth, and a shining light arose from within the Great Tree. The light grew brighter and brighter, and the Tree turned all to light; then slowly the light faded, and there was neither light nor tree. And a great awe fell upon them, and a kind of dream. They did not speak or stir until daybreak.

When they came to themselves, they found the Lord and Lady and their wise counsellor waiting on the mound in the grove. But the Great Tree was no more. 

Then Ingos said to Dîamána his daughter: ‘You, my daughter, are now the guardian and guide of our people. To you therefore I surrender my staff, the staff of Ingos, branch of the enchanted tree.’