Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #29: "The Wood of the Suicides"

"The Wood of the Suicides" is one of the two stories by me that were nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Every year, a book of award-winning stories and poems is published—a very thick volume—and constitutes what is considered the best writing of the year in English.  Nominations are supplied by magazines and journals, and even to be nominated for one is considered an honor. I've been nominated three times (one poem, two stories), though none of the nominations has landed my writing in the Pushcart volume. Maybe someday . . .

The story under discussion here originally appeared in a journal called Four-Cornered Universe, which folded after about a year. I let the story sit but 1) since I don't write a lot of science fiction; and 2) since I thought the story was a good one and wanted people to read it, I decided to work on it and resubmit the piece.

 

Dore's Illustration of Dante

"The Wood of the Suicides" was inspired by Dante's Inferno. When Dante and Virgil visit the area of hell where the violent are tormented for their sins, they come to a place of punishment for suicides, those who are violent against themselves. The suicides are turned into trees. The trees resemble humans somewhat; you can see faces on them and you can identify them as male and female. They can talk to you. The deeper their roots go down, the more their pain; and harpies, mythical creatures who are half-human and half-bird, perch in their branches and tear at them, pulling off the bark and drawing blood (reminiscent of a section of Virgil's Aeneid). I had read Inferno in an issue that carried French illustrator Gustave Dore's woodcuts, and the one of the Wood of the Suicides stuck in my mind as particularly gruesome.

But my story was not about hell. I thought, What if such a punishment was used not to torment but to rehabilitate? What if the purpose of doing so was both benevolent and retributive?

"The Wood of the Suicides" is told from the point of view of a Terran soldiers stationed on a remote but strategic planet at the edge of Terran space. The planet is inhabited by a race of beings called the Anva. They are a quiet, unassuming people. Their skills in such areas as medicine and agriculture are more advanced than any other race of beings in the galaxy. And they have a unique way of dealing with murderers.

Cullen, the main character, has a sister, Bria, also a soldier, who has murdered someone. The Anva turn her into a tree, their standard sentence for murderers. Upon returning from a deployment, Cullen's wife tells him the Anva have informed them that Bria's term of "rooting" (imprisonment in the form of tree) has ended and she is to be released. They set a time for him to pick her up. When he and his wife arrive, they are surprised at a couple of things:

After a short while, two priestesses came in with Bria. Two things startled him [Cullen] so much he stood up.

One, she was naked.

But even more than that, she was green.

He gaped. It embarrassed him to see his sister bare. He had thought the change of clothing would be for after she took off prison clothes. Instead, she had no clothing at all. And what also amazed him was her apparent lack of concern about it. She did not attempt to cover herself.  Her eyes looked bright, her face intelligent (if a little solemn); she did not seem drugged or incapacitated in any way. She stood there with her arms to her side as if being nude were the most natural and logical thing in the world and nothing to wonder at.

Cullen and Kassa, his wife, dress Bria and take her home. She asks him if it's "okay" that she's green and says her color will never revert to what it was before. The next day she tells about what it was like to be a tree. In a sense, it was beautiful living an elemental life, feeling the rain, snow, cold and heat. But being a tree was simple. Only one life system functioned. As a human being, you had eight or nine systems working simultaneously. Bria has learned, from the transitions her journey has taken her through, how complex and miraculous a human being is—and has taught her the crime of destroying another human life in all its glorious complexity. Her green coloration will never go away. It will always remind her of what she has done. This is the Anva way of dealing with murderers.

"The Wood of the Suicides" turned out to be an adventure in the imagination. It depended on an existing literary source but took the idea in new directions—which is a primary mode of creative endeavor, at least as I see it. And this one got an award!

Read "The Wood of the Suicides" in Empty Oaks. Scroll down to page 32.

For more titles, see my Writer's Page.

A great Halloween read is Le Cafe de la Mort. Coffee to Die For, Lady Death from Sandman

to serve you--along with Joe Black, Misa Amane,

Lady Death from "Appointment in Samara," and a mysterious Israeli woman who may be the Angel of Death from the book of Exodus.

I would love to hear your comments.