The Rebirth

“You can’t miss him,” the trees of Hyde Park had insisted, before promptly disappearing before Elena’s eyes.
They hadn’t been kidding.
Almost immediately after entering Battersea Park, Elena had found him- a looming mass of curling limbs, furling gray bump-roots, and fiery red-orange-yellow-browns. She swiftly redirected her mother to the nearest food stand (because she was really, really, reallllly thirsty, mama!) and promptly strode up, craning her neck upwards.
She checked the line her mother was very irritatedly standing in. It wasn’t too long. She had about five minutes.
Elena whipped around towards the oak tree. It really was very, very large- maybe 80 feet- and she suddenly felt like she was invading some sort of presence. The breeze had shifted, but perhaps that was just coincidence. (If Elena had paid any attention to the details around her, she may have noticed the three little old ladies sitting in the corner, but of course she did not. Fate has no coincidences.)
“¿Señor Oakley?” Elena nervously blurted out in Spanish, becoming very shy. She looked down at her shoes and coughed.
A couple of moments passed, and although Elena was feeling twitchy, she felt a small push from behind her, a small encouragement. (If Elena had been watching the little old ladies on the side, she would have seen the middle one tap- ever so gently- on the string, smiling at the girl in front of her.)
She swallowed, and repeated in Latin. “Domine? Oakley? Ave-“
Before Elena even got to finish, the tree began to sway. A hole started procuring from the middle of the trunk- a smooth, hollow, gleaming seat of white- while the branches shed down a flurry of crisp autumn ornaments. Bits and pieces of dirt and leaves stung her eyes and flew onto her tongue, making her spit and stumble back. When the flurry finally cleared, a six foot tall man rested calmly on his ashen throne, with hands bent over and gnarled, features wrinkled and rough, and a orange-gold beard entangled and wrapped throughout his own limbs.
“That would be me.”
He looked pretty old, but his eyes and burning hair seemed so young. If Oakley happened to be short, he’d look very much like a grandpa leprechaun.
Elena couldn’t help herself. She was looking at this figure, with so much experience and observation in his face, and she was noticing how much he resembled the sad wisdom on some of the ghosts she’d seen, and how much she missed Tilia, and how scared she was in a city of monsters and things she’d never even seen before, and how nobody here was like it was in Spain, and how every time she encountered a monster, it got closer and closer and closer to her, and this all hit her at once but she couldn’t explain it, and she couldn’t help but cry.
Oakley let her heave and sob for about a full minute. He watched her with very little emotion twitching in his features. He amused himself by examining his cane that he had in his hand and the designs that were etched into it. And then, finally, he said very sternly, “This is above you. This is above me. Your mother is at this moment looking over at you. If you don’t get yourself together, you will lose all the precious time you spent looking for me, as I’ve heard from the surrounding trees in these parks, and I’ll no longer show my face to you. And this will happen because I’ll decide that I can’t be bothered with nonsense such as this, and the only way you can prevent this is if you stop crying at this moment, or at least begin talking, to explain why you are crying, and why you are troubling me on this very disgusting day.”
For five seconds, Elena couldn’t stop. Oakley was not the kind spirit she had hoped to see, she was thinking bitterly, hurt like she’d never been hurt before. He can’t help me. Nobody can. I can’t trust anybody!
Through her tears, she saw the old tree nymph lean back in disappointment. Something clicked. Somehow, from some knowledge she’d apparently had all her life, she realized that this was a test. One that she was going to fail, if she didn’t stop crying right now.
Or start talking.
So Elena did. She began to talk about monsters. She began to talk about the city of London, of the odd things she could see that her parents couldn’t. She talked about Tilia’s unusual seriousness and worry about the place Elena had to move to. She talked about not understanding anything anybody said. She talked about the river nymphs, and how she was only protected if she was near the river. She talked and talked and talked and talked until her tears had pretty much dried and she was waiting for the tall leprechaun in the tree to speak.
He hummed to himself and shook out his shaggy, tangly beard. A couple of leaves came loose, fluttering to a crackled halt at Elena’s feet.
He looked at Elena in an unreadable expression. Her discomfort seeped through. She cowered a bit, ducking her head, until she scowled to herself. She wasn’t afraid of a leprechaun!
And so she raised her head and stared, like she did so many times to her parents.
Oakley held her gaze for a second.
And then he let out a high whistle of laughter.
“Elena,” he suddenly said, his hair still raging around him. His voice got very kind. “Do you like chocolate?”
Her wolf stare turned to complete bewilderment.
“Yes?” she said, completely amazed into doing nothing else but answer the question.
He hummed some more, that same rustling, crackling hum.
“Do you like lemons?”
“How do I stop the monsters?!” Elena began to shake. “I told you about the monsters! I told you so you could stop it! How do I stop? How can I stop them?! You’re not telling m-“
“I can only help you,” he smiled an old, tired smile. “If you answer these questions.”
Elena’s mother had reached the food cart.
“I need answers NOW!” Elena wasn’t even embarrassed to find herself near to the point of screaming. Visions of dog eyes and serpents and dragons swam before her eyes.
“Answer my questions,” Oakley stated firmly, “And I’ll answer yours.”
Silence.
A heavy breath.
“Yes. I like lemons.”
“Do you love lemons?”
“No.”
“But do you love chocolate?”
“Yes. Yes, I think so.”
“Vegetables?”
“Vegetables?”
“Do you like vegetables? Like, tomatoes?”
“I… like… Tomatoes are good.”
“What about broccoli?”
“Algentum…” Elena made a face. “Broccoli…”
“I am taking that as a no.”
“I don’t like broccoli.” Elena sagged against the bench, weary. She had given up on the great, wise Oakley. She was ready to leave. From the side, the three little old ladies looked up in interest. Yolanda Barros-Rodriguez had gotten into a fight with the food cart man, frustrated by their lack of language communication skills.
“If you had a chocolate bar,” Oakley leaned forward, a couple of leaves freeing themselves from his beard again, “A very, very good chocolate bar. But, there were chunks with broccoli in it. And some of that broccoli could make you very sick, but there were some parts of the chocolate bar that could make you feel very good….”
He paused. Elena was still slumped, her back sagged.
She nodded, ever so slightly, with an air of a much, much older soul.
“A chocolate bar with broccoli in it,” he concluded. He raised his eyebrows and stretched even further out. “Would you eat it?”
Elena sagged even further, still thinking of the four red eyes.
The three old ladies craned their heads.
Yolanda Barros-Rodriguez screamed in Spanish.
“No,” Elena said. “No chocolate with broccoli. I don't want it.”
"Even if the chocolate made you feel really nice and warm and full and happy?"
This time, she didn't even hesitate. "Yes."
Oakley nodded and relaxed back into his tree with an odd look on his face. Pity wrinkled around his eyes. His smile was rueful.
The ladies clucked their tongues and suddenly began to untangle a silver, glowing, gleaming string from the rest of their knitting.
“Okay, Elena. I have to tell you something.”

Notes

:))))))))))))))))))))