Chapter 1: Saxony: 400 AD

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Arlyss and his wife, Sigeburg, came to a spot in an open field, beyond the great bend in the Elbe River. Stony, a young horse who bonded with Arlyss and treated Sigeburg with indifference, hauled their cart into the field and stopped in the shade of a mighty Oak tree.

Arlyss and Sigeburg surveyed the land, which was covered in scrub brush. Other than the mudstone rock, the land was flat and without large boulders. There were no trees on the land but for the grand Oak, with three red squirrels in its branches looking down intently as they chattered and shook their tails.

Sigeburg looked up at the Oak and felt it looking down upon her. "This is the place," she said. "This is where we shall make our dwelling and farm the land, with the blessing of Thor, god of thunder and farming, and son of Jörð, goddess of Earth."

Arlyss continued to survey the land and nodded. "As good as many fields we have seen. Better than most." He leaned down, picked up a clump of earth, and brought it to his nose. He inhaled deeply then clenched the soil in a tight fist. "The soil is rich," he said. "If we farm this land, we shall have excellent crops. Wheat and rye for bread. Barley for brewing. Oats to feed the animals we shall acquire."

"And for morning porridge that I shall cook," said Sigeburg. "As well as carrots, parsnips, cabbages, peas, beans, and onions that I shall use to make stews and soups."

Standing a head taller than his wife, Arlyss had long, unruly black hair that cascaded down to his shoulders and a scraggly, dark beard. He walked with a slight but noticeable limp, left over from a wound received in Britain while fighting for the Romans to defend Hadrian's Wall against attacking Barbarians. When the battles ended with the retreat of the Barbarians, Arlyss was given the option of accepting land in Britain or taking Roman coin. He chose coin, as he desired to return to Saxony to be with his wife whom he loved deeply...

 

 

Chapter 2: San Francisco
& Toronto: 2015

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It was Tuesday, the day after Labour Day. Corey Alden would soon be heading into work, as the new Director of Information Technology for Ancestry Discovery, a rapidly growing DNA testing company in San Francisco. Corey, his wife Indira, and their daughter Ashley had moved from Toronto to San Francisco where they had been living for just over three weeks.

Corey had gone into the office for several meetings, but today was his first official day on the job. Indira, an experienced registered nurse, was starting as a volunteer in the maternity ward of the UCSF Betty Irene Moore Women's Hospital. Ashley's classes in the science and languages programs at the University of California-San Francisco began today.

At forty-two, Corey is a tall, fit-looking man. He sports a full head of dark hair, with just a hint of grey at his temples, combed back in curly waves. Corey inherited his dark complexion and wavy hair from his mother. According to her, he inherited his dark green eyes and his small ears from his father. His slightly crooked nose, though, was all his own.

Corey walked across the diminutive square of a front lawn toward the car park adjacent to the house. Before he reached his ocean-blue Ford Focus, he paused at his Oak tree, planted in the centre of the lawn.

His Oak tree had had a rough start when first planted in Toronto, where the family lived with his mother, Martha, before she passed away. They continued to live in the house inherited from her until they moved to San Francisco. Since being replanted in San Francisco, Corey's Oak tree had grown rapidly, as if making up for lost time, and emitted an occasional cloudy white aura that only Corey could see.

Corey did not notice squirrels hanging out when the Aldens arrived at the new house. Once he planted his Oak tree, there they were: three squirrels. Rust-colored with pure white bellies, deep black stripes on each side, and tails reddish on top and yellow-grey on the underside. Chattering at his tree, they were waiting for its roots to clutch firmly into the soil so that it would be sturdy enough for them to climb.

Corey puzzled over their appearance but concluded that there must be red squirrels in California, just as there were in Toronto. It mystified him that, as in Toronto, the bellies of these particular squirrels were pure white and the stripes on their sides were an intense black, unlike the mottled white and blotchy black of other red squirrels.

The red squirrels in Toronto had climbed both his grandfather's and his mother's Oak trees in the front and back yards of the house on Sunnyside Avenue. They had ignored Corey's barely a sapling of an Oak tree in the backyard, as it was too weak to support the weight of their tiny bodies.

While the poor growth of Corey's Oak tree disappointed him, Corey came to believe that it was his fault the tree was not doing well. He had planted the tree before his acorns, inherited from his mother's tree, had warmed up and requested to be planted. Every time he looked at his tree in Toronto, he felt that he had let down his family line.

Now that Corey's family and his Oak tree were in San Francisco, the problem, based on how perky his newly planted tree was, seemed to have resolved itself.

"San Francisco. This is where you belong," Corey said to his Oak tree and patted its rough bark, twisted like a braid in three shades of brown. "I didn't know that when I first planted you."

His Oak tree shimmered briefly. The three red squirrels, sitting on their haunches at the base of the tree, chattered playfully. Corey felt reassured by what he called his Oak tree's good vibrations. "Good, good, good vibrations," he sang in his low baritone voice. "Now that we are living in California, that's your theme song," he chuckled.

As if in reply, his Oak tree's small branches swayed to the tune even though there was no breeze.