Aria (Chaewon) Lee
The old zelkova had white cloth strips tied to its branches. They were prayer flags now, though some people still remembered when kids used them for kite tails. At the base of the trunk, a jar of filtered water, left by a tree doctor. Next to it, a small oxygen canister with a yellow ribbon. Pressed into the bark near eye level, a single gold tooth.
A crowd stood behind a yellow cordon line. The walk here had been long, across ground that crunched like old bones. The mother's shoes were still dusted with the fine gray powder, the same powder that coated the empty streets they had passed through, the same powder that settled on the abandoned cars and the empty buildings with their shattered windows. Inside the dome, the ground was soft. Outside, through the glass, the dunes were creeping up against the walls.
The tree doctor arrived at 11:11, right on time. People stopped murmuring when they saw him. He wore the standard gray overalls like all tree doctors, but his pockets bulged with instruments. Two assistants followed, one carrying a folding stool, the other a wooden case lined with velvet.
The mother came late, her son's hand in hers. He was coughing again, that dry cough he had picked up somewhere. She tightened her grip on his small fingers. He was chewing on her sleeve, leaving a wet mark on the cuff.
"Mommy, why is everyone so quiet?"
She didn't answer. She watched the tree doctor kneel.
He put his palm flat on the ground next to the tree and closed his eyes. The crowd waited. Thirty seconds passed. Then a minute. Then five more. A woman in the front row coughed into the hollow air. Then the doctor stood, nodded to his assistants, and took the tree-specific stethoscope out of its velvet-lined case.
When he pressed it to the trunk, the crowd leaned forward.
The son tugged his mother's sleeve. "What's he listening for?"
"Shh."
But the tree doctor looked up. He smiled and gestured them forward. The mother hesitated at the yellow tape, but an assistant lifted it for them. Then the crowd parted, like the Red Sea splitting for Moses.
"Come," the tree doctor said. His voice, soft yet clear, came through the small microphone attached to his collar. "This tree has something to say about the children."
He pressed the stethoscope against a scar on the bark, a long-healed wound where a branch had been torn away long ago, its edges grown over and smooth. Then he beckoned the boy closer. "Put your hand here."
The boy looked at his mother, and she nodded with a quiet smile. The boy's small hand was drawn to the tree trunk, finally pressing against the bark, piercing the heavy air.
The tree doctor adjusted his earpiece and held it close to the boy's ear.
"Feel anything?" echoed through the doctor's microphone. The boy frowned, looking upset. "Nothing."
"Just a moment," the doctor said, looking around. Then a sound came from above: a bird singing. The boy still frowned, but suddenly his eyes widened and he exclaimed, "It's warm!"
The tree doctor's expression softened. He smiled gently, took off his earphones, turned toward the crowd, and placed one hand on the boy's shoulder. "This tree is over three hundred years old. It remembers when this village was an empty field. It remembers when the air was clean enough to breathe without masks, and all the children who passed through that time are treasured in its heart." And he paused. Ten seconds felt like ten hours.
The doctor continued, "Even when storms, time, and indifferent people harmed its body, this tree considered it an honor to share its breath. The children's laughter, their silly games of hide-and-seek, the sight of little hands climbing its branches... that was its greatest joy. But now, those children are gone."
The mother felt her numb heart surge without knowing why. Memories of children playing around this tree flashed through her mind, tinged with an orange hue like an old photograph. Was it really so? Had she truly climbed that tree? Had she really hung a swing from its branches? Now she couldn't tell if it was reality or a scene from a broadcast. She looked past the crowd, past the yellow tape, to the dome wall. Beyond the glass, the sky was the color of old bruises. Sand drifted against the barrier in slow waves. Once more, a heavy, solemn weight settled in her heart.
Her dazed gaze slowly turned toward her son. He still had his hands on the tree bark, his expression serious.
"Mommy, the tree looks sad," her son said to her with grave eyes.
"How did you know?" Mommy asked.
"I don't know. I just feel it." Then he gazed at the tree with eyes filled with sorrow.
The crowd sighed. Amidst the soft sound like wind rustling through leaves, someone knelt. Then another. In an instant, about twelve people knelt and bowed their heads. Toward the roots of the zelkova tree, toward the small boy who had placed his hand on the scar.
The mother knelt too. She didn't know why. It was instinct. Warm knees touched the cold ground. The earth here was soft. Outside the dome, however, was dust and rock and things that used to be alive.
"Mommy, why is everyone kneeling?" her son asked, sounding startled.
She opened her mouth, but no words came out. What could she say? That the tree was speaking through her son? That she felt it too, this vast loneliness, older than the village, older than the masks worn when pollution alarms sounded, older than the memory of clean air?
The tree doctor's sudden, intense gaze turned toward her. His expression was kind yet professional, and beyond that, indescribable. There was something more. Before he turned his head, something flashed by in an instant. Resolutely, he withdrew the stethoscope, out of the boy's reach, and placed it back in the velvet box.
"That's enough for today," he said softly. "The tree is grateful," the doctor added.
As the assistants packed up the equipment one by one, the crowd finally dispersed, slow and reverent. The mother rose, took her son's hand, and led him away from the yellow barrier tape. She looked back once.
But the tree remained where it had always stood. Offerings at its base reflected the sunlight. The prayer flags fluttered in the breeze carrying the scent of ozone and purified air. Beyond the dome, the sand kept moving, the sky kept its bruised color. The world outside kept being what it had become.
The boy tugged at his mother's sleeve, asking impatiently, "Mommy? Why did the tree doctor look at me like that just now?"
The air around her froze. She was still trying to understand the expression she had seen on his face. That moment, just before the doctor's kindness returned. She thought it might be the same expression one sees when unexpectedly catching a glimpse of oneself in a mirror. The expression of someone who knows exactly what they are doing, yet does it as if they have no choice, because the world has become a place where such actions are now necessary.
She thought of the dunes outside. Of the powder on her shoes. Of the cough her son had picked up somewhere.
"Come on, let's go," she said. "Let's go home."
Behind them, the tree stood patiently, silently. Clad in white. Accepting offerings. Waiting for children who would never climb it again.