Silence. Sunlight. Soil. These were the things Isadora loved. Her parents refused to believe

her when she told them what she really was. They stole sidelong glances at each other and

humored their headstrong child. 

When Isadora started digging holes in the garden, and burying her bare feet deep down inside

them, burrowing her toes into the cool dark soil, they were concerned. They shook their heads

and pointed crooked fingers and said, “Enough of this Isadora, you know you’re a girl." Isadora

protested, but they covered their ears and turned away blind eyes.

Isadora dreamed of earth worms and slugs and nesting birds. She drew pictures of herself with

arms extending high into the sky. She collected leaves and twigs and bark bits and wove them

into woodland crowns. She grew quiet and solemn and would speak only when necessary. Other

girls found her to be strange, and stayed away from her, but she didn’t mind. She was content as

long as she could be silent, feel sunlight and touch soil.

Once they found her tied to the big oak across the street in the early hours of a summer

morning, facing bravely against a man with a chainsaw. She cried and begged and accused him

of murder. "Isadora," her parents pleaded, "come inside and forget all this nonsense." They

wrapped their arms around their sobbing daughter and dragged her away from the bewildered

arborist.

On a drizzly afternoon in mid-spring, her parents sat sipping tea as Isadora walked into the

kitchen and said goodbye. "You won’t see me again," she said, "but I’ll always be here." She

kissed each of them on the top of the head and left through the back door. They didn’t try to stop

her.

They watched in wonder through the kitchen window as Isadora, crowned with twigs and

covered in dirt, centered herself in the middle of the yard. She moved in slow, spinning circles.

She raised her hands to accept the rain, unfurling like a flower, and her lips whispered on the

wind, words that her parents could not, would not hear.

They watched her skin thicken and harden, change color and texture. They saw bright green

buds shoot from her fingertips and burst into foliage, they saw snaking tendrils spring from her

ankles to surge forward, grasping blades of grass and disappearing below.

Isadora receded securely within herself as she rooted deep into the earth. She felt free, and she

knew the peace of becoming. She stretched and lengthened her arms into sinewy limbs. She

absorbed carbon dioxide and rays of light. Hydrated by moisture and nutrients drawing up from

the rich ground below and coursing up and through her trunk, she admired her graceful new

branches, her delicate, patterned leaves.

At dusk, as an owl perched in the crook of Isadora’s largest branch, and butterflies fluttered

about her newly formed blooms, her parents came near, ashamed. They sat down speechless

underneath her shade, they ran their palms over her rough bark.  “We’re sorry we didn’t believe

you,” they said, “but we believe in you now.”