Step into the Enchanted Stories series — a world of quirky mushrooms, whispering trees, and hidden life beneath the soil. Explore more tales here.
I got the idea for this post’s story from my children. They call this forest the graveyard of trees…
This forest is dying.
The air feels heavy. Hopeless wind blows through the forest, then fades. Trees are decaying in place. Some trees still stand bravely — dying with their boots on. Others aren’t so victorious: they have fallen to the forest floor.
Mushrooms grow from lifeless trees, which decay in the dimness of this sorrowful forest. The mushrooms mourn the loss of the trees. Beneath the soil, they were life companions — sharing cold winters, shivering in fading warmth with mycelia and roots intertwined with one another.
Each spring, the fungal networks woke up and helped the trees drink, and the trees fed them in return. And each summer, when the mushrooms ran their busy underground businesses and exchanged important messages with the trees. And in autumn, when they finally see each other after a long time — if death has not come.
But there, in this fading forest, grief and loss are constant. Even the spiders have gathered up their webs. In the middle of sorrow, sits Priestly Frog — comforting the mushrooms, whispering gentle words about the trees that are gone.
His tiny hands rest lightly on the decayed wood, as if offering blessings to the graves of trees. Every note he utters ripples through the damp air, stirring the mycelial networks below, carrying the sorrow to roots that still remember life.
Polypores in this cemetery stand like tombstones, honoring every miserable snag that once was a thriving tree with hopeful green leaves and needles and solid trunks.
But there is someone. In silence you can hear a sound of digging. A shovel sinking to the soil and after a short pause, soil falling from the blade. Steady tempo of committed work. It’s the Gravedigger.
With no expressions, he works around the forest floor. Never resting, always somewhere digging, covering, filling… repeating. Mushrooms are only witnesses to his endless efforts. Work is never finished. Always, new trunks need their last resting place. He digs grave pits, for coffins made of decayed wood.
After the covering, he places the polypore as a tombstone. No expressions, no teardrop, not even a little sob or sniffle. When he is done, he stares a while, turns around — and starts it all again.
Even lichens are in sorrow. They are necks down crying. Their pale bodies have lost all joy and laughter. No wind moves them. No sun warms them. Only the shadow of the Gravedigger passes them, announcing that someone has passed again into the eternal forest.
Some curl tightly against the bark, and refuse to let go. This is the last goodbye. Once they painted the forest with silver, but now they hang colorless and tired, heads down, like sorrow itself has drained their pigment. They are fading away like ghosts.
Through this land of desolation, forgotten paths are disappearing under the rot. The shadows cast their long black branches over everything. The paths won’t lead anymore to the joyfully green leafy corners — they just go in circles and lead nowhere. There’s not even the possibility of anything more exciting than getting lost — just endless wandering in the sighing gloom, among roots and tombstones of trees long gone.
But there, in the middle of all misery, there’s hope. Fungi networks know it — they can see it first. Soil hums with hidden life. Renewal of life stirs quietly beneath the rot. Small roots unfurl through the soft earth like secret hands, reaching, touching, remembering how to awaken the forest once more.
And next spring, bird songs return while the earth of this suffering forest sees the light of new growth. Fresh, green tentative sprouts break through the surface of the soil, bringing the forest back to life.
Soil remembers.
