The Halloween Tree

"No!" roared Samhain in the high air.

"But yes!" cried the Romans. "Now!"

The soldiers gave a final mighty blow.

And Samhain, God of the Dead, torn at his roots, chopped at his ankles, began to fall.

The boys, staring up, leaped out of the way. For it was like a giant forest falling all in one fall. They were shadowed by his midnight descent. The thunder of his death came before him. He was the greatest tree in all existence ever, the tallest oak ever to plummet down and die. Down he came through the wild air, screaming, flailing to hold himself up.

Samhain hit the earth.

He dropped with a roar that shook the bones of the hills and snuffed the holy fires.

And with Samhain cut and down and dead, the last of the druid oaks fell with him, like wheat cut with a final scythe. His own huge scythe, a vast smile lost in the fields, dissolved into a puddle of silver and sank into the grass.

Silence. A smoldering of fires. A blowing of leaves.

Instantly the sun went down.

The druid priests bled in the grass as the boys watched and the Roman captain prowled the dead fires kicking the holy ashes.

"Here we shall build our temples to our gods!"

The soldiers lit new fires and burned incense before golden idols which they set in place.

But, no sooner lit, than a star shone in the east. On far desert sands, to camel bells, Three Wise Men moved.

The Roman soldiers lifted their bronze shields against the glare of the Star in the sky. But their shields melted. The Roman idols melted and became shapes of Mary and her Son.

The soldiers' armor melted, dripped, changed. They were dressed now in the garments of priests who sang Latin before yet newer altars, even as Moundshroud, crouched, squinting, weighed the scene, and whispered it to his small masked friends: "Aye, boys, see? Gods following gods. The Romans cut the Druids, their oaks, their God of the Dead, bang! down! And put in their own gods, eh? Now the Christians run and cut the Romans down! New altars, boys, new incense, new names..."

The wind blew the altar candles out.

In darkness, Tom cried out. The earth shuddered and spun. Rain drenched them.

"What's happening, Mr. Moundshroud? Where are we?"

Moundshroud struck a flinty thumb into fire and held it up. "Why, bless me, boys. It's the Dark Ages. The longest darkest night ever. Christ long since come and gone in the world and--"

"Where's Pipkin?"

"Here!" cried a voice from the black sky. "I think I'm on a broom! It's taking me--away!"

"Hey, me too," said Ralph and then J.J., and then Hackles Nibley, and Wally Babb, and all the rest.

There was a huge whisper like a gigantic cat stroking its whiskers in the dark.

"Brooms," muttered Moundshroud. "The gathering of the Brooms. The October Broom Festival. The Annual Migration."

"To Where?" asked Tom, calling up, for everyone was making traffic on the air now in whisking shrieks.

"The Broomworks, of course!"

"Help! I'm flying!" said Henry-Hank.

Whisk. A broom whistled him away.

A great brambly cat flashed by Tom's cheek. He felt a wooden pole between his legs jump up.