The Money Tree

Once upon a time, long ago and far away, deep in the dark forest was a village where the people were poor and worked hard cutting trees and delivering the lumber to distant cities. In this village lived a small girl named Posy.

Posy loved the giant trees and hated to see her father and uncles sawing the ancient beauties down causing a gigantic crashing roar as they fell to the forest floor making it shake and tremble as if Mother Nature herself was shuddering at the loss of one of her children. The trees were not only stripped of their lives but also of their bark, leaves, and limbs as if their dignity was taken too.

The work was hard and dangerous; many villagers lost limbs and even their lives to sharp ax blades and falling trees. The nearest city to market the wood was many miles away and the huge logs had to be pulled on a sled by a team of unruly donkeys. The road was dangerous with twisting turns and many dark places where thieves hid waiting for an unsuspecting woodcutter making his way home from the city with a pocket full money.

Often posy returned to the forest after the loggers were done at the site and sat among the broken limbs and jagged stumps to mourn the loss of the trees. She always pushed a few seeds, acorns or whirl-i-gigs, whatever she could find, into the spongy forest soil. She tried to replace fallen trees with new, replacing what had been harvested for the village's survival.

Posy preferred to play deep in the forest, away from the crash and tumble of falling trees. She wandered down moss covered trails, picked wild flowers, sang and played make-believe games involving wood sprites to amuse herself. One day a flash among some ferns caught her eye. She knelt and parting the tall ferns found a gold coin glittering in the dim light of the forest floor. As she reached for the coin she saw another flash a few feet away. Laughing, she picked up the coins; this would feed her family for a week!

She sat back on her knees and smiled at a fabulous red and gold butterfly as big as her hand. She watched the creature flutter and fly up and up. Posy's jaw suddenly dropped open and she jumped to her feet. Gasping she reached out to touch the remarkable tree standing above her. The tree looked ancient with twisted, gnarled limbs and large, glossy, dark green, heart shaped leaves. Dollar bills hung from every branch, fluttering in the breeze.

Many bills were out of her reach but Posy stretched and plucked until her apron was full of the soft green money. She hugged the tree trunk and thanked it very kindly for the wonderful gift. She promised to keep the tree's secret safe from her father and the other villagers and then ran off home.

Posy's father lifted her clean off her feet and swung her in a circle when she gave him the money. He sat her down and asked, "Child, where did this come from?"

Posy only smiled and said, "Dear father, I can not say. Please accept this good fortune without question."

Posy's father took the money to the village market and bought sturdy new boots, warm blankets, little cloth sacks of hard candy for Posy and her sisters, corn for the donkey, heavy material for new coats and basketfuls of the finest food. He filled his little cart with supplies until it threatened to topple and the donkey danced sideways to avoid the weight. The villagers wanted to know where the poor woodcutter with six children found such good fortune, but he could only smile and honestly say he didn't know.

Posy visited the tree often and would sit for hours talking to it and playing amongst the tangled roots. Sometimes she climbed the twisted branches and sat in the sweet smelling leaves. She never pulled more than a dollar or two each visit, being careful not to harm the branches of her marvelous tree.

Posy's father tried to accept the good fortune without question but he kept imagining the worst as humans will do. Perhaps Posy was robbing graves? Picking gold coins and rotting money from skeletal fingers? Or, perhaps she had made a deal with the devil? The poor woodcutter kept imagining the worst until he feared he would go mad. He had to find the truth.

Day after day, he watched his daughter run off to play. She always went the same way into the woods. One day he decided to follow her and crept in the undergrowth behind the trees following her deep into the forest down a mossy trail. Posy stopped and patted a tree trunk, saying hello to the plant. She settled herself on the ground and leaned back against the trunk. The woodcutter ducked behind a sticker bush and stood quietly watching his daughter. A gentle breeze set the leaves and bills hanging from the branches to fluttering. As Posy's father's eyes rose to the tree they popped out quite like a frog's and he sank to his knees. Dumbfounded, he remained on his knees in the sharp thorns until finally Posy rose, hugged the tree and left.

Posy's father rose to his feet, brushing twigs and thorns from his bloody knees and wincing as needles of pain shot through his feet when the blood started to flow through his cramped limbs. He rushed to the tree, grabbing and snatching at the bills, snapping twigs and branches in his frenzy. He stuffed his pockets and shoved the front of his shirt full until he looked as if he had swallowed a watermelon whole.

He returned home, hitched the donkey and cart and left for the market. At the village market he once again loaded the cart high with supplies. An old woman knelt before him and pleaded, "Please' dear sir, have you anything to spare? My husband was crushed under a falling tree last summer and my children are cold and hungry."

Posy's kind-hearted father gave the old woman a handful of money and soon the cart was surrounded by villagers wanting money. The wood cutter gave the rest of the money away and still the villagers cried of the hardships they were suffering. Wanting to help his friends the wood cutter explained where he had found the money and how to find the tree.

The good natured villagers turned into an angry mob, pushing and pulling at each other in their rush to find the tree. Posy was pulling weeds in the garden when the villagers ran by, screaming and clawing at each other in their rush. "Oh, no," she cried, "stop, wait!" But nobody paid her any heed and they ran into the forest with Posy and her father running after.

When the mob reached the tree they swarmed over it. A small child was trampled in the frenzy and lay on the ground, his poor broken body as twisted as the tree limbs. Branches were broken and the whole tree leaned under the weight of the many villagers climbing to reach the highest bills. Grasping hands plucked and pulled not only every bill but also every heart shaped leaf and many branches from the tree.

Posy stood watching with tears streaming down her face as the villagers destroyed her marvelous tree just as surely as if they had used their gigantic axes to chop it down. When the last bill was plucked they left as quickly as they had come. A sobbing woman with leaves caught in her hair and bills sticking from her bodice picked up the broken body of the child and was the last to stumble from the forest.

Posy sank to her knees in front of her tree. She bowed her head and sobbed. Her father laid a calloused hand on her shoulder and said, "Posy, child, I am so sorry. I was only trying to help our friends. I thought there was enough good fortune to go around. I didn't know they would go wild." Posy did not answer or even look up at him and with tears in his eyes he turned and left her to her mourning.

Posy curled into a ball at the base of the tree and cried until her face was red and swollen and there were no tears left in her to fall. As she sat up, a glitter of gold in the trampled weeds caught her eye. She reached for the coin and found it was stuck to the ground. She parted the foliage for a closer look and found the coin was half buried in the spongy soil and a tiny green sprig had sprouted.

Posy's eyes widened and a smile lit her face as she carefully cupped the the small sprout between her palms and promised to keep it safe from harm. She returned home for a spade and the coins she had hidden in a small box under a loose floorboard in the room she shared with her sisters. She returned to the forest and carefully lifted the seedling from the forest floor. She took the seedling and coins deeper into the woods, farther than she had ever ventured before, and planted them.

Posy returned often to tend her young trees and spread rumors of trolls deep in the forest to keep the villagers away. The trees grew slowly and Posy died an old woman with a husband, seven children, and a full life behind her before they ever bore fruit. She never shared with a single soul the location of the trees or even the fact of their existence.

Are the trees still there? Are they yet bearing fruit? If you see a flash of gold in the forest remember to look not only down but also up to see if you have found Posy's marvelous money trees.