Reyna’s  Oak

The statue stood in the old graveyard since time immemorial. A stone woman sat on a throne and held up a goblet in an eternal salutation to the good life. The throne perched atop a tomb, and a tall, thick oak tree flanked it, like a sentinel protecting his queen. Time had smoothed the statue’s nose, eyes, and mouth into bumps and valleys, and the name on the tomb had faded into oblivion long ago.

The carved folds of her dress were now smooth lines covered in moss and bindweed. Ivy slithered around her bare, polished feet and crawled up her lap, winding itself around the arm holding the goblet aloft. No one knew her name, the villagers all called her The Queen.

She was the heroine of many fanciful legends about her identity and contribution to the world. People surmised she was Guinevere, or Boudicca, but the mystery hovered still over the village of Reyna’s Oak.

The statue had been many a scholarly enterprise for decades. Historians and archeologists came from the big universities to determine her name and age. Many experts said medieval sculptors carved her, but others thought she was Roman, and still others believed she was even more ancient. They brought machines and dug around her feet. They used ground-penetrating radar to peer under the slab of stone that covered the grave beneath the throne. There was a skeleton down there, they said, but without exhumation they could know no more.

The village council hemmed and hawed every time someone — always an outsider — suggested breaking the stone beneath her feet. They stonewalled all attempts to dig deeper into The Queen’s history.

The villagers of Reyna’s Oak considered The Queen a landmark, a patrimony of their village, and they stalled all endeavors to deface her. They understood something the erudite scholars and archeologists did not: The Queen’s well-being affected Reyna’s Oak’s well-being. The tomb bound the village to it, as if Reyna’s Oak’s life began with The Queen’s death.

The goblet The Queen held was always full of water. How much water remained in the cup at the start of spring determined the harvest and economic development for the rest of the year.

If the water in the goblet was low, then the village — poor and rich alike — would have a harsh year. If the water brimmed over, then the village rejoiced, for abundance lay ahead. The goblet had never been dry.

One night, a terrible storm raged. It came in a banging flash and villagers scattered, running to their houses as hail and rain pelted them from the sky.

Taking refuge in their homes, they watched in horror as lightning zapped down and struck the old cemetery at the center of town.

Many screamed, others gasped, and all hoped The Queen remained unscathed.

Thunder, lightning, and hail pummeled the village all night, but by morning, the storm had abated.

The villagers breathed a collective sigh of relief as they took stock of their property. Most buildings were undamaged.

Not a significant loss, they murmured. Phew, they breathed.

Then the screams sounded throughout the village streets.

Lightning had struck The Queen.

The guardian oak stood with its thick trunk split and charred, and groaned in pain and sorrow as its branches swayed in the cool breeze. The Queen’s goblet lay on the ground with its cup separated from the stem. The cup — thank heavens — remained full. A jagged crack marred the smooth statue as the lightning left its trace. The tomb beneath the stone had shattered, and a hole gaped. A few people dared to peer inside it, others turned their heads.

Those who dared a glance reported seeing nothing but earth and stone, despite the assurances of the myriad of scholars of a human skeleton buried in the ground. Many shrugged and stated that academics rarely knew what they said. Most looked at one another askance, superstition shining in their eyes and wondering if perhaps this was a bad omen.

That night, the villagers awoke to the sound of a woman singing through the village streets. The voice was both sweet and hollow, and an eerie mist spread over the town. The meek cowered in their beds, while the bold dared to peek out the windows. They reported the spectral figure of a woman in a long, flowing dress floating down the street. Barking dogs quieted and whimpered as she approached. The mist thickened and soon engulfed the village.

The next morning, the scholars came, alerted to the damage done to The Queen. They arrived at the quiet village and wondered that no one was in sight. They knocked on doors, but no answer came. Then they peeked in the windows and found the houses empty of living souls. The mystery of Reyna’s Oak’s disappearance only deepened when the scholars read the last entries in the vanished inhabitants’ journals.