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This Wooden Heart

by Eleanna Castroianni

 

 

It starts with a seed in your grandfather’s beard.

Before you were born, when you and your brother were still seeds tucked deep inside your parents’ bodies, your grandfather dreamed for a while: of grainy bark, of sun-kissed leaves, of sweet purple fruit and of milky poison sap.

Your grandpa: you knew him for a while. He had the eyes of someone claimed by something bigger; the eyes of someone who has known secrets that take root deep below.

He had the eyes of your brother.

Your brother: you knew him for a while. His fire burned too bright. And everyone who shines brightly is sent to exile. To this day, your mother thinks her son — your only brother — is imprisoned on a faraway island.

She doesn’t know that your brother dreams of grainy bark and sun-kissed leaves. She doesn’t know that what started with a seed in her father’s beard has grown wiry roots and curly tendrils around this family’s hearts.

She can feel the thorns. She can hear the faint beating. She will clutch at her chest with every long breath. But she doesn’t know.

It starts like this.

 

---

 

The story of your grandmother goes like this — or so they told you.

Rumour had it that the fig grove surrounding the church of Saint Yerasimos in Tholaria could hide one from human eyes. When the Ottomans and the Moors raided, people took to the grove. They knocked on the trees and the spirits of the trees answered. They welcomed them, one trunk now holding two souls.

In the thick shade of the fig trees, with no birds singing, no cicadas trilling, no bees buzzing, the priest eyed your grandmother with a smirk on his goatish features. The irreverent call priests he-goats, but he truly was one: shiny horns and black jewel eyes, part of the beastfolk of Yerakari. He was the spitting image of Dark Father, one of the Cruel Saints that are honored only in Messara Valley. No doubt this chilling resemblance made him, ironically, popular with the pious. Goats have herbivore eyes; his eyes were a predator’s.

“It will cost you,” he said. “The church has needs, you know that, child.” He stroked the heavy cross hanging from his neck. The little jewels tucked in the insets must have cost a fortune. Among them, rubies shone bright red. Rubies were a sign of someone who had traded with the Ottomans. Someone who herded the serfs for the sake of the master.

She clenched her jaw. Of course. The beastfolk of Yerakari cared about one thing only: money. Sometimes it took the form of business, sometimes of sheer thievery. When it came to the church, the beastfolk were a natural partner to the biggest thieves in the country.

“Name the price,” she said.

The he-goat went silent for a moment to briefly weigh the odds. “Forty aiyes. With interest.”

That was a year’s income for a spinner, in good times. Your grandmother was resourceful; she could find a way to pay the instalments. “Expensive, but you have a deal. I have an upfront of ten.”

“Splendid. Dark Father thanks you.” His goaty eyes shone with greed, and his long-fingered human hands, covered in the short black hair that goats have about the legs, came together to rub in impatience. She handed him the silver. Taking his time, he inspected every piece, his long fingernails scuttling against the coin.

Your grandmother truly looked at the grove around her for the first time. It was old, too old. The trees were twisting in unnatural shapes. On some, if she blinked, she could see the gentle curve of hips or the shape of a mouth, a nose, closed eyes. The complete absence of any animal sound was unnerving. It smelled of fig sap, of wet leather, of decay. She steadied her breath. “Which one will it be?”

“That one over there.” He showed the direction by moving his muzzle only a little; eyes and fingers did not leave the silver.

It was different than the others. The leaves were brighter and thicker, the trunk still straight and welcoming. It looked like a real tree — nothing sinister about it, like the others.

“Looks like the only one alive,” she said, watching the goat-priest carefully. For a second, his back tensed, his fingers faltered. She had figured out something. “Your grove is dying, isn’t it?”

He was done with the silver. He tucked it away carefully, straightened his stole and caressed the cross one more time. He met her eyes and smiled that chilling, animal smile. “All the more reason to be a patron of this church, my child. You have a deal.”

She shook hands with the spitting image of the Devil.

One day later, she kissed your grandfather goodbye as his eyes were covered by bark — or so they told you.

 

---

 

You grew up in this house surrounded by fig trees, you and your brother. Your childhood was lucky: wrapped in days of peace, in sweet summer scents and delighted little hands digging the dirt. It was quiet in the fig orchard, oh, so quiet. Once, your brother caught a cicada on his way back from school and brought it home. It fell silent, until it fell dead.

You both remember how the quiet of the fig trees was disturbed one winter morning. They said that the war had reached Messara — yet another war. War that wore grey uniforms, war that smelled of heavy leather boots, war that spoke a foreign, northern language. War that tasted like branches and mud because the hunger was so great.

One day Grandmother arrived with two girls from the village — you knew them, Rachel and Mariam. You used to play with them. The Levi girls. “I told their mother we can put them in the trees,” Grandmother said. “So those monsters can’t ever, ever find them.”

You all nodded — all except Grandfather. His face was frozen, as always. Wooden with no expression, and eyes as if caught between two worlds. He was the one who had planted that seed. He was the one who took care of all those trees, watering them every morning, pruning them. The one who had brought the secret of the grove home. The one with the wooden eyes: the wooden heart.

But he did not object. And since the girls were in danger, you hid them.

The trees welcomed them. They slit their barks like mouths and swallowed them gently. Only one in a trunk, always.

You remember visiting the girls daily with your brother, watering the soil, wiping the dead leaves. You sang songs and played with dice. One die for you, one die for him, one die for Mariam and one for Rachel. Sometimes, underneath your feet, you could feel the roots shaking. Sometimes, you could even hear a girl’s laughter echoing in the silence.

Soon, more got inside the trees. People were afraid they’d be sent to labour camps, if not killed and their grain taken. Sometimes, village folk were simply hungry, so hungry they couldn’t stand it anymore. Getting in the tree was a way to pause and forget. Maybe, when they came out, the war would have ended. Inside the tree it must have been sweet oblivion: a dream of suspended existence. Grandmother kept bringing them and Grandfather did not object. But someone did object.

Your mother.

“We are at our last sack of flour,” she said. “Unless you get something from them, we’re going to starve.”

“I am not the church,” Grandmother said. “I won’t take people’s hard-earned money in difficult times.”

Your mother stomped her foot. “We are still paying our debt to that goat-priest of yours. You might be all proud and haughty, but I am not letting my children starve.”

Grandmother put a hand on her shoulder, begging her to reconsider. “It is not right. You will be doing to them what the priest did to us.” But Mother would not listen. It wasn’t her debt; it was her mother’s. What was hers, though, was the worry of raising you two. Grandmother tried again. “If things go dire, we can all get inside the trees. We could leave only one of us behind. To tend to us.”

That was the first time you truly heard your grandfather’s voice. Your grandfather spoke, and he spoke bark. Somehow, you all understood.

Such were his words: None of us is going inside the trees. We shall not ever, ever do that.

There must have been something in his wooden eyes that shone for a moment in a forgotten way. Something that made your grandmother cry, your mother shudder.

Then your mother stood, steadfast and remorseless. “We charge, then. That’s how it’s going to be.” No one objected this time.

No one could do what she did. She was not afraid nor ashamed. She took over the dealings, named the price, counted the coins. Sometimes she’d bargain with food, if the household supplies were low, but she knew coin was the smart choice. Coin could get you far. When the war was over, and coins regained their value, they’d be rich. So many evenings of your life: the only lullaby you heard was the sound of coin against coin — and once in a while, the bombs and the screams, away in the villages. To this day, she takes them out every evening and counts them anew. When bad times come again, she will be ready.

People came and went. Some stayed longer in the trees, some not so long. Once a Romani mother came with her little child. You knew them too — they were travelling merchants, trading in your village on feast days. “Please, hide my child. If they find us, they will kill us on sight.”

“Can you trade anything?”

“I have nothing. I beg you to just take my son — forget about me!”

“I’m sorry,” were your mother’s words to another mother.

You all witnessed this when it happened. You all knew what the Nazis did to the Roma. Your mother, too.

No one objected any more. You all just let it happen. You and your brother too young, Grandpa only speaking — or only being understood — when it came to your family and no one else. Your grandmother, tired and defeated by then, only said,

“This is devilry. We brought the Devil’s tree to our home, and it spawned.”

When Mother counted the coins that evening, she only said, “This is our salvation. Father brought back a business with him. Better in our hands than the goat-priest’s.”

This is the story they tell you of how you had hot meals on the table while growing up.

They tasted of fig and blood.

 

---

 

Your mother remembers the day her father returned. To this day, she still isn’t sure if that was her father or not. Her true father never returned from that tree.

Your mother tells you the story of your grandmother. Paints the grove around the church vividly, now all those trees just dead husks standing. Describes the greedy priest lushly, and speaks of your grandfather hiding from the war. It wasn’t a good time for them; your grandfather was Greek, and also a government official of the Ottomans. Not a traitor, but far from a hero. A grey person. Whose side would he fight on? The grove, Grandmother thought. Hide. It’s okay. The mothers and wives of cowards never cry. Hide. Let the war pass.

Grandfather came out of the tree in a changed land — the empire had dissolved and the nations were free to take their fate in their hands.

And he came out of the tree a changed man.

There is a memory that seems like a dream, so you aren’t sure: that your grandfather never speaks, but when he speaks, he opens his mouth and speaks bark. That he smiles and he smiles leaf. That he takes you in his arms, and they smell like fig: the fruit of the Devil.

Your mother remembers the day her father returned. His eyes vacant, his smile familiar yet uncanny. He pulled something from his beard: a seed. Next year, a fig tree had grown by your house.

 

---

 

Trees beget trees. These trees, unnaturally so. The single fig tree became an orchard in only a few years. An orchard that could welcome people inside the tree trunks.

These are all stories your mother tells, and you have learned not to trust her.

Your brother learned this lesson first. Your brother was still young when you ate bread soaked in blood, but not so young to not know what that tastes like. Day by day, he grew colder, his face a statue-like expression. Day by day his heart, too, became more wooden.

“People in the village don’t speak to us,” he said over dinner. At his words, the beans in your mouth turn ferrous. It was only days after the incident with the Romani mother. “There is blood on our hands.”

Mother scoffed. “Whom did we kill, to have blood on our hands?” she asked, but no one answered. She pointed toward his side of the table with a fork. “And there’s food on your plate. But I don’t expect you to be grateful.”

Grandmother tried to say something, but your brother was unyielding. “You don’t care about us. All you care about is counting your silver. You don’t care about anything! You’re no better than the Nazis. Your heart is made of wood.”

Mother eyed him with a stare that could kill. With the corner of your eye, you saw your grandfather turning his head, only slightly. He didn’t speak.

“I don’t expect you to thank me now,” Mother said, masking any hurt in her voice rather well. “One day, when you have to care for your own, you’ll understand.”

A day later, under the Levi girls’ trees, he told you his secret: he had joined the resistance; he was leaving tomorrow.

“I am no coward like Grandfather was. And, yes, I do have my own to care for.”

Something inside you knew this was the last time you would see your brother as you had known him for a while. War changed people.

Something moved inside the tree. Like a hand, reaching out for your shoulder.

 

---

 

Your mother’s heart isn’t wood — it’s ice. But once a year, it melts. It’s the day your father died.

They brought him already inside the lidded coffin. The casket never opened for the funeral. His face, his body caught in an explosion — it was not a sight for his family.

Once a year, your mother cries, yet never speaks. Only once she did. She spoke to you alone. She told you another story.

“Your grandmother suggested we put him in the tree, you know. First time she’d told me the secret. First time she thought to use it. The orchard was fully grown by then and the trunks large and solid. The trees grow and grow, and they spread, until they stop spreading — as if they are a single mind. If we wanted, we could have put him in a tree. But he said no. He said he was no coward, like your grandfather was, that he’d fight the war. I did not insist. I should have.”

“Did Grandpa say anything?”

“He spoke, but we still couldn’t understand him back then. His words came out all wooden. Now we know he had probably opposed this, even though he didn’t have to. Your father went to die willingly.”

And she cried. Once, she opened up her heart to you. She pushed that icy door aside and let you see the vulnerable, squirming animal inside. Then she closed and locked it again. There were things to be done, coins to be counted.

 

---

 

When the people came out of the trees, your brother wasn’t there to see them. He was still fighting a war, like your father had done: willingly. One war had ended, but another had just started. People could now leave the trees, perhaps, though it wasn’t safe. The Nazis had left, but this was a war of brother killing brother. Your brother was still fighting. You didn’t know if he’d ever return.

But you were still here. You were helping your grandmother slice each tree: put a careful hand inside, seeking. Then find a finger or two, or maybe an ear, or a lock of hair, all too difficult to distinguish from the wood. The more you patted, the more it felt a little softer, like flesh. “It takes time,” Grandma said. Then pull — pull, pull; it’s like an uprooting. A few lost limbs forever to the wood but they didn’t seem to mind.

They all shared the same eyes. They had all seen the same things. When you pulled out the Levi girls — the first to go in, the first to come out — they hadn’t aged a day. You were the same age when the war started. Five years later, they still looked like they were eleven years old, and you were almost an adult. They looked at you with wooden eyes — with the eyes of your grandfather. Something in their expression, probably, said thank you. Something else might have said, we heard the songs you sang to us while we were inside, we felt the games you shared, and we thank you for that too. But you’re not sure if they ever spoke. Something else they could have said was, perhaps, thank you for making this prison bearable. But you can’t remember if anyone ever said those words or if it was a dream of yours.

Your mother stood there the whole time, watching you and your grandmother working. She didn’t say a thing. Your grandfather was watching too. He didn’t speak either, but his silence was louder.

When everyone was out, you noticed how everyone was not any less human, but certainly a lot more wood — the Levi girls most of all, as they had stayed in there for years. Their skin had grown thick and grainy. Their hair was leaves. Even the last person to go in had something tree-like about them. For a few moments they all looked at you in utter silence. A breeze blew, but it did not rustle the leaves. Then they all started walking back home. No words were spoken and, if they were, you didn’t understand them.

 

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When your brother returns from war, he has fought a thousand wars already. He first pushed the Nazis away. When one war finished, another one started. The Nazis left, the British left. The Americans came much later, but in the meantime gave you weapons to kill each other with. Then your brother fought with the partisans until they lost. In between, he went to prison several times. He went to prison after they lost too. The things he saw there he never speaks of.

When your brother returns from war, he returns a changed man.

There is something still in his eyes, like wood, like glass, like death. He doesn’t even fight with your mother anymore — he is tired of fighting. He just smiles, and looks at the silent grove outside. He has lived a thousand lifetimes in those few years he was away. And he has died several deaths. He is tired of fighting, but something inside him is still at war — forever.

When your brother returns from war, he returns a wooden man.

 

---

 

It’s been years since your brother returned from war. It’s been years since the gendarmerie raided houses, ratting out surviving partisans like your brother and sending them to exile. On prison islands, to knap stone every day under the sun.

This isn’t a story your mother tells you. She doesn’t speak about him. Once a year on his birthday, maybe she cries. But you don’t know.

The trees are all dying or dead. Having kept people inside them for years, they have all started dwindling just like the trees in the church orchard that Mother described, all those years ago. Whenever people come out of the trees, they take something with them — maybe they’re also leaving something behind. Your mother does not mind the dead orchard; you have enough silver to have secured a future. And these are, after all, better times. Wars are over. And those who still suffer on the prison islands, well. They should have known better.

There is one tree that still has a human face. You need to look carefully for it. You need to wipe away the ivy that surrounds it, concealing the features that look like you. It’s deep in the grove, forgotten by all. It’s the last tree, just like the one your grandfather got into.

You put a hand on the trunk and whisper. The response isn’t coming. You whisper again.

“Brother, brother, can you hear me?”

There is a faint nudge. Perhaps a palm against yours, layers of grainy wood between them. A voice, muffled in leaves and sap.

“Brother, I’m taking you out today.”

There is no response. You take out your pocket knife and shove it deep in the bark.

When he comes out, he is all wooden-like. He hasn’t aged a day, and his expression hasn’t changed either. Years ago, when he asked you to put him in the last surviving tree, his eyes were already wooden. If they hadn’t been, you might have objected more.

You put his arm around your shoulders and walk home.

“Grandma died last summer,” you fill him in on what he’s missed. “Grandpa is inconsolable still. He knows he is going to live many more years, but without her.” No response.

When Mother sees him, she knows. She now knows that what started with a seed in her father’s beard has grown wiry roots and curly tendrils around this family’s hearts. She has felt the thorns. She has heard the faint beating. She has been clutching at her chest with every long breath. She has always known.

She doesn’t speak. She pulls out two chairs for you both and boils some thick dark coffee. When you are all sitting together on the table, she asks no one in particular, “What have you done?”

The same question echoes in your ears. You’re not sure. You never were. Every day he’s spent in that tree, you asked yourself the same question. The warning of your grandfather never faded from your mind.

“I am sorry. It was his wish. He couldn’t stand going back to exile. He said it’s a living death. And that he’s tired.”

Long moments pass before Mother speaks again. “I don’t know who took my child. The war, exile, or the orchard. All of it is my fault, anyway. I drove him away. None of this would have happened.”

Unspoken things will linger forever between the three of you, between the seams of this house.

But one thing you do ask. “Mother, if you had put Dad in a tree — would you have preferred that? Or would you rather have let him die in the war?”

It is a genuine question, no tricks, no ethical dilemmas. And it is a genuine answer she gives you.

“Of course I would put him in the tree. It changes you; but so does war. You know what else war does? It kills you. Your father chose to die. I’m not holding it against him. But if it were my choice . . .”

She finishes her coffee and goes back to counting coins. She lives with her guilt. You with yours.

It takes years for your brother to speak in a way you can understand. His life has become slower, more serene. He has seen things; but he has also found some calm. He likes sitting by the window. It is his favourite spot, just like Grandfather’s is at the porch. It takes a while to understand them both, but it is okay. They are still your family; they are still the caring and loving people they were. They are just changed forever, and you all have to live with that.

In the evenings, you sit with Brother in your middle. You play the baglama; Mother stops her chores and her counting of coins for a while, to listen. One evening you see tears on her face. You lower your eyes and see that your brother has put a hand on hers.

“He said he forgives me,” Mother says.

When you sit on his other side, you never notice but, somehow, he’s put his other hand on your open palm. In there, you find a seed.

You hold it between two fingers. A seed, just like the one Grandfather carried in his beard. All the misery of your household, all the bread that tasted like blood and dust — it started like this. All the good the trees have done and all the evil — just like this.

You are tempted to crush it in your palm, to end all suffering. But your brother’s eyes shine. He puts again his hand over yours, and like this, brings the seed next to your ear. For a second, you can hear the seed’s heartbeat: like wood against wood.

 

---

 

Rumour has it that the people of Tholaria are all made of wood. Wooden hearts, wooden minds. They won’t bleed if you slash them. They won’t cry if you hurt them. They are not monstrous, nor without feeling. They are normal people. Maybe a bit calmer than usual, their lives slower. They live for many, many years, longer than other people do. They have seen a lot inside their tree prisons. Human words fail them. They seem to carry the Earth in them.

These are all stories your mother tells, and you have learned not to trust her.

Grandmother could say otherwise, but she is long dead, and the dead in this village don’t rise to answer questions.

Grandfather is still there, unnaturally old, unnaturally still — even stiller than before. He sits in the same spot at the porch, his thick beard grown long and curly, glossy, carved.

You ask your grandfather: Why? Why did you plant the seed? Why did you help these trees grow? They are the Devil’s trees. They are not a hideout. They are a prison. For every person who walked into them, and for this family. They gave us so much pain.

He smiles a carved smile. He speaks and he speaks bark, but somehow, you understand. After all those years, it seems like you’ve finally mastered the tongue.

This is what he says: The grove was dying. My tree was bound to die. That seed was the only thing that could keep me alive. Keep us all alive.

You look at the seed between your hands. “You are telling me I have to plant the grove anew. To continue the secret. For all the villagers to live, for you to live. For my brother.” You don’t like that option. You were determined to put an end to this.

He says: I am telling you to sow a seed. What seed this is, you choose.

 

---

 

These are all stories your folks tell you.

And this is the story you will tell your children.

You sow the seed and only you know what kind of seed it is. You sow the seed and it’s a seed of love — for all the people, for your brother. You sow the seed, but no one knows where. Among the fig trees, among the Devil’s trees, one tree might have a human face one day, or it might not.

And this — you will tell your children one day — is how it ended.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Host Commentary

..aaaaand welcome back. That was “This Wooden Heart” by Eleanna Castroianni, and if you enjoyed that—though “enjoyed” may not be the right word; perhaps “if you were emotionally blown away by it, and can feel your mind and heart expanding, and want more”–then check out Eleanna’s other stories, both equally as impactful: episode 734 “An Incomplete Account of the Case of the Bird-Talker of Yaros” which deals with the injustices and violence of the Greek military junta in the 1970s, and episode 513 from Artemis Rising 4, “We Head for the Horizon and Return with Bloodshot Eyes”, regarding the Greek Civil War of 1946-1949.

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Eleanna sent us these notes on This Wooden Heart, and I will pause after I’ve read them, so you have time to process them: The first stories I ever heard were stories from my grandmother’s life as a child during the Nazi Occupation of Greece. Thinking about recent history and how it affects us is one of the themes I am most interested in exploring in my fiction. As with the other two shorts published by PodCastle, in which I discuss 20th century Greek history, in this one I return to the theme of the Greek Civil War while also touching on the years of the Occupation that preceded it and going even further back. In the story, the thread that ties these events together is family: one more thing I keep coming back to, because where I come from it’s everything, and because memories and trauma are passed down from generation to generation. We are always the inheritors of decisions made before we were born, of seeds already sown. These roots are our roots; to walk away from them would be impossible. To walk into the future, we need an understanding of where we’re coming from. So we hold onto our hauntings and our wooden hearts and take a step forward.

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[pause]

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Thank you, Eleanna, for the thoughts and the story. I am once again staggered by your fiction. Your ability to use metaphor to emphasise truth and reality, rather than obscure and defang it, is unparalleled. Every one of these three stories—fair to call them a triptych, I think—is not only important, a vital light on a history that’s often unknown outside of Greece, even as recent as it is (oh the irony that Ancient Greek tragedies are better known than the 20th Century tragedies!), but they are all also the emotional equivalent of being hit by a bloody truck.

And even as this is about recent Greek history, it is impossible not to think of the contemporary invasion of Ukraine, and even more so, the genocide in Gaza. And I use that word specifically and consciously: what is happening to Palestinians is in no way a war, because war should only happen to militaries, not to civilians. “War” brings up images of equally matched nation states meeting on the battlefield, but this is not that. War should not be a military-industrial complex backed, apparently without doubt or restraint, by the richest nation to ever exist, bringing all its terrible machinery to bear on a people dispossessed of their home for 80 years. War should not involve the deliberate denial of charitable aid. War should not involve the bombing and assault of hospitals.

Gaza is not a war. Gaza is an attempt by the Israeli political and military classes to solve the Palestinian quandary once and for all by simply erasing its people. I don’t deny that the Hamas attacks were acts of terror; but how can anyone believe this response is proportionate, reasonable, justified? The Israeli military is literally murdering civilians at aid trucks. They are arresting doctors who are desperately trying, in unimaginable conditions, to mitigate some of the harm being visited upon their people. Israel is killing 250 people a day[1], every day: the current official death toll is 31,000[2], the casualty rate is probably three times that, and the missing are impossible to tally, and will most likely never be dug from beneath the rubble.

We have seen these horrors unfold before us, and we have seen the perpetrator claim the moral high ground and pretend this wholesale murder of innocents is good and righteous and within their gift to deliver upon the face of the earth. Even if the ceasefire is called today, this hour, this minute, now that even the US state has finally woken from its moral torpor and realised what it has enabled: it is too late for so many people who will bear the scars down the generations. Whole families are gone, and even more cruelly, sometimes they’re all gone bar one. These wounds will never, ever heal, as Eleanna’s story proves, 80 years on and still processing the scars of the Nazi occupation of Greece.

Exodus is still recounted over two millennia later.

Israel was supposed to be a land of hope, a home after centuries of diaspora, peace after incomprehensible enormities and suffering visited upon the Jewish people. How has it come to this? How has it come to be what it professed to hate?

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