He used to stare up in awe at the giant as it towered above his house and garden, and above every other house and garden in the neighbourhood. The huge arms reached out above him, making a green roof over the area where he kicked his ball and made his garden dens.

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A few years later, he climbed the fence which separated his garden from the neighbours. His small hands grabbed the lowest branch, and he pulled himself up the tree for the first time. The arm held him tight as he looked over the neighbour’s garden, and his own garden, from the best view that he’d ever had.

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Soon, he was climbing higher, carefully feeling each branch, until one day, he reached the narrow top.

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He looked down, stunned, over his whole town: his house far below, the golf course, the sand dunes and the sea beyond. A distant forest, the town’s steeple, and all the tiny rooftops. He tightly hugged the slim trunk as it bent back and forth in the many winds.

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He thought he was the only one who had ever been up that tree. He didn’t know that one hundred years before, when his house had not yet been built, that another child, just like him, had climbed up too. And he didn’t know, that years after he had died, another boy would do the same.

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The tree made hushing and creaking sounds as it swayed in the wind.

 

And they watched down, together, over the town.