Stick Boy
Photo of some tree roots protruding from a pine needle covered floor. The roots look like a stick figure.
This is a portrait of Stick Boy, when he was alive and happy, frolicking and running in the forest. The pines of Holmbury Hill have memorialised him so that he could finally realise his dream of being one of them. Alive, organic, free.
Stick Boy came to the forest at some point in the future. He was born in a time when IVF meant placing an AI into the body of a robot. An AI you got made to the have the perfect personality; a robot body which never got hurt or decayed, so long as you oiled it and kept it out of the rain.
Stick Boy’s human parents ended up being a sorrow. No matter how perfect Stick Boy was, he still wasn’t good enough to end the arguments which raged between the two adults. No matter how many science projects and paintings he created, he could never be the sticking plaster his parents had unconsciously made him for. Paintings were glanced at and placed under magazines, science projects were put in the attic where they would take up less space, and school plays were sat through by virtue of the infinite scroll on the flashing devices in their pockets.
One day, when Stick Boy was waiting for his ever late parents at the school gate, he gave up. When the last classmate waved goodbye, he picked up his rucksack and walked out of the gate, down the lane, and into the woods behind the school. Because he was a robot, he carried on walking for weeks until he arrived at a place with thousands of trees all stood atop a sandy hill overlooking the weald.
Stick Boy sat down. He took his blue rubber rain coat out of his rucksack, put it on, and then stayed sitting down for a further three weeks. It was during this time, being so quiet and still as he was, that the first robin came to investigate. At first it eyed him from safely inside a gorse bush, then from a nearby post, and then finally from atop Stick Boy’s bag next to his feet.
Robin cocked its head and watched.
Robin flew off.
Robin told sparrow told crow. Crow told badger told fox. The trees, as they always do, listened. So, by the time Stick Boy decided to get up, the entire community of Holmbury Hill knew there was nothing to be afraid of. A still boy who stared at horizons belonged to the hill. Let him be a part of the peace.
In the days which followed, Stick Boy enjoyed his first twilight outside before night fell and he saw something like his own, secret flashing lights in the sky above him. The next day he enjoyed the trees’ lazy shadows stretching at dusk. The day after, he enjoyed the afternoon sun and how it made his metal body hot to the touch. The day after that, he found a clearing to stand in like a soldier at midday, so he could watch his own shadow shrink and disappear. The following day, he delighted in flowers unfurling in the morning sun. The day after that, he caught dew drops at dawn and marvelled at their crystaline forms. On and on he went, enjoying days backwards until eventually he left the future and arrived in the present tense with us. With us. Stick Boy was with us.
Stick Boy went on like that, enjoying his days backwards, even as they carried on going forwards themselves. Spring turned to summer and then onto autumn, and it was only then that Stick Boy started to run into trouble. Even though he was an advanced robot with self-repairing capacities and a water resistance rating of 300 meters, he still was not designed to be a wild boy robot, camping out under the stars. He required certain oils and lubrications for starters.
When it became clear to the rabbits that Stick Boy’s paint was starting to peel and his joints were becoming a little bit creaky, they went to their stores of hurtberries that they were saving for the winter, and pressed some down into a kind of wine. Using acorn cups they passed the hurtberry wine to Stick Boy, urging him to use it in place of his lubricant. Sadly, this was a terrible idea and only served to hasten Stick Boy’s decline.
By winter, Stick Boy was more like Sticky Boy, after having tried all manner of Holmbury Hill materials to heal his robot self. Pine resin and mud, beeswax and moss. Sadly none of it was up to the robot lubricant job and Stick Boy slowed so far down, that he ended up in a past I have never quite visited. In the end, a long time ago, Stick Boy lay down under his favourite tree while the forest people came to pay their respects. Bracken was fanned, pine cones were arranged, foxgloves were adorned, and our little Stick Boy finally eroded down into the ground.
Nowadays, on sunny days, in our days, you can hear Stick Boy laughing and his little feet running through the conifers of Holmbury Hill. On wintery, windy, rainy days, he howls with the wind down the paths cut into the hill. As eerie as it can sound, there is no need to be afraid as his haunting is entirely benign. Little Stick Boy is running free now with the ghosts and the winds of the history of the hill, and without the need for a lubricant of any kind.