Red Leaf’s mother tucked him into bed right after supper, and as she always did, she kissed him tenderly on the forehead and wished him the sweetest of dreams.
He fell asleep immediately, drifting easily away. Fragments of his day danced through his dreams. His visit with Little Pine to the elves’ house, the images of troupes of fairies dancing on the ornamental drums, and the wondrous songs of the golden grasses all wove themselves together. He saw his feet racing across a forest floor dappled with sunlight and striped with the shadows of the great trees. He felt the softness of moss and the crunch of fallen leaves beneath his feet as he ran.
Then the music of the grass choir returned and lifted him gently above the ground. It carried him high into the treetops and upward into a vastness where glittering stars hung in a velvet sky. He floated there for quite some time, borne on the flow of the choir’s soft music.
As he gazed at the stars, a cloud of light drifted toward him, shining with silver and gold. And when it was right before his eyes, the image of a shimmering silver maple leaf appeared and it spoke to him.
“I heard the question in your heart, my child,” it said, “as you ran across the layers of fallen leaves. I heard you ask, ‘Where do they go when they leave their forms?’ and I knew that you had forgotten the place where your essence dwells. That often happens when your spirit inhabits its earthly body.
“Because your love is so strong for the leaves with whom you danced in the summer winds, I wanted to remind you of your heart’s true home.
“It was your request to have this earth adventure, to experience being an oak leaf. Do you recall? You and all your leaf friends had to practice a long time to be slow and steady enough to hold molecules of matter in your energy patterns. You had to study all the kinds of magic that a leaf performs and to master them. And when you finally passed all the tests, we sent you to curl inside a tight bud, right here, on this tree, in this forest. Remember?”
“Yes! Yes! I do remember, Silver Leaf!” the little oak leaf exclaimed.
“Then you remember, too, that when your tree releases your leaf-form, you float to the ground below. And the instant you touch it, your spirit is released, your adventure complete, and you wake to find yourself back home, with all your beloved friends.”
“Yes, Silver Leaf,” the little leaf sighed, his heart filled with gladness. “And in the meantime, I got to be here, right now, to play with Little Pine and all my leaf friends, and to watch the Festival of Light unfold! This was even better than I ever could have dreamed it would be.”
And as he spoke, the Silver Leaf faded away. And the little one floated through the velvet, star-sparkled sky on the music of grasses until he was far, far away.