Grim Tales

Norman Lock’s short story “Grim Tales” appeared in NER 23.4:

The trees now grew without observing any longer the limits assigned them by nature. They reached into the sky until they looked out over “the floor of heaven.” Recalling the old story, boys climbed them. Not only boys but men and even some old men who wished for gold. One by one they fell–the old men and the young, and the boys, too–not one of them having reached the top branches let alone the floor of heaven. Instead, they fell, all of them, earning for themselves neither wealth nor fame, only death at the foot of the unruly trees. And still the trees continued to grow without regard for the limitations of their kind until the roots tore from the ground and the earth was broken into pieces and destroyed.