Barnaby was not a normal oak tree. While his peers in the Whispering Woods were content with the standard, sedentary lifestyle—growing rings, photosynthesizing, and complaining about squirrels—Barnaby had a leg. It was not a root, nor was it a branch disguised as a limb. It was a proper, oak-grained, gnarled leg that ended in a rather stylish root-ball foot, looking somewhat like a hobbit's foot made of pine. For years, Barnaby kept this a secret. It was hard, of course, especially when he wanted to stretch it during a thunderstorm or do a little jig when the sun hit his leaves just right. He tried to keep his root-ball covered in thick moss and fern, pretending to be as boring as the rest. But a leg is a leg, and it was getting tired of being used only for balancing in strong winds. It wanted to go places.
The trouble started on a Tuesday, which was already a terrible day for secrets. A particularly pretentious pine tree nearby named Percival was bragging about his height. "Oh, my needles are catching the morning dew so much better today," Percival droned, looking down on a sapling. "I'm probably three inches taller than I was last week." Barnaby's leg, tired of Percival's attitude, let out a massive, wooden stretch, snapping a twig on its way down. It wasn't a small snap. It was a loud, woody CRACK that made all the birds in the surrounding woods stop singing and look down. "Barnaby?" asked a nearby birch named Brenda, her voice full of suspicion. "What was that? Was that a bird? A big, clumsy bird with a cracking knee?" Barnaby, keeping his bark perfectly still, tried to look nonchalant, which is difficult for a tree that doesn't have a face. He vibrated slightly, trying to blend in with the surrounding rustling of leaves.
That night, Barnaby decided he couldn't take it anymore. He wanted to see what was behind the big boulder on the north side of the hill. Using his leg, he lifted himself out of the hole, a process that made a sound similar to a wooden cabinet being dragged over a gravel driveway. He took his first step. Thump. Scratch. Thump. It was remarkably awkward. For a creature with hundreds of branches, he had very little coordination. He stumbled. His crown brushed against a nearby oak, causing it to awake and whisper, "Who's there? Is it a lumberjack? Tell me it's not a lumberjack." Barnaby didn't answer. He was too busy focusing on not tripping over his own roots.
By the time he got to the north side of the hill, he was panting, or at least, as close to panting as a tree can get, which is just shaking his leaves violently. He saw the view. It was a slightly smaller hill with a slightly smaller boulder. "Huh," he thought, "Not worth it." He turned around, only to realize he hadn't noticed the slope. His root-ball leg caught in a patch of mud, and he went sliding downhill on his trunk, leaving a gouge in the earth and collecting a very large, very annoyed badger named Mr. Snuffles along the way. "Watch it, you woody nuisance!" yelled Mr. Snuffles, who was now stuck in a gap between Barnaby's roots. "I'm in the middle of a delicate tunnel expansion!" Barnaby apologised, or rather, shed a few leaves in a sorrowful manner, as he came to a stop in the middle of the brook.
The next morning, the woods were in an uproar. There was a giant muddy trench leading from Barnaby's spot to the brook. Percival the pine was triumphant. "I knew it! That oak was always acting suspicious. He's a rogue tree! A tree with ambition! It's unnatural!" Brenda, the birch, was more concerned about the damage. "He's probably destroying the topsoil. Do you know how hard it is to grow topsoil?"
Barnaby, still in the brook with Mr. Snuffles, was trying to wash the mud off his leg. "Look, I just wanted to see what was behind the hill," Barnaby said, his voice coming out as a deep rumble through the leaves. "It was empty," Mr. Snuffles complained. "Well, not empty. It had a nice rock, but now I have to start my tunnel again." Barnaby tried to move back up the hill, but his leg was slippery, and he couldn't get any traction. He was stuck. The forest creatures began to gather, looking at the stranded, muddy tree. A squirrel named Sammy, who owed Barnaby a lot of acorns for past protection, decided to help. "It's all about leverage, Barnaby! You need to push off the big rock behind you, not the mud!"
Barnaby tried, shifting his heavy, wooden body, using his leg to push against a large, stable boulder. CREAAAAK. He lifted his leg, swung it, and tried to plant it on the bank. Thump. He was almost there. "Push, you leafy fool!" chattered Sammy. With a mighty heave—or what passed for a mighty heave in the tree world—Barnaby pulled his root-ball leg out of the mud and onto solid ground. He was back. But he was now covered in, and somewhat smelling like, rotten leaves and stream silt.
"He's back!" cheered a younger tree, who was always bored by the adult tree politics. "He's back, and he's filthy!" Percival snorted, or whatever it is that pine trees do to show contempt. "You look absolutely disgraceful, Barnaby. No tree with proper self-respect walks." Barnaby, having experienced the thrill of motion, didn't care. "At least I'm not stuck in the mud, Percival." He flexed his leg, making a slow, deliberate sound of creaking wood. "And I can move, too."
The forest was never the same. Barnaby didn't walk often—the risk of sliding into the brook was too high—but he did move to better sunny spots when Percival was too high, or to the edge of the hill during autumn to get the first, best gust of wind to shake his leaves. He became a sort of legend among the smaller trees, the "Tree with the Leg," the one who dared to take a step. Mr. Snuffles the badger still complained, but he did admit that the new path Barnaby had made was quite convenient for his evening commute. Barnaby was happy. He had his secrets, he had his leg, and he knew that, whenever he wanted, he could just... leave. Even if it was just to go ten feet to the left to get away from a bragging pine. And honestly, that's all a tree could ever ask for in a life that usually lasted five hundred years in the exact same spot.