Skittles did not know the name Laleham.
But the trees did.

They whispered it when the wind blew uphill from the gardens. Laleham, they rustled, the house that once stood with a half-acre of laughter, where a mother sang and a father smiled too often. A house with walls like warm bread and shadows that listened gently. A house where three brothers played: Julian, Aldous, and Trevenen.

Trevenen was the smallest, the one the trees liked best. He would climb into their arms and read them poems. He would cry beneath their roots when no one else could see. The trees loved Trevenen so much that they pressed his name into their rings. And when the white-purity men came with axes of law and maps of efficiency, the trees bled quietly — but did not forget.

Years passed. The garden shrank. The laughter faded. The house became Huxley Close. Polite, prim, and razed.

But the memory did not die.

And so, when Skittles stumbled upon the grove, long after names had turned to noise, he didn’t know what he was walking into — only that the dirt remembered pain. And hope. And Trevenen.

The goblin had come to bury silver. Real silver. For Blossoms. For children who would know joy without chains. For girls whose names were songs: Freya, Penelope, Cassia, Helena, Mirai. And maybe, if she allowed it, even Rain-Eyes — the one who did not pull when she held your name.

But before the silver could be hidden, he found the sign. Bright orange. Nailed to the tallest tree like an insult.

“Dangerous. Marked for removal.”

Skittles read it with his shoulder. His eyes couldn’t read much, but his scars could. It was the same mark they once painted on him before they threw him over the fence. “Bad for the neighborhood,” they said. “Too much of a smell. Not enough of a future.”

So Skittles did what goblins do when they love something too much: he stole it.
He tore down the sign with his moss-paws and scurried down the hill. He burned the paper in a fire of vinegar and bark. And when the smoke stung his eyes, he whispered a name he did not know he knew: Trevenen.

Then he climbed back up before sunrise, a pot of wood-stain tied to his chain-sack, and painted over the orange dot. Carefully. Lovingly. Like an apology.

The tree sighed.

It would still be cut down. He knew that. Just like the ones at Laleham. Just like the memory of a pretty little boy with a big head and brothers who teased and loved him. Just like Trevenen, who vanished quietly like a question no one dared to ask.

But Skittles had made a promise — not with words, but with action. And the trees understood.

He buried the treasure that day under the tallest root. Real silver. One spoon for each Blossom. A bell for every forgotten mother. A mirror that didn’t show your face but your stillness. And a button. A magic button that, when pressed, would make the trees remember Laleham.

And maybe, for a moment, remember you.