Enchanted Forests (12 page)

and leave."

They laughed and got their backpacks. Adam put the cone in

his and they went out the door. During show and tell, when ev-

eryone was telling what they had done during the summer, he

took it out and said, "We went camping and I got this magic

cone. It grows trees."

His classmates snickered, and the teacher said, "Yes, Adam, it

is magical the way new life sprouts from a seed."

"No, it isn't like that. You breathe on the seeds and part of you

goes into them and trees grow up right away."

Mrs. Hargrave looked concerned and everyone else laughed

out loud. He regarded them steadily with the clear gaze of a

spreading forest. "Watch," he said, and shook the cone, breathed

on the seed in his hand, and feeling faint, stood, walked to the

terrarium on a table in the comer, and dropped it in. He sat

woodenly on the floor and saw the green flash and a tingle of

motion as a tiny stem twisted into a bonsai cedar that barely

peeped above the glass walls.

The classroom was silent. Then his friend Jess said, "Wow,"

and they all crowded around the terrarium. "May I look at that

cone?" asked Mrs. Hargrave with her hand out.

Adam backed away. "No, I'd rather not."

"Let me look at it," said Jess.

"No, no,'* said Adam. The others pressed close, demanding,

and he opened the door to the playground and stepped outside.

His classmates followed.

"Wait!" said Mrs. Hargrave. "Come back here!" Some of them

hesitated. "Give me that cone, Adam."

"I'm sorry," he said. A crowd stood in the doorway watching

as he shook out a handful of seeds and breathed softly, breathed

his soul out surrounded by the wavering outlines of the school

building and dimming outlines of his friends, inhaled a dream of

green life, a wordless song of sylvan speciation, and stumbled

and slipped to the ground scattering the seeds.

He became aware again. Evelyn had her arms wrapped around

his trunk. She was sobbing and her sorrow distressed him.

"Don't cry, Evie," he said and bent his branches to enfold her.

"I was looking out the window and I saw the trees growing up

and I knew what you'd done, so I got up to see better and Mrs.

FIAT SILVA                 81

Hascall said to sit down, but I saw you lying on the ground so

I said my brother's hurt and I ran downstairs and you were here

and your skin was getting hard and you wouldn't move and I

held onto you and you changed, and you changed, and now

you're growing here in the yard ..."

"Evie," he sighed, and emanated a gentle wave of love which

filled her arms and body and flowed through her feet to complete

the circuit underground at his roots. "Evie, you must join us. Ev-

eryone must join us. Come into the new garden. We need your

help, we're still too few—they're cutting us down on Highway 5,

you know."

"Yes." she said, "I see," she said, as she saw what he had seen

in the grove and now showed her, the completion of the dimly

sensed vision of integrated intelligence and interwoven life, indi-

vidual death and the sparkling green continuum of existence. A

crow alit in his branches and laughed with raucous delight. "But

what about Mom and Dad? We can't leave them alone. They'd

pine for us."

'Tell them to come and join us, or else they'll be left behind."

Evelyn heard the murmur of an excited crowd of children

milling around the trees. The principal stepped forward with

Mrs. Hargrave. "What's going on, Evelyn? Where's Adam?"

"He's this tree."

Mr. Thierry frowned. "Evelyn, Mrs. Hargrave says he disrupted

the class and ran out here. We're afraid something's wrong."

Evelyn smiled nervously. "I don't think it's wrong, Mr.

Thierry, but I don't think Adam's coming back. Can you call my

parents and ask them to come right away?"

"There's the pine cone," said Mrs. Hargrave.

Evelyn snatched it up. "Please, Mr. Thierry."

"See if you can get the children back in their classrooms," he

said to Mrs. Hargrave. "I'll call their parents."

"Come with us," said Mrs. Hargrave.

"I'll wait here," said Evelyn.

Mr. Thierry threw up his hands. "Promise not to go any-

where." As they left, she heard him say, 'The first day of

school's always tough, but this takes the cake. What are we go-

ing to do about these trees? Okay, everybody, back to class."

A peaceful half hour passed in the shade. Sparrows skipped

cheerfully through the leaves and chattered at the crow. A squir-

rel skittered in from somewhere and shyly extended a delicate

paw, scampered up Evelyn's arm into Adam's crown and chit-

82                      Jack OaUey

tered busily from branch to branch. She leaned back and listened

to a song of sparkling streams.

"This is all very good, Adam, but I'm not sure one cone is

enough to change the whole world."

"That is why, 0 sister mine, we need the others. Tell them,

you who still have their attention, what to do. As these groves

quickly grow and fructify, each cone contains the same celestial

seeds. Bring the children here and let me speak to them."

At recess a swarm of curious children came. The teachers

stood in a group by the building and wondered about the new

laurel grove, and commented about the students' strange behav-

ior. The children enthusiastically surrounded Evelyn with ques-

tions as she called for calm, eventually settled into a generally

attentive huddle, encircled a tree, even the skeptical ones, arms

on each other's shoulders, stood silently as if listening intently,

then lined up to receive something Evelyn shook from a pine

cone, dispersed to the edges of the playground, touched hands to

mouths and flung them away. The teachers watched in disbelief

as the playground flashed, was covered by a hazy verdant stubble

which rose and rapidly veiled the adjacent freeway with a tender

growth of laurels as the children skipped laughing and shouting

under its canopy.

"I think we'd better start calling all the parents," said Mr.

Thierry. "Ring the bell for classes. Let's keep the kids inside.

And let's call, let's call ... I don't know. I'll call the Park De-

partment." Some of the teachers went inside. The others sug-

gested holding class in the grove; everyone was too overwrought

to sit still, and it was a nice day. They gathered their classes and

asked what was going on.

"It's Evie! No, it's Adam!" "Where is Adam, anyway?" "He

turned into a tree!" "Come on ..." "Yes, he did, I saw it."

'That's what Evie says." "I felt it, too, I felt like I was a tree."

"Me, too! Me, too!"

Their father arrived. "What's going on?"

"Evelyn's sitting out there in that grove and she won't leave

a tree she says is Adam."

Glen was astonished. "Where did those trees come from?"

"I don't know," said Mr. Thierry. "Strange things are happen-

ing-"

"Where is she?" Glen threaded his way through the trees.

Evelyn ran and threw herself into his arms.

"Oh, Daddy! I'm so glad you're here! Is Momma here, too?"

"Not yet, but she's coming. Where's Adam?"

FIAT SILVA                 83

Evelyn drew him and placed his hand on Adam's bark.

Through his palm, up his arm, into his heart came the loving

word, "Dad."

"Adam!" He touched the tree with his other hand, and his

mind filled with a bright starlit vision of immensity and a small

green globe spinning in serene joy. "Adam, what is this?"

"We're helping to save the world. Dad, and now it's Evie's turn

to Join us, but we want you and Mom to come, too. Will you?"

"What does this mean?"

"There is no meaning. Father, only life's dance, and in this

place we are the new race of earth being born. If we survive, life

will continue here; if not, it will not, and that would be sad, but

races like individuals die and creation will continue else-

where. ... But life loves living and to live we must evolve, and

we must change quickly here. Please come with us."

"Adam ... what is this vision? How do you know this?"

"We are the primeval forest, Father, we are Adam and we are

the birds, we are the life that lives, the love that loves, the past

uncounted, the present extended, the future foreknown.'*

"Yes ... I feel Adam, and I feel the rest of you.... But why

now, why here?"

"The eternal is always here."

Marie arrived. "What is all this? Hello, Evie, darling. When

did they plant these trees? Where's Adam?"

They showed her. "Oh," she said. "Hello, dear." She embraced

him and listened. "Yes, of course we'll come. You're our chil-

dren. We love you."

"Oh, Momma," Evelyn said with joyous relief.

"Show us how."

"Like this." She shook out a seed. "Breathe on it. Plant it.**

She sighed and sank down.

"Evie!" cried Glen. They knelt and took her in their arms. A

smile played peacefully on her face, her eyes closed, the cone

dropped. She grew heavy, they laid her carefully on the ground

and caressed her thickening skin; she gently kissed her father's

hand. "Her bark is worse than her bite," he said softly.

"What naughty children; they've gone and left us."

"Well, children always do, you know."

"And now we follow," she smiled, and shook the cone, and

handed it to him.

Teeas

by Julia and Brook West

Brook and Julia West are a husband and wife team who

write fantasy and science fiction. Julia is an anthropologist

and botanist and Brook is a physical geographer who

spent several years in Japan. Julia was 1994 Grand Prize

winner and Brook has been a finalist in the Writers of the

Future contest, and they have sold several short stories to

magazines and anthologies.

Crisp mountain air, splash and gurgle of water dropping over a

ten-foot waterfall, wind through the trembling leaves of an aspen

forest; Angie Lindstrom wished she could capture the smells and

feeling on videotape, as well as the silver-green flash of leaves.

Odd that there were no bird calls or scolding chipmunks, though.

She turned off the minicam—she needed to help her botany

students set up camp. Well, it was Dr. Stoker's class, but they

were her students—she was the Teacher's Assistant.

A hand fell on her shoulder, and she turned, twisting out of Dr.

Stoker's grip. "I'm glad you're getting the camp going. Angle,"

he said. "Where did you leave the cans of herbicide?"

Angie was relieved to see her husband, Kelton, come up be-

hind the professor.lf! put them over in that jumble of boulders,"

Kelton said. "What do you need that stuff for, anyway?"

Dr. Stoker turned to face Kelton. "Call it a personal crusade.

I feel thai eradicating introduced weeds—like dyer's woad and

thistle—is important. This valley may look like an unspoiled

Eden, but odds are we'll find noxious weeds up here too, crowd-

ing out the native plants."

•WEEDS                85

Angie made a face behind Dr. Stoker's back as he went to in-

spect his precious cans.

"Wish you'd TA for a different prof," whispered Kelton.

"Kel, you know he's on my graduate committee. I had to."

"Well, he'd better keep his hands off you...."

"Hey, Anj, got a hammer?" called George, a gangling redhead,

and one of the better students.

"Sure." She dug it out of her pack for him. "Everybody doing

all right? Need any help?"

"What's this?" asked Laurie, whose long blonde braids hung

down into a jumble of tent nylon.

"Just leave that for now; it's the rain fly, and you won't need

it unless it rains," said Helen, a tall black girl with her hair in

comrows. "I'll give you a hand; I've used this kind of tent,"

Angie moved on down the line of tents set higgledy-piggledy

in the open spaces beneath the aspens. "Um, Cory. Pull those

branches out from under your tent—you don't want to sleep on

them."

"Oh, yeah. Sorry, my dad always put up our tent."

Angle chuckled and went to help Kelton set up. Wildflowers

were just starting to bloom at this elevation—a tall spike of bog

orchid, tangles of blue clematis in the trees, and freckled

monkeyflower blooms. The sparse grass was dotted with spring

beauty blossoms.

"Shouldn't be hard for anyone to identify these plants," she

said to Kelton.

"Even your oh-so-proper businessman husband?"

"I'll oh-so-proper you!"

Angie looked around at the camp. "Everybody done? Gather

in." She ushered the twelve students to a central area where a

couple of fallen logs made seats. "We need to set up a few

ground rules and discuss tomorrow's plans."

As she outlined cooking and bathroom policies, Kelton moved

in behind her. She leaned into his embrace, but continued speak-

ing: "We'll start with a preliminary survey in the morning—

identification of common plants, data entry, and such. After

lunch we'll begin frequency sampling. Four teams, three people

each. You'll each get a chance to set up a grid, map, count and