The One Tree of Luna (5 page)

“Hmm,” I said as I conceded her unspoken point. It could just as easily be that something in my tree had changed to attract this person. “No, I still think we should check for any recent arrivals.”

She gave me a half-nod. Hmm, so I still hadn't figured it all out. “Oh! We should correlate for anyone who's been on Earth near Dad's trees!”

“What else?” Mom asked, making it clear that I was still not done.

“Well,” I said, “naturally we need to set up a guard on the tree.”

“And?”

I looked at her, stumped. She smiled and patted my knee while moving her hand up by her ear, activating her comms.

“Security, this is Cherie Ki, I am declaring a stage one biological emergency,” my mom said. My eyes went wide with surprise. “Do NOT use the alarms — we have an intruder who may be carrying a biological hazard.”

“Dr. Ki, do you have any ID on the intruder?” the security chief came back calmly. I smiled at my mom — she'd turned on her external audio so I could listen in.

“Not yet,” mom said. “We're still working on that. But this is in connection with the earthside emergency that my husband was called away on.”

“Yes, Doctor,” the security chief said with a tone of increased alertness.

“And Don, I want a twenty-four/seven watch on the tree,” my mom added. I knew Don Ostermann, he was the best we had.

“I see,” Don said. “Jenny reported an incident the other day but didn't —”

“This is related,” my mother said. “It's her tree, you know.”

“Oh, yeah, I know!” Don Ostermann said. My eyes went wide and I flushed with embarrassment. The Head of Luna Security knew about
my
tree?

“I'll let you know more as soon as we've got it,” mom said, breaking the connection and telling the computers, “Central library, data search.”

“Subject?”

“Keyboard entry,” my mom said, rising from her chair. Over her shoulder she said to me, “You get some sleep!”

“Mom!” I wailed. How could she possibly expect me to sleep with all this going on?

“I'm going to need you to take over in the morning,” she told me. “Your father's not here and
you're probably the next expert we have on the dryads —”

“Dryads?”

“Well, who did you expect your tree friend was, honey?” Mom said, tossing me a smile before exiting through the automatic door.

Dryads? Do you know how long it took to look up dryads? 0.32 seconds, that's how long. The network must have been working overtime.

I pulled up a complete download and was checked by a security screen. It prompted me for a passcode. I was astonished, I'd never found anything requiring a passcode on the network before — we Loonies pride ourselves on our freedom of information. With my tongue poking through my lips — I do that when I'm nervous — I entered my passcode and received a priority data assignment.

The Japanese word was
Kodama
, the Scottish had a similar spirit called the
Ghillie Dhu
. Dryads and Hamadryads — uh, oh, my friend was a hamadryad — if her tree died, she'd die. And, from the looks of what I'd seen, if she aged, her tree aged. But what had caused her to age so much?

‘
Three kisses
' she'd said. ‘
Three kisses and I'll be his forever!
'

If she looked so bad after two kisses, what would she be like after the third?

I jumped out of bed and rushed out into our living room.

“Mom! Mom, I've got it!” I cried. “I know what happened to the trees!”

But she wasn't there.

 

“Stan, Stan, pick up, pick up!” I cried as I rushed outside, wrapping my nano-suit and willing it on me. My chrono told me it was past midnight.

“Huh?” Stan Morgan's voice came into my ear. “What? Jenny, what's up?”

“I need you to meet me at the forest,” I told him.

“The forest? Now?” He sounded more awake. There was a silence. “There's a stage one emergency, you should stay home!”

“I'm going out
because
of the stage one emergency,” I told him. I spread my wings but I already knew what they'd show — I'd four red bands and only two yellow. I was thirty minutes from the forest — I'd be ten minutes into the red by the time I got there. “You've got to meet me; I'm going into the red on this.”

“Into the red? Jenny, you'll get your license pulled —”

“Just meet me there,” I told him, talking a quick set of steps and leaping into the air. I must have been more tired than I realized for I fumbled the first beat and nearly crashed. I had to work twice as hard to regain the lost height and I was breathing hard by the time I was fifty meters up.

It took work to get to the nearest thermal — I usually launch from school which has a thermal close by — and I was grateful to be able to just glide for a bit in a slow turn as I climbed up to one hundred and fifty meters — just below the safe altitude limit.

“Jenny,” Stan called me. He sounded like he was trying to talk sense to me. I didn't have time for sense so I ordered my comms unit to reject the connection.

I glanced at my altitude gage and with a few beats of my wings climbed another twenty meters. Now I was right at the safe altitude but I didn't plan on staying there for long, diving to exchange height for speed.

I didn't know what was happening or when but I knew if I couldn't stop my Hamadryad friend from getting her third kiss she was going to die.

 

“Warning, warning, you are entering a secured area,” a voice spoke insistently in my ear. “You are in violation of Lunar regulations and penalties will be assessed.”

“I know,” I said, even as I spotted my tree in the distance. It was surrounded by lights and people. I landed just in front of my mother.

“Jenny!” she cried. She was angry. Don Ostermann was next to her, his expression grim.

“Mom, I know what's happening and I know how to stop it,” I told her quickly. Her eyebrows rose. “You've got to leave or he won't come.”

“What?” Mr. Ostermann said. “How do you know?”

“Because no one ever saw him,” I said. “He went after all the trees on Earth and no one caught him.” I looked back at the tree and said, “I'm not sure we'll be able to see him.”

“So how are you going to stop him?” my mom asked.

I told her. Mr. Ostermann looked at me wide-eyed but my mom merely took a deep breath and nodded. “She's right, it's probably the best way,” she said. “And you've got Stan on patrol?”

“Actually, I've got the whole air corps on patrol,” I told her.

“But you only said Stan —”

“Trust me,” I told her, nodding up to the skies above as two, then three, four, and finally a dozen sets of wings came into view. “Mr. Ostermann, if you could coordinate with them?”

“What makes you think he won't see them?”

“I don't think he's ever heard of flying men,” I told him.

“Do you know who he is?” My mom asked in surprise.

“No,” I told her, “but I've got an idea
what
he is.” She gave me a skeptical look and I moved close to her. “Mom, trust me, please?”

“This is the last tree, Jenny,” my mother said slowly. “We can't lose it, there are no seeds.”

“This is my tree mom,” I told her. “Dad didn't know what to look for when he was little but
I
do.”

My mom gave me a long look and then she surprised me by stepping back toward Mr. Ostermann. “Jenny's got it, let's go.”

Mr. Ostermann had known me a long time, pretty much my whole life. I guess he saw the same thing in me that my mom did because he nodded toward me and smiled. “Good luck!”

“Thanks.” I was going to need it. If I was wrong or if I fell asleep, my tree was going to die.

 

“Jenny,” a voice came quietly in my ear and I startled, surprised that I had nodded off. It was Stan. My face chrono showed me that it was 4:13 a.m. so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. “From the northeast.”

“Roger,” I replied. “Show time.” I sounded calm, I knew it. But really, truth to tell, I was shaking like a leaf. Which was probably a good thing.

“Nano-suit overload in ten minutes,” a computer voice warned. Yeah, I knew. The nano-suit was overworked, overloaded, generating a shutter that flickered over six hundred times a second — the fastest I could get it to go.

I was pretty sure that whatever was coming for my Hama — well, I had to call her
something!
— was flickering in the same ghostly manner as my tree's Hamadryad. I guessed that was why no one had noticed it — it was flickering too much for our regular cameras to catch it.

There! “Target acquired, confirm lock.”

“Locked,” Stan's voice was the first among a dozen to reply.

“Engaging —”

“Jenny, are you sure?” Stan cried out. He sounded worried about me. Stan Morgan, the best flyer on Luna?

“— now,” I finished, standing up and moving from the tree toward the approaching figure. There was no time for worries and there was no second plan.

He was dark-haired, dark-eyed and incredibly handsome. He was Japanese, just as I'd guessed. He looked middle-aged, maybe younger. He smiled at me.

“Did you miss me?” he said, moving toward me.

“Are you going to kiss me again?”

“Is that what you want?” he asked, smiling. I could see the hollowness in his eyes and my skin crawled. Whatever he was, he was not human. Some sort of spirit, a creature of darkness or of void — I didn't know which.

“Don't listen to her!” Hama cried as she burst into view. “She's an impostor?”

“Am I?” I said and, on cue, all twelve flyers swirled into view, each adding their own voice, keyed to match Hama's. “Am I?”

The dark-haired spirit looked desperately from one to the other of us. Hama tried to move toward him but I stepped in front of her as did Stan and Crissie while Moira and Kevin pulled Hama back behind them, executing a quick shell-game even as the rest of flyers interposed themselves.

I shifted out of my flickering just before my nano-suit's power failed.

“This tree is mine, you may not have her,” I told him.

“What are you?” he cried, backing away from me in awe.

“The Greeks called me Artemis,” I said advancing toward him. “I guard the Dryads, the
Kodama
, the
Ghillie Dhu
and no
jiang shi
will defeat me.”

I must have guessed right for the dark-eyed thing winced at the name I gave it.

“You have killed too many, you must depart,” I told him.

“What would you do if I don't?” he demanded. “What can you know of my power?”

I smiled. “I know this, you're no match for me,” I said, moving forward once more to trap him exactly where I'd planned. I threw a handful of nano-suit at him, using the last of my power to cause it to flash in brilliant light. On that signal, all the other flyers threw flashes of nano-dust light at him and surrounded him in it.

With a horrible scream, he brought his arm in front of his eyes but it didn't matter, it was far too late — our power-packs were completely consumed delivering that one burst of intense laser light. Stone would have shattered, steel melted. As for the
jiang shi
— he simply dissolved.

There was a moment's stunned silence and then my Hamadryad moved forward through the group, shouting, “You killed him!”

“No,” I told her, turning toward her even as the afterglow faded in my eyes, “he was never alive.”

“But — he kissed me!”

“He took your life force,” I told her. “He took it, he took your mother's, and he would have drained you to the death with his last kiss. He's already killed at least five other of your kind — you're the last that we know.”

“The last?” Hama said in dismay. She turned back to her tree. “Mother, is this true?”

The tree my father planted for me shivered as though shaken by an invisible wind and a terrible sorrow and then Hama turned back to me, “She says this is so.”

“Jenny?” Stan came over to me. “Who are you talking to?”

“Can't you see her?”

“He has to get my mother's permission to see me,” Hama said. She made a face very much like ones I've had when dealing with my mother. “She says I should have asked about that man, too.”

“Stan,” I said, “go touch the tree and ask for permission to speak with her daughter.”

“Jenny, are you all right?” Moira Adamson asked, coming up beside me. She gave Stan a worried look.

I sighed. “Look, it's a long story that you won't believe until you do what I ask. Go touch the tree and ask for permission to speak to her daughter.”

“They can't see me?” Hama asked, looking at me in surprise. “Or hear me?”

“No,” I said as the others started, with obvious skepticism, to walk toward the tree.

“Then how can you see me?” Hama asked. She turned back to the tree, even as the others reached it, touched it and murmured the question.

“Oh my goodness!” Moira Adamson shrieked as her eyes lit on Hama. “Guys, look, look! There's a girl and she's wearing no clothes!”

Hama looked at me. “What is all this about ‘clothes'?”

I laughed. “I'll explain later.”

 

Okay, so I'm a Loony. I make no apologies. I guess you grubbers have your place, your home and you love it, too. If you want to stay in that gravity well, I'll be okay with that.

You're probably wondering what happened. Well, only the flyers ever saw Hama. With my father's approval, they became the air guard. Mostly that didn't change anything, we still flew our regular patrols, fought and bickered, egged each other on for endurance records and plotted to win the lead flyer position in the Animé Parade.