All the Birds in the Sky

Patricia and Taylor rested, arms around each other, and the clove smoke fumigated Patricia’s insides. They were trading weird stories about their lives before Eltisley Maze, all the flukey experiences that made them realize they had a connection to some unidentified power. And Patricia found herself talking about what she remembered of the Parliament and Dirrpidirrpiwheepalong and the Tree, before she even knew what she was doing.

“That is bizarre,” Taylor said.

“It is quite amazing,” said Diantha, leaning forward and encompassing Patricia with her dark, enthralling eyes. “Do tell us more.”

Patricia told the whole story again, from the beginning, adding more details this time.

The next day, she wondered if she should have kept the “Tree” thing to herself. Was she going to get in trouble? She kept glancing at Carmen Edelstein during Literature class — they were reading Troilus and Criseyde—but Carmen showed no sign of knowing anything.

That night, as Patricia was getting ready for bed, Taylor knocked on her door. “Come on, we’re all at the chimney,” Taylor said with a grin. The group in the disused chimney was twice as big as before, so there was barely room for Patricia. But everybody wanted to hear about the Tree.

The more times Patricia told the story, the more like a story it became: with dramatic touches and a better ending. She threw in more details, like the way the wind felt as it passed through her disembodied spirit form, and the way the trees shimmered as she soared on the wind into the heart of the forest. And by the third night, when Patricia was telling the story to a third group of kids, the Tree had gotten a lot more eloquent.

“It said you were the protector of nature?” said a younger kid from Côte d’Ivoire named Jean-Jacques.

“It said we all were,” Patricia said. “The defenders of nature. Against, like, anyone who wanted to harm it. We all are. We have a special purpose. That’s what the Tree said, anyway. It was like the perfect Tree at the heart of the forest that you can only find if someone shows it to you. A bird took me, when I was very small.”

“Can you take us to it?” asked Jean-Jacques, so excited he couldn’t breathe.

Soon they had a proper club. They got together at night, a dozen kids, and talked about how they were going to find the heart of the forest, the way Patricia had. And how they were going to protect nature from anyone who wanted to harm her. Like the Na’vi. Patricia was the one with the knowledge, but Diantha was the one who could say, “We are all of one accord,” and everybody would cheer.

“We are all counting on you,” Diantha said to Patricia in low, confiding tones, touching her shoulder. Patricia felt a thrill all the way down to her tailbone.

“And the Tree was huge, like forty or fifty feet tall, and it wasn’t an oak or a maple or any kind I’d seen before. It had branches like big wings, and the moonlight came through the thickest part of the branches in two places, so it looked like two glowing eyes looking at me. The voice was like this friendly earthquake.”

The tenth time that Patricia told the story about the night she left her body and went to the Tree, the tale had gotten embroidered to the point where it bore little resemblance to the version Patricia had told that first night. And yet, everybody was bored with it. They wanted to know what happened next. “What do we do?” Sameer asked. “What’s our next move?”

“I honestly do not know,” Patricia said. She told them, for the first time, about when she was in Bogtown and she guzzled chili oil and nothing happened. They traded theories, like it wasn’t the right time, or she wasn’t in the right headspace, or you couldn’t reach the Tree from Eastern Europe because of ley lines.

Opinions among Diantha’s secret club were divided over the crucial question: Did the adults at Eltisley Maze know about the Tree? Either: (A) It was something all the adults knew about, and they were just keeping it secret from the kids because they weren’t ready to know about it yet, or (B) they didn’t know about it, and this was something you had to be a kid to understand.

A few days later, Patricia had lunch with Diantha. Alone. They had a blanket on the East Lawn of Eltisley Hall, where every blade of grass was perfect. Patricia still couldn’t quite believe that Diantha was hanging out with her. Diantha had this way of widening her eyes just before saying something to you, so you found yourself looking into her gaze and you felt sure that whatever she said next would be the most important thing you’d ever heard. She wore her Eltisley scarf so elegantly, you’d think she had picked it out of a thousand scarf options. Her brown hair caught the light.