If you’re kind to the trees, they’ll tell your story ahead of you to the other trees, and they will always lend you shelter.

Zenobia and me was tired. I knowed we couldn’t keep on walkin. I looked up into the branches of the huge sycamore where the little bird sang its song over and over, over and over. I wished I could feel so happy at the comin of the mornin.

Ten feet above us, a thick branch swooped acrost the crick, then dipped down almost into the water. I waded to the sturdy limb and pulled myself up and over, then dangled my legs on each side like I were ridin one of Grandpa’s old horses. First I slid an inch, then another, and finally I hitched a few inches at a time till I got to the middle of the crick. Zenobia stood below me and watched as I hoisted myself up through the big branches, then up again till I were a good twenty feet above her. I looked down, through the wide leaf hands and branches, at glimpses of the curlin blue-green of the water.

“Get up here, trouble girl. You got no business bein down in the crick this time of day. Foller where I come up. There ain’t no way for someone to track us up here from the middle of the water.”

Zenobia checked her sack, tied it closed, and looked up into the thickness of leaves. She hugged the limb, pulled herself onto it, and crept to the center of the crick.

“I don’t like this. I never like bein up high. What if I falls?”

“Turn your mind to climbin up and don’t think nothin about fallin down,” I urged.

Zenobia stood, steadied herself, and grabbed the branch above her. I watched her get her balance and walk slow toward the trunk. Once she reached it, she leant against its bulk, then gripped the branch and pulled herself up. At first, she were careful, but then she climbed faster and faster. Just as I started to caution her, she reached for a branch, and it snapped. She slipped, down, down, one limb, two, three, reachin, graspin, and hollerin as she fell toward the rocky crick below us.

“Hold on, girl!” I screamed.

She flailed, thumped, and stopped her fall in the fork of two strong limbs. They looked like big speckled arms cradlin her in the air.

“Oh law,” I said. “Cain’t you take care and get up here without near killin yerself and lettin everyone know we here?”

She looked up and shouted, “I didn’t spect to be climbin no trees, and I sure didn’t spect to be flyin through no trees.”

“That weren’t no flyin,” I said, “that were fallin, and fallin and hollerin, and that ain’t what we needs now.”

Within a few minutes, she righted herself and began the climb through the branches, but she come more slow this time, not so bold and full of herself. Finally, she set on a limb just a few feet away. She were breathin hard and holdin on tight. Bloody scratches striped her arms, legs, and the side of her face. She looked like she’d been wrestlin a bobcat.

I could tell she hadn’t spent no time in trees, but for me, hidin out high in tree branches always felt like a safe nest. Folks never think to look up. How many times had I run and hid from Pa and my brothers after they hurt me? They’d hunt through the woods never knowin that I set up above them and watched their every move.

When I pulled in my legs and arms and stretched full out along the thickness of the limb, no one would ever be able to see me. I reached out and patted the patchy trunk. “We safe now, Zenobia. Just move closer to the trunk and keep your legs straight out so they don’t show.” I motioned her forward till she set close beside me. She slipped the torn pack off her back, looped the strap around her waist, and tied herself against the tree.

Zenobia shook her head. “I seen me some bears in trees, some birds, some possums, some squirrels, but never no slave girls.” We giggled.

I reached out, pulled a danglin buttonball off a stem, and tossed it at her. She grabbed another, and afore we knowed it, we both had them buttonballs stickin to our clothes and hair.

“We best get restin and quietin down,” I said. “We should be in Waterford town by tomorrow night.”

“Why we goin close to a town?” she asked. “Town mean people. People gonna know we in trouble. Know we runaways.”

“I been thinkin on it for a while, and Waterford’s not like other towns,” I said. “The preacher’s wife told me them Quakers are good, kind folk, and right now I cain’t think about anythin except tryin to find me some good, kind folk—and tryin to get some sleep.” I snuggled against the tree; the branch swayed slightly and pieces of sunlight flashed through the big, papery leaves above us.

The faraway sound of a rooster’s crow and the chuck, chuck, chuck of wood bein chopped carried acrost a wide meadow and rollin hills. Them was comfort sounds, like the sizzle of bacon or the purrin of a kitten. I reached into my sack, pulled out my patchwork Hannah, and tucked her under a strap. Then I patted at my pocket to make sure my lucky buckeye were still safe. Zenobia leaned back against the sycamore’s broad trunk and closed her eyes.

“I wonder where my baby sister and my ma and papa be?” Zenobia asked. “I wonder if Promise still callin for me? Now our family all in pieces like your rag doll.”

Family, I thought. I didn’t know nothin about family, and now that my grandpa were gone, I wouldn’t know what to do if any of my kin ever said a kind word to me. Hannah doll and Grandpa was the closest to family I’d ever had.

I slept until the growlin and gnawin of my stomach woke me. I opened my eyes and stretched out slow and catlike.

Somewhere close by, I heard the voices of children, a man, and a woman yellin. I looked down through the leaves at what bits I could see of the ground below us. A big woman, dressed in men’s clothes and high leather boots, stepped into the flickerin shade of the tree and glanced around. She bent over the earth, as though lookin for footprints, and called out to the others to hurry up.

Her deep, boomin voice woke Zenobia. She stretched, groaned, and shifted on the limb, not knowin that anyone were nearby. The branch swayed, and some of them sycamore buttonballs dropped down through the leaves and onto the woman-man below us.