At seven thirty, it was dark and cold and the town of Benedict was finally still. The stores had been closed for a few hours. An evening service ended and churchgoers headed home. Soon after, the lights inside the church turned off.
“Now!” Wunder said, jumping up from the bench.
He half ran down the block of shops, pulling the wagon as smoothly as he could to keep the clanging to a minimum. He could hear Faye’s cloak flapping in the wind behind him, and he suddenly wished he had one of his own, if only for moments like these when things were dangerous and wild and exciting. A cloak, he was sure, would amplify those feelings at least a hundredfold.
At the back of the church, they came face-to-face with the DoorWay Tree for the first time.
The tree was inside a black wrought-iron fence. The fence enclosed a small plot of land that was dotted with gleaming marble and rough gray stone and glistening gold and shining silver and one statue of a majestic white bird.
The tree was in a graveyard.
“Of course,” Wunder said aloud. “Where else would it be?”
The fence was short enough that Wunder was able to throw his bag to the other side and then scramble over himself. Davy needed a boost, and Faye’s cloak got stuck and nearly ripped, but soon they were in the graveyard.
Despite its towering height, the DoorWay Tree’s branches came down low. They spread out almost as wide as the tree was tall, swooping down, ambling back up, twisting and tangling in one another. The tree was a maze of limbs, a labyrinth of winding ways that finally joined together at the great, gnarled trunk.
Even so, the branches were too high for Wunder to reach from the ground.
“I should have brought a ladder,” he said in frustration after trying and failing to climb the trunk for the tenth time.
“Too late for shoulds, Wundie,” Faye told him. “Climb on David’s shoulders.”
“What? No!” Davy cried. “Wunder’s bigger than me! And I don’t want him using a saw above my head!”
“You think I do?” Faye replied.
Wunder kept trying. They couldn’t have come this whole way for nothing. There had to be something they could do. But the fence wasn’t close enough to the tree, and the eaves of the church roof were too far from it, and his fingertips barely brushed the lowest branch when he jumped.
“Use that gravestone!” Faye shrieked suddenly.
“Shhh!” Davy shushed her.
She was pointing at the bird statue. It was white and shining in the starlight, almost glowing. It seemed ethereal to Wunder. It seemed holy. There was no way he could stand on it.
“It’s the only way,” Faye said. “The dead person won’t care.” She bent down and shone her flashlight on the stone. “Ashley Bride will understand. We need this branch!”
“But the bird,” Wunder said.
“The bird?” Faye cried. “The bird? You think the bird cares? If anything, the bird wants you to do this! It was that deranged bird dive-bombing you that started all this anyway, right?”
And somehow, that was exactly what Wunder needed to hear. The bird was on his side. Ashley Bride was on his side. He was going to do this.
He climbed onto the outstretched wing tips of the bird statue. From there, he could reach one of the low limbs of the DoorWay Tree. He swung up onto it, and then wriggled backward until he came to a forked place. The branches were thick there. He hoped he could cut through one.
“Hand me the saw,” he said.
“Be careful!” Davy had his hands pressed to his mouth as Faye passed it up.
The tree’s bark was smooth underneath him, smoother than any bark he had ever felt, and it was warm too, in spite of the low temperature. The flowers surrounding him were so white that they seemed to glow, and the wind blowing through their petals sounded like a whisper.
The DoorWay Tree felt so alive.
“I hope this won’t hurt, Tree,” Wunder whispered. “But even if it does, you’ll grow back. And this piece of you will grow somewhere else, somewhere new. I promise.”
Then he started to saw.
As hard as the wood beneath him felt, Wunder didn’t have much trouble starting the cut. He took this as a good omen. The tree, he thought as he worked, was willing to give up this branch. The tree wanted him to have the branch.
Things were going according to plan again. Everything was going their way. He had sawed through half of the branch, and they were going to make it back to the train in time.
Then a light turned on in the church.
“Hurry! Saw! Saw! Saw!” Faye hissed.
Wunder hurried, but his hands were sweaty now and his grip kept slipping. His arms were getting tired. The branch was so thick and the wood didn’t seem to be giving under his saw the way it had at the beginning.
“Someone’s coming!” Davy was whisper-screaming. “Someone’s coming!”
Wunder heard a door shut somewhere on the other side of the church. He bent toward the branch, pushing back and forth, back and forth as fast as he could.
“Someone’s coming, someone’s coming, someone’s coming.” Davy was chanting this now in a high, petrified voice.
“David’s right, Wundie,” Faye whispered. “We’ve got to go.”
“Almost there,” Wunder said. “Come on, Tree. I need your help.”
And then the branch finally broke loose. It crashed toward the ground, narrowly missing the bird statue. Davy let out a true scream—sharp and earsplitting. The someone who was coming, a man, yelled, “Who’s out there?”
Wunder leaped to the ground. There was no reason to be quiet now.
“Everyone grab the branch!” he shouted.
Even with the three of them working together, the branch was heavy and bulky and nearly impossible to lift. They had to heave it over the fence, then load it into the wagon with frantic hands. There wasn’t room for the bag of tools, so Wunder left it behind. He knew his father wouldn’t be happy about that, but he couldn’t help it.
As they were racing off—Wunder pulling the wagon as fast as he could and Faye and Davy steadying the branch—Wunder saw the silhouette of a man coming slowly, cautiously around the corner of the church. He didn’t yell after them though. He stood and watched as they ran farther and farther away.