he following afternoon, Ariel and Robin were on watch, perched on the roof with their binoculars. Danny sat on the deck, chiseling his initials into the railing with his pocketknife, while Julian put the last layer of varnish on his little box. They were discussing the best way to construct a zip line to the ground when they heard Robin’s whistle. Looking into the forest, they saw Molly standing on the fallen log, dwarfed by a tall man with dark, wild hair. She pointed to the tree house, then turned and ran toward home.

“Hello, tree–sitters!” the man called up when he’d reached the base of the trees. “I’m Bruce, from the Chronicle.”

Robin grinned. They hadn’t been certain he would come. “Do you want to come up?” she asked.

“You’d better not be one of Carter’s spies,” Danny shouted.

Bruce burst into laughter. “Trust me! I’m a bona fide journalist. Eleanor Li sent me.”

“Those are the magic words.” Danny lowered the pulley seat down.

Bruce squeezed into the chair and, without waiting for instruction, started pulling on the rope. Soon, he was lurching toward the tree house, his long hairy legs dangling below him. He extricated himself with some difficulty from the chair, then stood looking about him with a bemused expression.

The tree house was now fortified for their stay. The sleeping bags were neatly rolled up and baskets of walnuts and apples and a large water jug were set out on top of the storage bins. Inside the bins were even more supplies: peanut butter, several loaves of bread, a pound of cheese, boxes of cereal and crackers, a container of powdered milk, and two jars of jam.

Ariel offered Bruce two chocolate–chip cookies, then he sat down on one of the storage bins and began firing off questions. He wanted to know their names, their ages, what they studied in school, the history of Big Tree Grove and the Greeley family, how they’d found the tree house, how long they’d been there, what they ate, and whether they were scared to sleep up in the tree at night. Occasionally, he would grab another cookie and jot down a note on his yellow legal pad.

After they had talked for nearly an hour, he turned and said, “So, Julian Carter–Li, how does a nice guy like you end up butting heads with your own uncle? Are you two still on speaking terms?”

“Well,” Julian stammered, “we haven’t really spoken for a while.”

“I’ll bet!” Bruce said, laughing. “So here he is, the new CEO of this hot–shot investment firm and you start a protest.”

Julian blushed. “I wasn’t really thinking so much about my uncle. I was just thinking about Big Tree and how it’s been here for so long—practically forever—and that it would be a terrible thing to cut down all these trees.”

Bruce jotted some notes down in his legal pad. “Where did you guys all meet, anyway? We’re pretty far from San Francisco.”

Julian glanced nervously at Robin.

“What?” Bruce’s dark eyes darted quickly between the two of them. “Did I say something wrong? What’s the big secret?”

“We’re old friends,” Julian said.

“What—how old? Since you were six or something?”

“We were pen pals,” Robin said with a false smile. “Part of the home–schooling curriculum.”

Bruce gave them both a hard stare, then shook his head. “I can tell when I’m being stonewalled,” he said. “But I’m glad your grandmother called. Eleanor Li’s the best journalist I know. And you guys have added a nice human–interest angle. Nobody cares about all these THPs and departments–of–this and boards–of–that.” He flipped through the pages of his legal pad. “OK, just one last question: What’s your message to the world?”

“This THP is terrible,” Robin said. “The Greeley property was harvested sustainably for years and it still should be. They should preserve Big Tree Grove and any other old–growth. Forever.”

Bruce raised his eyebrows and jotted down a few notes.

“There’s a bunch of bigwigs getting rich off of trashing this place,” Danny said. “They should go to jail instead!”

“It should be against the law,” Julian said.

Ariel, who had said only a few words during the interview, suddenly broke in. “My mother used to play in Big Tree when she was a little girl. And Robin and I played here when we were little. The clear–cuts, they’re the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen. The ground all ripped up and slash all over the place. Look around here. There’s nothing half as beautiful as this in San Francisco or Los Angeles or Phoenix. If they keep cutting down the trees, nobody will even remember what a forest is supposed to look like.”

Julian looked at her in surprise. It was like the running. She dawdled around and then suddenly she was moving like lightning.

Bruce finished scribbling, then put away his notepad. “If I don’t get lazy, the story should run on Wednesday.” He took several photos from up in the tree house and then lowered himself, hooting and laughing, to the ground. Holding up his camera, he told them to look serious, then angry, then cracked jokes to make them smile. Robin threw him an apple for the road, and he caught it with a flourish and headed down the path.

The next afternoon was hot and muggy, and by evening, the heat still hadn’t broken. It made everyone listless and took away their appetites. The girls lounged in the cabin, reading. Danny started chiseling his initials deeper into the side railing. Julian watched him, wondering how he could have been so stupid as to lose his father’s knife and thinking he would never again have anything half so cool and perfect.

Finally, Ariel roused herself to cut up some cheese and tomatoes and they all ate sandwiches and granola bars under the colorless sky.

“Wouldn’t you love to climb to the top of these trees?” Robin said when dinner was done. She was lying on the storage bins, staring up at the treetops.

“We could do it,” Ariel said. “I bet John and Dave could teach us.”

“John has a friend who climbs redwoods,” Robin said. “It’s his life. John said he saw all sorts of cool things up there. There’s huckleberry bushes—growing right out of the tree trunks. There’s rhododendrons blooming. There’s little miniature bonsais growing in the crooks of the trees. They’re growing in dirt two hundred feet up. These little trees are more than a hundred years old and they’re growing out of the branch of a thousand–year-old redwood.”

“Trees in the trees?” Ariel said.

“That’s what he said.” Robin crossed her ankles and wiggled her bare toes. “These trees are so old. They’re older than the dinosaurs. When all the continents in the world were still smushed together, there were redwood trees, or something like them. The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs—the redwoods were fine. John said they covered half of the world. Then they shrank down to just California. And then the loggers came along and cut them all down.”

“The end,” Danny said. “That was a cheery little story.”

“Well, Big Tree’s still here,” Ariel said. “That’s kind of amazing, when you think about it.”

Robin got to her feet and poured lemonade from a canteen into her tin cup. “I can’t wait until the story comes out.”

They rinsed the dishes in the creek and the girls ran off to the outhouse. When they returned, it was nearly dark. Julian helped them out of the pulley seat and cleated the rope. Now that he was used to the tree house, it felt like the safest place on earth, safer than the city. Any decent burglar could break a window, he figured, but it would be almost impossible to break into the tree house in the dark.

It was still too hot to get inside their sleeping bags. Julian was just looking for his flashlight when the sky flickered, casting a momentary gray light over the tree–house deck.

“Lightning!” Ariel cried.

The sky flashed again. This time, they heard a low, angry rumble in the distance. A feeling of dread stirred inside Julian. He’d never seen lightning in San Francisco.

“I love storms!” Robin shouted, looking up at the sky.

Julian could hear the wind coming before he felt it—warm and damp and smelling of salt and sap. The branches above them bowed and swayed.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Danny said, “but is it possible that a tree house is not exactly the safest place to be in the middle of a lightning storm?”

As if in answer, a brilliant fork of lightning ripped across the sky. Julian stood transfixed. The trees shifted uneasily, and soon the sound of the wind sweeping over the forest was like the roar of the ocean. A few heavy raindrops blew onto Julian’s face. A tin cup went rattling off the storage bins and across the floor.

“We better get our stuff inside!” Robin called. “Before it’s too dark to see.” Her alarm stirred them to action. Julian and Danny grabbed their backpacks and pillows and sleeping bags and threw them into the cabin while the girls stuffed everything else on the deck—dishes and canteens, notebooks, two candles, a box of crackers—into the storage bins and slammed the lids shut. When they were done, the deck looked strangely bare and abandoned in the dim light.

The sky flickered again and Robin started counting aloud—“one thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand . . .” There was another low rumble.

“Five seconds!” Robin said. “That means the storm is still a mile away.”

Danny looked up at the sky, his face tense. “Let’s get out of here! I’m serious. Let’s go back to the house while we still can!”

“We’re safer here,” Robin said. “Besides, it’s too late. It’s already dark.”

There was another bolt of lightning, then a low crescendo of sound that exploded into an earsplitting clap of thunder.

Ariel gave a little shriek and Danny cried, “We’re going to die!” They ducked into the cabin. It was even darker inside than out, and Julian had to blink a few times before he could see a thing. Finally, Danny, who’d been fumbling through the bags, turned on his flashlight. In its eerie white glow, he crossed himself quickly. “Oh, God, don’t strike this tree house!” he muttered. “I promise to be good for the rest of my life!”

Robin was still standing near the doorway, peering into the forest. “That was a big one,” she said. “But I don’t see any flames. I don’t think it hit anything.”

“Remember that tree in town?” Ariel said. “It was hit by lightning and burned to the ground.”

A forest fire. Or a lightning strike. They weren’t so uncommon. At the Monterey Aquarium, Julian had learned you were more likely to be struck by lightning than attacked by a shark and he’d always found that reassuring when he was swimming in the Bay. But, now, sitting thirty feet up in a tree in the middle of a lightning storm, Julian didn’t find it so comforting.

There was another crash of thunder. Danny’s flashlight dimmed and went out.

“Oh, great!” he said in a pained voice. “Doesn’t anybody else have a flashlight?”

Julian fumbled around, but the bags were all jumbled together, and it was almost completely dark.

The tree house trembled, and all at once the rustling sound of the trees seemed to expand until it was as loud as a rushing waterfall. Dense rain descended on the forest. With the rain, the last traces of light vanished.

“I can’t see you guys. I can’t even see my own hand,” Danny said with a note of panic in his voice.

Ariel’s voice came out of the blackness. “I’m right here, Danny.”

“Me too. I’m here,” came Robin’s voice.

“I’m right next to you,” Julian said. He scooted a little to the right until his knee hit what he thought was Danny’s leg. “See?”

The next clap of thunder was so loud that Julian jumped. Danny made a small whimper. A flash of lightning electrified the sky and revealed, for an instant, the inside of the cabin, and Julian could see that, underneath the darkness, they were all still there.

Then it was pitch black again. They sat silently, listening to the heavy drone of the rain. Each neon flash in the sky, punctuated by a crack like a shotgun, was like a warning that they were in mortal danger. But it was too late to go back. Robin was right. They were better off in the tree house than stumbling blindly through the forest.

The floorboards creaked beneath their feet. Whether I’m going to die now, Julian thought, is out of my control. In the terrible blackness, he felt half dead already. He shifted his knee against Danny’s leg just to reassure himself that they were both still alive.

The trees shuddered. Surely, they had been through worse than this, Julian reasoned. After all those years, what was the chance that the trees would be struck by lightning tonight? What was the chance that lightning would strike down the four of them, when they had lived such a short time?

On and on went the storm—a flash, a crack of thunder, and then the sound of rain gusting through the darkness.

Each time the wind rose, Julian could feel the tree trunks tensing and bending beneath them. He knew, of course, that, technically, trees were alive. He’d studied biology in school. He’d learned about photosynthesis and respiration and cell division. But now, for the first time, he understood that a tree was an actual living thing—unseeing, unhearing, unconscious, but alive and perhaps aware in some other way, swaying with the wind, absorbing the rain, breathing. Their tree house was anchored to a living thing. And all around them, a whole forest of living things bowed under the forces of wind and rain and electricity.

Nobody said a word. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the rain stopped.

The rustling of the trees rose up again through the darkness. The trees swayed back and forth, but stayed rooted in place. They had stood there, Julian thought, for a thousand summers and a thousand winters. And each year would have had at least ten bad storms, he figured, storms where the rain pelted down and the wind howled. Ten thousand storms. And somehow the trees had survived. And even when these trees died, the forest would still be there. After all, for a tree to die wasn’t the same as a person, was it? A tree lived for hundreds of years, and how could you even say when it died? Old logs lay on the forest floor, slowly turning to dirt, and little saplings grew right out of their trunks.

Through the windows, Julian could see the brilliant flashes lighting up the sky. He breathed in and out in the blackness, listening to the hushed whispering of the trees. And slowly, the periods of silence grew longer and longer. The growl of the thunder and the flickers of lightning grew fainter. An owl hooted, and hooted again. The storm had passed.

“It’s over,” Julian said at last.

They sat without speaking for another minute. “I guess we should try to find our sleeping bags,” Robin finally said, yawning loudly. Julian could hear her rummaging around. There was a clank and, finally, the glare of her electric lantern lit up the small cabin.

Julian walked outside and touched the floor of the deck. It was barely damp. The trees had acted as a kind of leaky umbrella over them. Danny was still slumped against the cabin wall. Julian grabbed their sleeping bags and pillows from the cabin and lay them out on the floorboards.

“Come on, Danny,” he said. “It’s all set up.” Without saying a word, Danny crawled out onto the deck and into his sleeping bag. Between the branches, Julian could see the stars blinking into view again.

“That was not fun,” Danny said in a low, rough voice. “You really shouldn’t be in a tree during a lightning storm.”

“All’s well that ends well,” Julian said.

“Fortunately, we’re not dead,” Danny said. “Unfortunately, now I have to be good for the rest of my life.”

Julian smiled in the darkness. “You know what, Danny?” he said after a moment.

“What?”

“I found that letter you wrote to Bob.” Julian paused. “I didn’t mean to, but—it was a good idea.”

“What are you? An actual undercover agent?” Danny said. “Jeez.”

Every minute it seemed like more stars filled up the black spaces in the night sky. It was like the storm had swept the air clean. Julian wasn’t tired now. He was wide awake and filled up with something like happiness.

Danny sighed and gave a little sniff.

“Lean on me,” Julian sang out suddenly in the darkness, “when you’re not strong.”

There was a pause and Danny bellowed at the top of his lungs, “I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on!”

“Oh! Our poor ears!” yelled Robin.

“Have some consideration!” Ariel said. “We’re trying to get a little sleep over here.”

“Well, you don’t hear me complaining about your snoring!” Danny said. “Mercy! The two of you are like a pair of elephants over there. Here we’ve been suffering in silence every night and you jump down our throats just for singing you a little lullaby.”

Julian heard muffled whispers and then the two girls started singing a round. It had only one verse and they sang it over and over.

“Stop! Stop!” the boys shouted.

“Truce,” said Julian. “No more singing!”

Robin stopped and Ariel finished out the verse in her thin soprano. After her last note, the only sound was the soft shush of the redwood canopy, far above them.