L I L L Y

 

Lilly thought there’d be a brown sign announcing the entry to a National Forest, like when she went camping with her dad. Instead, a vast woodland simply appeared up ahead on the horizon. When they entered the Forest of All she plastered her face to the window to take in the great trees. The sky above them took on the cheerful color of the happiest blue bird—a blue that rippled like the soft undulations of a gentle sea.

“Wow.”

“They are a sight, aren’t they?”

It was the strangest forest she’d ever seen. The trees were spaced in an intentional way that made it curiously unnatural, very unlike the hodgepodge of a regular forest with saplings of different ages, underbrush, ferns, decaying logs, shrubbery and whatnot. Here each tree had its own little area and rarely did the canopies appear to touch. The forest floor looked to be covered in mulch. Though every tree grew with abundant health, Lilly was reminded of the military cemetery—next to the regular cemetery where her mother was buried—and its tidy rows of headstones, a perfect line wherever you looked. It was like that here too, and by their arrangement Lilly understood that each tree had been planted.

None had sprouted through the soil like an ordinary tree.

Angus, cheery and relaxed, drove through the forest along a hard-packed dirt road.

“But how…?” Lilly needed a moment to formulate her question. She knew enough about ecology to know that different trees had different requirements—for light, moisture, temperature, even the insects and birds. “How can they all live together?”

“Oh, with a little help from the ladies. Someday—maybe soon—some of these beauties will be extinct in their regular habitats. They come from all over, I’m not the only one who brings them here. Sometimes I think of this as a zoo, a rehabilitation reserve for the great trees of the world—the last place they can live. The ladies know just what each needs to grow and thrive—or should I say re-grow.”

“Is that why the light’s so weird?” Lilly finally grasped the ripples in the sky: sunlight bathed the trees with varying intensity. Angus gave her a good-job nod. “Wow.”

She meant that wow for the ladies. Not only could they bring severed logs back to life, they had the ability to populate the sky with made-to-order sunshine.

Angus pulled the truck into a circular clearing beside a large piece of machinery with a ginormous claw. He set to work using the grapple to unload the logs, and Lilly wandered off to explore. A pleasant shock came to her when she found the source of the chirping and tweeting, which seemed to emanate from the tree branches: the birds here made charming, wordless sounds, with pretty voices!

As she walked through the forest she saw trees she recognized, like the giant sequoia and the eucalyptus (which was the food of koalas). They were magnificent, towering over her, making her feel tiny—something she hadn’t felt in a long time. As she approached a particularly impressive tree she realized it was a humungous version of the ones she’d spotted after awakening on this side of the tunnel.

“What kind is that?” Lilly called, pointing upward in case Angus couldn’t hear above the clamor of his work.

“Isn’t she a beaut?” He wiped his sweaty brow as he abandoned his task and joined her. “That’s andansonia grandidieri. The greatest of the baobabs, native to Madagascar.”

It reminded her of a lighthouse. Tall, with a smooth trunk devoid of branches.

“It’s like standing under the world’s biggest umbrella!” The canopy was so far above them, spreading outward like a living roof. “Or, it looks like…. The trunk is an arm, holding a bouquet of smaller trees.”

That made Angus laugh, and Lilly giggled. Being among the trees made her feel so good. The air carried a scent so vibrant that the oxygen itself seemed alive. If only she could share all of this with Rain.

Angus started pointing to different trees. “Mountain ash, raintree, white oak, silver maple, hackberry, western hemlock, sacred fig, coast redwood, copper beech, scarlet oak, Sitka spruce, red cedar…. You can see more, if you go in deep among them.”

She gave him a look, questioning, and he immediately understood. “Safe as can be. I’ll finish unloading and come find you.”

“How do the trees—logs—get planted?”

“Oh that’s not for our eyes. The ladies have their ways. I think they work at night, like me. I’ve camped here a few times, out among these wonderful creatures. And the next morning the timber I’d left by the truck was gone. Not for us to see.

“After I’m finished we’ll drive into Town Town and I’ll say hello, and you’ll be on the next leg of your journey. Yeah?”

Lilly nodded, beaming with a happiness she hadn’t felt…well, maybe ever. It would sadden her to leave Angus, but hopefully they would meet again. And after seeing the Forest, she was more eager than ever to meet the ladies. In a land so brimming with magic, the Village of Wrong Things might be just around the corner.

 

 

When Angus found her she was hugging a redwood. It was the size of a skyscraper, with a hollowed room at its base that she longed to make her own—if only she wasn’t a pregnant giant on a mission.

“I wish we could stay,” she said as Angus led them to the truck.

“The Forest of All is a part of you now, and you’re a part of it.”

He meant well, but Lilly desired more than a memory, more than philosophical sentiments. The Forest—like her home, her best friend, her father—was hard to leave behind. They drove up and over easy hills, while the liberated trees stood watch on both sides of the road.

The land changed abruptly and they entered a stretch of normal woodlands with roly-poly hillsides and trees that grew in untended chaos. Ahead was a clearing. And then they drove into a pocketsize town with the swagger of the Wild West about it—wooden buildings with swirling letters and fancifully painted façades. The town was surrounded by a mob of evergreens, eagerly waiting to be let in. They passed a cross street and Lilly saw houses of different styles and colors, no two alike. One of them had a wraparound porch and a turret that reminded her, even with its cheerful raspberry paint, too much of Stop’s purple castle.

A nervousness came on, the runaway sizzle of butter overheating in a frying pan. Angus was sure the ladies could help her with the baby (could they help raise it too?), but what about her bigger problem? She couldn’t live in the Village of Wrong Things (or anywhere else) if she couldn’t survive her ever-increasing size.

Angus parked in front of a building whose wooden façade bore a two-story mermaid, larger than life, yet lifelike. The swinging sign read Yummy Things, which made Lilly think it was a bakery or candy shop. Three little old ladies sat in rocking chairs on the broad porch and waved and smiled as Angus got out of his truck.

“Hallo! Flora! Penelope! Doris! How are you lovely ladies?”

Feeling shy, Lilly wished she could huddle behind Angus. She hadn’t expected the ladies to be so…wrinkly. Or shrunken. They looked too frail to do much more than rock in their chairs, how did they manage to care for an entire forest?

“How are you, Angus? Been a minute.”

Maybe that was Penelope, the one in the middle—in pale yellow. They dressed monochromatically: the one to the left in light blue, the one to the right in orange sherbet.

“Good, doing well, always something to be thankful for.”

The ladies nodded, pleased, but every scintilla of their concentration was on Lilly. She glanced around the town, uncomfortable with their scrutiny. As the ladies stood—not rickety in the least, but graceful—four more emerged from the store.

“We haven’t had a need to gather in a long while,” said the one in lavender, holding the door open for her friends.

“This is Lilly,” Angus told them. “She’s in need of some help, as you can see. She was looking for a village, but Town Town seemed like a good place to start.”

“We can help her,” said the little old lady in pink.

The seven ladies streamed off the porch, their movement unobstructed by the fragile bones or wasting muscles of the average elderly person. Lilly caught movement behind her and when she looked, more women were emerging from other storefronts. They weren’t old, and some of them quite frightened her.

Seven were dressed in flowing robes in the hues of autumn, their long hair entwined with feathers and leaves. They were perhaps middle-aged, diverse in their size and shape and coloring, though each wore an amulet about her neck. The other seven were younger, tall and muscled, their hair either shaved or braided tight against their skulls, their faces inked with designs. These seven wore fierce gazes and each carried a weapon—spear, ax, a knife with a curved blade.

As they encircled her, Lilly tried to shrink into Angus’s shadow.

“Shall I leave you to it then?”

Lilly wasn’t sure who he was asking—the collective ladies, or her. She shook her head, but the robed women nodded. Angus gave them a little bow, and turned to head for—

“You aren’t leaving me?”

“This is as far as I can take you. The ladies will care for you now.”

Again, the women nodded—this time all of them. But Lilly didn’t want to be left alone with so many strangers. With a friend at her side—Angus or Rain—she could’ve handled it. Rain was good with new people, but Lilly…. On her own, she felt so very on her own. To bolster her courage, she took the photo out of her back pocket and snuck a look at Rain before pressing her against her heart.

“Don’t fret child, we won’t bite you,” said a white-haired lady in a pale-gray pantsuit.

The women, all twenty-one, started closing the circle after Angus left it. Before he reached his truck Lilly ran to him, crouching down to give him a hug.

“Thank you, for everything.”

“My pleasure, Lilly.” He got in and closed the door. He looked happy enough, but tears stood in his eyes. “I truly can’t wait to see you again.”

“Me too.”

He backed up, careful not to hit anyone, and drove out of Town Town the way he’d come. Lilly, not wanting to appear rude, or afraid (which she was), strolled back toward the congregation of women, with Rain’s image tight in her hand.

They flowed into position around her, making Lilly the center of their circle. Seven little old ladies. Seven priestesses. Seven warriors. Lilly tried not to be scared, but the gleam in their eyes radiated something hungry. She was much larger than even the warriors, but Lilly didn’t think she could take them all on at once, if they made a move to devour her.