Deadwood (3 page)

Spring passed, and summer, until each autumn when the tree shed its leaves, sealing itself tight for the cold winter. When days lengthened the tree's sap surged, its buds swelled. The tree opened, and the wind bore its scent to the animals that awoke.

Around the tree the humans crawled like ants, smaller now and distant, moving too quickly for a tree to sense clearly. They fought and bred and labored, building homes and mills. Each human was replaced by two more.

Two hundred summers or more passed. The tree couldn't quite keep track of time or the humans.

The buildings decayed, falling in their own season, just as leaves did.

When the buildings fell, the plants grew again—the wildflowers and grasses, shrubs and vines. The tree watched from above as a new forest grew around it and beneath it.

Until humans came again. They moved too quickly to sense. A bad one led them as they spoke loudly and carried something sharp.

The tree had seen grasses shorn and trees tumbled, but it hadn't felt a blade for two hundred years. The tree had been wind-torn, nibbled and bored by insects, scraped by the antlers of deer long dead. This blade was different.

For two hundred years, water had risen through the heart of the tree. Now something sucked it dry, pulling its life upward, wresting it outward through the leaves. The tree drew more water, and still the greedy thing drained it.

The knife wounds scarred over but the damage continued, ceaseless and merciless, year after year. The land around the tree burned dry. The scent the wind carried was metallic and sharp, as if poisoned. Bees and hummingbirds stayed away.

The humans did not. In their season they returned with blades in their hands. They spoke loud words, carved into the tree's surface, and laughed.

The tree did not feel pain. It felt absence. It felt what was stolen. It felt the bad one grow strong as it weakened, and all the life around it faded.

For two hundred years and dozens more, energy had streamed through the tree from the earth to the sky.

Then a girl put her hand into the carved runes and spoke the words aloud. The tree understood her. The lightning came down, a bolt from above.

The tree gathered the electricity about it. And it spoke.

5

Scratch

B
ack in the dingy basement, Hannah grabbed a musty towel out of the laundry basket and dried her bike. With a brother on the football team and one who worked as a landscaper, no one would notice a little extra mud and grease. She tossed the towel into the old washing machine.

She shivered, grabbed one of Nick's fleeces out of the dryer, and stripped off her new-school-year jeans and T-shirt. They looked a lot like the clothes her best friend Waverly wore, except that Hannah had made-up, discount-store brands instead of designer labels. She didn't really care, and somehow nobody else in seventh grade cared what she wore, either. She was a Vaughan, starting forward of the Lower Brynwood Middle School soccer team and younger sister of two high-school quarterbacks—one past and one present. Being a Vaughan was a label that counted in Lo-B. That and a dollar got you a cup of coffee at the Quik Mart, Hannah's dad joked when Nick and A.J. got too full of themselves. Which was pretty often, if you asked Hannah.

She packed her wet clothes into the already-full washer, dumped in a cup of powder detergent, and started a heavy duty cycle. She felt something soft brush against her leg, and leaned down to pick up her small gray cat.

“There you are, Vincent Vaughan Gogh.” She stared into his amber eyes, daring him to start blinking in Morse code, but he was just a cat. No talking, no texting. Didn't want anything but dinner and a belly rub. Just as he should be.

She trudged up the basement stairs, kissing the silky dent on the top of the cat's head between his ears, or where his ears would have been if he had had two of them and not just one. He'd been bloody and scrawny when Hannah first found him, but his torn-off ear had healed up just fine. He was still scrawny, though, no matter how much she fed him. The cat purred, and Hannah purred back.

The kitchen bustled with noise and glare. Hannah sniffed—something spicy, something sweet.

“I was just wondering where you were,” Hannah's mother said. She was still wearing mismatched scrubs from the nursing home where she worked as an aide. “Grab a bowl.”

Nick and A.J. hadn't waited, digging into big portions of slow-cooked chili. Hannah set down Vincent, who leaped to the windowsill and huddled in the purple glow of the plant light shining on a tray of African violets. She filled her bowl but picked at the chili.

“Weird thing at the Spirit Tree, huh, Hannah?” Nick asked. She whipped her head up. How did he know about the messages?

“Why? What happened?” A.J. asked, then stuffed a piece of cornbread into his mouth, crumbs raining into his bowl.

“Some kid tried to stop the ceremony,” said Nick. “Didn't work. Can't stop Chase once he gets going.” Hannah relaxed. Nick didn't know anything.

Hannah's mother
tsked
, then said, “The poor guy had the right idea. Carving that old tree isn't my idea of a ceremony. It's vandalism.”

“It's an old tradition,” said Nick.

“Not that old. Nobody did it when your father played ball.” She glanced at Hannah's father for confirmation, but he only mumbled, his mouth full. “That's right. Back then no one thought defacing your community was a good way to show your school spirit. Don't know why the teachers shut their eyes. Somebody ought to stop it.” She looked pointedly at her husband, who shrugged. Hannah's father worked at the township planning commission, and Hannah used to think he could fix anything wrong in town. If only it were true.

“This kid almost did, but he was too late,” said Nick. A shadow passed over his eyes, then he laughed a little. “Boy, he was mad. He turned so red I thought his head would explode.”

“He'd been out running, Nick,” Hannah said. “He was just hot.” Martin hadn't been nice to her, but she couldn't help defending him. He wasn't there to defend himself.

“So, you know him?” A.J. asked. “He go nuts like that all the time?”

“I never heard him say a word before. Not even in class.”

“Guess he finally had something to say,” Hannah's mother said. “When someone who doesn't usually talk says something, you'd better listen.”

“Wait a minute,” said A.J. “He's a little crazy-haired kid, maybe Puerto Rican, runs a lot, new in town? He's got to be related to Michelle Medina over in Brynwood Estates. She has some orphan living with her now.”

“I don't think he's an orphan,” said Hannah.

“Whatever. I heard her chewing him out about something or other when we were over there doing her yard the other day. Poor kid. It's bad enough dealing with that woman and her precious lawn once a week, much less living with her.”

After dinner Hannah escaped to her attic bedroom. She shivered, switched on the electric radiator, and crawled beneath the worn comforter. Vincent Vaughan Gogh kneaded the blanket beneath his feet, claws digging lightly into Hannah's flesh below.

Scritch scratch
.

Hannah jumped at the noise behind her head. She knew it was a just a branch from the hemlock tree scratching the roof shingles. A.J. should have trimmed it back by now—Hannah's mother had been nagging him to get out the clippers for weeks. The noise used to scare her sometimes when she was little, but it was just an overgrown tree. She flicked her eyes toward the dormer window under the eaves. Nothing visible but deepest darkness under the dense, prickly reach of the hemlock.

Just her imagination. Just a tree. Just like the Spirit Tree. There was no such thing as curses. Whatever she thought had happened earlier—it couldn't have happened.

Scritch scratch
.

Just a tree. Trees don't talk. They don't glow. They don't ask for help.

She dug her mobile phone out of her bag, bracing herself as she fired up the power.

No messages. Hannah almost laughed. What had she expected? A text from the tree? No. Not only was that impossible, she was out of airtime. If a tree wanted to contact her, it would have to wait in line behind Waverly, who managed to burn up Hannah's meager allotment of minutes within the first week of each month.

Turning the tiny ruby studs in her ears, Hannah wondered what would have happened if her best friend had been with her earlier. Would she have defended Martin? Would she have stuck around long enough to witness the storm and, well, whatever had happened? She wasn't sure she would have.

Hannah tried to do her homework, but the
scritch-scratching
of the tree sounded like it was inside her skull. Like it was trying to tell her something. Maybe even like it was trying to get in the room.

She remembered how her mother had asked her if she was sure she didn't mind moving upstairs all alone. Hannah had shaken her head. She might have shrieked over sleepover-party ghost stories, but Hannah had never believed in ghosts, monsters, or things that went bump in the night. And if she had, she would have risked the wrath of a thousand ghosts for her own space away from her brothers. They tended to fill the house, even when they weren't home.

Scritch scratch CRACK
!

A branch crashed against the window, splintering the pane into a starburst of shards.

Vincent Vaughan Gogh leaped from Hannah's lap and fled down the stairs. Hannah stayed frozen in place. She was alone.

Alone except for the tree outside her window.

Heart racing, she steeled herself. It was just the same tree that had been there before she was born. She tentatively approached the window, ducking her head to fit under the sloped ceiling. The broken glass, delicate as frost, stood in place in the peeling wooden frame. She peered through the starry glass web. The nearest hemlock branch hung motionless, four feet clear of the window. Not a needle trembled. If there had been any wind a moment before, it had died to an eerie calm.

Hannah tried to remember if the window had been broken before—her mom had complained that windows kept cracking whenever the house settled. She'd tell her father, and he'd tape up the glass to hold it in place and keep drafts at bay until he got a chance to replace it. Yes, she thought. The window might have been partly broken already. She hadn't noticed, but it must have been. There wasn't even any wind.

Then Hannah heard the noise again.

Scritch scratch
.

Prickles rose along her hairline. If there was no wind, what was moving the branches? She nervously appraised the angled ceiling above her head—a lumpy old crack was visible through the painted-over wallpaper, but it looked strong enough to protect her from a falling hemlock tree. At least, she hoped so.

Scritch scratch
. Whatever was causing the noise, it was real. That message the Spirit Tree sent in the forest had been real. Was this a message, too?

Hannah had always trusted her senses—observe, analyze, move, no hesitation. When someone needed help, she gave it, whether that someone was a person, an animal, or even a tree. It didn't matter if she was scared. She wouldn't let anything frighten her from doing what was right—especially not a pile of sticks. And if that meant she had to lift a curse, she would. She gulped in air, the first deep breath she'd taken all afternoon.

She would listen to Martin. They would both listen to the Spirit Tree.

The scratching stopped, and the room was quiet. Hannah was ready to believe.

6

Change Your Attitude

M
artin tried to open the heavy fiberglass door. Deadbolted. He rang the bell, and Aunt Michelle answered it, a wireless headset in her ear and a laptop balanced on her hipbone.

“I forgot you were out. Ugh, what happened to you?” she said, nose wrinkling as she took in Martin's dripping clothes and mud-caked sneakers. “Put those sneakers outside.”

He tossed them and tiptoed in. She curled her lip. “Oh, now you're leaving wet footprints on the hardwood.”

“Sorry. Can I use your computer?” Martin didn't have his own system. He didn't even have his own cell phone, despite the fact that Aunt Michelle was a telecommunications executive for a company that gave free mobile service to employees' immediate family. She told him that as a second cousin he didn't qualify, and she'd set a bad example for everyone at Horizon Network Communications if she stretched the rules. Aunt Michelle was a stickler for rules and technicalities.

No wonder she was so quick to tell everyone she wasn't really his aunt, but his mother's cousin. She only agreed to take Martin in because his mom was deployed overseas with the Army, and then his grandmother died. “Gone,” Aunt Michelle said with a dramatic heavenward glance, but he didn't believe she really missed Abuelita like he and his mom did.

Martin's dad was gone, too, but Florida wasn't exactly heaven, though sometimes it seemed as far. Martin's dad sent his monthly checks without fail, but when Martin's mom asked if he could take their son for a few months, it turned out the house in Orlando was too small because of his new half-brother. That was fine with Martin, because as a seventh-grader, the last thing he wanted was a grubby little kid touching his stuff.

He hadn't figured Aunt Michelle would feel the same way about him.

Her temple twitched as she looked him up and down, and he felt even sweatier and muddier than before. “Get showered, then you have five minutes,” she said. “I've got a ton of work.”

A few minutes later, his hair in damp locks but his body clean and dry, Martin sat in the glow of the computer screen. His two index fingers hovered above the keyboard. How could he even begin to describe his day?

His mother's IM account was inactive. Martin frowned. It would have been nice knowing that his mom was on the other end of the computer, even around the world, but email would have to do. She'd read it later.