Canopy, p.11
Canopy, page 11
“So the two of you were on Bough Four, and then what?”
“The bridge was still attached on the near side and Maestro Hamamalis wanted to secure it before its weight tore out the remaining bolts.”
“And?”
“We rigged up some ropes to lash around the bridge and anchor to the trunks. We thought we could loop it around one of the planks, but we couldn’t catch it from above. We tried and tried, but the rope wouldn’t stick, so Maestro thought he’d climb down to attach the rope to the bridge from below.”
“What are you saying?” My mother’s voice was rising to the level she reserved for me and Yew when we really messed up. “You let Hamamalis climb down a tree trunk? I know that’s not what I’m hearing.”
“We lashed a rope around him, and he repelled down to the bridge—”
“In the pouring rain?” Her voice was beginning to screech. “He’s, what? Sixty-five?”
“He’s not that old—”
“He’s sixty-five if he’s a day.”
“I should have gone, but I couldn’t. My shoulder.”
Wingnut was staring at his feet. My mother was in rare form, performing two examinations simultaneously: a physical exam on the Maestro and a cross examination of his trainee. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was mad at me but taking it out on Wingnut. And she was getting angrier and angrier. Once started, she couldn’t seem to stop. Like a snag leaning in the forest, she was going down, down, down. Fast and loud. “Why didn’t you stop him? Why did your Maestro at age sixty-five attach a rope to his waist and repel down a cliff in the pouring rain?”
Wingnut stammered, “He’s … he’s the Maestro …”
“Where is your common sense? You knew it was a bad idea. Maestro or no, you should have prevented it.”
I thought the screamy voice was for family only. In this, as in so much else, I was evidently wrong. My head wound patient and I both stared at her.
“Why didn’t you stop him!” She was totally losing it.
“Michelia,” I said.
I needed to distract her from Wingnut, get her anger on me, where it belonged. Wingnut didn’t know how to deal with her temper. It was me she was mad at, not him.
Wingnut’s eyes flickered up and he looked at his Maestro, lying pale and still on the table. Tears welled in his eyes and in his voice. “I tried. He wouldn’t listen.” It came out in a whisper.
I took Wingnut’s hand. “Tell us exactly what happened.”
He held my eyes with his own, moist and clear. “He was secured to the line. The wind grabbed the bridge and tossed it. I couldn’t really tell from above, but I think the bridge struck him in the head. I hauled him back up, but it took a long time with one arm. Too long.”
“Good thing you were with him, Wingnut. If he’d been alone, there would have been no one to help him, right Michelia?”
She was silent for a moment. Her eyes considered me.
“Hamamalis would have done it anyway. With or without Wingnut. If it hadn’t been for Wingnut—”
Michelia’s gaze softened. She rubbed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Maestro Hamamalis is a stubborn man. There’s no talking to him once he’s decided on something. Forgive me, Wingnut. It’s been a horrible day.”
“That’s an understatement,” mumbled my patient.
“I’m amazed you were able to carry Maestro Hamamalis here.” Michelia felt Wingnut’s shoulder. “Lucky that shoulder didn’t pop out again. You’ll be feeling it tomorrow. Have Ostrya show you where the smelling salts are. Let’s see if we can wake your Maestro. I’ll clean up his head abrasion, and then I’ll teach you to wrap and bandage. Ostrya and I need all the help we can get today.”
I smiled up at Wingnut and let go of his hand to point out the supplies he needed. The father and son lingered on the examination table. “If the bridges to the skygardens are out, how long until we run out of food?” he mumbled to no one in particular.
Chapter Sixteen
Dark faces, light faces, short and tall, old, young, and those in between, clustered around the central stairway from Bough One all the way to the top of the canopy at Bough Seven. In that narrow, vertical space, the silent gathering appeared vast. A light breeze rustled through the needles, the soft whoosh mixing with inhalations, exhalations, and quiet weeping.
Wingnut stood beside me along the edge of the crowd on Bough One. We’d hurried over from the clinic. My mother remained behind, monitoring Hamamalis in between sewing and bandaging the injured. I would have stayed to help, but she insisted Wingnut and I attend the Feeding Ceremony. “Their future doctor needs to be there, in community with them. Lend a shoulder to the bereaved,” she said.
I glimpsed Cassia and Cedrus near the center, his arm wrapped jealously around her. Her eyes, like those of most of the crowd, were red-rimmed and swollen. Cedrus’s mouth was clamped tightly in a grimace, his eyes hooded under heavy brows. The sorrow and despair weighted me down, threatened to suffocate me. My skin crawled, every nerve on alert. I bounced one leg, wiggled the other, desperate to flee, forcing myself to stay. I felt a tickle on my fingertips and glanced down. Wingnut’s muscular hand brushed mine, his fingers thrummed against my palm. I looked up at him, startled by the contact. He hated this, too. Too many people. Too much emotion. Too much—everything. I wrapped my pinkie finger around his, drawing strength from his companionable discomfort. I turned my attention to the tiny white-haired woman ascending the stairs.
All eyes followed her as she climbed, her cedar rain cape flowing behind her. When she’d climbed several steps and positioned herself above the heads of the Bough One crowd, she stopped and faced us. Her intelligent brown eyes skimmed over the assembled faces. She saw me standing awkwardly beside Wingnut and her lips curved in a barely perceptible smile. My grandmother, Councilor Butia.
Barely five feet tall, her bones sharp and bent, her presence held the crowd. What she lacked in stature she more than made up for with her voice. Deep, gravelly, and resonant, it was calm and nurturing, commanding and powerful. She was cunning and politically agile. She accurately gauged the mood of the people, made difficult decisions, and somehow convinced others to live with the consequences. My mother said she was cold-blooded, a raptor feasting on the weak. I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but I knew there was no love lost between my mother and my grandmother.
Butia had been the Councilor of the Council of Maestros for as long as I could remember. She’d outlasted plenty of powerful leaders. Despite what my mother thought of her, I supposed she must be loved by most of the climbers. Otherwise, why would they continue to select her to serve? Butia was unusual in another way. She was old, ancient by our standards. It was not only unusual for a seventy-five-year-old to be the Councilor, it was unusual for a seventy-five-year-old to be alive. If a member of the canopy lived past sixty—and with all the hazards of life in the treetops, that was a big if—they more likely than not suffered from arthritis or rheumatism, possibly even the wasting disease. Unfortunate individuals like Thevetia lost their memories or personalities. Some developed blindness, a death sentence in the canopy. A seventy-five-year-old woman with none of those ailments, fully in command of her mental faculties and as physically healthy as a woman decades younger was more than an anomaly.
Though she was my grandmother, I didn’t look anything like her. Joshua had shared her brown eyes and petite build, her cunning intelligence, her unsettling ability to see and know all. I was the female version of her life partner, my grandfather, the doctor before Michelia. Tall and gangly, awkward and pale. My mother and I had inherited his heterochromia, our trademark blue eye and green eye passed down through generations along with the suffocating expectations of our ancestor Pseudotsuga.
“My fellow climbers.” Her voice rang out from the central stairway. “Our canopy has sustained a tremendous, heart-rending loss. We have lost many loved and valued members of our shared family. We who are assembled here are like the First Climbers. We have survived when others have not. Let us think on that for a moment.”
Around me, heads bowed and eyes closed. I bowed my head, too. Butia might call us family, but it felt weird to close my eyes even among familiar community members, so I kept them open. I tried to catch Wingnut’s eye, but his eyes were shut, giving him a sweet little kid look.
“Great Ones, we thank you for our lives, for sheltering and protecting us through this latest storm and every day of our lives. We obey the commandments of The Book of Silvanus transcribed by that wisest of climbers, Pseudotsuga, and protected by the First Climbers, so that we all might be educated by the words. We take only what we need. We produce only to replace. We acknowledge that all spirits are equal.”
Butia’s voice caressed and hypnotized us. We rested in the soft cocoon she wove around us. She continued, “We offer you, in gratitude, the bodies of our loved ones, our family in the trees. As you feed and nurture us all the days of our lives, so we will feed and nurture you all the days of our death. We offer you our sustenance from the north to the south and from the east to the west.”
Her rasping voice became insistent. “Everyone, let us thank the Great Ones together.”
As one, we recited the words we’d all learned on the laps of our parents and teachers when we were young: “The Great Ones shelter and clothe and feed us. Protect us while we live, oh Great Ones, and when we die, we will feed you.”
Everyone opened their eyes and raised their heads. The ceremony part of the Feeding Ceremony had ended. Now for the feeding part. Butia commanded, “The west side has had its fill. The storm saw to that. Maestro Hamamalis is in clinic, so we will ask only three maestros to administer the feeding. Boughs One and Two, you will feed the north side with me. Boughs Three and Four, you will feed the south side with Maestro Drypetes. Five and above, Maestro Wollemia will feed your dead to the east side.”
The crowd began to disperse, moving off to gather the wrapped bodies of the storm victims. Butia cleared her throat loudly. “One last reminder. None of us has escaped this tempest unscathed. The storm was a warning to us all. The Great Ones are angry. We must all be aware of our actions and those of our fellow climbers.” Her voice boomed. “The commandments must be followed!”
In all my time living in the canopy, I never witnessed so massive a Feeding Ceremony. So many bodies. So much death. All that week, we had ceremonies twice daily: one in the morning for those who had died in the night, and one in the evening for those who hadn’t lasted through the day. In the extreme heat, even two feedings a day wasn’t often enough.
After that first week, the feeding ceremonies were intermittent. Smaller ceremonies continued throughout the month. Many of the wounded sickened and died of secondary infections, especially those with burns and crush injuries. Michelia worked at the clinic night and day. I ran from one home visit to the next, up and down the canopy, and still the ceremonies continued. Throughout the month, we fed three corners: north, south, and east. The west had feasted during the storm. And with the bridges out, we had no way left to get there.
No matter how Michelia and I labored, no matter how many patients we treated, the feeding ceremonies didn’t stop. They had scarcely begun.
From The Book
Scientists first discovered climate change in the early nineteenth century, but it took another century and a half for them to realize that humans were responsible for a large part of it. By the time the polar icecaps began to melt, two generations of children had attained adulthood and voted for the politicians who claimed it to be a fiction, a fantasy, an invention of scientists who had a cynical disregard for the economic wellbeing of the world.
When the warming of the earth accelerated, many joked that they preferred summer to winter, their gardens would be so much prettier, and finally the growing season would be long enough to feed the world. The storms grew fiercer, hurricanes and tornadoes wiped out entire towns. The politicians blamed one another: levies weren’t built strongly enough, infrastructure had been allowed to deteriorate, towns and villages shouldn’t have been built below sea level in the first place.
And then large cities began to flood, cities within which economic wellbeing resided. Despite the mass resettlement of urban dwellers, global warming was still not accepted by most as scientific fact. It was an accident, a mistake, a fluke of the weather, the crazy weather. Nations began to suppress immigration, becoming increasingly isolationist in their efforts to cope with the alleged non-issue of a warming planet.
Humanity began to move inland. Oceanfront property was no longer desirable as the oceans encroached, coastlines submerged, and owners were desperate to move.
Where it wasn’t flooding, it was burning. Every summer the sky became choked with thick smoke. Gray ash fell from the sky like snow, coating the trees and ground, scratching skin and lungs and eyes. When the fall rains finally began, the ash washed into drains, thick like concrete, flowing into lakes and rivers and streams. As the earth continued to warm, fire season stretched longer, crossing from one season to two, and finally, lasting years, set off by any errant spark or lightning storm.
The politicians continued to crow and strut, distracting their constituents with diatribes while inventing wars with other nations over questionable ideals and diminishing resources. The adults continued to vote for the status quo, and the earth continued to warm.
We could no longer wait. We ascended into the canopy.
Pseudotsuga, The Book of Silvanus
Chapter Seventeen
Three months. That’s all it took. Not a huge amount of time, three measly months. Ninety days, give or take. Three moon cycles. One pregnancy trimester. Three months is not so long, but sometimes it can be an eternity.
The storm had destroyed all the bridges to the west and sheared all weight-bearing branches from Bough Seven and on down. There was no way to cross the abyss, no way to reach the western skygardens. No berries, no apple trees, no greens or vegetables. Gardeners struggled to grow what they could in sunlit nooks and crannies and nurse logs, but it was never enough to satisfy the needs of the community. Climbers grazed on tiny shoots and harvested edible plants wherever they found them. They consumed fir and cedar tips, nettles and fiddlehead ferns, lichens and edible mushrooms. Spider swatters rose early in the morning, risking bites and infection to gather protein. Hunters provided as best they could, but because there was no passage to the fertile west, they soon overhunted the nearest areas with and without their trained raptors. Previously a coveted luxury, meat quickly became a precious currency, traded in the dark corners of Yew’s market and elsewhere in the canopy. A replacement garden area had to be found, and quickly.
Maestros Drypetes and Hamamalis had shown foresight in their exploration of a route to the south months before the storm. Their scouts hadn’t discovered an easy passage, but the two maestros thought the southern boughs might be reached by traversing the Great Ones a mile to the east and backtracking several more miles to the south. Clearing pathways and building bridges turned out to be a slow process, especially with a diminished and weakened workforce. The builders who had survived the storm and serious injuries were working on reduced rations.
Our stomachs always growled. We were hungry-angry. Mom and I argued even more than usual. We started taking turns sleeping in the clinic so we’d be available at night when people might need us. At least, that’s what we told ourselves. Even after his shoulder healed, Wingnut didn’t return to gardening. There was no gardening. He started showing up more frequently, learned to suture, and studied medicine alongside me. Mom started giving him jobs to do and he began working nights at the clinic. On quiet afternoons, Wingnut and I shoved spider fleece up our noses and sutured our reeking carcasses until they putrefied. The food shortage meant no fresh corpses for us to practice on.
I gave up half my rations. So did Wingnut. Everyone did. But for the young, the old, and the already fragile, three months was all it took. Three months for the first child to die of something other than storm injuries.
A frail boy, Yucca was a regular visitor to the clinic. He suffered from frequent ear infections, a near constant runny nose, and severe pollen allergies. My mother wasn’t alarmed the afternoon a neighbor came to the clinic asking for a doctor visit. The family lived on Bough Three, and Mom’s knees were swollen to twice their size. She didn’t have to say anything. I volunteered to go.
I was surprised to see Cassia. Even with a staircase and handrail, Bough Three was a long hike for a heavily pregnant woman. Her belly was huge and she moved slowly, like an opossum with a full pouch.
“Cassia? What are you doing up here?” I asked.
She smiled at me, revealing her perfect, white teeth. “What am I doing? Right now, looking for a bathroom. These babies are sitting on my bladder.”
I don’t know what came over me then; I was probably dizzy from lack of food. But I surprised both of us when I took her hand. Even more when these words came out of my mouth: “I’ll walk with you and you can tell me how things are going with you. You should be taking it easy.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m okay. A little tired, I suppose, but that’s to be expected, right? Listen, I came up to check on one of my pupils. Do you know Yucca? He’s a little brown kid, nine years old. He’s got asthma and all kinds of allergies—"
“—he’s the one I’m up here to visit.” We were nearing the family’s shanty. “Let me go in first, see how the kid’s doing. Give you a chance to use the facilities. Yeah?”
I pointed to a toilet shack, a secluded tall box situated at a distance from the homes, limbs and branches below cleared away to allow the effluent to fall unobstructed to the forest floor. Cassia waddled off, leaving me alone to visit my patient.
Yucca lay listlessly on his side in a tiny hammock. His spine poked against his thin brown skin and I could count every one of his ribs. The blood had left his face, leaving his complexion gray. I knelt on the floor beside him and took his hand: cold, dry, and weak in my grasp. His brown eyes flickered up at me, apathetic. I stroked his forehead; his lips were gray and cracked. His mother stared sightlessly and picked at her fingers.
