In the morning, the Mother Tree said, “I have one more thing to share with you. Come within me.”

  Lan felt himself sink into her trunk. He saw the inside of her filled with crystalline rings that gave off the shimmery light he saw when he was walking through the forest. Then she took him further into her roots and he found himself flying through the underground grid system. He had no idea where they were going until they ended up right in the middle of his village under the large tree that everyone gathered under. He was not far from his home with Boosha.

  Suddenly he saw Boosha above him walk into their hut. He tried to call out to her but got a mouthful of dirt. Even so, she stopped, turned and looked around sharply. Then a smile formed on her face and she waved to the tree. Something deep within Lan released as he realized how worried he’d been about her. He knew that his journey could take as long as it needed. Then just as fast as he’d travelled through the roots to the village he was back again in the tree bowl.

  “It’s time to go. I have a special treat waiting for you with the birches so be sure to spend the night with them.” Once again Lan saw a picture with the Mother Tree’s words. A beautiful grove of white birches, complete with a pile of dead branches in the middle, appeared in his mind.

  Climbing down, Lan put his arms around the massive trunk of the Mother Tree although he could only reach part way around. “Thank you,” he said. The words didn’t seem adequate for all her help and wisdom. “I promise to protect and honor the trees.”

  “On you go then,” she said and Lan felt himself pushed down the trail. His mood was light once again as he got back into his walking rhythm. He saw no signs of The Gatherers as he strode on the trail and his fear that they would find him disappeared.

  A day later he came upon the birch grove. In the center was a pile of branches exactly how he’d been shown by the Mother Tree. After he started a fire, he cooked some mushrooms and made tea with the birch twigs. He didn’t know why he was supposed to be there, but maybe the birches would show him things like the Mother Tree had. Lying back on some crunchy dried leaves that smelled refreshingly minty, Lan looked up the trunks and into the branches. The trees rose tall and straight in the air with black markings that made their white bark stand out in stark contrast. Their canopy of tear-drop leaves with serrated edges were mostly yellow now, though a few were still green.

  As night descended, Lan sat dreamily in front of the fire. His eyes began to droop. Suddenly he felt a weird sensation in his legs. Looking down he saw roots growing from his legs and feet, burying themselves deep into the ground. Before he could even comprehend what was happening his arms rose over his head, becoming branches with leaves sprouting from them. His body had become a pure white trunk. He shook his head, wondering if it was the result of the mushrooms he’d eaten or a dream, but nothing changed. He had turned into a tree!

  Then his dream got stranger. While he had become rooted to the spot, the birch trees were walking around! Lan stood up and discovered he could pull his roots out of the ground by lifting first one knee, then the other into the air. He began tree-walking like the other trees. It was cumbersome walking on roots instead of feet, but he loved being so tall and taking long steps. While he was learning to manage his root feet, the trees began dancing. Moving in a graceful sweeps and bows, they circled around the grove.

  Lan was filled with an intense desire to dance as well, but when he tried to move like the other trees, he immediately tripped over his roots. Shame and embarrassment swept through him with his clumsiness, a familiar feeling. One of the trees came up to him and shook her leaves over his roots. Oddly it felt like his root-feet were being washed. Unexpectedly, old memories surfaced from his childhood.

  He saw the hurt from traumatic events stored in his roots. There was the time an older boy had mocked him for having no parents and living with old Boosha. Another time a group of kids picked up stones and threw them at a dog that had wandered through the village. Lan tried to stop them and they threw the stones at him instead. And then he saw himself right after his parents were taken away. He was a baby and not even talking yet. Most villagers thought he hadn’t realized his parents were gone, but he had. His roots stored all those feeling-memories. As more birch trees cleansed his roots the tortured feelings began to wash away.

  With the root clearing, Lan began to dance like the other trees. He felt himself connect to his elemental self. Through his roots, he took in water, minerals and an energy that he didn’t have a name for, but that filled his body with a special power. He felt vitally alive and strong.

  Now he wanted to wave his arm-branches as he danced, but they felt heavy and burdened. A tree near him bent down and whispered, “Gavilan.” He didn’t know what that meant, other than the word on his Map Compass. Tree after tree came up to him and whispered the same word. Each time, Lan felt stronger and more sure of himself, odd because he had no idea what was going on.

  The last tree lifted Lan’s arm-branches just as the hawk from the ravine flew overhead. He felt awash in an incredible nectar of love. Moonlight flowed into his leaves, then branches. He trembled with joy as his leafy branch-arms waved in sweeping gestures.

  His root-legs danced and his arm-branches waved, but his trunk-body felt incredibly stiff. His bark-skin was too tight. Though his trunk did not show one black blemish, he felt marred and imperfect because of the way the villagers had seen him. Lan remembered times when he’d desperately tried to show other villagers his strong sense of self from his roots and the incredible love in his branches, but they had turned away in disgust.

  In the grove, trees came up around him and began to hit him on his body-trunk. Each time they hit him a black mark formed. The more whacks he got, the more he felt his root energy rise up and his leafy-branch energy flow down. The two energies mingled in his trunk, making the most exquisite sap within him, then poured out of the black wounds in huge waves of relief and happiness. Looking at the black marks on the other trees, Lan realized everyone had wounds they were ashamed of, not just himself.

  The other trees encouraged him to dance as they circled around him in what he could only call tree hugging. His trunk energy combined with the others and together they created a beautiful tapestry of light. As the dance increased in wildness, he felt a homecoming that he had never felt before. How weird he had to become a tree to feel like a young man! He danced exuberantly, swept up in the energy of earth, trees, and starry heavens.

  Lan woke to the warmth of the sunlight on his face. By the position of the sun, he knew it was late morning. He didn’t want to get up yet, but rather stay in his dream from the night before. He stretched his branches toward the sun, then realized they were simply human arms again. He looked down and saw that he had legs. Lan’s gaze swept around the birch grove. Once again, they were still and completely rooted to the earth, only now there wasn’t one single leaf on them. On the ground swirls of leaves still danced as they lifted in the wind.

  Was it a dream or was it real, he wondered? Something made him lift up his shirt and he saw welts all over his stomach and chest. Although they were lighter in color, they were the same shapes as the dark markings on the birch trunks. They looked like a type of bruise, but it hadn’t hurt when the trees had hit him and the bruises didn’t hurt now. Still, he had proof that the wild night of tree dancing had actually happened.

  Expecting to feel sore, Lan rose and packed up his gear, then cleared up his campsite. He didn’t feel sore at all and in fact had never felt so good in his life. Looking down at his skin he saw that it shimmered a little, like the trees.

  “Thank you,” Lan said before leaving the grove. He sent a silent “thank you” into the roots in the ground back to the Mother Tree. He knew he had truly become part of the tree tribe. In the coming days, most of the markings from his body disappeared, but a few stayed and slowly turned a dark brown. The sight of them would always remind him of the night he became a tree in a wild dance.

  Returning to his bleaker reality from his memories of happier times, Lan reached out and put one of the last branches on the fire. What a different blaze this one was compared to the birch bonfire. Now the dark overcast night pressed down on the meager fire, threatening to put it out completely. The leafless trees had gone to sleep and weren’t communicating with him. Lan knew he needed to gather more logs so they could dry out before he put them on the fire, but he was too weak to move. Trying not to worry about what he was going to do in the coming days and to avoid how awful he felt, Lan retreated into his memories again.

  During the days after the birch dance, Lan felt like he had entered a school and the trees were his teachers. When one of them wanted to teach him something, it would draw his attention in some way. One time a great branch fell right in his path. Another time the light would shine on just one tree in the midst of others. One tree drew his attention through the raucous cries of dozens of jays sitting in the branches.

  Gradually he realized that these signs weren’t random but tied in with his thoughts and questions. Once he understood that, his communication with the trees increased tenfold. He just had to put his hand on the tree that had signaled him and he would travel into the roots, back up to the branches and then shift into the trunk to understand what they were showing him.

  In this way, he met Alder, who helped to rebuild the forest after the Great Shift. Maple showed him how it found underground water, while White Spruce created cover for the small animals in wintertime. Crabapple shared with him the image of its flowers that caught starlight in each petal, and Aspen showed how its grove was one living organism. Hickory was all about strength and knew its wood was prized for making many tools that lasted a long time. Mountain Ash put a lot of energy into its brilliant berries to hide its sensitivity. If something was off throughout the forest, Mountain Ash knew immediately. Chokecherry had flowers similar to Crabapple and delighted in feeding the birds. Cypress loved the edges of streams and had to stand taller than the other trees to connect the energies between earth and heaven. It knew what kind of weather was coming. Each tree had a sense of itself and of its place in the forest, making it strong and protected. As Lan drank in the tree wisdom, he was also nurtured through their energy. He didn’t need as much food when he talked with the trees.

  Gradually all the trees lost their leaves while their shimmery energy went to sleep in their roots. Lan found he couldn’t tap into them for his own daily energy boost. The weather continued to worsen and his feet grew heavier with every step. He made less progress every day.

  One day he came to a hawthorn tree. It still had all its leaves and even bright berries. It was a sore sight for Lan’s eyes against the backdrop of sleeping, grey trees. It didn’t shimmer with light like the other trees but had a certain hard glitter to it. Although something inside of him shivered, Lan approached the tree hoping to communicate with it and receive some energy. The tree drew him in but did not seem as welcoming as the others. This was the first hawthorn Lan had met, so he thought maybe it was just different from all the rest of the trees. As always, he planned to ask permission before proceeding to honor it.

  Tentatively he placed his hand on the trunk. He began to merge with the trunk of the tree as he asked it permission to communicate. For a brief moment, he saw a room with two individuals sitting at a table. They looked up, startled, then there was a blast of energy and he was flung violently backward. His foot came down on a wickedly long thorn that pierced his shoe straight through his foot. From above, the tree rained down more thorns. Throwing an arm over his face, Lan rolled over and tried to stand up, but the pain in his foot was agonizing. Crying out, he dropped to all fours and crawled away as quickly as he could to get out of range of the flying thorn missiles. Finally, he stopped and, biting his lip to stop from crying out, pulled the thorn out. It was covered with his blood and little pieces of tissue. He felt faint at the sight of it but the throbbing in his foot kept him all too present.

  Lan’s mind scrambled. What had just happened? Why had the tree responded so violently against him? He looked at the Map Compass, only to see it had gone blank again. His heart sank. Now he had more problems than before. Moving further away from the tree, Lan decided to stop for the night. He only had enough energy to build a fire and collect some wood before collapsing in front of it. In the morning, he’d figure it all out somehow.

  But in the morning, the Map Compass still didn’t work and he felt worse than before. Lan’s one night turned into two and then five. On this bitterly cold night he put the last of his wood on the fire and fell into a fitful sleep. Unaware any more of where he was or what he needed to do next, he sank into the darkness that pulled him down and wouldn’t let him go.

  Chapter Six

  Safe Haven

  In a high-ceilinged room in front of a massive burning fire, Draegan Osuro read under a floating glass bulb. He seemed mildly entertained with what he was reading. Overlord of the World Regime, His Excellency’s long, white hair was brushed back from his face, but hung scruffily over his collar. Despite the image his mottled, puffy face and thickened waist conveyed, he held the power of a coiled snake ready to strike with tremendous speed and accuracy. No one wanted to disappoint this man and face the consequences. Even the room seemed to pull back from him as the dark wood paneling absorbed all available light and sound. The weight of the stillness bore down on everything.

  Tarek, the Chief Informer, slid through the door, checking to see if he would be interrupting His Excellency. Before Tarek could clear his throat or talk, Draegan spoke without looking up.

  “Yes, what is it?”

  “The tripwire in the Forest of Dandaka has been detonated,” Tarek replied.

  Although he barely moved, something snapped into deadly focus within Draegan. His eyes locked intently onto Tarek, who shifted back and forth on his feet. “Is it The Awakener?” Draegan asked neutrally.

  “I can’t quite tell,” Tarek answered uneasily. “It doesn’t read as a Crystalline or as The Awakener.”

  Draegan exploded out of his seat, his hands thundering down on the desk. “Then why are you bothering me with this information?”

  Tarek nervously took one step back. “Because the tree was set to detonate only if The Awakener or a Crystalline found it. But it was set so long ago…do we even know if it is still working right?”

  “Well, can you tell if it was detonated by a person or an animal or even a storm?” Draegan asked.

  “I’m pretty sure it was a person. I’m almost positive about that.” Tarek backtracked with his words as he had with his body. He wasn’t sure which was worse with Draegan…being overly confident and then wrong, or just uncertain.

  “Could you look at the Glyph and see what you think?” Tarek’s voice broke at the end. He didn’t want to seem like a coward, but standing up to Draegan was always a risk.

  For now, Draegan’s mood seemed calmly controlled as he followed Tarek out of the office. Together they crossed a common area and entered a different doorway, into a bare room with curved, paneled walls. From a distance what appeared to be framed art hung from each panel. As Tarek and Draegan got closer to the hangings they became sculptures of trees, rocks, buildings and landscapes. Although beautiful, they exuded a strange energy, glittering with a dark light that drew the viewer in. These were Glyphs, traps set in the world for a specific purpose. Draegan and Tarek approached the first one at the far left. It contained a tree that looked damaged.

  Only two people in the world knew that if a Crystalline touched that particular tree in the forest, it would fall into geometric shapes. If The Awakener touched the tree, it would stay standing but become a hollow shell. Draegan and Tarek stood in front of the image of the tree, studying it.

  Draegan reached into his pocket, took out a small silver box, opened it and took out a pinch of dark brown powder, sniffing it up his nose. He waited for his brain to charge, then closed his eyes and connected to the Dark Grid, asking to mentally travel to the tree. He scanned the area but didn’t see anyone. The tree looked as if it had been struck by lightning from within. Draegan noticed something at the foot of the tree and picked it up, studying it. He came back to the Glyph room with Tarek and said, “Someone laid another tripwire over the first one. It warned them and covered up ours. Reset each of the tripwires in the Glyphs, and check for any outside energies overlaying them. Let me know if you find any more.”

  Tarek nodded his head and started to move to the next frame, but Draegan wasn’t finished. “Where is the closest village to this tree?” he asked.

  “I believe it’s the village called Our Place,” Tarek responded. “The director is Kuut.

  “Fine,” said Draegan. “Send The Gatherers there and search for any Crystallines or those who are harboring Crystallines. Make an example of someone.”

  Tarek nodded again, knowing he was about to rain down terror on an unsuspecting town. He wouldn’t want to be in their shoes.

  Lan swirled down into darkness. He had no sense of time or place. All around him spun despair and hopelessness. Occasionally he glimpsed and heard strangers talking about things he didn’t understand. Once he saw two men in a round room looking at a tree sculpture. He heard the words “The Awakener” as he floated passed them. He had no idea who they were talking about but he instinctively tried to hide himself, terrified they would see him. Then he saw a village being burned down and two people running away from it. He felt scared for those people. Other times in the consuming darkness, horrible-looking creatures laughed and pointed at his helplessness. They seemed to be eating something that was coming from him. His heart pounded in his ears as he tried to push them away.

 

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