Children in Trees

Welcome to Children in Trees, one of the three books I’m writing an entry-a-day in 2021. I envision it as a weird mashup between Alice in Wonderland and Where the Wild Things Are. I’m posting new entries every day on my PATREON PAGE free for anyone to read. For people’s convenience, I’ve posted the first 30 days of the story on this page.

Here are some nice things my readers have said about Children in Trees:

I’m torn between reading each new installment of this masterpiece when it lands in my inbox, and archiving it for reading all at once weeks from now. Pretty sure I don’t want to allocate my limited patience to the latter approach, though, tempting as it is.

Every once in a while you find a story that hits just the right tone and thoughtful approach that just draws you in. That category now includes Kingdom’s Wild and Children in Trees. Both of these arcs are masterfully executed and engrossing as hell.

When Pearl’s mother came home from work, she found a letter written on a blue and yellow leaf pinned to the front door by a tiny metal sword. It was almost like the little plastic swords that some restaurants used in place of toothpicks for sandwiches and such – the kind that Pearl’s older brothers and father would use to have sword fights with after they finished their food and were waiting for Pearl to stop playing with her meal and finally eat it. Only, this sword was a little bigger, metal, and very real – even though it was so small.

The letter read:

Dear Pearl’s Mother,

Do not worry. She will be home someday. Maybe soon. Maybe not-so-soon. It all depends on what she decides to do up here. Still, don’t worry. I will keep her safe. Well, as safe as I can. She is Pearl, after all. You of all people know how she can be. Still, everything will be fine. I promise. I think. I’m pretty sure. Fine as dew on cherry blossoms.

Respectfully

Pearl’s mother read the letter twice. Then she rushed to the back yard, stood under the treehouse, and called her daughter’s name until her throat hurt.

She didn’t expect an answer.

She stared into the branches of trees on the other side of the fence, wishing she was still small enough to climb up to where the blue-and-yellow leaves grew.

Pearl was the kind of child her mother liked to post about on social media or talk about at parties and after meetings at work? But that was always after the fact. In hindsight. Once the storm of the most recent explosion of mischief had settled.

Sometimes Pearl just did things she wanted because it seemed like a grand adventure at the time. Like making a saddle for their Australian shepherd, Jameson (Jamie, for short) and riding him into battle with her Nerf gun and wooden sword was too amazing to resist. Unfortunately, the enemy in such situations usually turned out to be the clowder of cats that roamed the back yard. The cats were her grandmother’s, who lived in the converted garage. Grandma dreamed of breeding a line of cats with opposable thumbs.

Other times Pearl knew her plottings and schemings would make mom mad, but she cracked the passcode on her tablet and downloaded the next ten chapbook stories in the series she was reading. Pearl would read until Mom came home from work, and then she would color or draw until she discovered where Mom had hidden the tablet.

Pearl wouldn’t be so bad if her older brother, Alex, still played with her. Ever since he started high school, he stopped being fun. No more superhero training in the afternoons and on Saturdays. No more battles with their action figures. No more trying to figure out what tasted good with peanut butter and naming the potions they made with milk food coloring.

More and more, Pearl spent afternoons in her treehouse wondering why Mom worked so much, Why Alex wasn’t fun anymore, and where Dad had gone after her parents got divorced.

Like many children, Pearl liked to climb.

However, where most normal children might say, “Look, Mommy,” or “Look, Daddy,” with a wide smile, “I’m bigger than you.” Pearl always said, “Look at all the things I can see.”

Before her parents got divorced, and before he disappeared, Dad asked, “What do you see?”

And Pearl told him the most interesting thing she could find.

Then Dad asked, “What else do you see?”

And Pearl tried to find something even more interesting.

She missed the game. She tried to play it now, but it wasn’t the same by herself. Alex got bored of it too easily. Mom was always at work. Grandma only wanted to talk about which cats she should put together to get to them having opposable thumbs faster. So Pearl changed the game.

Now Pearl wrote down everything she saw in a journal Dad left behind when he moved out. Every day, she wrote about the things she saw every day on a new page, and she tried not to have too many repeats. Someday, when (if?) Dad decided to come back, she wanted to read every list to him. She was running out of interesting things just looking out of the treehouse windows, so she started climbing to the roof. From there, Pearl could see further into Ardenwood park. She just had to remember to climb down before Mom got home.

On the day Pearl’s mother received a letter by leaf, Pearl’s list consisted of the usual sorts of interesting things: I saw a bee get caught in a spider’s web and sting the spider; cherry blossoms are early this year; ants are trying to invade the treehouse again; on the other side of the fence in Ardenwood park a squirrel with butterfly wings flew from one tree to another.

Pearl re-read what she just wrote and then looked back into the thick trees of Ardenwood.

Had she really seen that?

Pearl scampered down the ladder, dashed across the back yard, and rushed through the house to her room.

The mess of dirty clothes, toys, and chapter books stalled her for only a moment. She spread the mess even further looking for her binoculars. Dad had given them to Pearl as a gift for Christmas last year, with the note, To help you find more interesting things. Now they would help her find the most interesting thing she might ever see. She hadn’t taken them to the treehouse yet because she thought she still had more pages in the journal to fill with what she could see without them. She finally found the binoculars after pulling all the books off her books

At the door, Pearl stopped. IF she really did see a squirrel with butterfly wings, would she want to go find it and try to see it up close? Of course she would. She would want to notice as many interesting details as possible, enough to fill pages and pages to be able to read to Dad. That might keep her out late, possibly after dark. How high would she have to climb to find that squirrel.

Pearl grabbed her backpack and filled it with her favorite jacket, a flashlight, her mittens, a scarf, the map of Ardenwood park she and Alex drew last summer when he was still fun, and her stuffed squirrel. Maybe she could use that as a decoy or something to help her sneak up on the squirrel with wings.

One last thought popped into Pearl’s head. Maybe that squirrel wasn’t a nice creature. Pearl got her wooden sword out of her closet. She rushed through the house, dashed across the back yard, and scampered up the ladder to her treehouse.

Back on the roof of her treehouse, Pearl looked through her binoculars into the dense foliage covering the nature area portion of Ardenwood Park – the part just on the other side of their back fence. She searched for any kind of colors that stood out against the greens, browns, occasional yellows, and the patches of grays deepening with afternoon turning into evening.

There!

An orange patch streaked across a branch that wasn’t too far away. Pearl might be able to climb there, or, if not, get close enough.

The binoculars went back into the backpack. Pearl pulled the straps tight so it felt like she was giving the backpack a piggyback ride. The wooden sword went through the loop at the top of the backpack. Pearl jumped from the roof of her treehouse to the one big branch that stretched over the fence and into Ardenwood Park. She balanced her way along it out of the backyard and into the wildest and most exciting place she knew.

High above the treehouse, up where the branches grew too small for Pearl to climb, a pair of feline eyes looked out from a not-quite-human face that had watched everything Pearl had done that afternoon. Just as those eyes had watched that yard, and later the treehouse, every day since Pearl had come home from the hospital. A four-fingered hand snatched a blue leaf from the very tip top of the tree and scribbled a note. The mother should know, and how far ahead could Pearl really get? She was, after all, only human.

Pearl reached up, took hold of a branch, and pulled herself higher into the trees of Ardenwood park. Climbing here felt so different than climbing in the tree in the backyard or either of the trees in the front yard. Those were safe, domesticated trees, as Dad used to say. The trees in the nature area had bark that wasn’t quite as smooth, and the branches were windier and twistier. Pearl had to make sure she didn’t puncture her hand or slice a finger on any sharp bits poking out from the branches. This made her progress slower than she wanted but she figured climbing around with a bloody hand would slow her down even more.

Not long after Pearl left her backyard, she picked out three interesting things to help her keep track of where she’d last seen that flash of wings. The first was a pink and yellow flower she’d never seen before. The second was where the branches of two trees had grown together. The third was a length of orange rope tied around a branch and hanging down about twenty feet above the ground.

By the time Pearl reached the two branches growing together, daylight had dimmed so much she considered getting out her flashlight; only, that would probably slow her down even more than a bloody hand. She wove over, under, around, and across branches. When she reached the orange rope, Pearl looked about the pink and yellow flower. She pushed a branch full of leaves aside and found another face looking at her. The little girl beamed a wide grin.

“Hello,” the girl said, and this startled Pearl so much, she fell back off of the branch.

For two pounding heartbeats, Pearl floated just out of reach of the branch. Then she fell, for one heartbeat before the straps on her backpack hugged her extra tightly. Her feet hung into empty space, swinging back and forth ever-so-slightly.

“You okay down there?” someone asked from above.

Pearl looked up.

A face looked down at her from out of a mane of wild, dark hair. IT was the girl who had said, “Hello.”

Pearl stretched her neck around, this way and that. Some kind of rod hung down from the tree branch. Craning her head so that her chin touched her right shoulder, she saw the rod hooked onto the same loop of her backpack that held her sword.

“Yeah,” Pearl said. “I think so. You scared me.”

“Sorry,” the girl said. “Glad I caught you.” The girl looked past Pearl to the ground. “That would have been bad for you if I hadn’t.”

“Yeah,” Pearl said. “Thanks.” Then after a moment, “So now what?”

“Swing yourself over to that branch.” The girl pointed to Pearl’s left. “When you get there, I’ll let you go.”

Pearl twitched her shoulders to get turned facing toward the branch. Each time, she hoped she didn’t twitch herself out of the backpack. She kicked her legs, creating motion to get her to the branch. Once Pearl got hold of it, the other girl unhooked the rod and dropped down to that branch.

“So…” the girl asked. “What’s a groundling like you doing way up here?

Pearl looked this strange little girl over. Her hair wasn’t just brown; it had streaks of green as well. Her clothes, if you could call bits of leaves, fur, bark, and moss woven together with string clothes, were just as wild. She leaned on the rod thing with the hooks at both ends.

“Don’t be shy now, groundling,” the girl said. “I know you can talk.”

“I’m not shy,” Pearl said. “You’re just a surprise. And interesting.”

“Yeah?” The girl asked. “What’s interesting?”

“Everything.” Pearl pointed at the rod. “What’s that?”

“It’s my catchstick.”

The girl held it out. It was a little longer than the girl was tall, and both ends curved into a hook. Pearl had experienced one use for the thing, but her imagination gave her plenty of other ideas.

“Not really surprised you didn’t know what it was. They aren’t really useful for groundlings.”

“I could use one,” Pearl said.

“For what?” Her face got still and serious.

Pearl grinned. “Hiding under furniture and tripping my big brother.”

The girl snickered. “Clever for a groundling.”

“I’m Pearl.”

“I’m Liberty.”

They shook hands.

“I came to find a squirrel with butterfly wings.”

“Is that all?” Liberty asked. “I can take you to a herd of them. But tomorrow. Tonight we have to get inside.”

“Inside where?” Pearl asked.

But Liberty was already scurrying away through the branches.

For just a moments, Pearl looked back over her shoulder to her treehouse and home. Mom would be getting home soon. Every second, the world seemed a little darker. Liberty talked about going tomorrow and getting inside for now. Should Pearl just go home and come back after school? But then, Mom might be home already. If she was, and Pearl wasn’t there, Pearl would be in serious trouble. She might get grounded. If that happened, Mom would put Alex in charge of Pearl, and Pearl would never get a chance to see the squirrel with butterfly wings. No just one. A whole herd of them. Is she didn’t go back right now, Pearl would be in even more trouble. More trouble than she’s ever gotten in ever before.

The question ran through her mind’s eye: Would seeing the squirrel with the butterfly wings be worth it?

Pearl looked back to Liberty and say nothing but leaves, branches, and darkness.

Two steps took Pearl to the trunk of a tree. She took her backpack off, leaned against the tree, and rummaged around for her flashlight. The barest rays of sunset came through the leaves, making the world among the branches small islands of light among a growing sea of shadows and darkness. Pearl almost dropped her backpack in her hurry to get the flashlight out and turned it on. The beam cut through the darkness and danced about while Pearl put the backpack on.

Something in the trees above growled. Not like a dog or any other kind of animal.

This was a growl from the back of a closet, the darkness under the bed, or a bad dream that wouldn’t let you wake up.

Pearl shined the light upward.

Teeth.

White. Sharp. Teeth.

In a cavernous mouth in a face that might be any creature at all because the fur seemed to devour the light. Except for the eyes. Glowing green-yellow eyes that glared with all the evil of a schoolyard bully ready to chase one of the smaller kids so long and so hard they got too tired to enjoy the rest of recess.

And teeth.

The teeth dropped down to the branch where Pearl stood. The branch shuddered when the dark body landed.

It growled again. The sound, something like a cross between a hungry lawnmower and a helicopter searching for badguys at night, settled into Pearl’s stomach.

The eyes moved a little closer.

Pearl held her breath.

What could she do?

The mouth opened a little wider, showing more teeth.

Pearl shoved the flashlight into her pocket.

Whatever the thing was growled again and rushed.

Pearl jumped. Her hands grasped onto a branch above her. She pulled herself up, scrambling higher and higher, not looking down. Maybe she could get to where the branches were too thin to support the growling thing.

Up and up Pearl scrambled, higher and higher, arms pulling, legs pushing. Below her, the growl followed along with the snap, pop, crash of branches. What was that thing? How big was it? Where could she go to get away from it or even hide?

She reached a point where the branches grew thin enough that they last rays of sunlight also came through the leaves. The extra light showed Pearl a way she might get out of this, or at least have a fighting (or talking) chance.

Just below her, a branch cracked like one of Alex’s firecrackers, the ones Mom pretended she didn’t know he had. Pearl used the branch next to her to help her hurry along the branch under her feet. After several steps, the branch bent downward several inches. Pearl bounced on it twice, testing it. Then, She used the third bounce to help lift her to a ticker branch on another tree.

The bark grated on her hands, but it also gave her hands and feet extra grip so she could pull herself up.

From there, Pearl scrambled downward, which was much easier than going upward. She reached the place where the two branches from different trees grew together and stepped out onto them. They felt perfectly solid, almost like standing right on the ground.

Pearl took her flashlight out of her pocket and drew the wooden sword from the loop on her backpack.

Now, if only she could think of something clever to say.

Not far from where Pearl scurried about the upper branches of the trees in the nature area section of Ardenwood Park, Liberty went through the process of opening to the entrance to her hovel.

“You left that girl to face something she doesn’t understand alone,” a voice said.

At first, Liberty thought it was her conscience. It had never spoken to her out-loud before, but then again, she couldn’t remember feeling this bad about something before. Then she realized someone or something else was speaking to her.

“She needs your help,” the voice said.

“She seemed to be able enough to move about in the trees,” Liberty said. “She shouldn’t have any trouble getting back across her fence, through her yard, and into her fancy home, safe and snug like a rug giving a bug a hug.”

“You’re a clever one Miss Belle—”

“How do you know that name?” Liberty snarled.

“It’s both my business and nature to know the hidden truths of things,” the voice said. “Just as I know that your new acquaintance isn’t going to go back to her fancy home. You promised her something she wants. She won’t stop until she gets it.”

“She’s one of those kind?” Liberty asked.

“Indeed,” the voice said. “She gets it from her parents. Right about now, she’s probably deciding to fight instead of run.”

“What? Really?”

“Indeed.”

“Snot,” Liberty snarled through clenched teeth.

A heavy thud sent a shudder thought the intertwined branches under Pearl’s feet. The flashlight shined on the rows of teeth and those green-yellow eyes.

“You’re a long way from home, little mouse.”

The voice came to Pearl’s ears like a slow rumble that seemed just a little mean. It was like spilling off your skateboard into the gravel beside the path. Then the sound of it tromped through Pearl’s ears, into her head, went wandering around her body, and settled between her lungs. Like after getting up from the spill, your wrist hurts and you have gravel ground into your hand, so Mom and Dad take you to the hospital to get it all checked out, only to find out your writs is broken. Pearl struggled to breathe.

Time. She needed time. For what, she wasn’t exactly sure, but as long as she had time, she could come up with some way to get out of this mess.

Pearl shifted her feet, kept the flashlight shined on the thing, and raised the sword so the tip pointed straight at those teeth and eyes as she remembered from Dad’s adventure movies.

“You are cute, little mouse.” It stepped closer. “Do you think I am worried about a glorified stick?”

Pearl swallowed. Her mouth felt coated in kitty litter dust. Still, she had to say something.

The thing moved closer.

“Put the stick down and come snuggle me, little mouse.”

“It’s not a stick,” Pearl said. “It is the sword my father gave me. He called it Oakblade and Terror of the Wicked.”

“Then why should I fear it? I just want to snuggle a lost and lonely little mouse.”

“You seem wicked to me.”

“Does it seem like I am in terror. little mouse?”

Pearl drew in a deep breath and tried to sound like Aowyn, Wonder Woman, and Princess Leia all wrapped in one.

“Take one more step and you will be.”

The yellow-green eyes glared at Pearl. The shadowy mouth stretched wider, showing even more teeth. Both eyes and teeth moved just a little closer.

“I am still not terrified, little mouse.”

It moved a little closer.

“Still not.”

Pearl took a small step back.

“Hey, mulch breath,” Liberty’s voice called from above.

Pearl shined her flashlight upward.

Liberty crouched on a branch not too high above where Pearl stood The wild little girl held her hook stick above her head, and her mouth stretched into a wide grin. Not quite as wide as the thing hunting Pearl…but close.

“Catch!” Liberty threw the stick at the shadowy thing.

Those gleaming teeth snatched the length of wood out of the air with little effort.

Liberty sprang into the air, following right behind her hook stick. She flew past the creature. At the last possible moment, her hands grabbed the very end of the catchstick. The force of her movement pulled the shadowy thing off the branch and into the air with Liberty.

Pearl swept her flashlight this way and that, trying to see what happened to Liberty.

The wild girl had an arm and a leg wrapped around the hookstick. The catchstick hung from a branch just below Pearl. The green-yellow eyes glared up from the other end of the hookstick. Liberty’s free leg kicked right between the eyes over and over. The thing yelped, let go, and crashed through the branches into the darkness below.

Liberty climbed up the hookstick, then used it to climb onto the the inter-growing branches with Pearl.

“Run,” Liberty said.

Thank you, Pearl gasped. “What was that thing?”

“Is,” Liberty said without looking back. “What IS that thing. A little fall like that won’t do much more than irritate the Cheshire.”

“The Chesire cat?” Pearl asked. “Like Alice and Wonderland?”

“Who is Alice?” Liberty asked. “And where is Wonderland?”

“It’s a book, Pearl said. “And movies. The Cheshire Cat is a character.”

Liberty didn’t say anything for a while. She kept up her rush through the tree branches, stopping only now and then to make sure that Pearl was still behind her. Finally, they reached a tree that seemed a little wider than the others.

“This isn’t a book or a movie,” Liberty said. “It’s real life. Probably realier than you’ve ever known, full of dangers as bad as or worse than the cheshire.”

Pearl nodded. “Got it.”

“Now, I can sneak you home, or you can be my guest. Which will you choose?”

Even before Pearl’s mind could start to think about which she should choose, her mouth opened. “I want to be your guest.”

Liberty nodded. She pushed one of the knots on the slightly-wider tree, pushed it again, twisted a small branch, and then tugged a clump of leaves.

A door swung open.

“Well then, guest of mine,” Liberty said. “Welcome to my home.”

A small flash of blue light made Pearl blink and stumble a bit crossing the threshold into liberty’s home.

“What was that?” Pearl asked.

“What was what?” Liberty asked.

“The blue light,” Pearl said.

“Oh, that…” Liberty smiled. “That was you crossing into the blue.”

“The blue?” Pearl asked.

“Yeah.” Liberty headed down a wooden spiral staircase. “Come on.”

Pearl followed her new friend and rescuer down the stirs. She counted fourteen before coming into a small room with a bed covered in mismatched blankets and pillows so it looked more like a nest. On the far wall was a cupboard with one door hanging partly open. Opposite the bed was a small, wood-burning stove.

Liberty hung her catchstick on a peg next to the stairs. Pearl did the same with her backpack.

“There’s leafbags under the bed.,” Liberty said. “Pull them out, and I’ll take care of food.”

Leafbags turned out to be like beanbags, only made of canvas and leaves. Food was hot chocolate and Spaghetti Oh’s served in wooden dishes, and they ate with plastic spoons. Pearl didn’t ask about the expiration date. Her stomach growled almost as loudly as that cheshire thing, so she ate and drank everything Liberty gave her.

Pearl finished eating and asked, “What’s the blue?”

“You’ve heard the expressions, out of the blue, once in a blue moon, the wild blue yonder, looking through blue glasses, into the blue, and what in the blue blazes?”

“I’ve heard some of them,” Pearl said.

“Well,” Liberty said. “That flash happens when you cross into the blue.”

“What?” Pearl asked. “Is this another world? Like… Wonderland… or… Narnia… or…?”

Her breath came in shallower and shallower gasps. She couldn’t help shaking in her leaf bag. Another world. Full of adventure. And squirrels with butterfly wings. And who knows what other wonders. And all of it had been waiting for Pearl just on the other side of the fence and up in the trees.

“I don’t know what those places are,” Liberty said. “But we’re still in the same world. This tree is still in the Ardenwood. We’re just kinda sideways. Things just work a little bit differently here in the blue.”

“Like this room fitting inside a tree?” Pearl asked. “Sorta, kind of a TARDIS thing?”

“I don’t know what a TARDIS is,” Liberty said. “You have funny words. “But the other thing it might be is maybe we became small enough to fit inside a room that’s inside a tree.”

Pearl stared at Liberty for a few seconds.

“Well? Which is it?”

Liberty shrugged. “Don’t know. Don’t really care enough to know. Whichever it is, it makes certain parts of life in the Ardenwood easier. Like staying away from the Chesire and his kind when they come out at night.”

“How many of them are there?” Pearl asked.

“Enough that you don’t want to be out after dark,” Liberty said. “No one has stayed out to count them all. Or, if they did, didn’t last long enough to tell anyone.”

“How many of you are there?” Pearl asked. “I mean other kids. Living in the trees like this?”

“I don’t know that either,” Liberty said. “Enough that I don’t know all of them.”

“How come we don’t see you?”

“Didn’t you listen? Liberty asked. “We’re off in the blue. You don’t see us because you don’t want to.

They went to sleep. Pearl thought that she might be up all night, or at least half the night, thinking about this strange new world she had discovered. The Blue. How did nobody ever find out about it? What was the chesire, exactly? How did it get it’s name? What other things were here in the trees on this side of the Blue that Pearl had never known about?

But, the leafbag was more comfortable than Pearl expected, and the blanket Liberty gave Pearl wrapped around her with all the warmth of bedtime stories dad used to tell. Pearl’s eyes closed for just a moment, to enjoy the feeling of settling into the leaves and stories, and the next moment, Pearl sank into the deepest sleep she’d known in a long, long time.

In the wider worlds outside of Liberty’s room inside the trees:

A part of feline eyes in a not-quite-human face kept watch, as it had for years, just in case.

A shadowy form with green-yellow eyes and two rows of sharp teeth recovered from its fall and plotted its vengeance.

On the other side of the fence, Pearl’s mother huddled in the treehouse wrapped in sleeping bags and sending soft whispers asking for her daughter to be safe.

Up in the highest branches where the blue leaves grow, a herd of squirrels with brightly colored wings dreamed of scraps of food left by people who brought picnics to the Ardenwood.

Trapped somewhere just to the side of the place between the normal, the Blue, and the Pale, a man sat spiraling in his thoughts, waiting for rescue.

The next morning Pearl and Liberty woke and had a breakfast of juice boxes and stale doughnuts.

“Where do you get the food?” Pearl asked.

“Steal, scavenge, or trade,” Liberty said around a mouthful of doughnut. “Some of the older kids go on raids out of the Ardenwood. Sometimes we can trade with the children inside the Stronghold.”

“What’s the stronghold?” Pearl asked.

“It’s a place on the far side of the Ardenwood,” Liberty said. “Lots of children live there. Like a family but not a family. None of the growns there act like parents. More like guards.

“Growns?” Pearl asked. “Like grownups?”

“Sure.” Liberty shrugged. “Bigger, like parents, but not.” The growns don’t like it when we trade with children of the Stronghold. It’s a risk too. Sometimes the growns there try and catch us. How terrible would it be to be stuck on the ground all the time?”

Pearl got her map out of her backpack. She spread it on the floor between her and Liberty. Liberty looked it over. Pearl pointed to her hour, right on the edge, represented by a drawing of her treehouse.

“This is where I live.” Pearl moved her finger a bit. “This is about where the two branches are growing together. Where is the Stronghold?”

Liberty pointed to the lower left-hand corner. Pearl’s mother had called the center there something like an orphanage for kids with bad families. Pearl decided in her next version of the map, she needed to put as much of what surrounded Ardenwood park as she could. She would also add new landmarks she saw, like the branches that grew together.

“Can we see the squirrels with wings now? Pearl asked.

Pearl did not see a flash of blue light when she followed Liberty out of the room hidden away inside the tree. They walked along the branches, and Pearl asked Liberty about it.

“You’re in the BLue now,” Liberty said.

That made Pearl stop short. “Like forever?”

Liberty laughed. “Afraid you can’t go home now?”

Peal shifted a bit from one foot to the other. “Yes. A little.”

“You can go home,” Liberty said. “If you want to. It’s not an all-or-nothing thing.”

“Will I be able to come back to the Blue if I go home?”

“Sure,” Liberty said. “The Blue and the Normal aren’t one-or-the-other kinds of places. Well… mostly. It kind of depends.”

“On what?”

Liberty started walking again.

“It depends on how long you stay home without coming into the Blue. The longer you stay out, the harder it is to get back in without a guide. I have the feeling you won’t be staying out very long, if you even go home at all.”

“I’m going home,” Pearl said. “After I see those butterfly squirrels.”

“I’ve heard that before,” Liberty said.

Pearl smiled. “But I’ll be back as often as I can.”

Liberty hoisted her catchstick onto her shoulder. “We’ll see.”

Pearl followed Liberty toward where the squirrels with the butterfly winds gathered.

High above them, up where the blue leaves grew, a pair of feline eyes watched, but they only partly watched the two girls chattering away like old, dear friends. Mostly those eyes watched among the lower branches still shrouded in shadows, waiting for the sun to pierce that low.

A dark shadowy creature slinked and slid from one patch of darkness still left from the night to the next. It growled its hunger, anger, and desire for revenge.

Ardenwood Park seemed bigger than Pearl remembered. It hadn’t been that long ago that she and her mother had taken a walk the long way around their block and through the nature area. Granted, pearl rarely came to the nature area, and when she did, she stuck to the paths on the ground. Still, even with the times Liberty took them higher into the trees, then closer to the ground, and even the few times they backtracked under or over their previous course (Because that’s just how the branches grew), Pearl thought they should have come to the edge of the nature area… at the very least. But even with all their walking and climbing, they didn’t come to the edge of anything. Liberty kept walking along branches, climbing up, sometimes sliding down, and even jumping from one to another now and then. Sometimes Peal had to help Pearl along by using the catchstick, but for the most part, Pearl kept up all on her own. She spent most of her outside time in trees, after all.

In the middle of the morning, Liberty pushed a branch full of leaves, Pearl looked out onto a wide, open clearing she had never seen before. In the center of the clearing, a single tree stood all by itself. Rope bridges and zip lines stretched across the space between the trees of the nature area and the lone tree in the clearing. Other children climbed around that tree and crossed toward and away from it on the ropes.

Pearl opened her mouth to ask what was so special about the tree, and then she saw fruit hanging from its branches.

Liberty dropped down two thick branches to a rope bridge. Pearl followed.

“Welcome to lunch,” Liberty said. “Try not to talk to anyone too much.”

“Why not?” Pearl asked.

“Not everyone from the Ardenwood is as nice as I am,” Liberty said. “They will say things to get you to think they are your friend in order to get everything that can form you. Once they get everything and your catchstick, they’ll leave you to fall from the highest branch possible.”

Liberty slung her catchstick over her back and stepped onto the rope bridge. After a few steps, she turned back.

“Coming?”

Pearl didn’t move. “How do I know you’re not one of those kind of people?”

Liberty shrugged. “I could have left you to deal with the Cheshire alone.”

“Good point.” Pearl followed her new friend across the open space.

Half-way across, Pearl had a thought.

“Why doesn’t everyone just climb to the ground and walk across?”

“Because it’s safer up here,” Liberty said.

“What do you mean?” Pearl asked.

“Look down.”

Fortunately, Pearl spent enough time in high places that looking down didn’t bother her at all. At first, the ground underneath them seemed covered with dried grass, grown long without anyone to mow it. The blades back and forth in the wind, except… the air was mostly still, and the yellow seemed too much the same for all the grass across the clearing. Pearl didn’t see any differences in the color anywhere like normal grass might have.

“What happens if someone goes on the grass?” Pearl asked.

“We don’t know,” Liberty replied. “Come on.”

They continued across the swaying rope bridge toward lunch.

About half-way across the rope-bridge, someone called out, “Hey Liberty… Who’s your new friend?”

Someone else said, “I thought she didn’t join klatches.”

“She doesn’t,” a third said. “But then, she also said she hates groundlings, and that looks an awful lot like a groundling to me.”

“Looking a bit shady there, Liberty,” the first voice said. “If you really are Liberty.”

“Slip off!” Liberty shouted. Then she muttered, “And break everything on the way down.” Then to Pearl, “Ignore those mulch brains. Come on. Let’s eat.”

Laughter echoed. Liberty’s head hung down and her shoulders slumped. IN between steps, pearl looked about and noticed none of the other kids were alone. They mostly went in groups of three or more, walking across rope bridges or sitting on branches of that giant fruit tree. It seemed that children were the same whether in the schoolyard or after crossing the Blue into Ardenwood: They gathered in packs and the few who didn’t fit in got picked on. Pearl knew all about not fitting in.

When they reached the tree, which was so much bigger than Pearl expected, even from just the side of the clearing. Liberty took them to a thing like a cross between a hammock and a picnic blanket stretched between two thick branches.

“What’s a klatch?” Pearl asked.

“It’s a group of kids that stick together in the Ardenwood, Liberty said. “Not quite a family. Not quite a club.”:

“Why aren’t you in a klatch?” Pearl asked.

“Stay here,” Liberty said. “I’ll get some fruit.”

Waiting for Liberty to return with lunch, Pearl took a moment to see all the interesting things she could notice.

The tree trunk was huge, wider than Pearl’s treehouse. It had many different kinds of fruit hanging from different branches: apples, oranges, pears, and peaches. At the outer tips of some of the branches, vines hung down covered in berries. The tree’s leaves seemed to lean closer to a shade of blue than the vibrant green of most trees in spring and summer.

The other groups of children, those “klatches” stayed up in the higher branches. No one seemed interested in coming down to meet Pearl. Was that because she came here with Liberty? Or maybe because she was a groundling? Or maybe some other reason altogether?

Pearl wished she had remembered to bring her journal to write down the things she noticed so she could read them to Dad when (if?) he ever came back. Next time she came to Ardenwood Park and figured out a way into the blue, she would be better prepared. She also needed to update her map.

She took the map out of her backpack and wondered where this fruit tree was in relation to everything else. Liberty’s path here had been so windy and turny and distances in the Blue were so different than the distance in the regular world. She wasn’t quite sure where this tree should be in relation to all her other landmarks.

“Put that away.”

Liberty dropped down onto the picnic hammock. She craned her neck to look upward. Pearl looked up too. All the other klatches seemed to be ignoring them.

“Don’t let anyone know you have that,” Liberty said.

“Why not?” Pearl folded the map and put it away.

“Somethings that live in the Blue need to stay in the blue,” Liberty said. “And that map could show them the way out.”

“Like the cheshire?” Pearl asked.

Liberty nodded. “Like the cheshire. Here,” Liberty put a small basket full of fruit between them. “Let’s eat.”

Speaking of things that live in the Blue that want to escape to the normal…

A creature slinked and slid from shadow to shadow as close to the ground as it dared. It had been called the cheshire by so many children for so long that it had forgotten its old name. Very quickly in its hunt, the chesire gave up trying to track little Liberty by smell. She had fully embraced the Blue and so smelled so much like everything else that she might as well be a blue leaf. The groundling however… that little mouse smelled… reeked of the ground… of the Earth… and that made her so deliciously easy to follow. The cheshire couldn’t wait to find and swallow that little mouse up.

Someone dropped onto a branch in the cheshire’s way. Tall and thin, with braided black hair and piercing-blue eyes without a hint of white. Those eyes matched exactly the color of the robe the person wore woven from blue leaves. Lord Azure gave the cheshire a slight bow.

“You’re up late.” Lord Azure’s voice dripped with jawbreaker sweetness. “Or is it early?”

“What do you want?” the cheshire snarled.

“The same thing you want,” Lord Azure said. “I want you to make a snack out of a little groundling mouse.”

The cheshire stared hard at this lordling from up in the high branches. “Why?”

“Do you really care?” Lord Azure asked.

The cheshire considered this ever every angle. “No.”

“Good,” Lord Azure said, and then whispered to the cheshire about a secret path through the yellowgrass around the fruit tree, a secret path paved with dried blue leaves.

The cheshire grinned and hurried off to hunt

Luckily for Pearl, a part of feline eyes in a not-quite-human face saw the whole thing.

Pearl popped a raspberry into her mouth.

“Why aren’t you part of a klatch?” she asked Liberty.

“Because I’m not,” Liberty said. “Drop it.”

The wild girl’s tone reminded Pearl of the creak a branch might give to warn her that it might not be able to support her weight if she went any further.

They ate without speaking for a bit. After a while, Pearl couldn’t stand it any more. She just wanted to share words with someone who was fun, because Alex wasn’t, wasn’t all about breeding cats, or Mom talking about how tired and busy she was.

“How much further until we see the squirrels with butterfly wings?” Pearl asked.

“They are a few trees over and several layers up,” Liberty said.

She bit into an apple so red it might have come from a fairy tale. Then again, with everything going on around Pearl, she figured she might be right in the middle of her own fairy tale. Liberty sat munching and crunching on the fruit and stared off into the leaves. Then, she stopped mid-chew and looked right at Pearl.

“How do you know about them?” Liberty asked.

“The squirrels with wings?” Pearl asked.

Liberty nodded.

“I saw one,” Pearl said.

Liberty swallowed. “Where were you when you saw it?”

“In my treehouse,” Pearl said.

“Where is that?” Liberty asked.

“In my back yard.” For some reason, Pearl didn’t like all these questions coming at once. “Why?”

“Something is weird about this,” Liberty said, “in a, ‘do I really want to eat that?’ kind of weird, not in a, ‘what’s a groundling doing up here so close to dark?’ kind of weird. Something’s wrong about this whole thing.” Liberty snatched up her catchstick. “We have to go. Right now.

Pearl shoved an apple and orange into her backpack. Liberty was already climbing upward. Pearl shouldered the backpack and scrambled after her new friend.

“What’s going on?” Pearl asked.

“I don’t exactly know,” Liberty said. “But it’s really weird. I don’t like it.”

They climbed higher.

“Weird how?” Pearl asked. “Don’t like what?”

“You shouldn’t have been able to see the squirrel,” Liberty said. “Groundlings usually can’t see that far into the Blue, and especially not from the other side of barriers like backyard fences.”

“Pearl caught up to Liberty at one of the zip-lines across the brown grass and back into the Ardenwood.

“Someone in the Blue wanted you to see that squirrel,” Liberty said.

A scream rose up from the branches below… followed by a deep growl that rumbled like an amusement park ride breaking down with people still on it.

“Run! Everybody run!”

“It’s the cheshire!”

More screams followed, and all the children in the lower branches headed upwards. Others scurried for rope bridges and zip-lines.

Pearl and Liberty looked at each other.

“Oh snot,” Liberty said.

She hooked one end of her catchstick on the zip-line.

“Put your foot here,” Liberty said. “And hold on as tight as you can.”

Pearl did as her friend told her.

Liberty nodded. “When you get to the other side, run for home. Stay in the trees unless you find a trail you know, and know for sure in your secret heart, that you have walked on before. Get back to the other side of your fence. And try not to lose my catchstick.”

Pearl nodded again. “Okay.”

Liberty gave Pearl a good, hard push.

If not for the thought of the chesire chasing her, Pearl might have enjoyed the ride on the zip-line. She thought she heard the cheshire’s low, growling voice chasing her. “I just want to snuggle you little mouse.” Or was that just her imagination?

At the other end of the zip-line, Pearl climbed onto a branch and pulled Liberty’s catchstick up behind her. How did liberty expect Pearl to make it through the trees quickly while carrying the catchstick? Sure, Pearl had lots of practice climbing trees, but it wasn’t the same as living in them like Liberty did. On the other hand, Liberty had shown how useful the catchstick could be. Now Pearl would see how much good all that superhero training with Alex would do for her.

Someone slid to a stop on the zip-line just below Pearl. A boy, maybe a year or two older than her. He wore raggedy, too-big camouflage clothing. Behind him, children crowded the zip-lines and rope bridges to get away from the fruit tree and escape the cheshire. Pearl didn’t see Liberty anywhere.

Pearl looked down. “Hey. Which way to the place where the branches from two different trees grow together?”

The boy glanced up at her. His face had the same expression Alex’s did when he was playing video games and Pearl wanted to do superhero training.

He said, “Slip off, groundling,” and scurried along the branches.

“Snot,” Pearl said.

First, she needed to get away from the cheshire. Then she could figure out the way home. Whatever direction she chose, eventually, she would come to the edge of the nature area. From there, she could find her way home.

Any child in the Ardenwood who decided to stay alone and not join with a klatch learns to think around problems very, very, VERY quickly. Few children can develop this skill, which is why most of them joined klatches. Of all the children who roamed the Blue side of the Ardenwood, Liberty might have been the quickest thinker of them all. So, while all the other children rushed to escape from the cheshire, Liberty wanted to know how the cheshire had gotten to the fruit tree, and in the fullest of full daylight.

After Liberty pushed Pearl away on the zip-line, she dropped down two branches and hid in a clump of leaves. Another question came to her: Was the cheshire more interested in Pearl or Liberty? She’d find out in a moment.

Liberty got her answer when that shadowy form stalked past her over by the fruit tree’s thick trunk. It went up to the zipline, sniffed around, and snarled, “I just want to snuggle you, little mouse.” Further up in the tree, other children cried out. The cheshire rose toward them, branch by branch.

TO get the answers she wanted, Liberty dropped toward the ground, branch by branch.

When she reached the lowest level of branches, Liberty stared at the ground. A circle of cool-looking brown kept the yellow grass from getting too close to the fruit tree. The tree’s roots stretched out so that Liberty could drop down without touching Earth. It had been so long since she had walked on the ground, would Earth even accept her if she slipped?

Pearl wished she’d paid more attention to branches and trees Liberty used to get to the Fruit Tree. Liberty’s room in the tree wasn’t too far from where the two branches grew together. From there, Pearl could find her way home. But she hadn’t paid attention. The Ardenwood in the Blue was filled with so many interesting things. Right now, the interesting things were all the children in all the klatches running to get away from the cheshire.

Alex’s superhero training lessons helped Pearl more than she ever thought they would. He would make crazy obstacle courses in the back hard using lawn and patio furniture, logs from the woodpile, and ropes he hung from branches. Even though carrying the catchstick made it a little more awkward to move through the branches, it wasn’t as bad as Pearl thought. Putting distance between herself and the Fruit Tree, Pearl felt a bit like Robin Hood, Wonder Woman, and Tarzan all in one. She hoped Liberty would be alright.

Using the catchstick, Pearl climbed up one level in the branches and circled around a thick trunk. A girl leaned on a catchstick and glared at Pearl. She had dirty blonde hair in pig-tail braids and wore patch-work cloths of browns and greens.

Pearl turned to go in another direction.

Four other kids either dropped down or climbed up to her level and stood in her way. That all leaned on catchsticks, except one who swung a grappling hook. They all wore the same patchwork browns and greens.

“The cheshire has never come out in the daytime,” that first girl said. “Not until you came along.”

Enjoying the story? READ 31 HERE!

M. Todd
Gallowglas

Children in Trees

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