Stephen clicked off his light, and Flash seemed to calm a bit, although he was definitely hiccuping.
“Hey,” Stephen whispered.
“Hi,” Samar whispered back.
Stephen sat down next to Samar. The babies watched with interest.
“Why do they come to you?” Stephen asked.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s like magic.”
“No.” Samar shook her head. “I’m just … quiet. They like that.”
Bongo flew down to Samar’s shoulder. “Hello,” she said to Stephen, mimicking Samar’s voice.
“Wow,” he said. “That’s amazing.”
“Yesterday I heard her imitate a doorbell.”
Stephen grinned.
“She gave me this key,” Samar said, holding it up. “I don’t know what it’s for. A diary or a jewelry box, maybe.”
“Or the world’s smallest door,” Stephen joked.
For a while, everyone fell silent. Even the baby raccoons were still.
At last Stephen held out his hand, revealing Samar’s wish. “I found this,” he said.
Even in the moonlight, Samar’s blush was visible. She looked away.
“I’m sorry about that word,” Stephen said softly. “The word on the tree. We didn’t … It wasn’t us.”
Samar nodded.
“My parents aren’t bad people. They’re just … afraid of things.” Stephen shrugged.
“So are mine,” said Samar. “I heard my father talking about moving. If we can find a safe place to go.” She gave a sad smile. “If there even is such a place.”
“I’m sorry,” Stephen said again.
The babies, sensing Stephen could be trusted, began to tussle and romp. Harold and the smallest You searched for bugs. RosePetal and her brother, HotButteredPopcorn, played tug-of-war with a long piece of grass.
“I’ll miss them,” Samar said.
“I hope you don’t move,” Stephen said.
A light blinked on in Stephen’s house. “I should go,” he said. “If my parents see me … I should go.”
“Night,” Samar said in a whisper.
Oh, the things I wanted to say to those two! I wanted to tell them that friendship doesn’t have to be hard. That sometimes we let the world make it hard.
I wanted to tell them to keep talking.
I wanted to make a difference, just a little difference, before I left this lovely world.
And so I did it.
I broke the rule.
“Stay,” I said.
30
The animals gaped at me in astonishment. Even the youngest babies knew about the Don’t Talk to People rule.
Bongo darted to my top branch. “Red!” she cried in a strangled whisper. “You can’t—”
“Oh, but I can,” I said. “What have I got to lose?”
“But—”
“As I was saying.” I returned my attention to Stephen and Samar.
They were staring at me, jaws dropped, eyes wide, as frozen as Flash had been not long ago.
“We’re dreaming,” Stephen murmured. “Right?”
“At the same time?” Samar asked. “Is that possible?”
“Pinch me,” Stephen said.
Samar complied.
“Definitely felt that,” Stephen reported.
“Maybe it was a dream pinch,” Samar suggested.
“Excuse me,” I interrupted. “I have two hundred sixteen rings’ worth of wisdom to convey. And not much time.”
Stephen reached for Samar’s hand.
“If it’s a dream,” he said, “at least it’s a cool one.”
And so I began.
31
I haven’t always been a wishtree.
It happened in 1848, long before I was surrounded by concrete and cars, when I was just a few decades old—still a youngster, by red oak standards. No longer a lanky sapling, I was solid and strong, but not anchored to the earth the way I am now.
This was a time, like many other times, when hungry, desperate people sailed on crowded boats to settle here. Many of them ended up, as they always seemed to, in my neighborhood. The blue and green houses were brown then, and filled to overflowing with new arrivals.
Sometimes the newcomers were welcomed. Sometimes they were not. But still they came, hoping and wishing, as people always do.
One of our new residents was a young Irish girl named Maeve. She’d voyaged across the Atlantic with her nineteen-year-old brother, who’d died of dysentery during the trip. Their mother had passed away shortly after Maeve was born; their father, when the children were nine and twelve.
Maeve was solid and plain, but when she smiled, it was like sunshine peeking through clouds. She had a deep laugh, and her hair was as brilliantly red as my finest autumn attire.
Sixteen, alone, and penniless, Maeve shared a tiny room with five other immigrants. She worked night and day, cleaning and cooking and doing whatever she could to stay alive.
Maeve soon discovered she was gifted at caring for the sick. She had no special knowledge. No secret remedies. But she was kind and patient, and she knew how to soothe a fevered brow with a cool cloth as well as anyone. What she didn’t know, she was willing to learn.
As time passed, word grew of Maeve’s abilities. People brought her their sick piglets and their lame horses, their coughing children and fretful babies. Always she explained that she wasn’t sure she could help. But since people in the neighborhood were too poor to go to a doctor, they turned to Maeve.
And since people believed she could help them get better, Maeve tried to live up to their hopes.
When she succeeded, and even when she didn’t, patients and their families would leave small tokens for her: a whittled figurine of a bird, a hairpin, half a loaf of bread. Once someone even left a leather-covered journal, with a tiny silver key that opened its lock.
When Maeve was out tending to someone who was sick, people took to leaving their thank-yous in my lowest hollow. It was still a fresh wound, just a couple of seasons mended. But because it faced the house where Maeve roomed and not the street, it was a safe place to leave a token of gratitude.
That’s when I realized that hollows can be a good thing for people, not just birds and animals.
Little did I know just how good.
32
The years passed, and Maeve became as connected to the neighborhood as I was, even as newcomers from other lands added their music and food and language to our little part of the world. No matter where people were from, Maeve cared for them as best she could.
I grew tougher, my older limbs less pliable, my shadow longer. More trees and shrubs joined me, but there was plenty of sun for all of us, and we never wanted for water.
I’d hosted many families by then, mice and chipmunks in particular. My closest confidant was a young gray squirrel named Squibbles. (All squirrel names begin with the letters S-Q-U.)
Squibbles was especially fond of Maeve, who often fed the little squirrel table scraps.
Privately, Squibbles and I worried about Maeve. Along the way, Maeve had seen a suitor or two, but nothing much came of those flirtations. She had friends aplenty and work to do from dawn till dusk. Still, she seemed lonely. Sometimes Maeve would sit on the porch steps, watching happy families stroll past, and her eyes would well up with tears. At night, she’d gaze out an open upstairs window, and her sighs would float to us on the breeze, melancholy as the call of a mourning dove.
Often Maeve would sit at the base of my trunk and write in her journal. Now and then she’d read passages aloud. She spoke about the Irish countryside fading into fog. She spoke about her family she’d lost. She spoke about her secret hopes and fears and longings. She had love to give, and no one to give it to.
Maeve adored early mornings, when the world was bathed in mist and the sun was still a promise. She would lean against my trunk and close her eyes and hum a tune from her childhood.
One day, the first day of May, Mae
ve joined me at dawn. To my surprise, she reached up to my lowest bough and gently tied a scrap of blue-striped fabric in a careful knot.
“I wish,” she whispered, “for someone to love with all my heart.”
That was my first wish. And the beginning of many more.
33
As the weeks passed, the piece of fabric on my branch drew many comments.
Some of the folks in our neighborhood, the ones from Ireland, would nod knowingly and smile. To them, Maeve would simply say, in her lilting voice, “That’s my raggy tree. She’s not a hawthorn, but she’ll do just fine.”
People who’d come here from other lands—and there were many of them—would frown at the rag, or even reach up to remove it. Maeve would warn, “Don’t you be touching my wish, now.” Patiently, again and again, she would explain how in her old home, leaving wishes on a raggy tree was a time-honored tradition.
Now and then, people would ask Maeve what she’d wished for. She’d tell them the truth, with a sigh and a wry smile: “Nothing much. Just someone to love with all my heart. Nothing much at all.”
Sometimes people would laugh. Sometimes they would roll their eyes. “A wish on a rag won’t bring you love, dearie,” they would say.
But usually, people gave Maeve a kind smile, a squeeze on the arm, a knowing nod.
And then they, too, would ask if they could add a wish of their own.
34
Another year passed. As May neared, I found myself hosting more scraps of fabric than budding leaves.
Squibbles tried to steal a few fabric strips to line his drey, the nest made of leaves and twigs high in one of my forked branches. I explained he’d have to stick with moss and pine needles until the first of May. Wishes, according to Maeve, could not be touched until after May Day. Then, the ones that weren’t carried off in the wind or dragged to the ground by the rain could be removed by people—or by enterprising squirrels.
I suspect she made up that rule for my benefit, so I could grow unfettered, without the weight of wet rags dragging me down.
Just before dawn on the first of May, a young woman approached me. She had dark, wavy hair and wore a tattered gray coat. In her arms was a wrapped bundle.
“Psst,” Squibbles whispered to me. “Here comes another wish, Red.”
But Squibbles was wrong. There was no wish.
Swiftly, but with great care, the girl placed her bundle in my hollow.
A thank-you for Maeve, I realized. A loaf of bread, perhaps. The girl had probably been one of her patients.
She was gone as quickly as she’d come.
Like a hummingbird, I thought: There, then not there.
Like a gust of wind.
35
Just a few minutes later, Maeve opened the door of the little brown house. She smiled at me, and at the scraps waving in the early-morning breeze.
And then came the cry.
Wail, was more like it.
Coming from … me.
Not the meek peep of a wren chick. Not the shy squeak of a mouse pup. No: This was a cry of righteous indignation.
This was a baby.
36
The baby had a note attached to her blanket. Haltingly, Maeve tried to read it out loud. “Italian,” she murmured.
Only later, when she consulted one of her patients, did she understand its meaning:
Please give her the care I cannot.
I wish for you both a life of love.
The baby’s hair was black. Maeve’s was red.
The baby’s eyes were brown. Maeve’s were blue.
The baby was Italian. Maeve was Irish.
They were made for each other.
Maeve named the baby Amadora, which meant, in Italian, “the gift of love.”
37
Many in the neighborhood didn’t approve of an unmarried Irish woman raising an abandoned Italian baby. People talked, as they will, and they tsk-tsked, as they must.
Some people were even angry. They said hurtful things.
They told Maeve that Amadora didn’t belong.
They told Maeve she and the baby should leave.
Maeve merely smiled, held Amadora close, and waited and hoped.
On dark nights when hope was scarce, she would sing an old Irish tune, mixed with a newer, Italian song that she had learned from a neighbor. The melody was sweet. The words were silly. The effect was always the same: a smile from little Ama.
Sure enough, the longer Maeve waited, the kinder people grew. And before long, Ama, as she came to be called, was as much a part of our messy garden as all the rest of us.
When Ama was old enough to feed Squibbles and his family, she did. When she was strong enough to climb me, she did. And when she was ready to make wishes of her own, she did.
Ama grew up steady and honest and kind, like her mother, and had babies of her own, and then grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Eventually Ama and her husband bought the little brown house, and the one right next to it, and painted them blue and green. Years later, they purchased a house across the street and began to rent the blue and green houses to other families.
The family grew and prospered and argued and failed and loved and laughed.
Always and forever, the laughter kept them going.
And when Ama’s grandson had a little girl, he chose a fine Italian name for her, with a fine Irish middle name: Francesca Maeve.
38
As for me, my reputation grew. Hadn’t Maeve’s wish come true in the heart of a wishtree? Didn’t that mean anything was possible?
Of course, as Squibbles often reminded me, I’d had nothing to do with it.
“This isn’t a fairy tale, Red,” he would say.
But people are full of longings, and decade after decade, the hopes kept coming.
A blessing and a burden it has been, all those wishes, all those years.
But everyone needs to hope.
39
At long last, I stopped talking.
Once the words had spilled out, it was like trying to stop the wind.
In the silence that followed, I felt as if the whole world was holding its breath.
I’d broken the rule.
Stephen and Samar still stared open-mouthed at me. They looked as rooted to the ground as I was. Neither had uttered a sound while I’d told my story.
The front door to Stephen’s house opened. “Stephen?” called his father. “What the heck are you doing, young man?”
Stephen leapt to his feet. “I … Here I come, Dad. Um, night, Samar.”
“Night, Stephen,” she said.
Stephen dashed toward the porch, but stopped halfway. He spun around to look at me.
“Thanks?” he said in a quizzical voice, using the same tone he might have used if Bongo had just made him pancakes.
The door slammed behind him.
Samar stood, holding her blanket to her chest. “I know I must be dreaming,” she said.
She headed to her own porch and eased open the door.
“I just wish,” she added with a smile, “that I didn’t have to wake up.”
40
Almost instantly, I regretted what I’d done.
I’d broken the rule. The biggie.
I’d deliberately spoken to people.
And not just a few words. I’d spoken a river of words.
I wasn’t like that frog in the mailbox. I hadn’t broken the rule accidentally.
I’d broken the rule because I wanted something. I wanted to matter. I wanted to do something meaningful before I died.
I’d done it for myself.
After the shocked babies and their equally shocked parents were safely ensconced in their dens, I admitted my feelings to Bongo.
I waited for her to yell at me.
Bongo is good at yelling.
Extremely good.
You might even say she has a gift.
“Why did I do it, Bongo?” I murmured. “Why?”
She flew to Hom
e Plate. She stroked my rough bark with her sleek head.
“You did it, my Wise Old Tree, because you had a story to tell.”
“It was foolish,” I said. “I’m not supposed to be foolish.”
“Not so foolish,” Bongo said. “Just hopeful. And everyone needs to hope, Red. Even Wise Old Trees.”
41
Morning emerged slowly, heavy with clouds. A light rain had fallen just before dawn, soothing my leaves, if not my mood.
Oddly, the ground felt saturated. Spring was always muddy, of course, but this was unusual. It would make for a messy Wishing Day tomorrow.
An early-rising old gentleman with a bamboo cane approached. He paused to attach a small piece of blue paper to my lowest branch, using a bit of twine. He didn’t say his wish aloud, so I couldn’t tell what it was. But he had a satisfied smile as he stepped carefully through the soggy grass.
No doubt I’d be seeing more wishes today. Many people came early to grab an easy-to-reach spot.
This would probably be my last Wishing Day. How could it be that my first one, that long-ago day with Maeve, still seemed as fresh in my heart as my conversation with Stephen and Samar from the previous night?
A car slowed to a crawl near the curb. I saw an arm, a blur, and then—splat—something hit my trunk.
Splat. Splat. Two more times, and the car roared off with a screech of tires.
Bongo was the first to report on the damage.
“Raw eggs,” she said. “I’m assuming that didn’t hurt?”
“Didn’t feel a thing,” I said.
FreshBakedBread, HairySpiders, and BigYou ventured out to inspect the situation.
BigYou slipped under the police tape and licked one of the yolks sliding down my trunk. “Mmm,” she murmured. “Raw. Just the way I like ’em.”
“Hey, Big, share the wealth,” HairySpiders snapped as she and Fresh joined her.
Agnes watched from her perch. “I’d much prefer a squirming mouse pup,” she said. “It’s all yours, ladies.”