“Grab hold!” she shouted. “And climb!”
Nothing happened.
She shook the bottom of the vine. “Grab it!”
Seconds passed. And more seconds.
All at once the vine jerked. Then went taut. Then jerked again, and again. He was climbing!
Anna grabbed hold and pulled down with her own weight. Don’t break, vine—please don’t break.
Finally, she spotted a slight movement at the rim. Sash! Something emerged from the hollow trunk and grabbed the edge. But to Anna’s shock, it wasn’t his paw. Or anyone’s paw.
It was a hand.
Chapter 10
AN INSTANT LATER, the hand that had grasped the rim of the trunk melted back into a bear paw. Right before her eyes! Anna, watching from the boulder, blinked in surprise. She looked overhead at the shimmering rays that sliced through the branches, then back at the paw.
Again she blinked. Must have been just a trick of light.
After the paw, a shaggy bear emerged from the hollow trunk. Sash was covered with spiderwebs, dust, and wood chips. And when he pulled out his left rear paw, it looked twisted and swollen. But he was alive! Anna laughed out loud when he thrust his snout into the yellow llyrberries at the rim of the trunk and took a huge bite.
The cub swallowed the berries at once. Streams of juice rolled down the sides of his mouth. He waved at Anna, then rested on the rim, breathing hard.
Finally, he wriggled backward and wrapped his hind legs around the top of the trunk. Then, despite his swollen paw, he slid back down the outside of the tree. His claws squealed as they scraped against the wood. With a thump, he landed on the ground.
Anna jumped off the boulder and stepped over to his side. He brushed some bark off his furry chest and gazed up at her, green eyes aglow.
“Thanks, Anna.”
“Oh,” she replied casually, “I’d do that for any old bear. Even one crazy enough to dare the ghouls.”
He laughed, the same rippling laugh she had heard so many times before. But this time it sounded a bit different—lighter, somehow, and the voice a little higher. His laughter lifted into the surrounding trees, whose branches rustled and creaked along with him.
“How’s this feeling?” She gently pulled a spiderweb off the hurt limb.
The cub straightened his leg and let the paw sink into a thick tuft of moss. “Just needs some rest, that’s all.”
“Which won’t be easy for you.”
Eagle hopped closer on a root and chirped in agreement.
The young bear pushed his nose at Anna. “No, but I can take care of myself. Always have.” He cocked his head. “Until…just now.”
He reached his forepaw toward her face. Lightly he touched her cheek, so lightly that he seemed to have no claws at all. “You’re the crazy one, you know,” he said, his voice sounding higher again. “But that’s the way I like…a friend.”
Puddles formed in Anna’s eyes. For a moment, in her clouded vision, he looked less like a bear than a sandy-haired boy. A boy who had called her friend.
She reached up to touch the paw on her cheek. What she felt, though, was not a paw—but a hand. A hand with fingers like her own.
She shrieked and pulled away. Furiously, she blinked, trying to clear her vision. Nothing changed. The bear cub before her was now, indeed, a boy.
He wore little over his walnut brown skin: loose leggings made of woven strips of bark, and a band of scarlet leaves around one wrist. His bare chest and arms bore dozens of scrapes, bruises, and scars. Gone was all the fur, though his sandy hair looked just as unruly. Only his wild, magical eyes, as green as the forest itself, hadn’t changed.
The boy watched her, a mysterious gleam in those eyes. “So what do you see?”
“A boy! You’re a boy!” She shook her head in disbelief. “How…?”
“I’m still Sash,” he said calmly.
Anna couldn’t stop shaking her head. “But who are you, really?”
With his good wing, Eagle tapped the boy’s knee, as if demanding an answer.
Sash’s gaze never wavered. “Guess.”
“Just tell me!”
“No, guess.” He grinned with all the mischief of a cub—but the face of a boy.
She drew a deep breath. “Well…you’re not a bear.”
He nodded. “Right so far.” He picked up a llyrberry that had dropped into the grass, flicked it into the air, and caught it on his tongue. “Though I like the way they eat.”
“And eat and eat.”
“Right again.” He folded his arms on his chest. “Come on, now. I thought you had a brain! Can’t you do any better?”
She growled at him, sounding like a bear herself. “Well, I just don’t know. You’re not a bear, and you’re not a regular boy. Aye, that’s certain! What are you, then?”
He just kept grinning.
Anna’s brow furrowed. “Oh, come on. Give me a hint, at least.”
Sash pursed his lips. “All right, all right. I guess you could say I’m, well…closer to Old Burl.”
“Old Burl?” She stared at him, now thoroughly confused. “He’s back at the beach! And we’re out here, by the glade. You’re no closer than I am, and you know it.”
“Not like that, Anna.” His eyes sparkled.
“Closer in spirit.”
She gasped. And her mouth opened as wide as an oyster. “You don’t mean…you’re not saying…”
He leaned nearer. “What?”
She blew a long, slow breath. “You’re not really…”
“I am! A tree spirit.”
She just stood there, dumbfounded.
“What my people call a drumalo.” He bent his injured leg, winced, then put it back down on the moss. “And what some might call a tree ghoul.”
Anna felt suddenly wobbly. She sat down, her back against the trunk of the hollow tree. And gazed at him with round eyes. “But…,” she said at last, “tree ghouls are horrid, and ugly.” She glanced over her shoulder. “I saw one, Sash. Deep in the forest. It had the scariest face.”
Sash reached his hands up to his face and pulled at the sides of his mouth. He crossed his eyes and wagged his tongue. And he started making strange noises—a mix of snarls, snorts, and hiccups.
“Like that?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Be serious. The ghouls are deadly!”
“How many times do I have to tell you? There are no ghouls. Just drumalos, like me.”
She gazed at him, her hazel eyes full of doubt.
Sash laid his hand on her knee. “You can be pretty thick, you know. I’ve met moles who are smarter.”
“Say now, that’s not fair! I learned your language, didn’t I? Fast as…well, fast as a seal can sail on the waves.”
“Ha! You mean fast as an owl can sail on the wind.”
She nodded, her face suddenly serious. “If what you say is true…”
“Anna, believe me. It’s true.”
She studied him for a long moment. “Now I know why your words sound so much like branches swishing.”
He peered back at her. “And there’s more for you to know. Aye, much more.”
“Wait now! What I really want to know is why you’re not scary. Like you’re supposed to be.”
He smirked. “I’m scary to my mother sometimes.”
“No, no. I’m not joking! Aren’t tree spirits really…well, ghouls?”
Sash straightened his back against the trunk. “Only if that’s what you’re expecting.”
“You mean…”
“Aye! Don’t you see, Anna? That’s a drumalo’s special skill. We look like whatever you most expect, or want, to see. A bear cub—or a boy.”
“Or a ghoul!” She pursed her lips, trying to take all this in. “You can really do that?”
“Right.”
A fresh wind swept through the forest, tossing branches all around. Leaves and twigs and petals swirled through the honey-sweet air. For a while they just listened to the swi
sh of boughs and the rustle of grass.
Sash reached over and took her hand. “It’s for our own protection. This way, to a bear cub—or someone watching bear cubs—that’s what I look like. And if you’re expecting an ugly old ghoul, well, that’s what you’ll find.”
Her heart raced just at the thought of the hideous face she’d seen in the forest. “This is all so hard to believe.”
“Of course, we only take those shapes,” he went on, “when we’re uprooting.”
“Uprooting?”
“Traveling around, outside our home trees.” He flexed his leg on the bed of moss. “Me, I was born in a grove of hawthorns. At the far end of the forest, near that old willow you’ve talked about.”
Anna started. Her eyes glowed like newborn stars. “The High Willow? You’ve been there?”
“Grew up dancing around her roots! Aye, and swinging from her branches.” He chuckled to himself. “Riding out storms there, too. Big, howling ones! Enough to blow me and my whole family to the ocean and back.”
She smiled. “And you have lots of family, I’ll wager. Five or six hawthorn brothers and sisters?”
“Five or six!” he bellowed. “Why, I’ve got thousands! When you’re a drumalo, the whole forest is your family.”
Anna drew a deep breath. Being a tree spirit sounded so very different from what she’d expected. From what she’d been taught. Amazing! Mayhaps the master was just mistaken? But was that really possible?
She slid closer on the gnarled roots. “Sash, you have to tell me the truth about something.”
“Me? I always tell the truth, you know that.”
“Really, now.” She bowed her head toward his so their noses almost touched. “Do tree ghouls—spirits, I mean—ever harm people? Or kill them?”
He scrunched up his nose, as if she’d asked him to bite himself. “Is that what old Crabface told you?”
“Aye. But it’s not true, is it?”
He made his mock scary face again, complete with snorts and hiccups. “What do you think, Anna?”
“I’d say it’s not what drumalos do.”
“And you’d be right.”
She slapped her own thigh. “So they couldn’t have killed her!”
“Who?”
“My mother!” Her voice rose, even as the surrounding branches chattered and swished. “The tree ghouls didn’t kill her! Oh, Sash, I’ve got to find out what really happened to her. Got to! She could still be alive, you know.” She swallowed. “And even if she’s not…then at least I’ll know.”
She squeezed his arm. “Take me there, would you? To the High Willow? Right to the place I was found! Please, Sash? Please?”
Somberly, he shook his head. “Sorry. I just can’t.”
Anna just looked at him. A bumblebee hummed right past her cheek, but she didn’t notice. “Can’t?”
He shook his head again.
Tears welled in her eyes, though she tried to blink them back.
“Until my ankle heals, that is!” He laughed, his voice rippling like a swollen stream. “When I’m better, I’ll come for you. And take you there.”
She hooted with delight and hugged him.
Suddenly Eagle started to whistle. Anna looked up at the slanting rays of sunlight, woven through the branches like gleaming threads of gold. Late afternoon already!
“Oh!” she cried. “The master—he’ll be back soon.” She lifted the sparrow onto her shoulder. “I’ve got to go. But will you be all right?”
“Sure,” he replied, with a broad sweep of his arm. “I’ve got plenty of family to look after me.”
Chapter 11
DAYS WENT BY, days that felt like weeks to Anna. The air hummed with insects and rustling leaves, and sunlight warmed the sand late into the evening. Summer had truly begun.
These were the days Anna usually loved most. But now she barely noticed. For her mind was filled, like the shallows at high tide, with questions about Sash. When would he come for her? And would he still want to take her to the willow?
As she stepped along the water’s edge one late afternoon, the cool waves licked her feet. Wet sand slid between her toes. And she wondered about her coming journey with Sash. Would it really be as safe as he thought? What if all tree spirits weren’t as kind and playful as he was? Mayhaps some of them really were ghouls.
She shuddered, remembering that face in the forest. And all the master’s gruesome tales of poor creatures killed by ghouls—creatures whose eyes had been ripped out of their skulls, whose skin had been torn to bits by cruel claws, and whose bloody innards had been draped from trees.
Seeing Old Burl, she strode over and sat on one of the fir’s knobby roots. That familiar smell, both tart and sweet, rolled over her like a wave. And calmed her, as it always did. As she sat there in the cool shade, Eagle, who had been busy pecking clam shells on the beach, hopped to her side.
Anna gazed up into the layers of needled branches. “What should I believe, Burl? Is Sash really a tree spirit?” She tilted her head slightly. “Are you?”
The tree gave a quiet creak of its trunk. No more.
She closed her eyes and rested her head against Old Burl’s trunk. She could almost feel something in there. Something that stirred with a life of its own. Was it a spirit? Or just a bark beetle? She couldn’t be sure.
Her eyes opened and turned to the forest—and what lay beyond. The far ridge was covered with mist, like a blanket that someone had woven from wisps of cloud. What was it, really, that drew her to the High Willow? The memory of her mother, or something else?
She shook her head. She couldn’t be sure of that, either. Mayhaps she wasn’t really remembering her mother, but only those songs she would sing. Songs that blew like the wind…and beat like a heart.
That evening, after a supper of crabmeat cakes and mackerel soup, the master checked carefully all the door and window latches. “Can’t be too blasted careful,” he grumbled. “‘Tis a full moon tonight, and them ghouls will be out a-prowlin’.”
He swung his face toward her. The orange glow from the hearth flickered on his brow, as if his thoughts were on fire. “Ye haven’t seen any more bears recently, have ye, girl?”
Anna looked up from the leggings she was trying to repair. “No,” she answered truthfully. But she frowned, wishing she could open her whole heart to him. The way she could long ago, when she was little.
“Good.” The old man reached for his pipe, stuffed some dried kelp in the bowl—then cast it aside. “Aaah! I be too thunderin’ tired for even a smoke. These summer days be long ones, and brutal.”
Anna felt a surge of sympathy. “You’ve done well, sir, with your catches.”
“Well enough,” he replied, his voice a touch softer. “Got to keep us fed, I do.” His gray eyes glowed like coals in the firelight. He looked at her almost warmly. “Yer gettin’ bigger, girl. And I wants ye to keep on growin’.”
She grinned at the corners of her mouth. “That’s why I need to lengthen these leggings.”
“And why ye needs yer sleep.” She wasn’t sure, but he almost seemed to grin himself. “Get now, to bed with ye.”
Moments later, Anna lay on her pallet of straw. She watched the firelight flicker on the thatch above, and felt warmed by something more than the hearth. And she knew she would sleep well tonight.
But she was wrong. She rolled and turned. Bits of straw poked at her neck. And someone was calling to her, calling her name.
“Anna,” the voice called. “Rowanna.”
She sat up. Fingers of moonlight were reaching through the cracks in the shutter, groping at the edge of her pallet. She listened, trying to hear the voice that had called to her. All she heard, though, was the splash of surf outside the cottage.
Yet someone had truly called. She was sure of it. Sash? No…not him, but someone else. Aye, someone she knew. But who? And she could still hear that voice now—not with her ears, but deeper, in her bones.
Outside. Right now, waiting
for me. She stood up and walked across the earthen floor. The master—mustn’t wake him. He needs to sleep.
Almost in a dream, she tiptoed past the master, sound asleep. Ever so quietly, she glided to the door. When her hand touched the latch, though, she froze. Should she really do this? Was there something wrong with opening the door, something she couldn’t remember?
But the pull to go outside was too strong. She slid open the latch. Cold night air slapped her face and flowed right through her grass nightshirt. She shivered, then stepped onto the beach.
Old Burl stood motionless, watching. The fir’s branches glittered in the silvery light. And behind, a great globe was rising over the forest, glowing brighter by the second. The rising moon!
Had the moon somehow called to her? She watched, entranced, as it lifted over the trees and into the sky as dark as octopus ink. Its light made a pathway across the clouds. A pathway that shone like the sunlit sea.
Suddenly she caught her breath. For the shining path led across the sky and straight to the highest knoll on the ridge. And ended at the single tree that stood there, all alone. Aye, the High Willow had never looked so clear as it did tonight! Its arching branches seemed to glow with a light of their own.
Anna knew, in a flash, who had called her name. The willow! She stepped closer to the forest edge. I will come to you, I will. And I promise—
“Thunder and blast, girl! What be ye doin’ out here at night?”
The master stood at the cottage door. He glared at her, the moonlight in his eyes as bright as lightning bolts. Then, as he saw where she was looking, he strode over and seized her by the shoulders.
“I should’ve known, ye brainless child! Lookin’ right into the eyes of that ghoul on the ridge!”
“B-but sir…,” she sputtered. “It’s n-not like that.”
“What?” He squeezed her shoulders. “Are ye sayin’ there be no ghoul there?”
“Oww,” she squealed, trying to pull away. “I’m saying mayhaps there’s more to that tree than we know.”
He squeezed her harder.