I agreed about the value. The soil in our forest was our greatest treasure. It fed us, nurtured us, kept us connected.
“This forest makes its own soil.” Val sifted the decomposing leaves around him through his fingers. “But out there, in the Barbs and the Stilts, the soil is dead, which is why nothing grows well. People have to have chemical fertilizers to make anything grow, but it doesn’t last long.”
“Crankas talked about fertilizers.” Arrow frowned. “He said he was going to fix the forest with fertilizers in the soil.”
“He also said he was going to tear down the Shimmer Cave.” Petari rolled her eyes. “Like we should trust what he says.”
“True,” Arrow said. “But why would Fenix kill the soil, then fix it?”
“Well, for one, Fenix had lots of side businesses, and one is making fertilizers,” Val said. “So they get money when people buy their fertilizer. But mostly, I think they just don’t care.”
Arrow jumped up. “How can humans not care?”
“People out there don’t know trees the way you do, Arrow.” Petari rose too. “I didn’t care about them in the Barbs. Not like Dad did.”
“We didn’t have many trees in the Barbs,” Val said. “And besides, we were too busy finding stuff to eat.”
Petari pursed her lips.
“So why do you think Fenix is killing the earth?” Arrow asked.
Val swallowed. “You saw that smoke. You saw that stuff they were dumping into the riverbed. That’s not natural. Dad said the waste from those plants was poisonous. If it’s poisonous to us, it’s probably poisonous to the earth, too.”
“And if they’re dumping it on top,” Petari said, “the poison could be bleeding into the earth and getting into the underground river.” Pieces were starting to fit into place.
“Then the poison is floating down here,” Arrow continued. “Into the river, into the soil, into the Anima.”
“It’s killing everything it touches.” Val’s words dropped from his mouth like a bird falling out of the sky.
“Dad always said pollution was like lies.” Petari cast her eyes down. “He hated it when I lied. He said that untruthful words pollute our souls just like the chemicals were polluting our land. I always thought he was trying to get me to own up to stuff. But maybe he was right.”
“That’s why the Anima is dying,” Arrow whispered.
“That’s why we’re dying,” I said. These chemicals, this poison, was making the bitter taste in the soil, the bitterness that had begun when the Anima had started to wither.
I felt a tug from the root network, but I was too engrossed. We were close to understanding our problem. To finding a solution.
“What can we do to stop it?” Arrow began to pace in front of the small group.
“I don’t know.” Val paced behind Arrow. “It was when Dad was trying to get a job at Fenix that he disappeared. He thought that if he could work there, he’d change our lives and could help the plants, too.”
“You think they killed him?” Petari ran to keep pace with her brother. Fear vibrated in the air around her. “Do you think that’s what happened?”
Val shook his head. “They didn’t have any reason to. He could’ve been robbed. He could’ve been hurt. Or he could’ve just left.” He looked at his sister. “He was never the same after Mom died.”
Sadness spread out from them both.
Arrow stopped walking, crossing his arms over his chest. “So what does this mean? How do we fix the magic?”
The other two halted as well. They looked at Arrow. Arrow looked at them. They all looked at me.
“I don’t have an answer,” I said, wishing more than anything that I did.
All were silent, deep in thought. Searching for options. It was as though none of this small pack of humans wanted to say a word unless it professed a fix.
And when none came, the silence drew out further.
“Hey.” Rosaman walked back up with Ruthie and Faive, arms laden with bananas. “Anyone want a—”
Curly shrieked from the nest above them.
She jumped onto Arrow’s head, pulled at his ears. Her high-pitched scream echoed in the branches above. She was scared.
And she wasn’t the only one. Her brothers and sisters ran to us, skittered up my branches, and curled into a tight ball together.
Faive tucked herself behind Rosaman, dropping the bananas.
Val jumped back. “What are they doing?”
“I don’t know.” Arrow brought Curly into his arms, trying to soothe her.
I felt that tugging in my roots again. I hadn’t reconnected to the root network after our trip with the bird. I opened my roots to them again and…
Ripping.
Tearing.
Crunching.
Lives had already been lost. Birds and animals had screamed their distress. Fear was so thick, it was a fog that crawled up the tree trunks.
“Arrow! ARROW!”
He whipped toward me, his eyes scared. “What is it?”
Petari and Val looked between Arrow and me, questions filling their faces.
“It’s the Burnt Circle.”
“The Burnt Circle?” Arrow pushed Curly onto the branch with her family.
“The Fenix camp?” Petari asked. “What’s going on there?”
“Have they left?” Hope buoyed Arrow’s words. “Maybe they left because we killed their machine.”
The pain was excruciating. So much disaster coming from one section of the forest.
But I couldn’t understand why. And I couldn’t find an insect, bird, or other animal to show me what was happening there. It was as though all life had left.
“No,” I told Arrow. “They haven’t left the forest. They’ve done something. Something… I…”
He ran, ran, ran to the kapok tree.
“Be careful!” I told him, but I wasn’t sure he heard.
“Where are you going?” Petari shouted after him.
“Come on.” Val ran after Arrow, Petari close on his heels. “Ros, look after Faive. We’ll be back.”
Arrow’s heart pounded as he sped along the liana. Val and Petari followed, anxiety growing thicker around each of them with every breath.
The closer they got, the more Arrow’s energy darkened. Noises echoed around the trunks.
Crunches.
Rumbles.
Shouts.
And SCREAMS.
Screams from the birds. Screams from other animals. Screams throughout the whole forest.
Swinging onto the last liana, the one that would take them closest to the Burnt Circle, Arrow peered around to find the cause of the noise. But before he saw anything, he dropped.
Something was wrong.
The liana was no longer tight. It sagged. And with Arrow’s weight, it sagged more.
He looked back to Val and Petari. “Don’t get—”
But his words were swallowed when he heard a loud CRACK. He fell, tumbling through the air. He hit branches, but they were weak and broke at the slightest touch.
Arrow shrieked, then crashed onto the ground with a Thud.
He lay there, pain streaking through his body and out into the soil. My boy!
“AAAAAHHHH.”
Arrow lifted his eyes in time to see two more bodies tumbling after him. Val and Petari had gotten his warning too late.
The liana had broken close to Arrow, so he had been able to ride it down to the ground. But Val and Petari had only swung a short distance before the liana had snapped. They had farther to fall.
THUD.
THUD.
Val groaned. Petari screamed.
Arrow picked himself up and rushed to her. “Are you okay? What’s hurt?”
Val hurried over. “Petari!”
Tears glistened in her eyes. “My hand.” She lifted her arm. Her palm had a deep gash running from under her thumb to the base of her smallest finger. Blood fled from the wound and soaked into the ground below. “It hurts.” Her
voice was weak.
Arrow took her hand in his. “We need to wrap it with blood leaves. There’s some where the Fenix people had placed their lights. Wait here.”
He rushed off, running through the trunks, gazing up to see why the liana had fallen, taken them all down.
Then he saw and froze.
The path he had shown Crankas, the path the Kiskadee Man had lit with glowing light, the path that was home to the blood leaves, anise, and so much more, was gone.
In its place was a strip of land bare of any green, bare of any trees.
Bare of any life.
Bare.
29
THE DRY TOPSOIL CRACKED AND DUSTED, SO LIGHT WITHOUT NUTRIENTS THAT IT BLEW AWAY WITH THE SLIGHTEST BREEZE.
My roots shook.
A cockroach too weak to leave showed me what Arrow saw. It looked like a giant eagle had raked a sharp talon through the forest and dug up everything it touched.
The bushes were gone. Leaves were gone. All that was left of the trees—trees so tall they had touched the sky—were golden circles dotting the dirt. As far as Arrow could see, there was a line of earth, yellowed with the dust of chopped wood, pointing toward the Burnt Circle.
At its nearest end were six metal monsters like the one Arrow had tried to destroy. One had stains on the side—what was left of the ants. Somehow the humans had removed the ants, then built more of the machines. And the humans had constructed two more types: One had a large dome on its front with claws to scrape across land. The other had a barrel on its body, with a lid of teeth.
Blades whirled out of the arms of the tall machines. They sliced through the bottoms of the trees, while the clawed arms picked up the trunks and dumped them to be ground up by the teeth of the barrel.
RUMBLE.
SLICE.
CRACK.
CRUNCH.
With each noise, Arrow flinched.
With each cut, the forest bled.
Arrow stared at the devastation before him.
Until he heard the cry. Petari was hurting.
He searched for the blood leaf tree, but it was gone. Destroyed. Crushed into dust in the machiners’ barrel monster.
Gritting his teeth, Arrow backed away from the raked land, then ran to his friends.
“They took… They took…”
“What’s wrong?” Val asked.
Arrow fell to his knees, put his forehead to the earth. He tried to breathe, but air had left him. “It’s gone. So quickly. Just gone.”
“What do you mean?” Val held Petari’s hand up and nudged Arrow with his elbow to make the boy answer.
But Arrow couldn’t speak. No words would squeeze through his throat, thick with hurt. Tears rimmed his eyes, then streamed down his cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
He grieved for the loss of the forest, a loss I knew he felt in his blood as much as I felt in my cells. These trees were his home, his life, his family. And now they were gone.
“Help Petari.” Val placed Petari’s hand in Arrow’s, then ran off in the direction of the destruction to see for himself what had upset Arrow so much.
Tracks of tears shined on Petari’s face. “What happened, Arrow? What did you see?”
He shook his head, unable to put it into words.
Val came crashing back then. “They’re tearing up the forest.” He turned to Petari. “We’ve got to go. Now!”
“They’ve done what? How?”
“That’s why the liana came down.” Val’s eyes followed the vine. “The tree it was connected to is no longer there. It’s their fault we fell.”
Petari stood up, but the pain in her hand made her cry out. Arrow swallowed hard. “I can wrap your hand with a palm frond until I can get some blood leaves. It’ll at least keep the pressure on. Wait here.”
He hurried to the nearest palm, pulled off some fronds with his right hand, and whispered, “Thank you.” When he returned, Arrow cradled Petari’s injured hand on his arrow arm, tucking one end of a frond beneath it. Then with his right hand, he wrapped the palm tight against her wound.
“How could they do that?” Petari asked. “How could they?”
Arrow shook his head. Grief still tore at his heart, at his gut, pouring into the air around him, thick and harsh. It ripped through me as well. All those voices snuffed out too early.
“What are we going to do now?” Val glanced around, fear spiking the earth beneath him.
“There are more blood leaves near the Guardian,” Arrow said, making sure the palm fronds were secure.
“I’ll be fine,” Petari said, worry weighing her words. “We have to stop them!”
“Luco! And the others!” Val’s eyes were wild. “Do you think they’re okay?”
“I don’t know.” Arrow sucked in a breath. “Wait.” He tilted his head and sniffed.
“What is it?” Val searched their surroundings more urgently now.
Arrow turned to Petari. “Can you walk a short way?”
She nodded.
Arrow hurried away. “Follow me.”
He took them around the path of machines, which were still destroying trees. Staying behind the trunks that hadn’t yet been touched, Arrow kept Val and Petari far enough out that they wouldn’t be seen by the machiners. Then the children skirted around closer to the Burnt Circle and crawled behind a rock that already hid some human heartbeats.
“Lu—” Val started to shout, seeing the skinny boy, but Luco clapped his hand over the boy’s mouth. Val nodded, then Luco released him.
“How did you find us?” Luco pulled Val into his chest for a hug.
Delora and Safa were huddled with him and patted Petari on the back.
“Arrow found you.” Val pointed at the boy, who was peering around the rock for the machiners.
“Good job, Arrow.” Luco pulled on my boy’s arm, inviting him into their circle. Through his grief, this gave him some warmth.
“Where’s Storma and Mercou?” Val asked.
“In the Fenix camp,” Delora said.
“No!” Val whispered, clapping his own mouth shut so the word came out muffled.
Delora grinned. “Our plan worked beautifully.”
“What do you mean?” Petari sat on the ground, resting her hurt palm on her knee.
“Storma and Mercou let themselves be captured by the copters,” Luco said.
“Then the rest of us followed them down here,” Safa continued.
“It took us a lot longer,” Delora said.
“And my feet are killing me now,” Safa mumbled, slipping her feet out of her shoes and rubbing them.
“We even saw some of your dangerous creatures.” Delora pointed at Arrow. “You were right, they’re mega scary. Lucky for us they were running away from the Stilters’ machines. But I don’t know how you haven’t been eaten in here.”
Despite his grief, Arrow gave her a light smile. The herd were seeing him differently now, and at least that was better.
The grinding and crunching stopped. Then there were shouts, and the machines began to make their way back to the camp.
“Why’d they let themselves get caught?” Arrow asked.
“It’s all part of the plan,” Safa said.
Arrow peered around the rock at the Burnt Circle. It looked different now. The new raked path, golden with the remains of the torn trees, was a sharp contrast to the dark scorched earth of the camp. The people and machines were the same, though. And still frightening.
Petari pushed against Arrow’s shoulder, trying to get a look of her own while staying hidden.
“I can’t believe they tore down all those trees, Arrow. I’m so sorry.”
Arrow shook his head. Tears still glistened in his eyes. I felt his pain deep in my roots.
“You guys couldn’t have stopped the machines from doing this?” Petari turned on the rest of the others.
“Keep your hair on. We only just got here a few minutes ago,” Safa said.
“How are y
ou going to get Storma and Mercou out?” Fear spiked the earth beneath Val as he no doubt remembered when he’d been tied up alone in that camp. At least this time, Storma and Mercou knew their friends were close. I just hoped their plan worked.
“You’ll see.” Safa grinned. “We’ll be killing two birds with one stone, so to speak.”
“We’ve been trying to see what kind of tech they have, so we know how well they can follow us,” Luco said.
“They’ve got trikes.” Val peered around the rock and pointed at a collection of the machines Arrow had ridden with Crankas. “I saw them when I was at the camp.”
“Those things are quick,” Safa said. “I got to ride one once. The rich people have all the fun toys.”
Petari peered out farther. “I want to ride—” Her brother pulled her back quickly.
“You won’t ride anything if they see you,” Val whispered.
Petari slunk back, holding her injured hand to her heart.
“I don’t see the two leaders,” Arrow said. “There’s a woman called Wiser and a man called Crankas. They must be with the machines heading to Shimmer Cave. We need to get there and stop them.”
“Don’t worry.” Safa stretched her clasped hands in front of her, releasing a pop, pop, pop of her knuckles. “They’ll be on their way here soon. When we get the signal, everyone needs to run out to the part that they’ve cleared shouting that you’re being chased by some kind of animal.”
“Safa and me will hang back and see if we can get the trikes so they can’t follow,” Luco said.
Everyone nodded.
“Are you sure they’ll leave the forest?” Arrow asked.
“If they don’t leave after this,” Delora said, giggling, “I don’t think they ever will.”
“Really?” Arrow smiled, but confusion bore into the ground beneath him. I didn’t understand either.
“What are you going to do?” Val asked.
“Mercou’s the science wiz,” Luco said. “He’s figuring out—”
“AAH HA HA HA HA!”
The hum of noise coming from the Burnt Circle was suddenly broken with a loud, harsh laugh.
Arrow Page 22
