by Joan Holub
“Good morning!” chorused the eight treechers once everyone was seated. They were Hamadryads, some of them thousands of years old. It was hard to imagine they had once been young nymphs like Echo and her friends, flitting around the forest. Over the centuries, they had grown ancient and wise and had chosen to meld with their trees forever. Which meant that their faces now appeared on the upper part of their trunks. And their many branches had become their arms, a protective canopy that could shield the classroom from occasional bad weather. All eight had put down deep roots, content to stay here in this clearing and share their wealth of knowledge with younger nymphs for all time to come.
Class began, and the treechers introduced the day’s assignment, each taking turns to speak. Since the treechers ringed the clearing, students had to constantly twist their heads to face whichever tree was speaking.
“Today you are to embark on a foraging project,” announced Ms. Karya, a hazelnut tree. She waved her nut-covered branch arms toward the surrounding forest to indicate the area in which they’d be working.
Unlike the rooted treechers, students spent a lot of time roaming the forest on their own. The philosophy of Nature School was that most learning should take place in the world outside and involve lots of observation and doing. Still, there were in-class assignments now and then, and graphite rock styli and slates were available for note taking. (And for doodling fashion ideas when the treechers weren’t looking.)
“Your assignment is to create a protective suit of armor using found objects. Each of you will return here by the end of the day, wearing your project,” said Ms. Ptelea, the elm tree.
“And you should be prepared to tell the class how and from what dangers your costume might protect you,” said Ms. Balanos, an oak tree.
“Protect us,” Echo murmured, pretty much repeating the treecher’s last two words.
“For instance, from sickness, weather, et cetera,” Ms. Morea explained. “You must study forest plants and creatures carefully today. Observe how they protect themselves, and base your armor on that.” An olive tree with slender silvery-green leaves, Ms. Morea was rumored to be three thousand years old. She was Echo’s favorite treecher of all.
“Isn’t basing our work on something the same as copying?” Echo asked her now, feeling confused.
“You ought to know,” Syrinx whispered to her from her mist bench one toadstool over. Daphne murmured something to Syrinx, looking embarrassed by the girl’s unkind comment. But a few other nymphs had overheard and giggled.
“Everything under the sun has already been done,” Ms. Ampelos, a hundred-foot-tall grapevine, replied to Echo’s question. “All inventions are built on the shoulders of older ones. So be yourself, but feel free to borrow ideas from nature.”
“If you put your stamp on whatever you do, you can make it your own. Understand?” added the popular poplar tree, Ms. Aigeiros.
No, Echo did not understand. To “make something her own” totally seemed like copying. What was the difference between the two? She just didn’t get it! Plus, she didn’t have the first idea how to invent armor. When she shrugged uncertainly, it sent Syrinx into a new fit of giggles, which the river nymph quickly turned into pretend coughs.
Ms. Morea stared from one girl to the other, the bark rippling above her eyes into frown lines. Obviously sensing some trouble between Echo and Syrinx, she gestured her branch arms to call them over. “Girls! Olive branch, please!”
Oh nuts, thought Echo. This meant she and Syrinx were being called up for a moment of personal friendship counseling. With an inward sigh she reluctantly stood, and both girls went to stand before the treecher.
A few leaves fluttered to the ground as Ms. Morea’s branches circled the girls’ shoulders, so that the three of them could have a private talk. Her big brown eyes studied them from below her bark-brows. “Now, what’s the problem, nymphs? I sense tension.”
“Oh, it’s all good,” Syrinx said, fake-smiling at the treecher. “We were just teasing. An inside joke. Right, Echo?”
“Um, yeah,” Echo replied. Syrinx might be a brat and a bully, but for Daphne’s sake especially, Echo didn’t want to make this into a big thing. So no matter how much the treecher prodded, neither girl would admit that anything was wrong. In the end the two nymphs simply clasped the olive branch together in the traditional way of making up at school. As if that would erase the tensions between them and make them instant friends.
No way! thought Echo as they returned to their seats. She couldn’t wait for Syrinx to go back to her river.
“Now, class,” sing-songed Ms. Kraneia, a cheery cherry tree. “This is to be an individual assignment. No teams allowed.”
Ms. Syke the fig tree added, “Your work is due here at sunset today. We won’t give a fig about excuses. No ‘the deer ate my homework’ or ‘the woodpeckers pecked my project.’ ”
With that the treechers commenced speaking the daily pledge, and all the student nymphs joined in:
“Tread gently today,
Among flower and fern.
Nature’s our gift,
And from it we learn.”
As their words died away, Echo and the other nymphs stood and left the circle to tackle the assignment they’d been given. Since teams weren’t allowed, she and Daphne waved bye. Then everyone spread out in different directions to search for objects they could turn into armor.
Echo departed the clearing and moved through the forest. There, birds swooped through the olive, fir, and cypress trees around her. White and yellow butterflies flitted about on flowers and low-growing bushes. They even settled on her hair now and then. But she was so focused on coming up with an armor design, she hardly noticed.
Spotting a black-and-white goliath beetle in her path, she crouched to study its armorlike exoskeleton. If she based her project on this beetle, she’d have to gather a bunch of insect shells together to make armor big enough to fit her. Is that what her treechers meant for her to do? It would mean killing a lot of bugs for their exoskeletons, and she wasn’t up for killing even one! After all, their pledge to “tread gently” was all about not harming stuff. She stood and moved on.
In search of more ideas, Echo wandered farther from school, thinking hard about how armor worked. Trees had bark to protect them. No way would she peel off a tree’s bark and use it as armor for herself, though. That would leave the poor tree defenseless against disease and bugs and other harmful things. Besides, bark armor would be super itchy and rough, not to mention heavy.
A cone fell from a pine tree onto her foot as she was walking. Hey! She picked it up and studied it. Pinecones protected the seeds within them. That was sort of like armor. After quickly weaving a bag from dried grasses, she began collecting any cones she found here and there on the dappled forest floor, hoping she’d figure out a way to make armor out of them.
Eventually she wound up in an area called the Forest of the Beasts. It was about one mile away from Nature School, but many more miles from Mount Olympus Academy, the school that goddesses and gods attended.
She had been here before. Every other Tuesday, Zeus allowed the forest nymphs use of this area to study its different beasts. In their last Tuesday class, they’d practiced blending into the surrounding woods to avoid detection by the monstrous creatures here. The beasts in this forest weren’t real, though. They were only mechanical copies of actual beasts that roamed Earth. Still, the beasts were scary-looking and could be dangerous!
A sudden gust of wind chilled the air. “I smell rain,” Echo said aloud. Wet weather wouldn’t cancel their class assignment. But if the rain turned heavy, the treechers would give students more time to complete the project. Which was only fair, since rain made it hard to see well and too muddy to move about easily. She could definitely use another day. One-day assignments like this one could be, well, beastly!
Just then Echo was surprised to see a great flash of bright light. She waited for a rumble of thunder to follow. It didn’t. That was odd.
Then, hearing voices, she went still. People were somewhere nearby! She crouched low, out of sight amid some ferns, her brown eyes searching her surroundings.
Sometimes MOA students came to the Forest of the Beasts to practice their archery and battle skills. The Forest was off-limits to nymphs when they came. Were they here now? Wait, this was Wednesday, and MOA students normally only came on Fridays. So who . . .
The skies opened up and began to sprinkle. Quickly the rain became harder, pelting her. Echo didn’t mind and knew the other nymphs wouldn’t either. They were used to being out in all kinds of weather. Still, she blinked when there was another flash of light. Again, no thunder. Weird!
When it looked like a real storm was brewing, she loped for home with her bag of pinecones, forgetting all about the voices she’d heard earlier.
As the lightning increased, she picked up her pace. She sensed other nymphs in the forest doing the same, and saw them moving among the trees now and then.
Because trees were tall, they were targets for lightning. And the sap running through them made them good conductors of electricity if lightning did strike. It was said that mortals avoided the forest in storms because it could be a dangerous place to take cover. But nymphs didn’t have to worry about such things. Their spells kept them and their trees safe.
Uh-oh. Her spell! She’d meant to chant her usual one after she’d copied Syrinx’s spell earlier this morning, but she’d been in such a hurry that she’d forgotten. Would Syrinx’s spell have the same protective power as her own? A bad feeling stirred inside Echo. A feeling that something was about to go terribly wrong. Heart pounding, she raced like the wind for home.
3
Ka-BOOM!
WHEN ECHO WAS JUST TWO dozen steps from her FirHeart, she breathlessly called out the chant she’d forgotten to say that morning:
“Protect this tree.
Let no ax chop it.
Should trouble come,
Let my spell—”
Ka-BOOM!
“—stop it!”
Echo finished the first part of her chant in a desperate shout, striving to be heard above the loud cracking sound. But it was too late. A lightning bolt had struck her tree! The bolt seemed to slide sideways out of the forest itself, instead of straight down from the sky.
Oomph! The force of the electric pulse tossed her backward into a pile of leaves. She pushed up on her elbows, watching in horror as her tree split from its lower trunk as if chopped at the base by that ax in her tardy chant. Only, this ax was made of lightning!
Her tree tilted sideways. BAM! It slammed to the ground, narrowly missing her and the nearby trees that were homes to her classmates.
“FirHeart!” she yelled in agony. Although trees couldn’t speak, there was an emotional bond between them and their nymphs. A bond that had suddenly been broken by a bolt of lightning! She leaped up from the pile of leaves and fought her way through dense branches that angled every which way out of the downed tree. The bolt had cut deeply, exposing the hardest, strongest wood—the heartwood. Even if her tree hadn’t fallen, it was damaged so badly that it would soon become food for insects.
Echo’s own heart twisted in her chest as she sadly counted the twelve rings that showed her tree’s age. Although FirHeart had stood fifty feet tall, it had only been twelve years old, the same age as her. Trees with nymphs to protect them grew much faster than other trees. However, she hadn’t been much of a protector, had she? She turned away, unable to bear looking at the scarred, splintered remains lying in the leaves.
After pushing her way back through twisted branches, she kneeled down alongside what was left of her tree. A stump.
Other nymphs soon gathered around. One by one and in groups, they arrived on silent feet. She heard them murmuring among themselves in shock and dismay.
A hand was rubbing her back. Daphne had come. “This is awful! I don’t get it,” her BFF said. “Your morning chant should have protected your tree. None of ours were hurt.”
A long moment passed. Then Echo admitted, “I didn’t say it. I tried a new one instead.”
“You changed your chant?” Daphne asked in scandalized disbelief. Those around Echo gasped and drew back.
“Syrinx said she changes her river chants all the time,” Echo said, defending herself.
Syrinx rolled her eyes. “Don’t blame this on me. I never suggested you try the same.”
The other nymphs whispered among themselves, their eyes accusing.
“That copycat . . .”
“How could she . . .”
“Her poor tree . . .”
They were right. Not saying her chant had been devastatingly careless. If only she could turn back time.
Of all the nymphs, only Daphne offered Echo a hug and a few words of comfort. Echo could tell that the others blamed her, just as she blamed herself. Nymphs were supposed to guard and protect their trees, to deflect lightning and disease and harsh weather and fire and all sorts of other trouble.
“I’m sorry, FirHeart. So sorry.” Echo hugged the splintered stump of her tree tight.
As the storm began to rage again, the other nymphs scattered to their trees. “Come on. You can stay with me in LaurelRing,” Daphne offered kindly.
“No,” Echo said, shaking her head. “I won’t abandon FirHeart, even if he is just a stump with roots now.” Plus, she didn’t want to be around that smug Syrinx, who was already staying with Daphne. “You go. Protect your tree. In case another bolt comes,” she told her friend. Everyone knew that when nymphs were in residence, their presence offered their trees extra protection.
“Okay, but I’ll be back,” said Daphne as she withdrew.
Echo was so distraught that she hardly noticed when rain sheeted down on her.
Sometime after the storm passed, she heard footsteps approaching. Daphne and Pan had brought her some food, but she refused to eat. Night came, and still Echo sat by FirHeart’s stump. Though the bond between her and her tree had been broken, she hoped that her presence was still a comfort to FirHeart in some small way. She fell asleep with her head lying upon his thick roots, which spread out from the base of the stump.
The next morning the sun warmed her fallen tree, and soon the sweet smell of fir needles and sap filled the air. While the other nymphs went off to school, Echo spent the day clearing away broken branches and stacking any unbroken tree house floorboards she found. She also gathered bits and pieces of her belongings from the ground, including the ladder vines she’d woven and some of her clothes. Her fashion drawings were mostly ruined, but she set those that weren’t out in the sun to dry.
When she found the waterproof mat that had served as her tree house roof, an idea came to her. Before she knew it, she had begun to build a little hut on the ground right next to FirHeart’s stump, from the pile of branches and floorboards she’d saved.
After school Daphne and Pan came over and pitched in to help her finish off the simple hut. When Pan left, Daphne insisted that she and Echo eat dinner together in the hut, and Daphne even brought Echo some food and household items, such as eating utensils carved from twigs, plates made from shells, and a pillow stuffed with dried grass.
Once they’d eaten the veggie pie and berries Daphne had brought, Pan came back to hang out. He quickly fashioned a new musical instrument out of one of FirHeart’s brown cones and attempted to play it. Echo could tell he was trying to boost her spirits.
“Honest opinion,” he said when he finished a tune. “Was that good enough to get me into Apollo’s band?” This was Pan’s dream. To someday play with the godboy of music’s group, Heavens Above.
Echo and Daphne didn’t say anything. Plagued with thoughts about her loss of FirHeart, Echo had barely been listening.
“No, huh?” he said, sounding a little deflated. “If only I could come up with a great new instrument. Something with a fantastic sound.”
“It’ll happen,” Daphne reassured him. “Just give it time.”
Echo kne
w she should chime in with some encouragement too. But she was still too wounded to think about anyone but herself.
And then a plan began to take shape in her mind. Maybe all was not lost. Maybe the treechers could help. When Daphne and the other nymphs returned to their trees at sunset and Pan left for his home on the outskirts of the forest, Echo slipped from her hut, entered the school clearing, and went straight to Ms. Morea.
“I’m glad you’ve come. I heard about FirHeart, and I’m so sorry,” the treecher said gently. She opened her branches wide, and Echo ran into them for a hug.
Stepping back after a minute, Echo explained to the treecher how she’d used Syrinx’s chant, thinking it would protect her tree. And how it hadn’t.
“I see,” said Ms. Morea. “Well, because rivers change and flow, the chants that protect them must change often too. However, trees are stable and solid and forever. Therefore, our tree chants must be so as well.”
“Oh,” said Echo. It was like what Daphne had said about how Naiads could change into other kinds of nymphs if they wanted to, but Oreiads and Dryads like her and her friends couldn’t. Ms. Morea was wrong about trees being forever, though. FirHeart wasn’t. A tear ran down Echo’s cheek. “I just wanted to ask if you could maybe somehow fix FirHeart?”
At this, all the treechers’ branches rustled, a sad and lonely sound. The other seven had been listening in on her conversation with Ms. Morea, and now all eight ancient trees spoke as one. “We’re sorry,” they chorused. Sometimes they spoke this way, all together, especially when there were important matters at hand.
“Please?” Echo begged, looking around the circle. “It wasn’t till I lost my tree that I realized just how much I loved it. I thought it would always be there for me, but . . .”
The treechers gazed at her with sympathy as she rushed on. “If you fix FirHeart, you could give him to someone else who’ll take better care of him if you want to.” It wrenched her heart to say that, but she’d do anything to save her tree.
