Luckily, the education fund left by her father is just enough to pay for international schooling, where she takes special lessons in botany. By the age of ten, she’s committed her dendrological encyclopedia to memory. By eleven, she can discern images of balsam from hemlock, oak from dogwood. By twelve, she can make the same classifications by ear, with only the YouTubed sound of wind running through leaves as her guide.
On her fourteenth birthday, she convinces her grandparents to let her travel nine hours north on a crowded bus, with not a square foot of space left unoccupied, to the famed Forest Research Institute at Dehradun. A sprawling wooded estate established by the British at the foot of the Himalayas, it’s one of the oldest institutions practising scientific forestry in the world. With her clothing shamefully crumpled from the ride, she meets the Institute’s director, Dr. Biswas, a leading expert on the Bodhi tree, the same species that the Buddha meditated under at Bodh Gaya. Jake has written many letters brimming with questions for the doctor, who was sufficiently impressed by their fluency that she offered Jake an informal week-long residency at the Institute, a time she spends in its laboratories, herbarium, and arboreta, meeting first-hand the countless species she’s previously only read about. For the next few years, Jake returns to Dehradun for the week of her birthday, and when she graduates high school, Dr. Biswas recommends her to the botany department at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, a treed city in which, as Meena once mentioned, Jake’s father had lived.
In Canada, aside from a brief engagement to a fellow biology student, Jake devotes herself wholly to tree rings and tap roots, to polyploids and triploids, to pollen dispersion, gametes, ovules, and seed genetics. Daily, her head zaps with fresh currents of insight. She becomes convinced that a true and perfect understanding of the tree’s secret workings will provide the intellectual skeleton key to unlock all her questions. That even the impenetrable mysteries of time and family and death can be solved, if only they are viewed through the green-tinted lens of this one gloriously complex organism.
It’s while she’s earning her Ph.D. from the University of Utrecht four years later—a degree paid for by a complex scaffolding of student loans, scholarships, and credit card sorcery that lingers on the servers of collection agencies to this day—that she first detects the traces of what will become the Great Withering, in dendrology-related periodicals and scholarly reports. As more and more old-growth forests around the globe succumb and die off, the soil dries up without trees to shade the ground from the gnawing sun, creating killer dust clouds as fine as all-purpose flour that choke the land—just as they did during the Dust Bowl, but this time on a much larger scale, burying even the largest industrial farms and strangling entire cities.
It isn’t until after Jake has returned to North America and is in Boulder, Colorado, to present a paper on communicative scent compounds used cooperatively by coastal Douglas firs that the world’s biggest tree, the Northern Californian sequoia known as General Sherman, splits lengthwise in a moderate wind, and the halves of its trunk, which are revealed to be shot through with fungus, thunder to the forest floor. It’s not a great loss in ecological terms—many giant redwoods remain, some just as ancient—but the dark symbolism of the event knocks the economy into a tail-spin, kicking off the Withering-induced economic collapse. Farms fail, the stock markets go apoplectic, employment dwindles, unchecked wildfires and shortage riots become commonplace, and utter despair becomes the only rational response.
With her bank card now useless, Jake hitchhikes her way north from Boulder, begging for food, with a dampened T-shirt tied over her face to keep the dust from caking in her lungs. She sleeps in drainage culverts and interstate rest stops, and when she finally reaches the Canadian border, she’s shaking with hunger. Luckily, the Withering is still in its early days, and vast stretches of undefended border remain, which means Jake, who is technically one of the first climate refugees, is able to cross unhindered. Just outside a town called Estevan, Saskatchewan, she manages to locate the farm that her father had willed to her. While most of its buildings have been plundered and stripped of their wood, and thigh-deep drifts of dust blanket its fields, somehow the well beside an old willow still pumps clear water and the farm’s storm cellar remains intact. Jake holes up there for a month, eating expired canned food, sleeping, and gathering her strength. One evening, she hears the voices of people searching the ruins above. Someone even tries to open the cellar door, but Jake has barred it with an iron rod, and eventually they give up and leave.
The next morning, she walks through the choking dust to the train tracks in nearby Estevan, where she climbs onto a massive rail car carrying new automobiles, all covered in white plastic. Twelve new Mercedes, which somehow there’s still a market for, even while people starve and asphyxiate with pale blue faces by the side of the road. She finds a car door that’s been left open and sits on the grey leather seats, the new vehicle’s smell so strong it gives her an immediate headache. The electronic key is in the glove box, so during her westward journey she’s able to play the radio, recline the seat, run the heater, and turn on the wipers when the dust gets too thick.
In two days she reaches Vancouver, only to find her former university shuttered and looted. She picks up the few things she’s stored there, including her father’s box, and at the bank she’s able to access her remaining savings. It’s there she also learns that the student debt she planned on paying off with a professor’s salary has survived the Withering. She takes cheap accommodations in an old hotel by the water, but food has become unbelievably expensive, and she faces bankruptcy if she doesn’t begin to pay down her debt. In desperation, she applies for a job with a vaguely described project located on an island northwest of the city. Though she’s grossly overqualified for the duties of Forest Guide at the Greenwood Arboreal Cathedral, she remains convinced that the primary reason Holtcorp plucked her application from what must have been a stack of thousands, thereby rescuing her from a life of rib retch and dust-shrouded destitution—and, worst of all, a life lived without the steadying companionship of the island’s trees—is the terrifyingly meaningless coincidence of her last name.
PLANKED SALMON
JAKE REACHES THE Maintenance Shed just before it closes, where she signs out a microscope, three rainfall meters, and a soil collection kit. It would be impossible to take measurements of the sick trees during one of her tours, so she’ll have to sneak into the old-growth after hours, which will be risky, especially with the increased Ranger patrols. But she has a private to wake up for tomorrow morning, so she reluctantly decides to leave it for another night, and settles on a quick walk to the ocean to calm her thoughts before turning in early.
The air is breezy and the sky pixelated with stars as she takes the trail to the wharf, where the supply barges tie up. Passing a group of Indonesian chambermaids, she catches the scent of the organic cedar oil they spray the guest Villas with, but only after they’ve already scrubbed them with eye-flaming chemicals. At the water, Jake stops under an ornamental cherry tree to watch four Salvadoran groundskeepers silently cleaning a cluster of hot tubs that overlook the bay. While her fellow employees always offer her a friendly nod, she’s heard that she’s the source of great puzzlement among them. Even though her skin is as brown as theirs, she somehow shares a surname both with the Arboreal Cathedral and the island itself—and yet, she still receives the same measly compensation they do. To them this suggests a downfall nearly impossible to measure.
Jake watches one of the groundskeepers reach into the hot tub with a pool skimmer and scoop out a tree frog from the steamy water. Even at a distance, she can tell that the chlorine has bleached the once-emerald frog to a pale pea green, and the sight of it makes her feel sick. Just as she’s preparing to head back, a group of black-clad Rangers swoops in and surrounds a member of the grounds crew who had been smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, a violation of the Cathedral’s strict fire protocols. The man’s companions bow their heads
and surrender their tools as the Rangers point their snub-nosed guns and pat them all down for contraband. Fearful of being questioned about the scientific equipment she’s carrying, Jake slips unnoticed back to the trail, while the Rangers roughly drag the offender off to put him on the next barge back to the Mainland.
It’s dark by the time she returns to her cabin to find Corbyn Gallant waiting near her door, his chin glued to his chest as he stares deep into the talisman of his phone. He’s left his cheeks unshaven and replaced his Leafskin jacket with an expensively rugged chambray button-up. Minus the sunglasses and hat, his facial structure is impossible not to admire.
“Are you lost, sir?” Jake asks as she approaches.
He looks up from his phone, childlike for a moment as his eyes refocus. “If it isn’t the Lady of the Trees,” he says as though they’re old friends. “I’ve got a few more important questions that I’d like you to answer.”
“I’m not supposed to meet with Pilgrims after hours,” she says, glancing around for a Ranger patrol. “How about tomorrow, same time, at the trailhead? We can discuss all the old-growth lumber I’ll sell you at ridiculous prices.”
“Actually, I was hoping we could talk over a drink at your place, except I doubt that we’ll both fit in there at the same time,” he says, examining the row of tiny staff cabins. They’re glorified sheds really, the shabbiness of which the resort seeks to conceal from the Pilgrims by hiding them on the less majestic half of the island, where the trees are comparatively young and spindly. “But I will say that these trees look like they’re closer to my price range than the ones you showed me earlier.”
“It’s not in the brochures,” Jake says in a lowered voice, “but this half of Greenwood Island burned to the ground in 1934. The fire left a single charred ring in the trees that edge the area—which means, I’m sorry to report, only half of the Cathedral is authentic old-growth.” It feels good to risk a bit of truth, a small relief after a day of speaking from the script.
“I won’t tell a soul,” he says, placing his palm to his heart. “Then how about my Villa?”
Jake feels her spine stiffen. Forest Guides are prohibited from visiting the Villas, especially after hours. But Corbyn must be the private that Davidoff told her about earlier. And even if he’s not, at the very least Jake can plead ignorance and wriggle out of punishment if she’s caught. But going anywhere near the Villas after hours while wearing her Forest Guide uniform would be begging for a run-in with the Rangers.
“Give me a minute,” she blurts, ducking inside her cabin to change out of her uniform—a Boy Scout outfit crossed with the technical apparel of a fitness instructor—and into the green Prada dress she took from the lost and found and had been looking for an excuse to wear. She pulls on her Cathedral-issue Leafskin jacket overtop to complete her Pilgrim disguise. After rejoining Corbyn, she takes a deep breath and quickly scans the path for Rangers before they set off for his side of the island.
With its fine timber-frame construction and unobstructed ocean view, Villa Twelve is the most luxurious and coveted accommodation on the island, and is always fully booked years in advance. The Canadian prime minister, now widely regarded as the most powerful human being on the planet, stayed here last year with her family.
“Lately, I’ve been considering a permanent relocation,” Corbyn says as he unlocks the intricately woodworked door with his phone before shoving it open. “So I thought I’d give Canada a little test run.”
Jake follows him inside, remembering Knut’s rant about how much the U.S. elite used to talk about immigrating to Canada, especially after an election didn’t go their way. But since the Withering, and after America’s once-mighty aquifers were tapped out like fraternity kegs, many actually went through with it, leaving the immobile and the poor to wallow and retch in the dust. Given Russia’s penchant for totalitarianism and the recent coup in New Zealand, water- and tree-rich Canada has become the global elite’s panic room. Now it’s all movie stars, tech giants, and investment bankers on the streets of such previously ignored places as Moose Jaw, Vernon, Thunder Bay, Chicoutimi, and Dartmouth. “And that’s how America’s polite and homely sibling,” Knut said, “once regarded merely as a country-sized storehouse of natural resources, like some great, unlimited supply chest tucked away in America’s attic, became the most sought-after address on Earth.”
As Corbyn offers her a quick tour, Jake struggles to conceal her awe. Everywhere she looks is the finest furniture of Danish teak, and there’s a real woodstove with an actual fire burning inside, and on the north wall is a giant bookshelf that displays what must be a thousand genuine paperbooks—all surrounded by beautifully intricate old-growth post and beam construction that’s surely priceless. There seems to be no end to the luxuries that the Villa contains, but it’s the paperbooks that impress her most. Almost all of them appear to be pre-Withering, and they range over every subject imaginable. After the majority of the world’s books were pulped for wood fibre to produce such essentials as dust masks, air filters, and currency, the value of the remaining ones spiked. For her birthday five years ago, Jake nearly splurged half her savings on a gorgeously illustrated botany paperbook, but reconsidered at the last moment. Today, the book is worth triple what she would have paid.
“It’s got a great retro feel to it, doesn’t it?” Corbyn says while he pours two bourbons at the butcher-block island—Basil Hayden’s, neat, the brand she’d buy if she ever had money. During the Withering’s early days, while catastrophic dendrological data from all corners of the world seeped into her laptop, Jake could do nothing except drink Old Fashioneds and watch pirated video files of BBC’s Planet Earth series over and over. Those time-lapse shots from space of the once-great deciduous forests rolling through their colours—green to red-gold to brown to green—would push shuddering sobs through her whole body until she eventually passed out, whether from dehydration, inebriation, or despair she couldn’t say.
Corbyn feeds a few fir logs into the stove and they settle onto the wool sofa and clink glasses as the fire warms their shins. The heat is different than the electric heat she’s used to, fuller, deeper-penetrating. “Oh, and I’ll need to ask you to power down your phone,” he says.
She pats the non-existent pockets of her dress. “Don’t have one,” she says, nearly adding: With my credit rating, they won’t give me a flip-phone.
At this, a theatrical expression overtakes him, the kind that could carry the final shot of some sappy movie. “Now that is absolutely charming,” he says, as though she’s a precocious child who’s inadvertently said something wise. Then he gestures to the shelves. “You would probably still rather read paperbooks, too, wouldn’t you?”
“Guilty as charged,” she says.
Corbyn edges closer and discourses upon the perils of technology for a while before he orders them dinner from the resort’s bistro with his phone. When their entrees of cedar-planked salmon arrive, Jake hides in the gorgeously tiled bathroom as the waiter, a guy she knows named Ramon, rolls the dinner cart into the kitchen.
When Jake returns, Corbyn has filled two glasses of thin crystal with wine, and they perch on stools at the island to eat. She tastes the salad first, purple heirloom tomatoes and leafy greens as soft as silk. She’s neither seen nor eaten salmon in years, not since the Withering dried up all the spawning streams and the ambitious fish were left to languish in the ocean. The fillets are glazed with garlic, balsamic vinegar, and real maple syrup—another outlandish delicacy. The fatty layers of the salmon’s ruby flesh are striking, and closely resemble wood grain, she realizes, Douglas fir particularly. The biologist in her loves these parallels of growth. How tenaciously organisms build tissue, layer by layer, year by year.
After they’ve eaten, Corbyn frowns at his Rolex and escorts her back to the sofa, where they both lean into a kiss. “I’m sorry to bring this up,” he interrupts not long after, his wine-sour breath fogging her ear. “I just want us to be straight with each other.”
>
“Sure,” she says uncertainly.
“I have something to admit, and it’s embarrassing.” He takes a deep breath. “But because of a severe latex allergy, I’m on doctor’s orders to avoid condoms. You don’t want to see what happens when I do, trust me. So I have to ask: Are you clean?”
She almost says: I could be a walking petri dish of any number of diseases, because even though Holtcorp provides all its female Cathedral staff with free IUDs, it doesn’t offer actual health care, so I haven’t seen a proper doctor since grad school, so who knows? But she’s having a good time, and can’t bear to return to her cramped, gloomy cabin. So she chuckles and says, “Of course. You?”
He laughs. Whether this means “Of course I’m clean” or “Of course I’m not, but you’ll do this anyway” is unclear. But barring any major gaffes, she might as well go through with it. Why not? There’s something about bottomless indebtedness and churning ecological despair that makes meaningless sex a kind of relief. Sure, she’d prefer a more long-lasting relationship over what is certain to be a brief entanglement with Corbyn, but how can anything last in a world as ruined as this? Where thousands of children cough themselves to death each night, and not even the grandest trees can be expected to survive?
“It must be difficult, as a woman,” Corbyn says afterwards, while they’re laid out on the sofa beneath an impossibly soft cashmere blanket, “to be so educated and passionate in a field, and have to lead idiots like me through these beautiful trees.” He grins, certain that this bit of cleverness proves him to be the very opposite of an idiot.
Jake draws a deep breath. Unlike Knut, she chooses her words carefully, especially when speaking with Pilgrims. “I get to live here,” she says, “doing a fulfilling job, and not coughing myself to sleep. So for all that I’m grateful.”
“But it must bother you on some level?”
Greenwood Page 3
