by Tara Maya, Elle Casey, J L Bryan, Anthea Sharp, Jenna Elizabeth Johnson, Alexia Purdy (epub)
Tony looked around and up into the sky. "No, it's not. It's pitch black out here ... now that Jared's pulled his shirt back down."
"Oh-ho! Zingah!!" I shouted, laughing my ass off all over again, before eventually collapsing in near exhaustion.
Eventually we all quieted down, once the adrenaline had left our systems. I knew now that Jared wasn't the vampire. I still wasn't totally convinced he wasn't somehow in on it, though. His lame excuse for where he'd been mirrored Spike's, but it was less believable since he had been gone for so damn long and neither Spike nor Chase remembered seeing him there in the clearing during the attack. Still, it was a good feeling to have everyone together again, to see Chase's eyes returning back to their usual blue, and to have some kind of a plan.
We decided we were going to sleep under the trees at the edge of the clearing tonight and get up bright and early to kick this test's ass tomorrow. Then we were going home.
I fell asleep wondering just where home was for me.
Chapter Fifteen
We got up as the first rays of sun were penetrating into the clearing where we'd spent the night. I didn't see how bright the morning light was at first because there were so many damn leaves on me; the trees around here had a serious shedding problem. No wonder the ground was so soft everywhere.
I threw the green leaves off of me as I sat up, pulling several of the more tenacious ones out of my hair. Once they were gone, I realized just how low the temperature was. Apparently, leaves made good insulation. I shivered from the cold and my still sleepy metabolism. I wasn't much of a coffee person, but I sure wouldn't have turned down a cup of it just then. I stood up and stomped my feet a little, getting the circulation going and my body warmed up.
Chase was still sleeping, snoring lightly. He had stayed up for the first watch and had wrestled with a vampire and lost, so I didn't blame him for being extra tired.
Jared had taken the map out of his backpack and was looking it over with Finn and Tony.
Spike was staring off into the trees, eating crackers out of one of his meal bags. It was easy to see he was more of a night owl than a morning person. I'm not sure his brain was totally functioning yet. His hair stuck out in all directions, making me wonder if he was called Spike because of this particular style. Even unkempt and unwashed, I loved it. Now if only he'd take his shirt off again ...
Becky stepped up next to me and nudged my hip with hers. "Wanna go pee with me?"
"Sure. I'm glad you said something; I've had to go all night."
We made our way out into the trees.
"Me too. I guess I'm glad we have limited food and water right now."
"You said it."
Once we were out of earshot, Becky asked, "So, do you feel better about Jared now?"
"Enough to let him sleep with us, so long as we have a guard - but no, not totally. Becky, you missed it. He seriously was giving Dardennes some kind of look, and Dardennes was returning it."
Becky shrugged. "Well, I think he seemed good last night, right?"
"Yeah, but his explanation of where he'd been didn't really make much sense, did it?"
Becky sighed. "Maybe not. But I have to believe he's with us, Jayne, on our side. He's been really good to everyone, including Sam. He really helped her out. He almost didn't come without her; she insisted, though."
That really didn't work with my theory so well, but I wasn't going to give up that easily. "Let's just agree to disagree on this for now. I'm sure it will work itself out in the end."
Becky smiled. "Deal. Now the question is: what are we going to use as toilet paper?"
"Leaves?" I suggested.
"Just don't use any poison oak or poison ivy ones."
I hesitated, instantly picturing an itchy red rash on my hoo-hah. Yikes. "I have no idea what poison anything looks like unless it's in a container marked with a skull and crossbones."
"We'll be okay if we take a leaf off a tree - I think the poison stuff is on the ground."
"Yeah, but did you notice how high up those branches are? How are we going to reach a leaf?" I pouted for effect. "Dammit, I want a leaf."
Suddenly, a giant, long tree limb that was above our heads moved, slowly lowering itself down to stop next to my shoulder. The sound of its huge body of wood straining and cracking to move in such an unnatural way was eerie as hell. I stood stock still, unable to make my feet go.
"What the fuck?" I whispered desperately to Becky, looking for some kind of guidance. The panic from last night was back. Was the tree going to kill me? Was it in league with the flamboyant, Chase-nibbling vampire?
Becky's eyes were nearly bugging out of her head. She whispered loudly, "I think it wants you to take a leaf!" She grabbed my hand, squeezing the crap out of it. I was glad for the contact, though, and squeezed back.
Please don't let this tree kill me, please don't let this tree kill me. I wasn't sure who or what I was praying to, but I hoped he, she, or it was listening.
I slowly reached up to the branch sitting next to my shoulder and gingerly plucked two leaves off. As soon as I pulled my hand away, the branch sprang back up, making a mighty groaning sound, the branch and leaves creating a whooshing sound as they rocketed from my shoulder back towards the sky. Tons of leaves, loosened by the branch's unnatural movement, flew off and floated down around us.
Becky held her hands up, catching some as they fell. She looked at me, her hands now grasping a bunch of leaves to her chest, whispering, "Holy crap, Jayne. What just happened?"
"I have no friggin' idea." I looked up at the tree. There was a crack in the limb that had moved for me. And there was no doubt in my mind that this branch had moved for me. I said I wanted a leaf, and it gave me a thousand of them - from its own ... body. Sap was coming out of the crack in the branch near the place where it connected to the tree, and I was suddenly overwhelmed with sadness. Tears sprang to my eyes and my heart started aching a little bit.
"Jayne, what's wrong? Why are you crying?" Becky giggled a little bit, confused about my seemingly incongruous emotions.
I pointed. "Look at the sap coming out of that crack. The tree is bleeding. It's bleeding because I asked for a stupid leaf to wipe my ass! I caused that to happen. I don't know why, but it's making me really sad." My explanation was nuts and my feelings being so over-the-top made no sense, but it was what it was.
Leaves rained down on my head, the tree shuddering, loosening them and causing them to fall. It just made me even more unhappy. I stood there being showered with leaves while crying like a baby.
Becky rubbed my back, and in an understanding, soothing voice said, "PMS sucks."
I frowned through my sadness, screwing up my eyebrows in concentration. I'd just finished my period, so according to my calculations, this wasn't PMS; but I didn't say anything to Becky. Let her think I had a chemical reason for being so wacky right now. It was probably the stress. I was going to figure this out with Tony later ... on second thought, as soon as I got back.
I wiped the tears off my cheeks and took a deep breath. "I still have to pee."
Becky laughed. "Me too." She looked around and then up at the tree, apprehension written all over her face. "Where should we go?" she whispered.
I looked up at the tree too. It had stopped sending leaves down on me, which was a good thing, because pretty soon I was going to be completely covered in a mound of them, and the tree was going to be naked. I seemed to recall from biology class that trees needed their leaves to absorb the sun's energy and feed themselves. Why I decided at that moment to remember some random fact from one of my science classes, I don't know, but it managed to make me feel guilty all over again. Shit! Focus. Move on.
"Well," I said, getting back to the business at hand, "I don't really want to pee with this tree watching me."
No sooner had the words left my lips, than I felt the ground under our feet start to tremble. The tree groaned again, twisting its trunk.
It hit me then that the tree was actuall
y pulling itself up out of the ground. "No! Wait! Tree, don't move!" It stopped moving, so I continued my begging. "You can watch me pee! It's okay! Here look, I'm peeing! I'm peeing! You can stop uprooting yourself." I looked in desperation at Becky, nearly yelling, "Start peeing for chrissake, Becky!"
She yanked her pants down and peed on the spot, not saying a word.
The ground had stopped moving and the tree had ceased its groaning and shuddering. The only thing I could hear was my heart beating in my throat and our pee splattering on the leaves beneath us.
After we were finished and had stepped to the side, we stood there, looking at each other, at the tree, and at all the leaves around us - completely weirded out, not knowing what to say. Both of us had seen it, so there was no denying it had happened. I was pretty sure I wasn't crazy. But then a thought came to me.
"Maybe this is one of those mass hysteria things, you know? Where stress causes people to have the same psychotic episodes."
Becky thought about it for a second, still not moving, and said, "Yeah, but what about all of this?" She gestured to the pile of leaves and the crack in the branch above us.
"Maybe it was already here and we just made up situations to fit the scene?"
Becky shrugged, not looking very convinced. "Maybe."
"Come on, let's go back," I said, turning towards our camp, with Becky anxiously following and then quickly overtaking me in her hurry to get to the clearing. I glanced over my shoulder at the tree and stopped. I spun around to go back.
"What are you doing?" asked Becky, now ten paces farther down the path we'd followed coming in.
Without answering, I went up to the tree and stood at the base of its trunk. After all that it had done for me, even if it was just a psychotic episode in my mind, I couldn't just take from it and then leave without doing something in return.
I didn't think about what I was going to do too much; I just did it. I put my arms around the trunk and squeezed, turning myself into the type of person I had mocked many times in the past - the proverbial tree hugger.
It was impossible for me to describe the feeling that came through that tree and into my arms at that moment. There just weren't any words for it in my vocabulary. But if I took everything I loved - like cotton candy and the smile on my best friend's face and a tiny, fuzzy-wuzzy kitten - and wrapped it all up into one sensation, this was what hugging that tree felt like. I couldn't stop the smile from bursting across my face.
I felt joy from the tree too. I didn't know what trees liked - probably not cotton candy and kittens - but whatever ... I was sure that my tree was feeling those things when we connected.
Don't get me wrong; the tree didn't hug me back, not with its branches anyway. But I felt an energy coming to me from it, so I was calling it a hug. If someone wanted to put a scientific label on what was happening with our touch, they could probably say it was an exchange of life forces - human and plant - and be not too far off.
Whatever it was, whatever it was called, it was fucking awesome. I wondered if I'd get the same sensation from every tree in this forest or just this one.
"Um, Jayne? ... What are you doing?" Becky had crept back over and was standing a few feet away from me, staring.
"Come over here and do this with me. You're not going to believe this shit." I didn't want to let go just yet, so I spoke with my face resting against the tree's rough bark.
Becky walked over hesitantly, looking at me with a worried expression. "Are you okay?" She was obviously concerned for my mental health.
"Shut up and hug the damn tree, Becky."
Becky sighed. "Oh, screw it, I might as well. I've done stranger things." She went to the other side of the tree, wrapped her arms around its wide trunk, and squeezed.
"Do you feel it?" I asked, excitedly. Now Becky was going to see firsthand how awesome this was.
"Feel what?"
"It. The awesomeness."
"Uh, no. All I feel is hard and pokey tree bark."
"Maybe you're not doing it right."
"I wasn't aware there was a technique to tree hugging." She started to pull away.
"No, wait! I'm coming over there. Stay put."
I released the tree and lost my connection. Bummer. Back to regular life - no cotton candy, no kittens. I walked around to the other side of the tree to look at what Becky was doing. She seemed to be hugging the tree properly; not that I was an expert, but I seemed to have a knack for it.
"Maybe put more of your body on it ... not just hug with your arms, but with your whole body."
"I'm not going to hump the tree, Jayne."
"Shit, Beck, I'm not talking about humping. This is hugging only - Rated G, like a Disney movie."
She sighed, but moved closer so her whole body was touching the tree.
"Well?"
"Sorry, I've got nothing."
"Let me help you."
I stepped forward and got next to her at the tree. I leaned in to hug it again, this time putting my arms above hers on the trunk, so I was touching the tree and her at the same time. I instantly felt the rush of good vibrations again.
Becky yelped. "Holy crap, Jayne! What the heck is that?!"
I shouted, my cheek against the tree again, "A-ha! You feel it now too, don't you?!"
I let go in my excitement and saw Becky's expression go from joy to disappointment in a flash.
"Get your butt back on the tree, Jayne, I just lost the mojo."
I jumped back into hugging position, and as soon as I was hugging the tree and touching Becky at the same time again, her face lit up.
"It's like ... it's like ... falling into sunshine on a cool day ... ," she said dreamily.
"I know." I had the biggest grin on my face. "I could hug this tree all damn day."
"We need to get the guys in on this," said Becky.
I stepped back away from the tree, severing our connection to it and each other.
Becky's face fell. "What's wrong?" She stood up straight, looking at me questioningly.
"I don't think we should say anything just yet."
"Why?"
I didn't answer her right away, and she got a sad look on her face. "It's because you don't trust Jared, isn't it?"
I shrugged. "I just want to feel more comfortable with him first, okay? I mean, it's my call, right?"
Becky nodded. "Yeah, it's your call. You're the tree whisperer, not me." She looked up at the tree wistfully. "That was amazing, though. I wish the others could feel what we were feeling. Even just one time would be worth it. I don't think I could ever forget that."
"Yeah, me neither." I got a mischievous look on my face. "Wanna try another one? See if it's just this tree or if it's all the trees?"
Becky jumped up and down excitedly, her smile back in full force. "Yes! Which one?" She looked around eagerly, seeking out a candidate.
"Let's move closer to the camp. Maybe it's just this area that has the special mojo."
"Good idea."
We walked about thirty feet back towards the clearing. We were still out of sight, but we could hear the others, their voices a low murmur.
"How about this one?" I suggested.
I pointed to a skinnier tree - one that had different bark and leaves too. Our experiment required a change in variables like the age, species, and location of the subject. I knew my science lab teacher would be so proud right now with the integrity of my study variables, or whatever the hell he always called it.
I went up to the new tree but didn't start hugging right away. I felt like it might be kind of presumptuous of me to just walk up and do that, so I started talking first.
Becky was standing next to me, and I saw her eyebrows go up a little, but she was letting me run the show. She remained quiet, listening patiently.
"Um, hello, Tree. I'm Jayne ... and this is Becky. We wanted to hug you, so here we are. You're ... um ... a really nice-looking tree, so that's why we picked you. I mean, all the trees here are nice looking and all .
.. "
Becky sighed, her patience running thin. "Just hug the tree already, would ya?"
"Fine. Don't rush me." I turned back to the tree. "So I'm going to hug you now, and I hope you give me one of those tree-hugs back."
I reached my hands out and put them on the trunk. My arms easily went all the way around. I instantly felt the energy coming back to me; this time it was more vibrant, more green, if a color can be used to describe a feeling. I didn't think about cotton candy this time. I thought about a cool breeze on a hot day, fireworks on the fourth of July, the excitement of being chased by someone who I hoped would catch me. Above all, I felt love. Just plain love. There was a connection here that went much deeper than flesh and bone, bark and wood.
"Can I join you now?" asked Becky, smiling at the look of happiness on my face.
"Yep. You're gonna love this."
Becky stepped up quickly, obviously anxious to feel the sensation again. She wrapped her arms around the tree, making sure to touch my arms as well. Her face radiated joy as soon as we were linked. "Oh my goodness, this is nice - different, but nice. This is a younger tree, I can tell."
She was right. The feelings were younger somehow. The bigger, older tree had given us something just as wonderful, but more ancient, more mature. It was impossible to describe with words - I couldn't even think about it properly in my own head.
"What the hell are you guys doing?" Spike's smiling voice penetrated our euphoria. "Are you hugging that tree? What ... did I take a wrong turn somewhere? Am I in Berkeley?"
We broke away from the tree, smiling nervously as if we'd been caught doing something we shouldn't have been doing.
"Yep, just thanking the tree for some toilet paper is all," I said, trying to brush him and his suspicions off with an overly casual tone.
Spike nodded his head in appreciation. "Well, that's just the polite thing to do, isn't it?" He smiled right at me with those damn teeth of his, and I was glad to feel the familiar sparks warming my insides. This time I didn't see the blood smear image generated by memories of that awful vampire creature thing.
I smiled back, still feeling the tree's energy and now basking in Spike's sexual vibe.
