Deadwood (27 page)

S
HE
FREED
ME
.

Y
OU
HEALED
ME
.

B
UT
TIME
IS
STILL
UP
.

“What does that mean?” Hannah wailed.

The golden fissures of light that traced the words narrowed, then sealed up. The letters disappeared, and the bark was solid, unmarked, new. The tree was really healed.

Then the whole Spirit Tree blazed again, too bright to look at. Martin shielded his eyes and pulled Hannah away, and they fell over Aunt Michelle. The three of them lay on the forest floor as the tree burned.

This was real fire, heat scorching their faces, hot ashes raining down just as light had moments before. Martin closed his eyes and hoped the others did the same. What was happening?

The fire roared, the loudest noise Martin had ever heard. Then silence, and nothing. The red behind Martin's eyelids snuffed out to black.

He opened his eyes. The tree had disappeared—the only trace was the indentation where the massive trunk had burst from the earth, a lost-wax impression of the starry knot of roots.

Martin and Hannah clutched each other, still tumbled on the ground. He looked into her stormy eyes, and she nodded. She was all right. They rolled apart.

Aunt Michelle stood, dusting off her red suit.

“Once again, sorry, kids. Time was up for the tree, I guess. It may be gone, but I have what I need,” she said, recovering her smirk. She pulled the Ziploc bag from her handbag and held it in the air like a trophy. Then she noticed it was empty.

The section of carved bark was gone. Even the crumbs were gone.

“Wait,” she said, rifling through her purse. She turned it upside-down, makeup and nutrition bars clattering to the ground along with the electric saw. She tossed them aside, becoming more frantic as she searched for the missing section of bark. Martin knew she wouldn't find it.

The sky lightened to twilight orange and purple, just enough sun that Martin and Hannah could watch the grass turn green where the tree had once stood. The verdant circle grew, radiating outward, spreading beneath their feet. A green curtain passed over the woods, brightening and softening the autumn gold and brown with a flush like springtime. As daylight faded, so did the green, the woods yellowing back to the golden hues of fall.

When the sky darkened to purple and the leaves and trees grayed into colorlessness, Martin smiled. They had beaten Aunt Michelle. He didn't register when she left, but he noticed when Hannah took his hand. It was warm, like the light from the tree had been. She stood, still holding his hand, and pulled him up beside her. His joints felt creaky, his muscles weak, but he didn't care. He didn't feel drained—he felt light. The energy they had given to the tree wasn't gone. It surrounded him and Hannah. They were breathing it.

They had lifted the curse. They had released the tree. The Spirit Tree was gone—every bit of it.

Martin dreamed it was daytime. He stood in a vast field, but not an empty one. All around him he listened to the buzz of birds and insects in tall stands of goldenrod, fluffy white boltonia, and wilting jewelweed, dwarfed by twelve-foot thistles.

The Spirit Tree had disappeared. Even the woods were gone, but the field was alive. And Martin was not alone.

Hannah stood beside him. She was dreaming, too.

35

Miserable Town

T
hings were normal in Lower Brynwood, if you could call something normal when it was the best it had ever been.

Martin and Hannah could both feel it right away. The next morning dawned the crispest, most beautiful, picture-perfect fall day they had ever seen. The leaves had turned from green to riotous bright colors overnight. Even the air tasted sweeter and cleaner.

The curse unraveled quickly. Within a few days Hannah's dad got his job back, including back pay. When his boss figured out that Jake wasn't certified for tree surgery, he suspended the town's contract with Laughlin Landscaping and Hannah's dad got credit for uncovering it.

The town lawyers turned down the planning commission's request to seize Jenna's historic property. They even chided Aunt Michelle for suggesting that Lower Brynwood could possibly benefit from destroying one of the oldest buildings in town, one with a direct connection to the town's founder, for the sake of a parking lot.

Once the controversy over eminent domain came out, Horizon Network Communications downgraded its financial support for the new stadium. The last thing they wanted was to attach their name to an unpopular project, and the deal to build a cell tower on school grounds fell through. Still, plans for a new stadium continued. The school district replaced the funds with grants, thanks to the smaller, greener stadium plan Jenna, her university colleagues, a landscape architect, and a green engineering firm had submitted months earlier, using sustainable construction materials and local labor. A.J. quit Jake's crew, got hired by the new landscape company, and re-enrolled in community college to study horticulture and ecology.

Nick even led the Lower Brynwood football team to victory over Upper Brynwood, then a few more, earning the team a winning record for the first time since the curse began.

Waverly and Libby joined forces with Hannah and Martin on their new social studies project—working with the Arbor Day Society to create a digital record of the Spirit Tree carvings using the photos Hannah and Martin had taken. It turned out Waverly and Libby were pretty good with graphics programs, thanks to their mutual obsession with the
Project Catwalk 4
video game.

But things being normal didn't mean they were perfect. It turned out Aunt Michelle was capable of holding a grudge against Martin—after all, she had nursed a one-sided rivalry with Jenna since high school. Fortunately, she had decided to tolerate his presence at home. She still needed him for her election campaign, although she scaled back her ambitions from Congress to Lower Brynwood Town Council after the debacle with the stadium.

“Great,” Hannah said when Martin told her during their daily after-school run. “I think she could do more damage here. At least Washington is three hours away.”

“That's what she said, but instead of damage she called it ‘local impact,'” Martin said. “Aunt Michelle and I both know she changed her mind because she couldn't go to Washington without power stolen from the Spirit Tree. Now she's got to pay her dues in local politics, and I'm stuck with her, wandering around that silly house pretending the whole thing never happened.”

“It shouldn't have,” said Hannah, breathing a little hard. “You know, I thought if we healed the tree, it would live. I guess it really wanted us to let it go.”

Letting go
, Martin thought.
Not so easy
. He ran silently beside her for a half-block. He had to tell her the best news of all, the best of his life, but at that moment it didn't feel so great. When his mom had video chatted last night, he had been ecstatic, but now he realized how much he was about to lose.

“My mom is coming home, Hannah,” he said at last. “Her whole unit will be back in the States by New Year's Day.”

Hannah squealed and hugged him awkwardly, nearly tackling him as they broke stride. “No way! I can't believe it,” she said. “Will she be able to live with Michelle, too? Talk about awkward.” She laughed.

“Home is South Carolina,” Martin said, then swallowed.

Hannah's laughter stopped abruptly. “You're leaving? You're not even going to finish out the school year here?”

“No.” The two of them pulled onto the edge of the Brynwood Park trail. Hannah stopped, gasping hard as if she couldn't catch her breath. She leaned down, her hands braced against her knees. Martin put his hand on her back, but she threw it off.

“Well, great,” she said, abrupt, as if she had slapped him. “You've been wanting to leave this…this
miserable town
ever since you got here. Lower Deadwood, right?”

“You know I don't feel that way now. Well, except for the fact that I'm still living with Aunt Michelle and she totally hates me, I like it here. I mean, I miss my mom and my friends back home, but I'm glad to be here for now.”

When she looked up at him, her gray eyes brimmed with tears. She swiped them with the back of her hand and straightened. “For now? For how long? You won't even be here another three months. That's too soon to leave.”

“It depends how you look at it. For the Spirit Tree, three months was nothing. But we're not trees—it's a long time for people.”

“It's longer than I've known you,” Hannah said. She looked away, facing the part of the woods where they had met in September. Once, this site had been the secret heart of the town, but now it was empty. The Spirit Tree was really gone.

“Three months is a long time if you make it count,” Martin said. Hannah turned to him again and nodded. She peered into his eyes in that odd way she had, as if she was looking through them right into his skull.

“So, let's not waste it,” she said, grabbing his hand in both of hers. He worried that his palm was sweaty, but realized that hers were, too. She helped him to his feet, and he still looked up at her slightly, close enough to count her freckles. He forgot about being nervous when she leaned down slightly to kiss him. For an instant, he felt the world stop around them. Then the buzz of life was louder than ever, ringing in his ears and through his veins.

He felt the warmth of her lips on his mouth even after she pulled away.

“Race you to the Spirit Tree,” she said, turning and taking off in a sprint.

Martin was about to yell after her that the tree was already gone, but then he could see it. Shining ahead of them through the woods was a column of light a hundred and fifty feet tall, haloed by a thousand tiny branches radiating outward, forking into thousands more, each tipped in a tiny star. He held his breath for a moment.

He blinked, and the ghost image faded into his memory. For him, the tree would never really be gone. He stretched his fingers wide like the branches and felt the life flow through them. Through
him
.

He ran after Hannah.

Every book is a journey, and this one had more detours than most.

Thank you to those who helped put this book into print: editor Jennifer Carson, agent Kathleen Rushall, and cover illustrator Shawna JC Tenney.

I remain grateful for the generous writers who supported me, read drafts, and answered questions: R.M. Clark, Steven Cordero, Dee Garretson, Bryn Greenwood, Joyce Shor Johnson, Norma Johnson, Teri Kanefield, Katrina Lantz, Nikki Loftin, Colby Marshall, Tracey Martin, Michelle McLean, Jenna Nelson, Lucy Pick, Cindy Pon, Lindsay Scott, Kristal Shaff, Shveta Thakrar, Angela Townsend, and Jenn Walkup.

Thanks to all my friends in Operation Awesome, the Pit, Purgatory, and the Blueboards.

To this tally I add those who embraced this story and told others: Jenny Cross, Kate Galer, Gail McCown, Alexandra Baker Shrake, Barley VanClief, and the inimitable Todd Marrone.

Much love to those who gave me strength and time to see this through: parents Nan and Jack Andrews; sisters Kim Andrews and Heather Andrews Magda; daughters Juliette and Oona; and especially my husband Jeff.

Create happiness.

Kell Andrews writes nonfiction for adults and fiction for children. A little bit of magic helps with both. Growing up, she spent a lot of time reading, writing, drawing, and looking for treasure in the woods and on the beach. She still does. Kell holds a humanities degree from Johns Hopkins University and a master of liberal arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania. A lifelong Philadelphian, she lives with her husband and two daughters in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, right next to a park a lot like the one in
Deadwood
.