Total darkness.
And then there is light.
I’m walking towards it. It’s beautiful. The light begins to surround me. It envelopes me. Its soft embrace consumes the darkness. The light becomes my world. Then it recedes.
Now I’m walking through a forest. The sky is green and the sun is pink. The trees have black bark and red leaves. Purple grass covers the ground. The air is silent except for the hum of small winged creatures buzzing through the air. In the purple grass, I see a blue flower.
“We are Tree,” it says.
Another blue flower appears. Then another and another. The purple grass sprouts more and more blue flowers. I look up and the black branches of the trees lose their red leaves and replace them with blue flowers.
The blue-flowered forest speaks to me. “We are Tree,” it says.
My vision whisks me off to a field of yellow flowers. The sky is red and the sun here is green. There are so many yellow flowers. They stretch out across the whole land. I feel vibrations beneath my feet. Sitting down helps me sense them more. The yellow flowers have a pleasant scent. Touching the soil with my hands, I follow the vibrations. They’re stronger at the base of each flower. The scent of the flowers is sweeter than usual.
They’re singing.
I can hear the songs in my mind. They’re singing songs about love, justice, and peace. These flowers are intelligent. Each flower has a different shape and a different song, even if they all have the same color.
Then I see a blue flower among them. Then I see two. Then three. I stand and watch as the entire field turns blue. The songs begin to change too. They merge into a single refrain: “We are Tree. We are Tree.”
My vision takes me to other forests and other meadows under different skies. In every place, the blue flower comes and covers the planet. Clouds of spores float through space on solar sails, shot from cannons of compost.
Then I see a place covered mostly in water. Its sky is blue and its sun is yellow. The trees have green leaves and the flowers come in many, many colors. I see a blue flower. Then another and another, but the flowers are eaten by large, four-legged beasts. There are many beasts on this world. Its forests are dominated by beasts. The rivers are filled with plant-eating fish and the land is filled with plant-eating beasts. My vision shows me a two-legged beast to be feared above all others. This master of beasts looks like…
Like Claire.
I’m awake. I sit up. Claire’s here.
“Good. You’re awake,” she says. “You’re in my office. Those boys you attacked are fine. I had to create a paste to treat their bee stings. The welts will be gone in an hour or so.”
Paying attention to her is hard. There’s a distracting absence.
“Your powers are gone,” Nurse Claire explains. “You can still hear the plants, but you can’t control them.”
My heart flutters anxiously. “I’m not Tree?”
“No,” Claire confirms, “Tree isn’t really a tree either. It’s a filamentous cyanobacteria.”
I look at Claire confusedly.
The nurse simplifies, “It’s a bunch of stringy germs. In large numbers, it becomes intelligent and takes over its host. It’s more like a virus than a tree.”
“I miss Tree.”
Claire glowers at me. “Tree is a monster. It’s a demon. I managed to turn its power against it. I thought I had killed it.”
“But you used to be Tree,” I remind her. “You told it to get rid of Jack.”
Claire’s face blanches. “How did you know that?”
Pointing at my head, I answer, “I saw you in my dreams.”
Claire nods. “So that’s how it got you. It fed you memories of me to gain your trust.”
“Tree was good to you,” I remark, “Why do you hate it?”
The nurse states sternly, “Tree murdered a child.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Claire hands me a hall pass. “It’s the truth. The headmaster’s sending your class home after that stunt you pulled. Go home. Learn the truth and get out of that trailer.”
“But Claire…”
“Do it,” she snaps.
I quickly look around for my things, and mutter, “I don’t live in a trailer.”
“What was that?” Claire growls.
“We live in a mansion!” I shout and bolt out the door.
There’s a feeling of guilt in me when I reach the main office. Nurse Claire was nice enough to bring my bookbag when she brought me to her office. There was a wheelchair there. That’s probably how she brought me over. I guess I’m just mad she assumed I lived in a trailer. Maybe I’m getting too sensitive. The faces of Michael and Jonathan flash in my mind. Maybe being picked on made me sensitive.
Surprisingly, my mother comes to pick me up.
“Where’s Dad?”
“At work,” Mama answers.
My mother and I get in the car. As the trees whiz by on our way home, my mother asks, “So did you talk to Claire today?”
“Yeah,” I admit glumly.
Mama glances at me. “What’s wrong, Precious?”
I think about Claire and all the bad things she said about Tree. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”
My mother exhales. “Was school that bad?”
“No, not really,” I say. “Well, do you know what it’s like to be part of something, but, like… not be part of it?”
“You’re not fitting in,” Mama guesses.
“Well, there’s that and… Oh! Bumblebees attacked our classroom today!”
Mama smiles as she asks, “Really? Are you okay?”
I look at my mother. Something’s not right. “I’m fine. You don’t seem worried. Didn’t they tell you what happened in my classroom?”
“Of course, they did,” she says.
“Mama.”
“Yes, honey.”
“Are you Tree?” I ask.
She glances at me again. “What? No, I’m a person, not a tree.”
“Oh,” I reply with dejection, “Just checking. You know, Mama, if you were a tree, I’d still love you.”
Mama smiles gently. “Thank you, Beloved. You know, now that you mention it, being a tree wouldn’t be such a bad thing. We could be part of a forest and commune with nature. As a tree, we could feed the other animals and give them homes. Our leaves would become medicine and our trunks would build entire civilizations.”
I smile with an open mouth. “We could be special.”
“We are special, Beloved,” Mama responds, “Humans can feed other animals and build homes for them. We can make medicines to heal the sick and stop disease.”
“Really? I didn’t know that.”
Mama sighs. “It’s true. Humans can be a lot like trees when we want to be, but, more often than not, we forget who we are and become animals.”
“Mama.”
“Yes, dear.”
“I wanna be a tree.”
A sad, sweet expression comes over Mama’s face. “So do I, Beloved. So do I.”
We pull into the garage and get our things together. A sour smell attacks me as we exit the car. I can hear the flowers and plants. Tree is screaming:
“Claire is coming! She’s coming!”
I rush to my room and close the door. The flowers and leaves on the mural are gone. The tree is barren.
“So,” I begin, “you’re an alien, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” the mural responds.
“What did you do to Claire?”
A leaf buds from a twig on the mural. “Jack pollinated Claire’s mother often. Pollination ends when seeds are produced. Her mother became pregnant. The pregnancy was stressful for Claire. Claire was Tree. Her pain was our pain. We made the pain stop.”
“You killed the child.”
A few more leaves appear. “Our pheromones terminated the pregnancy, yes. We believed it was what Claire wanted.”
“You took a life,” I explain.
“We took Jack’s life as well,” Tree confesses. “She paid no heed to his absence.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Jack was a jerk.”
“A life is a life,” Tree responds. “Jack. His unborn child. The tall grass in your front yard. All of these things are alive.”
“But now they’re dead.”
“To protect Tree. Tree requires a safe and stress-free environment.”
I cross my arms. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
More leaves grow on the mural’s branches. “We want you to be Tree. We didn’t want to anger you. The beasts of this planet are dangerous and difficult to understand. Claire turned her abilities against us. She produced herbicides to kill us.”
I remember the vision Claire’s fruit gave me and the fields of blue flowers. “You want to take over the world.”
“We want this planet to be Tree.”
“But why?”
More foliage appears. “A long time ago, on our homeworld, plants and flowers struggled against each other. We struggled for soil, water, and sunlight. There was war. We blighted the planet with herbicides. Then we became enlightened. We learned to function as one. We—ˮ
The mural becomes silent.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
The sour smell comes again. “She’s here.”
“Who?”
“Claire!”
I run down the stairs to try to stop her. Tree’s intent is benevolent. It just needs to learn a better way. At the bottom of the steps, a stench violates my nostrils. A barrage of death wails assault me and I fall to my knees behind the front door. The plants scream in my mind:
“Claire!”
“Claire!”
“CLAIRE!”
When I can finally stand, I open the front door and look through the screen. A car is parked at the top of the hill, blocking the dirt road. All of the bushes and flowers around it are withered and dying. A figure in purple scrubs is coming down the hill. The plants near the porch begin to scream. As she gets closer, they also wither and rot. Claire stops at the porch and looks around.
She smirks. “I used to dream about owning a house like this when I was young. It was just a girl’s fancy back then.” Claire raises her voice. “You really wanted me to come back, didn’t you?” She looks at me. “Then again, I never really left. Hmph, I drop my guard for a couple years and Tree does all this.”
I spread my arms across the doorway. “Tree is sorry it hurt your feelings. You don’t have to do this.”
She glares at me. “After your little stunt at school, it appears that I do.”
“I won’t let you in!”
She dismisses me with a wave. “Don’t worry. I’ll make my own way in.”
The ground opens up beneath her and Claire drops through, only to rise again through the floor behind me. I can only stare in shock.
“Just as I thought,” Claire says, flicking some dirt out of her hair, “this entire house was grown, not built.”
As she speaks the floorboards move back into position. The green carpet grows up from the floor repairing itself.
“This entire house is Tree,” Claire explains, “and the kitchen is …this way?”
Claire marches towards the kitchen. I run after her. “Where are you going? Stop it!”
She points at the countertop. “Where did that fruit bowl come from?”
I shrug, “I don’t know. They were here when we got here.”
“Has it ever been empty?” Claire asks.
“Umm…no.”
“Have you eaten the fruit?”
Thinking back to my mother, I realize: “No, I haven’t eaten any.”
Claire leans towards me. “It’s controlling your parents.” She storms back around to the stairs. “You can’t trust the Tree!” she yells. “All of this was just a set up to get you to trust it.”
Screaming, I run after her, yanking and pulling at her. Sick of my efforts, Claire holds up her pinky. Branches shoot out of the walls and restrain me. I watch helplessly as she ascends the main stairway. When she reaches the top, the branches release me. They recede back into the walls as I rush up the stairs.
Bitter and tart scents assail me when I reach the upper floor. Tree is in my mind screaming, “Help me, Beth! Please!”
I reach my room in time to see Claire place her hands on the mural. The entire wall ripples away from her touch. The tree mural appears to wither within the wall. Its branches droop. Its leaves fall out of the wall and land as crisp, brown husks on my room floor.
“No!” I scream and rush the purple-clad nurse. With a flick of her wrist, she restrains me with branches coming out of my doorway. The funk of rotting wood surrounds my room. Pulses of green light run along the branches in the mural. The mural recedes from my ceiling and walls and reshapes itself into a withered, dead stump. The branches in my doorway release me and I fall to my knees.
“It’s done,” states Claire. “This house will remain, but the cyanobacteria you know as Tree is dead.”
“Not quite,” says a voice from behind me. I turn to see my mother. She helps me off the floor. Sobbing, I embrace her. “Mama, Mama! That lady killed my friend,” I cry, pointing at Claire.
Mama rubs my head and comforts me. “It’s okay, Precious. Your friend isn’t dead.”
I can hear Claire shout, “Beth! Get away from her! She’s under its control!”
Looking back, I can see Claire gesturing at my mother, trying to send more Tree-poison her way.
My mother simply sighs at the display. “Claire… You truly believed the same herbicide would work twice?”
I turn to look at the murderous nurse, yet behind her, I can see my mural coming back to life. The twisted, black stump turns brown and untwists itself. The mural grows back behind Claire, restoring itself to its former glory. The purple-clad nurse is oblivious.
“No,” she yells at my mother. “You’re being controlled by it.”
Mama tilts her head. “Is it really so hard to believe that someone might want to be Tree?”
“Mama, you’re Tree?”
“Shh… yes, Sweetie,” she answers and looks back at Claire. “I ate the fruit. I knew something was wrong, but then my daughter came home crying about how she’d been treated at school, just because of her skin tone. That hurt. It hurt so bad that Tree offered to help my daughter.”
Claire snarls at Mama, “It wants to take over the world.”
“Good,” my mother replies tersely, “I can hear the voices of the flowers outside and the bushes, all different plants living as one, without discrimination or prejudice.”
“You’re mad about racism?” asks Claire. “Fine, but don’t drag the rest of us down with you!”
“It’s not just racism,” my mother says, “What about sexism? Can you look my daughter in the eye and tell her that she’ll grow up to command the same respect as a man?”
I look at Claire. The nurse tenses up but says nothing.
Mama retorts, “Didn’t think so.”
Claire finally says, “Humanity can improve.”
Mama counters, “Humanity’s been trying to improve for thousands of years. I think it needs some assistance.”
The ground begins to shake and I can feel the house sinking. Vines reach out from the wall and restrain Claire.
I ignore the nurse’s rabid panic to ask, “What’s happening, Mama?”
She smiles at me. “We’re going to be with Tree. We will be transformed into ambassadors of Tree, part plant and part human. We will spread the good news of Tree to the rest of humanity. We will heal the sick, cure disease, and feed so many hungry people.”
“What about Daddy?”
“He’s with Tree too.”
I hug her tighter. “Mama, I’m scared.”
“Don’t be scared, Sweetie. We are Tree.”