Gemini Trees

Gemini Trees - Charlotte Lebedeker (AW Dreyfoos School of the Arts, Twelfth Grade)

The mountains have been called many names. The Americana Mountain Range or the

Windy Mountains are most common, and those by the coast often knew them as The Barriers,

but one woman actually living in them called them very differently. To her and her family, they

were Mount Trees. The name was basic, sure, not very intellectual, but out of all the names,

probably the most fitting. There was nothing more plentiful between each divot and peak than

the dense thicket of trunks and leaves.

Her name was Margaret, named after her mother, and her mother was named after her

great grandmother. You’d have to go ten generations back to find an ancestor of Margaret’s that

wasn’t born in Mount Trees. It seemed like the people who lived there all got lost in the

mountains. After the first generation settled, very few followed in their footsteps, instead opting

for the flatter land and larger cities on either side of the mountain range. Consequently, after

many generations, the world outside Mount Trees was as distant as alien planets. Although the

outside world knew about them, the local folk didn’t know much about the outside world. It

would seap its way into the mountains like winter honey, so you could count on the people in

Mount Trees to be about thirty to fifty years behind the technology of the rest of the world. For

instance, a shipment of walkie talkies decades after they were on every child’s wish list arrived at

the gas station, and no one in the mountains ever questioned where they came from because

every now and then the gas station would have new stuff that no explanation was needed for, just

as they needed no explanation why the sun rose. Margaret, like most others living in Mount

Trees, had never wondered about elsewhere because she was never taught about elsewhere; it

would be like trying to imagine a new color. Besides, Margaret was too busy to think so

extensionally. Her whole childhood she had two goals: learn how to sew so she could sell clothes

like her lineage always had, and know how to protect herself so she wouldn’t end up a missing

poster stapled to a tree.

Margaret had seen it her whole life: people she saw in passing every day, maybe they

would be behind a shop counter or walking the dirt paths into town, becoming the people she

saw every day but now saw only their grainy face on a piece of paper on some wall or corkboard

or tree or lamp post. First they would be printed in a deep black, and then the sun would fade

them to gray, and when summer rains came, they would become gray blotches, and this

weathering would continue until the paper itself disappeared from its place, leaving only a staple

in its spot. To Margaret, the staples were bones, the hollow inside of dead trees. They were

morbid then the missing posters themselves because although no one from the missing posters

were ever found, when the missing posters went missing was the real pronunciation of death.

Margaret’s family told her trees and night were the killers. Anyone who goes too close

too often to the trees and anyone who goes out at night—even just once—would end up gone.

She believed this already, but she got confirmation of it when she was a teenager. Margaret knew

a girl her age who sat behind the counter at her father’s butcher shop and would sneak Margaret

jerky strips. They didn’t talk much and the only time they did was when Margaret had been sent

by her parents, but she was the closest thing she had to a friend. One day when this girl handed

her the wrapped up meats, Margaret noticed her palms were red and scraped at their heels. When

she asked about it, the girl told her she had been “climbing trees”. She said it was fun, and

wrapped up with the meat, she left a token from her tree climbing. When Margaret got home, she

peeled back the butcher paper and found a wooden sphere carved like an eyeball with some

green paint. She didn’t know what to do with it. She kept it in her room and rolled it on the floor.

Then she held it up to her own eye and chucked it out the window.

The next day, Margaret saw the girl from the butcher shop in print.

All this worrying left little room for personality. Luckily for Margaret, she was pretty.

Her skin was pristine from all her hiding in doors and her dark hair always sat in unfrizzed curls.

So when a photographer met her, a man with an eye for beauty, the two were wed in a flash.

Margaret wasn’t sure if she loved him—she was never taught about that either. Rather she had it

drilled into her mind by her mother (who had it drilled into her mind by her mother and so forth)

that she had to survive to create a next generation and ensure their survival as well.

Another thing Margaret inherited from this generational cycle was the many rules for

she had for her family: Never go out at night; Never borrow into the tree hollows—you’re not

some squirrel or bug; Never put all the lights out at night; Never climb the trees; Never go out

alone; Never forget to say your prayers; Never look out the windows at night; Never whistle, day

or night; Never look for lost things; Never cut the trees.

No one knew these rules better than her two children, twin girls, Thea and Taylor. They

were beauties like their mother, only they went outside so they developed tanner skin and brown

freckles across their cheeks. They had her straight eyelashes and rounded lips, round cheeks and

slender jaws, with dark brown eyes that lit up in the sunlight. However, they acted more like

their father. Thea was a storyteller who could talk for hours on end about something that never

happened, meanwhile Taylor was an artist who drew flower vines in glitter pens up her arms.

They saw their mother as paranoid. Some rules they took seriously, like going out at night. It was

too dark and if they got scrapped up playing in the daylight, they’d surely die in the moonlight,

but also, they didn’t have a reason to want to go out. If they wanted to sneak out anywhere, it

would’ve been an hour’s walk anyway. However, other rules they didn’t necessarily break, but

they didn’t follow. They tended to close their bedroom curtains at night, but they didn’t have a

strict time they would like their mother did, and if they were still drawn back at night and they so

happened to catch a glance out the window, oh well. They reasoned there was nothing that could

hurt them if they just looked; it wasn’t the same as venturing out. Few rules they broke again and

again. The only one that comes to mind is “Never climb the trees”; they practically lived there.

There were no playgrounds, and all the toys they had were inside toys, so nature became their

personal jungle gym. And maybe they might fall from a tree, but that wasn’t serious damage, so

it couldn’t be that important. Taylor and Thea would laugh about the rules to each other, and

sometimes they’d try to get their father in on the laugh. He was absent-minded not because he

was raised to be a paranoid mess like his wife, but because his mother went missing when he was

seven, the same age his daughters were now, and ever since then, he didn’t like to think too hard

about anything or else he’d start crying. It was better just to know his mother was gone than to

think of where she could’ve gone. All he wanted was to have fun and look at pretty things and

take photos, and with that lack of awareness, he was the same way his daughters were with the

rules: he’d follow the more sensible ones and ignore the others. The girls had seen him more than

once climb a tree with his camera to get the perfect shot. And when they broke the rules like that,

he said nothing, but the second they openly made fun of the rules, it turned into “Stop that. You

girls don’t understand that your mother is protecting you.” And he didn’t understand it either, but

Margaret had told him that’s what she was doing with the rules, and so he just echoed what he

was told.

They lived in a nameless town. Actually, they lived three miles away from it, and with all

the tall, thickets of trees and the fact that they had no car, that was an hour. Most people “in” the

dirt path town lived like that. And the people didn’t know much. For instance, Thea and Taylor

would often make a whole day out of the town although to an outsider, it wouldn’t seem like it

had much to offer. They liked to browse the “Teen Magazine” selection in the gas station. They

were plastered with celebrities, but the girls had never seen people with makeup and rollers for

their hair, so they always thought it was fictional and designed by really talented artists. They

called the people in it “Pretend People,” and Thea was particularly a fan of them. She would

mimic the “Pretend Girls” in the articles, picking up “Oh my god!” and constantly exclaiming it

in her mountainous accent. While Thea was enthralled with the glamor of alien-like bedazzled

handbags and headlines like “BACKSTAGE BACK STABBING: Astrid Pollux leaves set with

co-star Violet Evan’s Ex-Boyfriend!” Taylor would just stare at the images. She’s seen photos

before, but there was no doubt in their minds that this was all fictionalized and all the visuals

were illustrations. So the two of them were set on this idea: Taylor would draw the magazines,

and Thea would write the stories. The gas station owner was like a mayor, or like God. He and

the other shopkeepers were the only ones who lived in town, and he was the only person in

contact with the outside world. Other shops sold the meat they hunted or the vegetables they

harvested or the toys they handcrafted, but the gas station was the only place that ordered from

the outside world. He would smile when he overheard Thea and Taylor talk about the magazines.

He could’ve corrected them—he could’ve expanded the horizons of everyone in that town to the

world around them—but he didn’t. Half his entertainment was replaying memories of all the

“stupid” things he’s heard and seen the mountain folk say and do.

Thea and Taylor would sit in the tree branches and discuss magazine ideas:

“Oh my god! What if Violent Evan gets back at Astrid Pollux by buying all the same

clothes she has, but she wears them better!”

“And it's better because she put extra sparkles on her dress! I could draw the dress nearly

glowing.”

And life was good out in Mount Trees. They would create their stories, draw their

pictures, climb their trees, and play their forest games like hide and seek.

Then one day their father went out with Taylor to photograph some animals. Thea stayed

back, uninterested in photography. She asked her father if he saw any animals with green eyes to

be sure to snap a photo. Those were Thea and Taylor’s favorite. They’d seen crows, squirrels,

and even a fox before with bright green orbs for eyes, and every time they did, they would just

stop to watch them for as long as the animal would allow them, which was another good thing

about them: the green-eyed animals were much more tolerant of people than the ones with black

beady eyes. You could be close enough to reach your arms out and grab them, and the

green-eyed animals wouldn’t move. You could talk as loud as you pleased, and the green-eyed

animals wouldn’t move. It was like they wanted company.

So while Taylor and their father went out, Thea stayed back in the home with their

mother and wrote down her stories instead. She was in their room—the room she liked very

much. It had lavender walls and a lime green ceiling. They had drawn flowers on their closet

door with periwinkle markers and golden pawprints on the bedroom door with a metallic paint

they had cherished. The carpet was two inches of pink fluff that was perfect cushioning for when

they sat down and made their stories in their notebooks. On one side of the room were their bunk

beds. Thea slept on the top one and Taylor slept on the bottom. Under the bed, from the wall and

spilling from under the bed, were all the magazines they had stored. They had quilted blankets

with squares of clouds, purple chevron, and blue polk-a-dots. On the other side of the room was a

wooden desk. The back of it was stacked with notebooks and sketchbooks and photos their father

developed for them, and in the little drawers with heart-shaped knobs were all their glitter pens

and drawing supplies. Being in a place like that, it passed the time quickly.

Thea was peacefully writing, something about Violet Evan starring in the newest, bestest

movie, when she heard the front door hit the wall and Taylor crying. She put down her writing

things and ran for the door, but then she stopped at the sound of her mother’s screaming. She put

her ear up to the door and listened. Only fragments of their sobbings made their way through the

door:

“...gotta look for him!”

“I’m telling you, no! He’s...”

“For our birthday, he has to...”

“...just stay here and...”

Then she heard Taylor start shouting, “Mom! Mom! Mom!” and heavy footsteps

marching down the hallway to their bedroom. Thea scrambled away from the door on her hands

just in time. The door was thrown open, nearly broken as it hit the wall, and their mother threw

Taylor inside. After the door was slammed, she tried to open it, but their mother had already

pushed the hallway table in front of it.

“Taylor, you’re staying here!” Then they heard their mother walk away.

“What happened?” Thea asked, crawling to her sister. She grabbed one of her hands and

rested her head on Taylor’s shoulder. Thea felt Taylor’s tears falling off her cheeks and down to

her neck, and she felt Taylor shaking her head no again and again.

“Dad... is missing and- he’s missing—”

“Do you think he’ll be back in time for our birthday?”

“He’s not coming back. Not by next week, not by- There’s...” Taylor wanted to tell her

what happened, but she didn’t have the words for it. So she was quiet. Not only at that moment,

but from then on. Thea, who didn’t fully understand what had happened, picked up her notebook

to read to Taylor what she came up with, but Taylor just hummed and nodded, looking to the

window instead of at her sister.

“I’m sure Dad will be back soon. And he’ll probably have great photos with him when he

does,” Thea said later in the night as they laid in their bunks, Taylor unable to sleep with what

she had just seen. She spent the night tossing and turning, mumbling about how stupid their mom

was and how they have to find their dad. Thea couldn’t sleep either knowing Taylor was stuck

awake.

Taylor was just the same the next day. And the next. There was a grayness to her, if that

made sense. She didn’t care for the glitter gel pens and would only scribble in pencil. Rather than

storytelling with her sister, she would just sulk, lean against the bed and complain about their

mother while asking to look for their father. They would usually go outside to play, making

magazines and hide and seek and whatnot, but their mother wasn’t allowing it after Taylor’s

outburst. Thea was upset about the whole thing, but she didn’t say much about it. She didn’t get

why Taylor was so distraught and was mad at her mother for being so strict. She was just waiting

for her father to come home so this could all be put behind them. But the days kept passing, and

it all stayed the same. Distant sister. Angry mother. Missing father. Actually, it wasn’t quite the

same. Thea continued to beg their mother to look for their father, and each time the conversation

got meaner. Thea listened, ear up to their bedroom door. The first few fights were just yelling,

but now she would hear things tumbling into the walls, screams somehow louder than the last

fight—like they were competing over who could endure the longest before their throat

snapped—and eventually the sharp sound of a slap against skin followed by her sister’s cries.

The room seemed to absorb all these noises. The paint on their door seemed like rotting

memories and the screams seeped into the fluffy floor. The lavender walls and lime ceiling felt

darker, like they were a shadow consuming Thea when all she could do was listen, and she didn’t

really like the room very much—or at all—anymore. Somehow, Taylor would always return to

their room crying harder than the last fight. And with each argument, she wanted to find her

father even more. She would cry into Thea’s arms, parts of her skin red and her mouth dry,

saying, “Dad would never be so crazy. Why is she so crazy? I can’t live like this. We have to

bring him home.”

And Thea just got more confused. It was like she lived in some insane asylum and there

was some mass hallucination she couldn’t see.

Then it was the day before the girls’ birthday. That morning Thea twirled down the bunk

bed ladder to where her sister laid. Though it was early, the June sun was already pouring

through the blinds and folding their room in gold. “Tomorrow is the big eight, here we are!”

But Taylor just opened her eyes and stared, “Yeah.”

“Listen,” Thea sat down, crossing her arms and huffing, “If it’ll make you feel better,

we’ll go look for Dad today.”

“Mom would tie us down if we tried.”

“But today is the day before our birthday! Think! She’ll be going out to town to get our

birthday cake and decorations and presents, and that’s our chance. If you promise me we can

play hide and seek first. I’ve missed being able to play outside.”

“Promise.” Taylor sat up, and though she didn’t smile and her voice stayed flat, she

hugged Thea, and things were looking up.

So they changed into their play clothes then waited, looking out their window until they

saw their mother leave, and then when she was out of sight and deep into the winding path that

cut through the trees and into town, they headed for the door. It was locked, but they had read in

one of their Teen Magazines that bobby pins worked perfectly for this, and with just a twist of a

hair pin, they were free.

“I hope we see one of the green-eyed animals,” Thea said as she skipped through the

trees. “It would be like an early birthday gift. Don’t you think?”

“I don’t want to see any green-eyed animals.”

“Why? We’ve always agreed they’re so cute!”

“Nevermind,” Taylor stopped and looked around. “This looks like a good spot to play.”

And so Thea started counting, and Taylor ran to hide.

“Ready or not, here I come!” Thea took her hands off her eyes and surveyed the forest. At

this time of year, the sun made white paintings on the dirt through the leaves, but still, there were

plenty of shadows to hide in. Thea’s sister Taylor would blend right in with her black hair, so she

had to keep an eye out for her blue shoes and red t-shirt.

She circled each tree, looking up the tall, dark bark for any color hiding on the limbs

behind the leaves. Most importantly, she stayed silent. The only hiding places in their game were

in or behind the trees, so moving around, evading the seeker’s gaze, was the way to win.

Behind one of the larger trees with a base too thick to hug, Thea saw blue shoes in the

dirt. The left foot was tapping slowly, making no sound against the soft ground. That smidge of

color was all Thea needed. She rolled up her jeans and got on her hands and knees. She held her

breath and smiled, crawling around the other side of the tree to sneak up on Taylor. As she went

to the tree’s backside, she saw the red shirt and black hair sticking to Taylor’s skin in the early

August heat.

She lunged at her sister, grabbing her shoulders and laughing as she shouted, “Got ya!”

But Taylor didn’t laugh with her. She turned around- no, her head turned around. Her face was

just the same as Taylor’s—just the same as Thea’s. There were dark freckles over tan skin. She

had straight eyelashes and rounded lips. She had round cheeks and a slender jaw. But her

eyebrows, though the same black color and thin, were arched too sharply. There were no creases

on her peach lips, and her brown eyes—though just the same almond shape—were nearly green.

Then she smiled, and there were no dimples.

Thea scrambled back on her hands, got up, and ran back towards the house, which was

far out of sight by now. “Come back!” The thing called from behind her, sounding just like

Taylor. So much like Taylor, that it sounded like two Taylors were speaking. Then it called,

again: “Where are you going?” But this time, the call had come from up ahead.

She closed her eyes and continued to run, afraid to catch a glimpse of that thing again, as

she repeated, “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god—” And even with her eyes closed,

she made it home. She tripped on the wooden porch steps then opened her eyes and scrambled to

her feet, wheezing and breathing like a running hog. She threw open the door, sending some of

its ivy green pain that had been chipping for years now across the porch. “MOM!” She found her

mother in the kitchen with grocery bags on the table. She had been taping up a “Happy Birthday”

banner over the dining room table when her daughter ran up to her. Thea put her head to her

mother’s shoulder, starting to cry in her arms. “Something is pretending to be Taylor... I don’t

know what happened to her... we were just playing hide n’ seek...I don’t know Mom... I

don’t—”

“Dammit!” Her mother held onto her and began sobbing, too. “I knew she shouldn’t have

gone fucking looking for him. Dammit, dammit!”

“No, no, oh my god, no. We were just playing, Mom. Just—”

She shook her head and pushed Thea out to arms’ length, kneeling down to look at her

face to face. “Your sister is gone. And we don’t go looking for gone things, or you end up one of

them. That’s what happened to Taylor.”

“I know you guys were fighting, but we have to go find her. That thing could hurt her real

badly.”

“Listen!” She tightened her grip on Thea’s shoulder. “I’m alive because when a new

missing poster is put out somewhere in town, I stay inside! And I follow our rules! You’re gonna

do that too.” Then she started sobbing. It was like she was now the child, resting her head against

Thea’s chest and wetting her shirt with tears.

“Oh my god, you’re crazy...” Thea whispered. She didn’t mean to say it, but it was one

of those thoughts so strong, it broke the mental filter and went straight through.

“I’m surviving!” She fell backwards crying, rocking back and forth, hitting the walls.

“Thea! This is all there is! Put your fiction magazines away and think! Don’t you get it?! There’s

Mount Trees and then the edge of the world! You live on it or...” She screamed like she was

having some sort of vision, and all Thea could do was watch wide-eyed as her mother squealed.

She was almost sure her throat would just burst into a bloody mess. She heard the screaming and

fit before, but listening to Taylor beg her mother to look for their father from behind the bedroom

door was much easier than to be face to face with it conversing. Her mother continued screaming

and grabbed Thea by the wrist. She dragged her into her bedroom, throwing her to the carpeted

floor and slamming the door.

“Mom! Mom!” Thea shouted, scrambling to the door, but the screeching of wood had

already begun. It was the sound of the heavy wooden table out in the hallway being dragged

against the hardwood floors and pushed right in front of the door. Thea tried the door knob, but

all it did was shake, making more noise in the chaotic symphony championed by her mother’s

screams.

“Thea...” Her mother said as she took a deep breath. She was right against the door, but

her voice after all the screaming sounded strained and distant, like she was speaking from all the

way down the hall. “I wish you could understand I’m protecting you.”

Thea spent all day crying. And in her sobs, something peculiar dawned on her: Had her

life always been a horror?

She knew of horror as a genre. She’s seen the books and movies in the library, although

she never checked it out herself. However, when she took a step back from her insider's

perspective, everything was an oddity. All her mother’s rules remained a mystery. Her father’s

going missing, and her sister’s doppelgänger. And it wasn’t just that. With all that had happened,

it gave validity to her mother’s paranoia. Could the world be as dangerous as she claimed? And

what other things, things she had never second guessed, were monstrous? She thought about the

green-eyed animals. She remembered all the nature magazines she had skimmed for, but couldn’t

remember any mention of such animals. There had never been a photo or a blurb about it. Were

they strange? Were trees strange? Maybe there was a reason her mother didn’t want them

chopping or climbing. While she cried, Thea doubted everything. Was the sky alive? When it

rained, did it cry? If so, what about June made it sad so often? Thea pulled the magazines out

from under their bed. She used the glossy pages to wipe tears off of her face. If Taylor had

disappeared just like that and into someone else, maybe Thea could make one of her characters

come to life just like that. She would do anything to speak to Violet Evan right now. Maybe,

Thea thought, there are multiple worlds, and all are the different genres of magazines. Maybe,

Thea thought, she was living in the horror one, but somewhere out there is a world of glamor she

could escape to, away from all the things that were possibly bad and her mother’s screaming

rage. Maybe, Thea thought, that’s where Taylor went; she might be safer there.

When the light from the windows dimmed and the moon rose, she took all the magazines

in her arms and got into the bottom bunk, not bothering to close the blinds. Her body, identical to

her sister’s, fit perfectly on the indent Taylor had made in the mattress by sleeping the same way

in the same spot every night for thirteen years. But not that night.

Thea laid there, clutching the pages she wished she was in, eyes wide open and turning

red as she refused to blink. An hour went by when another thing dawned on her: This was the

same paranoia as her mother’s.

“Oh my god!” She began crying, ashamed of herself for what she had turned into in the

course of just a few hours.

Then, green eyes gleamed from the shadows of the closet, from the left side of the closet

where Taylor kept her shoes. There was no light around them. While they glowed, the rest of the

room refused to take in any of that luminosity. And the green, beady eyes were staring at Thea’s

brown ones. She took cover under her covers: “Just leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me

alone—”

“I’m here to help. Taylor is happy. She’s with me, and she wants me to take you to her.”

She took the covers off her face. “Oh god, you think I’m stupid.”

“No? What?”

“You think I’m an idiot,” Thea started crying. “You’re definitely not from the nice places

in these magazines, so if she’s with you then she’s not there! And you think I’m going to follow

the scary doppelgänger into the woods, so you can make me into some creepy clone, too. And

the worst part is I probably will because I do really miss Taylor, even though I know you’ll just

kill me or something worse!”

“Stop whining. Taylor’s not dead.”

“She’s not?”

“I can show you her. Honestly. Her breathing body and beating heart.”

“They won’t be like severed or anything? She’ll be alive? No tricks?”

“Nothing will be severed.”

So against her better judgment, Thea laced up her shoes while thinking, “Yup, definitely

going to die.” and unlatched her window. The thing crawled out the window, and she followed

afterward into the void of a nighttime forest.

The trees covered any stars and moonlight hoping to give guidance to the ground below.

Thea had walked through these woods time and time again. She should’ve been able to navigate

it blindfolded, but once she passed the point where trees hid the light from her house, it was like

she had found herself in an uncharted corner of space that not even nebulas, as large and light as

they are, dared to occupy. It was funny how the trees seemed to get rid of everything. Thea liked

to imagine that in the dead of night, they were just trying to take all the light they could. Yes,

that’s why they darkened everything. They were using the light, not killing it. The creature Thea

traveled with was unphased by it all. Maybe those green eyes gave it night vision. That must’ve

been when they were so bright, Thea thought. It grabbed her wrist, digging its nails into the skin

on her palm, and dragged her through the maze of trees.

Thea followed where she was pulled and tried not to think about what would happen to

her. It was too late to withdraw now that she was so deep into the woods. Then she heard what at

first just sounded like wind rustling through the trees, but then its pitch got higher and higher and

turned into a sort of whistle. It was the kind a human could make, but it went on way longer than

any person could breath in or out for. “Oh my god, what is that? Mom always said not to

whistle.”

“Ignore it. Or don’t. I know where you are.” Then they stopped. “It’s here.” The thing’s

eyes got even brighter, and the glow finally began to shed light on the things around it. They

were standing in front of a tree, one just like any other in the forest.

“I don’t get it.” Thea laughed in spite of herself, but then it said something that shut her

up:

“Open your eyes.”

Part of the bark peeled back, two little spots on the tree—only a penny big—retracted to

reveal eyes. Brown eyes. From the dark, honey-ish color and the pearl-like whites, Thea knew.

She had seen the specks of yellow and lines of dark browns day after day in the same patterns of

those in the trees. “Taylor...” She turned to the creature, “Get her out. Now. Please.”

It just took its nails and began scratching away at the wood like a chainsaw.

“Don’t cut the trees!” Thea tried to pull it back, but it didn’t move. Then she stared at her

shaking hands, the ones that were frantic to enforce her mother’s rules. What had happened to

her? What would Taylor think about the similarity?

When the thing was done, there was Taylor’s body in full. She was wearing the same blue

shoes and red shirt, although they had become dirty and torn. Her skin was... disturbed. There

was no blood or scarring, but it had lifted and melted, the same tan color it had always been,

blending with the innards of the tree. She smiled. Her chest was rising and falling. She blinked.

Thea went to touch her chest, feel for a heartbeat, but the thing just grabbed her hand and said,

“Don’t touch us.”

“Get her out. Please.”

“Do you want to leave, Taylor?”

She shook her head. At least as much as she could in that tiny space with her head

merged into the tree.

“Why? Why would you do this? Why would she like this? Why-”

“It’s all alive. I’m alive. We’re alive. Everything on this mountain is one. It’s all alive, but

it has no body. Long ago the ground used to take in squirrels crawling across the dirt and birds

landing on branches. We’d house them in our underbelly, and with the space they took up, we

made a copy. Then we’d go out to get food and experience this wonder which is us. Climb on

ourselves, run through ourselves, breathe in our air. The animals we took in were happy. We

merged with their organs, pumping blood through this large body you’ve been living on, taking

in oxygen, and most importantly, using their eyes to see. They, though rendered immobile, were

still sentient, and so much happier than when they were out there on their own.” It smiled at

Taylor, caressing the tree’s outside with its claws like one might to their child. Thea thought

about the green-eyed animals and her green-eyed “sister” she had seen before. She looked

around at the trees and down at the dirt, wondering in which places living things were being

sheltered. “Then the people came, and we realized you could do a lot with thumbs and upwards

of five feet of height. So we opened our trees and made copies of our wood out of your kind. It

feels so good to be this flexible. Have flesh that stretches and fingers that can grab. It also feels

good for people like Taylor who get to be safe, finally rest. She, like so many others, are now a

part of us. By talking to me right now, you’re talking to her. We’re all one. And I know, it seems

morbid. I’m sure she seems dead in a way, but she—we are going to live forever.”

“So what are there like veins and nerves in Mount Trees?” She chuckled again despite the

increasingly prominent presence of death.

“Yes. Would you like to see them?”

“Oh god! Why are you telling me all of this anyway?”

“Your mother has been living here for quite some time. As has her mother. And hers too.

Her entire life has been right here. We want your mother more than anyone else. Her parents, we

never got. Her grandparents, we never got. Your lineage was like a rainbow we’ve been chasing,

but then we got the man she married, then we got her daughter, and Thea, we’d love to have you,

too. Maybe then she’ll go along with us. You’ll all get to be a family again, ever closer than

before, in a bigger family than before, forevermore.”

Thea sighed. Her poor mother. Her crazy mother. None of this sounded pleasurable. But

then she thought this: if she didn’t join the land, then what? She grows old with her mother, sees

her die, maybe finds herself in a family of her own, all only to live poor and crazy like her

mother had. “Where are we?”

“What?”

“Outside these mountains, outside of you, what is there? I get Mount Trees is this living

thing I’ve been living on, but where do you live?”

“There is nothing outside of us. It’s all dead land. Have you ever heard of sand?” She

shook her head no. “There’s a lot of that. It’s not sentient like us. There’s no trees, no green. It’s

all dead out there. Would you like to see?” She nodded.

It took out its eye: a green wooden sphere with anatomy carved into it. There was only

more wood behind where the eyes had been. “Oh my god...” Then it held its eye up to Thea’s.

They were like wooden marbles, and she saw through it what the eye of one of the many

tree-bound bodies somewhere in a cloud-level mountaintop over in the mountain’s west saw. The

view was more gruesome than Taylor’s body in the tree; at least that was alive. What she saw

was yellow and dried. She would’ve thought it was rock if not for the wind that stirred it up,

wind that drove lonely with no leaves to rustle, no clouds in the dark sky to move. The whole

landscape was aching for just a bit of water. Thea wished to see a drop of rain or a small pond,

something that could support a breath, give life to this land. For someone who grew up on

grounds that squished when she walked and took coverage from June’s sun under trees, the

desert was as gorish as a mutilated body. “Is this all there is? Really?”

The creature flashed through different photos, all slightly different in angle, but all the

same view. All the images had been selected for the apocalyptic photo album to sell the same lie.

It didn’t show the view from the east side of the mountain of blue water lapping up on the coast.

It didn’t show Thea the southern view of trees on a plain so plentiful that would turn fire-like

come the end of summer. It didn’t show the cities that the magazine photos came from, nor did it

show neighborhoods where children were safe to play at dusk. It didn’t show the streams and

rapids up north weaving through the hills. It didn’t show the other side of the land where there

was another lush mountain range, and it left out that across the sea, there was an island of eternal

spring. All it showed was desert to the west of the mountain, and nothing beyond that arid land;

its narrative was this: Mount Trees. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Thea pushed the eyes away. The creature popped them back into the wooden-mockery of

its head. She stepped close to the tree, getting a view of Taylor’s face with her eyes now

closed—in a way, getting a view of her own face. How peaceful she looked, a slight smile on her

sleeping face and skin nestled in the embrace of a tree. How peaceful Thea could look just like

that. Someone, the creature—Mount Trees knew exactly what she was thinking. The trunk

stretched, opening up more where the thing had already scratched away at it, and the trunk grew

wider, too. Thea stepped in, and when she did, her heart’s pounding beat slowed. It was like the

end of a drum march where everything slows for the finale, but it just stayed that way, the same

repetitive melody going on and on. Thea stepped fully into the tree, and though it was dark

without the glow of the green eyes, she wasn’t scared like she had been leaving her bedroom

window into the void of night. She turned, standing back to back with Taylor. She grabbed her

hands, and the tree closed around them. The wood pushed her into her sister’s back and

cemented their holding hands. Any empty room had been taken up—swaddled. Then the tree

started moving into her skin. It sounds painful, but it was complete peace. The way the wood

gently had an upwards drag on her skin seemed to hold her whole body, taking all the weight off

of her. Thea and Taylor’s hands began to fuse; the melting flesh was warm and promised the girls

that they’d never be apart again. And it was not just them. They were one with each other, yes,

but also with all the green eyed animals they would gawk over and their father and people they

had never met, but would get to know sharing the same veins and body that was the mountains.

And what was once so scary was havenly.