All the Birds in the Sky

Somehow Patricia knew the way to the place where the Parliament had met when she was a little girl. She wondered if she was dreaming all this, but it had too many funny details, like the highway construction closing one lane in the middle of the night — who would dream that up? — and it all seemed totally real.

Soon she was in front of the majestic Tree where the Parliament had met, its great wings of leaves arching over her. But there were no birds this time. The Tree just fanned in the darkness, the wind animating its fronds a little bit. Patricia had wasted a trip out of her body, because nobody was home. Just her luck.

She almost turned and flew back. But maybe the birds were in recess somewhere nearby. “Hello?” Patricia said into the darkness.

“Hell,” a voice said back, “o.”

Patricia had been standing planted in a patch of ground, but at the sound of that voice she jumped, and rose four feet in the air because she still weighed nothing. She remembered at last how to come back down to earth.

“Hello?” Patricia said again. “Who’s there?”

“You called out,” said the voice. “I answered.”

This time, Patricia could tell somehow that the voice was coming from the Tree itself. Like there was a presence there, at the center of its big trunk. There wasn’t a face or anything, just a feeling that something was watching her.

“Thank you,” Patricia said. She was getting cold, after all, in her panda pajamas. She was barefoot outdoors in the autumn night, even though this wasn’t her body.

“I have not spoken to a living person,” the Tree said, forming the words syllable by syllable, “in many seasons. You were distressed. What is wrong?” Its voice sounded like the wind blowing through an old bellows, or the lowest note playing on a big wooden recorder.

Now Patricia felt embarrassed, because suddenly her problems felt tiny and selfish, when she placed them in front of such a huge and ancient presence. “I feel like a fake witch,” she said. “I can’t do anything. At all. My friend Laurence can build supercomputers and time machines and ray guns. He can make cool things happen any time he wants. I can’t make anything cool happen.”

“Something cool,” the Tree said in a gust of vowels and a clatter of consonants, “is happening. Right now.”

“Yes,” Patricia said, ashamed again. “Yes! Definitely! This is great. Really. But this just happened on its own. I can’t make anything happen when I want it to.”

“Your friend would control nature,” said the Tree, rustling through each syllable one by one. “A witch must serve nature.”

“But,” Patricia said, thinking this through. “That’s not fair. If nature serves Laurence, and I serve nature, then it’s like I’m serving Laurence. I like Laurence, I guess, but I don’t want to be his servant.”

“Control,” the Tree said, “is an illusion.”

“Okay,” Patricia said. “So I guess I really am a witch. Right? I mean, you called me a witch just now. Plus I left my body, that counts for something. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me. I know it must be hard work being a tree. Especially a Parliamentary Tree.”

“I am many trees,” the Tree said. “And many other things besides. Goodbye.”

The journey back to Patricia’s house went much faster than the outward trip, perhaps because she was much sleepier. She passed through the ceiling of her bedroom and into her body — which was twisted with horrible stomach pain, because she had eaten enough hot peppers for a hundred thousand curries.

“Aaaaaaaaa!” Patricia shouted, sitting up and clutching her stomach. “Bathroom break! Bathroom break! I need a bathroom break NOW!!!!”

* * *

ON MONDAY, SHE sat across from Laurence at lunch at the far end of one of the long tables, next to the slop cans, where the kids who had no clique of their own were stuck.

“Can you keep a secret?” she asked him.

“Sure,” Laurence said without hesitating. He was poking holes in his gray, clammy hamburger with a knife. “You already know all of my secrets.”

“Great.” Patricia lowered her voice and covered her mouth. “So listen. You probably won’t even believe any of this. I know it’s going to sound crazy. But I have to tell someone. You’re the only one I can tell.” She told the whole story, as best she could.

6

EVERY TIME LAURENCE showed Patricia another one of his inventions, he felt a crick in his neck. Sort of a charley horse, that only happened when he pulled an experimental device out of his knapsack. He wondered about this for days until he realized: He was instinctively flinching away from Patricia and lifting one shoulder. Braced for her to call him a creep.

“Here’s something I’ve been working on,” he would start to say — and then his neck would spasm. Even when he realized he was doing it, he couldn’t stop. Like part of him always flashed back to his sixth-grade Show-and-Tell disaster, the Laserscoop.