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All rejoice, for the story is finished! That's right, here resides my second completed story on FictionPress. I certainly hope somebody enjoys it.
- Vagabond Amanda
“Trees - Just do it.”– Sloganizer . net
Millie Abernathy was of the opinion that on any given day there was a one-hundred percent chance that, somewhere in the world, something incredible would happen. It would just never happen to her.
Taking into consideration the phenomenal potential human beings have to be boring, Millie was not comparatively a very uninteresting person; but she wasn’t a very interesting person, either. She was respectably above average, a dedicated A- student and a fairly good tennis player. She was moderately fun to be around. She liked to listen to whatever kind of music other people liked and wore whatever kind of clothes they sold in the stores. Her favorite food was spaghetti.
Complete ordinariness can be misleading, however, and Millie had always felt that there was something more to her than was plainly apparent. It seemed to her that she wasn’t quite on-center – as if she was a little unbalanced, like there was a small scale inside her chest and all the weights were stacked on one side. It wasn’t a bad feeling, exactly, just a disconcerting sort of feeling that made her suspect something was missing from her life.
Unfortunately, Millie was imagining things. There was nothing missing in her chest, literally or metaphorically. All of her organs were present and at attention and there was no hidden piece of her heart that she would have to discover. This is not that kind of story.
This story revolves mostly around an entirely remarkable, fantastic, and generally nice guy named Walker.
Actually, his name wasn’t Walker. His real name was something else completely, something that doesn’t especially matter to you. It’s not really any of your business, anyway. The truth is, his name is too sacred to be penned on any paper but that blessed by holy water. Three times. On the night of the full moon. For the sake of convenience and character specification, though, Walker is what he shall be called henceforth in this tale.
Or, rather, what I shall be called henceforth. In case the blatant personal bias didn’t give it away for you, I should mention that this story is told in first person, by yours truly.
Here’s a little background on myself, in case you’re wondering: I’m some guy from somewhere. I wish I could say more, but that’s all I can tell you without violating a whole lot of universally mandated codes. My sincerest apologies.
Although I am pretty much the indisputable core of this tale, I can’t deny that Millie Abernathy played a rather pivotal role as well.
See for yourself.
Millie Abernathy, although she did seem it at first, wasn’t entirely normal. On every second Tuesday of the month, she planted trees.
She didn’t know why. It wasn’t for any community service organization or radical environmentalist foundation. It was by her own free will, just because she felt like it was a reasonable thing to do. In fact, it was more than just reasonable – it was necessary. Planting trees was like a natural bodily function, the kind you can’t abstain from for long without becoming septic or turning blue. It was part of Millie’s basic programming. Take a breath. Eat a banana. Plant a tree.
Sometimes she planted little pine saplings by the gated sewage runoff pond near the elementary school. Sometimes she planted young elms in the park. Yet other times, she planted Japanese maples in her neighbors’ backyard, but only when they were away on vacation and couldn’t chase her off their property with their nasty little pustule of a pit bull. For some reason, her neighbors didn’t want Japanese maples in their backyard, and they wanted Millie in their backyard even less.
Mostly, Millie bought her trees from Mr. Krupp’s Friendly Tree Farm. Mr. Krupp must have thought she was trying to build a monopoly on lumber.
It was an addiction – an obsession, even. Millie knew that. But her impulsive tree planting was her dark little secret, and as long as no one else found out about it she was safe from being abject to wanton humiliation at the hands of her peers.
Yes, Millie did love her trees. Unfortunately, the feeling wasn’t mutual.
It was a Wednesday, and Millie was walking to school. She was feeling pretty good about herself. Yesterday she had planted a young cottonwood, two firs and a shrub. A shrub isn’t exactly a tree, but she was undiscriminating when it came to foliage. All and all, it was shaping up to be a good week to be Millie or a tree in Millie’s general vicinity.
Things were looking so promising, in fact, that Millie was starting to feel adventurous. The very air around her pulsated with a plea for incident. The trembling leaves of the trees lining her path quivered far above her head, seeming to whisper, “Shhhshhhhwooooosh.” Being in a speculative sort of mood, she interpreted that to mean, “Go take a walk in the woods.”
Millie glanced curiously into the dense forestry that bordered the left side of her trail. Well, she could take the scenic route to school that morning. What harm could it do…?
Like a stealthy forest ninja, Millie dashed into the cover of the trees before she changed her mind.
The first thing Millie noticed was that the forest was slightly stuffy and warm. The lyrical chirping and twittering of friendly woodland creatures was strangely muted, like someone had placed two pillows against her ears and tied them to her head. Nevertheless, Millie was entranced by the paradise around her. The mossy ground squelched pleasantly as she walked along, gazing upward in awe at the towering trees the forest boasted. It was worth taking the long way to school to be by so many beautifully barky organisms.
Then, she saw it.
Never before had Millie been blessed with the privilege to lay eyes upon such a gorgeous apparition. The ethereal figure stood placidly amidst a flanking of tree cronies – a powerful sovereign encircled by his court. It was a birch, reaching levels of majesty and aesthetic pleasingness never before recorded by any mortal on the planet. Millie stared at its leafy emerald canopy and perfectly sculpted wooden appendages. She began to drool.
The tree was an angel. A holy halo of otherworldly light beset his branches. Millie was entranced. She needed to lay her unworthy hands on the sacred bark of this deciduous deity.
Slowly and shakily, she trod towards the miracle birch. She stopped in front of it, awed and humbled, and took a moment to bask in its radiating glory. It was too much. Millie was so overcome with affection that she threw her arms around its trunk and placed on it a big, disgustingly slobbery kiss.
Millie held on to the tree and snuggled her face against it. For some reason, she found it impossible to let go. The birch was like a rough, sappy teddy bear that demanded to be squeezed.
“Stop that,” a voice said.
Millie lifted her head from the tree bark. “Who said that?”
“I told you to STOP THAT!” bellowed the stranger. “It’s annoying!”
Slightly alarmed, Millie stumbled back and twisted her head around. “Who’s there?” she choked. “Where are y –”
Millie was cut short as, out of nowhere, a colossal club of an object burst forth from the earth and pounded Millie over the head, nailing her into the dirt as if she were a croquet wicket.
Millie didn’t move. Her head, the only part of her body that remained above ground, lolled at a strange angle. The club that had bludgeoned her sunk back down to the ground and wriggled, burrowing into the dirt.
It was a tree root.
The voice that had spoken earlier cleared its throat, insofar as a voice has a throat, and hummed. “Sorry about that,” it mumbled to no one in particular. “I just lose my temper from time to time.”
It should become apparent at this point that the owner of the voice was the birch tree. His name was Leaf Erikson.
“But you know what,” continued Leaf, his volume escalating, “maybe I’m completely justified in getting a little peeved every once in a while. I mean, after all, what right do those humans have to come up and glom onto me like that?” He ruffled his branches irritably. “That’s unwarranted invasion of personal space, that is!”
“I agree,” conferred another voice. It came from the vicinity of Leaf’s canopy. The speaker hopped forward from one of the birch’s higher braches and emerged from the cover of its foliage. It was a tiny green tree frog, embellished with small red markings along his sides. Most people wouldn’t know it, but these markings were comparable to the military medals of the human world, and they were won by this particular frog in the Great Croaking War of 1963. He was a highly decorated soldier and well respected throughout his small, slimy community.
“But you really need to think about the consequences of your actions,” the frog reprimanded. “Just look at that pitiful human.” He gestured with a squelching fringer (the anatomically correct name for a frog finger) at the girl’s drooping head. “You didn’t need to go that far.”
Leaf swelled with indignation. “Oh, Marty,” he heaved, “you just don’t get it, do you? I’ve been stuck here for who knows how many years, adhered to the ground, and humans are free to come up and molest me whenever they please! They peel off my bark, they extract my sap, they cut down acres of my brethren, and now they come up to me and smother me with great bear hugs!” He whipped out one of his more formidable branches with a loud “SA-NAP!”, the tree equivalent of a frustrated stomp. “I won’t stand for it any more, I tell you! Someone’s got to do something about this!”
By now Leaf’s voice had reached ridiculous decibel levels, and his neighbor trees had no choice but to listen in on his harangue. And honestly, they were liking what they heard. None of them had really thought of it that way before, but…it was the truth, wasn’t it? Humans had no respect for the space bubbles of their deciduous co-inhabitants. Why should trees continue to put up with the abuse they suffered at the hands of bipeds? Certainly, humans wouldn’t sit back and take it if they were treated that way. Why should the standards of trees be any different?
There was a murmur of approval amongst the nearby flora as Leaf continued to rant.
“I say,” Leaf bellowed self-righteously, “Isay that we do something about it! It’s time we broke free of our chains and fought back against this exploitation! Why should we be subject to maltreatment? Are we not every bit as good as humans?”
The murmur soon grew into a dull roar of agreement, mixed with the occasional supportive shout (“Isn’t that the truth!”; “You tell it, brother!”). It was becoming something of a political rally. The other trees sloshed their roots through the dirt (which was no easy undertaking) to gather in a ring around Leaf, cheering him and raising their branches in exaltation as he raged on.
“Let us take our stand!” Leaf cried. “Let us raise our voices and let it be known to all that we won’t take it any more!”
The trees erupted with the tree approximation of applause.
“Quite an impassioned speech,” Marty commented as the crowd went wild. “But may I ask what exactly you plan on doing about it?”
Leaf thought for a second as his legions began chanting (“PHOTOSYNTHESIS POWER! PHOTOSYNTHESIS POWER!”). “Well,” he said at last, “I suppose the first thing we’re going to need is our own headquarters.”
Leaf turned (or rather, twisted his trunk as far as plantily possible to give the impression of turning) toward his followers and issued his first command to the freshly formed rebel forces.
“Follow me, brothers! This means war!”
And with that, a booster rocket inexplicably flared up at Leaf’s roots and blasted him in a trajectory towards outer space. The other trees followed en suite, hollering and whooping as they did so. The ground was tilled and scorched as the army launched themselves out of the forest, escaping their home planet, that human-infested wasteland, for good.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Marty groaned to himself, clinging desperately to his branch as they soared away.
For a very long time, the woods were unnaturally silent.
Millie awoke groggily with no idea where she was or how she got there. She was vaguely aware of the smell of dirt and that her body was feeling very cramped from the neck down. Her head also hurt something fierce. She let her eyes refocus and prepared herself to make an effort at surveying her surroundings.
It was then that she realized surveying would be a rather difficult task, due to the solidly packed soil she was buried in up to her chin.
Millie screamed. Loudly.
“Keep it down, will you?” I, Walker, hushed irritably from my post atop a charred stump, several feet to the right of the Abominable Shrieker. “I was trying to enjoy nature.”
The poor human yelped again and twitched, trying pitifully to turn her eyes towards me. She failed to an extent rarely seen on the mortal plane, making her eyeballs look as if they wanted desperately to escape from their sockets. Sighing, I stood up and strolled into her more immediate line of vision. I stared down at her. She stared up at me. She began gibbering.
“The first order of business, I should think,” I mused aloud, “is getting you entirely above ground.”
I frowned slightly. There was a pop. Millie drew in a sharp breath as she found herself quite suddenly sitting on the grubby forest floor, no part of her being in any way subterranean. I was very pleased with myself. It wasn’t often that I had the chance to use my magic for the benefit of others, and even less often that I took advantage of the opportunity.
Being unearthed didn’t immediately return Millie her lucidity. She was still gibbering, and goggling at me like I was some ethereal apparition. Which, technically, I am. But the point is that I don’t look it. I pride myself on maintaining a respectably humanoid form at most times, in this case a tall, dark, teenaged male one. That particular guise made interacting with (and/or manipulating) a young woman like Millie drastically easier, for some reason.
I examined Millie Abernathy as she squirmed around on the ground. She certainly didn’t look like she’d be much of a useful ally. She was one of those short people, the ones who you can’t imagine how they even reach the breakfast cereal on top of the fridge every morning. Her hair, an unusual reddish-tinted, scraggly mass, was tied back into that particular hairstyle so many human females are fond of. What was it called? A cowtail? Something like that, anyway.
Millie looked highly uncomfortable as I appraised her. It didn’t surprise me; I suspect my eyes must have shined like truth, boring into her very soul as I weighed the nutritional value of her moral fiber. My eyes have that kind of affect on people. It’s a supernatural being thing.
Finally, her lungs gathered enough air to output an intelligible statement. “Where…?” she stuttered. “What…? Who…?”
Well, a decipherable statement, anyway.
“We are in the Treewad Woods, three blocks away from Ridgewood High School,” I answered promptly. “The last thing you should remember is being conked over the head by a giant tree root. What happened afterward went like so: I was informed by my superiors of a potential supernatural disturbance in the tide of the universe and was called to this location. I found you hammered into the ground, quite clearly dead. I revived you – no thanks required, it was out of the goodness of my heart – and, well, here we are. As far as ‘who’ goes, my name is Walker. Well, not really.”
Millie had apparently gone into shock, because she was becoming much more coherent. “Oh,” she responded blankly. She thought for a moment. “What do you mean, ‘well, not really?’”
I scoffed with the haughtiest superiority I could muster. “My real name isn’t Walker. Just one phonetic unit of my true name is so unimaginably complicated that it would make your tiny brain explode. So for your own good, I’m telling you that you should just call me Walker and be happy about it.”
She drank it all in. “Okay,” she said finally. She paused. “Why Walker?”
“It has a dangerous edge to it, I think,” I elaborated, my eyes glazing over with a distant aloofness. “Like the Texas Ranger.”
The human phenomenon of “television” was actually one of the few commendable things Earthlings had come up with, in my opinion. All sorts of great, fantastical stuff crammed inside one little box. I ended up obtaining most of my aliases from American T.V. shows.
Millie cleared her throat sheepishly. “Um, excuse me, but when I said ‘who,’ I was hoping for more of a detailed explanation. As in, where are you from? What do you do, exactly?”
I grinned irreverently. “I’m just some guy from somewhere,” I responded, as if it were the most satisfactory reply anyone could ever hope for.
She stared at me with the responsiveness of a soggy cabbage. I took this as an invitation to disappoint her further with an even more convoluted clarification.
“You see, I can’t really divulge that. It’s a secret,” I said very slowly, hoping to offend her intelligence. “Let’s just say I’m part of a higher authority. The kind of authority that deals with talking trees who suddenly decide to jet off into outer space and wage a war against humanity.”
Millie blinked. “…What?”
I wondered whether or not I should bother trying to relate to her the details of what had happened in that small sector of the Treewad Woods in the last half-hour. I glanced in turn at the seared earth, the gaping holes in the dirt, and the utterly lifeless expression on Millie’s face. I opted for “not.”
“We’ll talk about that later,” I said.
What happened next, depending on your perspective, may or may not have included me asking Millie about her side of the story so far. I maintain that I did no such thing, and my knowledge of all events unattended by me was procured through pure omniscience, one of my many gifts as an advanced immortal. Of course, there is considerable evidence backing me up, such as the fact that Millie was certifiably dead for the fifteen minutes or so during which Leaf Erikson and his crew plotted their revenge and quite plainly couldn’t have provided me with that information. Some parties, however, have made claims accusing me of acquiring my knowledge of the tree rebellion from a local squirrel who had witnessed the incident, and then at a later time obtaining the account of Millie’s day up to that point from Millie herself, demonstrating a pointed lack of ineffability. As far as that goes, well, obviously it’s all fabricated. A squirrel never would have paid so much attention to detail.
Magic, contrary to popular belief, was not created, nor is it ever required, to be practical. Sometimes magic can be comfortingly mundane. To make things go more smoothly, I conjured a cup of coffee, a scented candle, and a nice, puffy couch in the middle of the forest clearing. Millie took the coffee gratefully and lied down on the sofa with the disoriented expression of someone who has just watched a cup of coffee, a scented candle, and a nice, puffy couch materialized right in front of their eyes. She rested in silence and sipped her coffee for a few minutes. I waited patiently.
“Time’s up!” I piped suddenly, sending Millie’s hands into spastic fits that caused her coffee to spill all over the couch. She looked at me reproachfully. “I’m very sorry,” I continued, smirking. “I wish just as much as anyone that you could lounge around in an armchair all day, but we have work to do.”
She reluctantly sat up and set her coffee on the ground as I magicked the fresh stain off of the couch. I preferred my furniture to be spotless.
Millie and I faced each other and unofficially commenced our unofficial meeting by both looking dumbfounded. I noticed she seemed very tired. That distracted me, for some reason. I tried to remember what I was supposed to be talking about. “So, to business,” I began as Millie stared at me anticipatively. I continued to have lost my train of thought for a moment. “Right. Business. Um. What do you know about those trees?”
Millie thought about it. “They talk, I think,” she answered slowly and uncertainly. “And they move. One bludgeoned me.”
I nodded. “Very good.”
Millie coughed quietly and glanced around the clearing as if hoping to prompt me about something. I looked at her, nonplussed. She coughed again.
“Um, where are the trees, by the way?” she said finally.
“Oh, they flew off a while ago,” I answered, waving my hand. She blinked.
“I see,” she commented. “And…how?”
“Sprouted rocket boosters,” I said with a shrug. “Blasted right out of the dirt into space.”
Millie gave the slight impression that she was choking on something but didn’t want anyone to know. She swallowed hard.
“Okay,” she rasped as if the word was having trouble escaping her throat, in accordance with the choking theme that was becoming so popular with her. “Okay, so they blasted into space. Can you please explain to me how that’s possible?”
I pursed my lips and considered how I could best put it. “So, you know when you put a pair of socks in the washer?” I started.
“Yes,” she said.
“And you are positive you put both of them in there, and sometimes you even tie a string around them both to make sure they stick together?”
“I suppose.”
“But invariably, once you’ve finished with that laundry cycle one of the socks will always be missing.”
“I’ve encountered that problem before, yes,” she confirmed.
“That’s how the trees did it.”
Millie furrowed her brow. “They found my socks?”
I sighed and shook my head. “No, but it’s the same basic principle. The same force that allows your socks to inexplicably disappear let the trees talk and move and grow rockets. It’s the laws of impossibility.”
She reflected on that concept for a short period of time and still found herself completely dissatisfied. “Well,” she huffed contentiously, “even if they could launch off the planet –”
“Which they did,” I reminded her.
She glared at me. “– Which they evidently did, the whole thing would still be impossible. Trees need the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere to survive. And it’s freezing in space as well. Plus, do you know how much solar radiation they would be exposed to outside of the Earth’s magnetosphere? Those trees couldn’t travel through outer space unprotected!”
“They could too,” I said, tapping my head knowingly. “The laws of impossibility.”
Millie frowned irritably. “Is that all you have to say?”
“It’s all I need to say,” I justified, shrugging. And it was true. The laws of impossibility can explain just about anything, from the creation of the universe to hippies.
Staring distantly at the dirt, Millie tried to lock all of this away in her brain for safe keeping. She found that it didn’t fit onto any of her shelves. In a fury, she threw it all on the linoleum floor of her mind, stomped on it a few times, and left it lying there. In my experience, this is how most humans handle things that they just can’t comprehend. Going clinically insane often makes dealing with other insane things much smoother.
“So,” she said eventually. I could tell something about her attitude towards the situation had changed, something possibly connected to the mental break she had just suffered. “What are these trees planning on doing, anyway?”
I looked at her solemnly. “Warring against the Earth, actually,” I clarified in the most calming tones I possessed. “And it’s our job to go after them and make sure they don’t succeed.”
“Wait, what?” Millie faltered, her head snapping upward. “Our job? What do I have to do with this?”
“Well, I hate to break it to you, but you started it,” I pointed out. “It’s kind of your moral responsibility to help finish it.”
She blubbered at me in disbelief. “B-but what could I possibly do to help?”
I grinned maliciously. “Oh, I don’t know. Hug them to death?”
Trees, although your average person wouldn’t know it, are very intelligent creatures, especially language-accomplished ones. As our particular band of rebels flew through outer space to search for their headquarters, they cleverly surmised that a general idea of where they were headed would be a good thing to have. Intently, they looked to the left (admittedly, trees don’t have eyes, but they found another way of looking that suited them just fine) and saw a gigantic, blazing ball of fiery death smoldering violently at a (cosmically speaking) very short distance from themselves. They looked to the right and saw a variety of nice, safe rocks orbiting serenely through space.
They went right.
A rough estimate of the amount of time it would take for a spacecraft to travel from Earth to Mars is ten months. That could explain why some of the more logical people out there might insist it is unfeasible to reach the planet in under fifteen minutes. To that, there is only one thing that can be said – do not underestimate the laws of impossibility. The trees were there in ten.
They shortly appraised Mars at a safe distance away from its significant gravitational field and found it to be red, dusty and boring. They moved on.
Forty-five minutes and several million miles of asteroids later, the trees arrived at Jupiter. Jupiter was certainly bigger than Mars, and much less red. Leaf Erikson elected a zealous young subordinate named Smitty to examine the surface and determine whether or not it was suitable for their operation. Smitty saluted excitedly and swooped down towards the planet, disappearing in its soupy cloud cover.
“Hey!” piped a voice amongst the floating mob of trees (yes, it is true that sound technically can’t travel in space, since there is no medium through which the vibratory waves can move; then again, the trees didn’t seem to particularly need mouths to speak, so perhaps they had evolved past the use of a medium as well). “Did you guys just see that flash? It looks like a load of lumber combusting under the heat and pressure of thousands of tons of liquid hydrogen!”
There was an awkward silence.
At this point a very brief conference/eulogy was held, and the trees decided not to follow after Smitty.
Leaf Erikson was becoming discouraged. He didn’t especially want to spend his whole day looking for headquarters, not with all the other constructive (or rather, destructive) things he had planned for his legions to work on. All he needed was a firm planetary surface, some raw materials, the right ambience…
A small rocky moon came swooping around from the hidden side of Jupiter and continued nonchalantly in its orbit around the planet. Leaf caught sight of it out of the corner of his eye and wished it would go away. He was trying to think, here, and he didn’t need things swooping around all the time, it was such a distraction, really –
Wait.
Small. Rocky. Discrete.
Leaf was starting to form an idea. He called his pack in to disclose it.
Not one to make the same mistake twice in less than ten minutes, Leaf opted not to send another unsuspecting member of his troops to investigate the alien object. Instead, he fished a bird’s nest out of his lower canopy and scooped up a bird’s egg. The bird itself was long gone. Leaf suspected they’d lost it while exiting Earth’s atmosphere.
At Leaf’s command, he and his brigade hovered closer and closer to the moon. Once he judged they were near enough to have a good view of things, Leaf held out a branch. The trees stopped in their tracks. All present held their breaths (metaphorically) as Leaf ever-so-gently tossed the egg down towards the moon’s whitish surface.
The egg had a pleasant, uneventful trip down, and then landed on the ground with a dull “splat.”
The trees were still.
“Well, it looks pretty safe to me,” remarked Marty the tree frog, observing from a sheltered position within a small hollow on Leaf’s trunk. Marty was one of the few life forms inhabiting Leaf’s foliage who had survived the voyage. He accredited his military training.
The trees turned to Leaf. Leaf thought hard for a minute.
“Gentletrees,” he said at last, “I think we’ve found our command center.”
It takes most societies years to develop a proper structure of authority – a government, a military, a socioeconomic dynamic. On Plantopia, the trees managed to form a cohesive chain of command before dinnertime.
(Plantopia is what Leaf Erikson named their new world. Proper scientists, however, knew it as Europa, Jupiter’s frosty moon.)
Leaf was, of course, the leader. Many disputes ensued amongst the trees as to what his title should actually be. The popular vote was for Lord Leaf. Personally, Leaf preferred Exalted Monarch Erikson. One slightly feebleminded young elm suggested Foreman Leaf – he was swiftly exiled to the coldest side of the world after they reminded him that the expression “man” or any word containing it was expressly forbidden in their new society.
Leaf was quick to separate his underlings into subdivisions and put them straight to work. The Armed Forces Creation Unit was assigned the imperative job of finding a way in which they could actually attack the humans from millions of miles away. The Strategy Implementation Coalition was in charge of inventing a plan of action to be applied by whatever the Armed Forces Creation Unit created. The Commercial Development Department built a variety of restaurants and theaters where the diligent members of the Armed Forces Creation Unit and the Strategy Implementation Coalition could relax after a hard day’s work. No one knew where the Commercial Development Department went to relax.
Yes, civilization seemed to be developing right on track, but one thing that Exalted Monarch Erikson was having trouble acclimating to was the fact that the entire world was covered in a thick layer of ice. What was that all about? Trees were slipping and sliding everywhere they tried to shuffle (trees didn’t walk – they shuffled), and there had already been four or five major accidents on the main highway. But hey, you take what you can get, and all in all Plantopia was a fairly decent headquarters.
“Well, then, what do you say?” Leaf gushed proudly to his Royal Adviser Marty as he glanced over the seas of industrious trees, shuffling back and forth between departments as they rushed to turn in their status reports before the 5:00 deadline. “I don’t think it was that bad, for our first day of work.”
Millie watched the blur of whirling colors intently, as if she expected an image to form from the chaos. It was captivating, even hypnotizing. She searched for something particular in the multihued turmoil. She couldn’t find it. Everything was moving so fast. It was making her dizzy.
She turned her eyes away and shook her head sharply.
“I still don’t think that this is the right time to be doing laundry,” she repeated with a sigh.
I gave her a sharp look. “You’re not second-guessing the laws of impossibility, are you?”
“No,” she droned in a way that made me think she was far past second-guessing the laws of impossibility and would really like to exterminate them altogether. “It’s just that this whole thing defies all logic. I’ve done laundry plenty of times before, and I’ve never been able to fly in outer space afterwards.”
“Have you ever tried?” I asked, staring keenly at the dryer.
Millie paused. “Well, no. Not really.”
I gestured at her conclusively. “Then there you have it,” I confirmed. “Trust me, this will work. Once you’ve done one impossible thing it’s much easier to get the hang of other impossible things.”
The dryer buzzed.
Eagerly, I threw open the dryer door and started heaving mounds of clothing onto the unfurnished concrete of Millie’s laundry room. Millie looked at me and then the clothes distastefully, probably thinking about how she was going to have to clean that up later. I was tossing out an ugly green t-shirt when my hand scraped against something pokey. With an excited twitch, my arm changed directions in mid-throw and went after the source of the itchiness. I found it quickly, buried beneath someone’s sweatpants.
I held up a sock tied tightly with twine.
“A-ha!” I laughed triumphantly, shaking my find in front of Millie’s face. “Success! The other sock was lost in the cycle!”
“It could have fallen out into the rest of the laundry,” she pointed out.
Grudgingly, I admitted she was right. We dug through the pile of clothes on the floor in search of something small, frilly and white, but even after we had sorted everything by color we couldn’t locate it anywhere. Millie glimpsed in the washer one last time to see if it could have been left behind. The washer was entirely empty.
“There you have it,” I grinned. “The vanishing sock trick.”
Millie frowned. “That was my favorite pair of socks.”
“I’ll buy you a new pair,” I said, rolling my eyes. “The important thing is that we’ve done something impossible! We’ve destroyed a sock without any equivalent exchange! That’s a violation of the law of conservation of mass!”
“Yahoo,” Millie said with pointed apathy. I could tell she was loosing what little morale she had in the first place.
I bit my lip. “Tell you what,” I said, putting my hand on her shoulder, “let’s take the rest of the day off. How much could the trees possibly do in that time? You keep that sock and we’ll work on the flying into space part tomorrow. You can sleep on it.”
Millie looked up at me. “Do I really have to sleep on the sock?”
“Um, no,” I answered, blinking. “It’s a figure of speech.”
If there was one thing I had learned about Millie, it was that she was far too literal.
Leaf Erikson stood before a vast, flat expanse of pure mass production.
To the north, as far as one could see, there were trees stationed at ten-foot intervals, performing delicate procedures on small piles of ice and snow. Leaf, standing at the forefront of the operation, peeked at the frozen creation the worker tree closest to him was hunched over. It looked like a giant snowball with a variety of unpleasant things sticking out of it.
“Treegor!” Leaf bellowed, twisting around and scanning the area. “Treegor, come here!”
From the shadows behind Leaf emerged the pathetic, stooped form of a very small and twitchy tree. It scuttled (a crude form of shuffling) towards Leaf and stared up at him enthusiastically. This was Treegor, Leaf’s personal assistant.
“Yes, Master?” he wheezed.
“Fetch me Sir Branchalot,” the Exalted Monarch ordered, turning his attention back to the laborers.
Treegor slipped off and was back only a moment later with Plantopia’s Chief of Military. Leaf caught sight of them and saluted, surprised. That Treegor might have been a little creepy, but he was a fast worker.
“Yes, Lord Leaf?” swaggered Sir Branchalot. He was a lanky aspen with a refined manner about him, and he always tended to make Leaf feel a little paranoid.
“I told you to call me Exalted Monarch Erikson,” Leaf sighed, exasperated.
Sir Branchalot cleared his throat. “Of course, Exalted Monarch Erikson,” he corrected quickly.
Leaf waggled a branch at the legions of slaving trees. “Tell me what these trees are doing, will you?”
“Building our army, sir,” informed Sir Branchalot.
Leaf took another look at the pile of angular slush the tree in front of him was sculpting. “And how, exactly,” he asked, “are these things supposed to destroy the humans?”
“Well, what you see right now is just a shell, sir,” Sir Branchalot said as if it should have been the most obvious thing in the world. “They have yet to be animated.”
“Wait, you’re telling me that these will be able to move?” Leaf replied with disbelief. “How could we possibly get them to do that?”
“We’re calling in the resident messiah,” Sir Branchalot stated in an official sort of tone. “He says he might just have the right miracle for our purposes.”
“Ah,” Leaf said, and left it at that. He wasn’t certain that their plan was quite as well thought-out as it could have been. Awkwardly, he stood in silence with Treegor and Sir Branchalot and watched the masses fashion the killer snowballs.
“Are things going according to plan?” a small croak intoned.
Leaf jumped and searched around for the invisible speaker, until he realized that he was hearing his Royal Adviser.
“Oh, well enough,” he answered quietly. “I don’t quite know what the Armed Forces Creation Unit is going for, exactly.”
Royal Adviser Marty scooted farther forward on his high branch. “Well, take it from an old soldier,” he prattled knowingly. “Sometimes the best warriors are the ones you least expect.”
“But still,” Leaf frowned, “they’re a bunch of snowballs.”
“Ah, excuse me,” a voice interrupted politely.
Leaf turned around to see a large willow tree, calmly waiting for their attention.
“Ah, Treesus!” Sir Branchalot exclaimed. “Our messiah is here!”
Treesus the messiah shook branches with the Chief and bowed respectfully to Leaf. Uncomfortably, Leaf waved a limb at him and glanced sidelong at Sir Branchalot.
“So, uh, I hear that you’ll be performing a miracle for us today,” Leaf remarked as casually as he could manage.
“That’s right!” Treesus chimed. “Infusing inanimate objects with the power of mobility.”
“Erm,” was all Leaf managed to say to that.
Treesus shifted his weight unobtrusively. “Ah, if you don’t mind…?”
“Oh yes, of course!” Sir Branchalot beamed. “Get right to work, please!”
Leaf observed curiously as Treesus began to plod down an aisle between workstations. As he passed the laborers, they glanced up from their work and watched him make his steady pilgrimage toward the center of the field. They knew it was time. The trees surged from their stations and emptied the factory, leaving millions of lifeless snowballs in their wake.
Treesus came to a standstill in the midst of the icy weaponry. He stood still for a very long time. Leaf didn’t think he had ever encountered someone who was that good at standing still, even amongst trees. He was just about to get bored with it when Treesus acted.
“OH GREAT POWERS-THAT-BE!” Treesus hollered, nearly sending the crowd of tree laborers who had gathered behind Leaf to watch the spectacle into epileptic shock. Leaf didn’t exactly remain cool and unaffected, himself.
“WITH THE GIFTS VESTED IN ME AS A HOLY MESSIAH, GIVE THESE WEAPONS OF MY HONORABLE TREE BROTHERS THE SKILL OF MOBILITY!”
Silence rang like the hollow head of a particularly stupid person when struck as Treesus’s voice died out.
Then there was a light.
It was a really glorious light. Leaf goggled at it as if it was the most resplendent thing he had ever seen, which it may well have been. You don’t come across many dazzlingly beautiful things when you’ve been rooted to the ground in the middle of a dank forest for most of your life.
With one last showy flash, the light twinkled, and then disappeared.
Floating above the ground was an obscene quantity of ice balls, brandishing an unthinkable array of vile tools.
Leaf regarded them with awed interest. From his position, he could tell they had sharp, angry visages – carved mouths bearing pointed fangs, eyes slanted with malevolence, two furious little dots for nostrils. Their arms were many, and tentacular in appearance, sporting at the far end of each an assortment of especially annoying-looking apparatuses. Some arms were capped with tendrillar devices reminiscent of corkscrews, some with soft and squishy globs that looked rather moist, and yet others with fuzzy puffs of fluff. Leaf had no idea what they were for. The snowballs flailed around their stringy limbs threateningly.
The Exalted Monarch was duly impressed. “Good work,” he muttered, unable to think of anything else to say.
Sir Branchalot nodded. “We affixed them with a variety of tools for invading the personal space of the humans,” he explained. “We thought it was a punishment most befitting of their crimes.”
Treesus was approaching them slowly, paying no mind to the hovering hoards of frozen soldiers that filled the air around his head. He stopped significantly in front of Sir Branchalot and swept out a branch, indicating that the job was done.
“They are yours to command,” he said simply, and stepped aside.
Sir Branchalot turned to Leaf with a meaningful look. “This is your endeavor, sir,” he whispered. “What will you have me do?”
Leaf didn’t need time to ponder this.
“SEND THE TROOPS FORTH TO EARTH!” he ordered in a voice that carried to the ends of the world. “LET THEM SUFFER OUR WRATH!”
Leaf’s followers cheered and carried on and threw various things in the air. They didn’t have many materials available for triumphant throwing, so they had to make do with each other’s twigs and some empty bird’s nests.
Royal Adviser Marty was not amused when Leaf inadvertently grabbed him from his branches and tried to toss him into the air in celebration.
It was a placid morning on the outskirts of Tioga, Germany, Earth.
Nothing indicated that the day would be different from any other days experienced by Axel Fleischer up to this point in his life. He was a farm boy, of course, so as far as he could remember he had never had a day that was any different from most days he experienced. Today he was heading to the market in the morning to buy some cow feed. Cow feed was about the most interesting thing Axel encountered in his day-to-day routine.
The grocer was being difficult that morning.
“Three deutsche marks,” he haggled. “And I won’t go any lower.”
Axel groaned. “But the regular price is only two deutsche marks! This doesn’t make any sense.”
The grocer shrugged indifferently. “Times are tough,” he justified.
Axel grudgingly dug around in his sack for the payment. He slammed the marks down on the counter and waited for the grocer to reciprocate by handing him the feed. He didn’t. The grocer was apparently preoccupied with something over Axel’s left ear.
Axel spun around and looked towards the horizon. He froze.
Swooping down upon the unsuspecting population of Tioga was a throng of white, roundish things. A lot of them.
Axel was not familiar with this kind of situation, or what the proper response should be. He was a fast learner, though, and very soon he found it in himself to act in accordance with the unspoken rules of how a human should behave when under attack by aliens – he panicked.
Dashing as fast as his farm boy legs would carry him, Axel lurched down the street. The white things were approaching rapidly. Axel glanced over his shoulder and saw one diving towards him. He stumbled frantically and spurted ahead.
He wasn’t fast enough.
The alien snowball slammed into the back of Axel’s head with violent force. In a state of mindless terror, he screamed and began to thrash around, but it was too late – the icy pest had attached itself to his neck. Zealously, it prodded Axel’s face with its goo-wad appendage.
Axel sunk to his knees and wailed.
All through Tioga, swarms of people flailed down the streets and alleys with vicious clumps of ice adhered to their scalps. Cries of the tortured and besnowballed echoed towards the sky, and no one, not one single person, could do anything to stop it.
Similar chaos ensued throughout the world as Leaf Erikson’s snowball army infringed on the home planet of humans.
Millie looked down at the sock in her hand, and then up at me, bemused.
“I still don’t think this is going to work,” she mumbled.
I ignored her and stuck my index finger into the air, testing the wind. It was a simple enough concept, wasn’t it? With the momentum of impossibility we gained by vanishing a sock in the wash, we would feasibly be able to launch into space and track the ripples in reality caused by the rebel trees. I counted again the items in our itinerary, lying on the ground by Millie’s feet: a lighter, a can of gasoline, a machete, one small pressurized container of government-grade Tebuthiuron, and some sandwiches for the trip. Check, check, check, check, and ham and cheese – check.
There was a strong westward breeze, as there often was in an open field such as the one we were located in, but we would have to make do. I had suggested to Millie several times that we launch from a city or suburban area where the cover of buildings would give us a smoother take-off, but for some reason she objected to it adamantly.
“Alright,” I said, drawing my self up to my full height and looking towards the sky importantly, “I see no reason to delay. Millie, grab something of the arsenal, will you? I don’t want to have to carry it all.”
Millie hoisted up the gas can clumsily and cradled it in her arms. She gave it a nervous glance.
“Are you sure it’s safe to bring this stuff into outer space?” she trembled.
I waved my hand dismissively. “Oh yeah, sure, it’s fine.”
I kept my eyes locked on the sky. It was a clear day. Well, almost. There were a few clouds blemishing the perfect blue canvas, but they were almost too miniscule to count.
Although, they were quickly growing larger.
Or were they getting closer?
“Hey Walker,” Millie said shakily, “do you see those things?”
They were definitely getting closer. As they plunged down towards our field I saw that they were not at all fluffy and pleasant as one generally associates with clouds, but sharper. More cunning. There were also long, noodley things growing out of their sides.
Millie abandoned the can of gas and crouched down to the ground as the hostile blobs impinged on us. I stayed upright, as is befitting of a brave immortal warrior, and took a closer gander. They seemed to sparkle iridescently in the morning sunlight. The word that came to my mind was prismatic, or perhaps crystallized.
They were made of snow.
Thinking quickly, I stooped down and snatched the lighter off the ground. Just as the ice balls were hurtling towards us, geared for attack, I snapped upward and flicked open the lighter. A tiny orange flame flared.
The snowballs paused.
“Stop where you are!” I commanded. Now that they were only ten feet or so away, I could tally six of them. They bobbed in the air menacingly and scowled at me. “One false move and I’ll melt you into a sorry little puddle!”
One snowball floated forward and exercised his sharp little lips. “We are not afraid of you,” it defied grittily. “We are Leaf Erikson’s army for the glorification of all things Barky.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Well, I don’t care,” I said. “I have a lighter and you’re made of ice. Now go away.”
The snowballs glanced at the flickering flame. They considered it for a while.
“Fine,” said the Lead Snowball. “We will spare you. There are many other humans whom we must exact vengeance upon!”
All six icy critters about-faced promptly and whirred off into the sky. Gradually, they disappeared over the horizon.
I flipped the lighter shut and slid it into my pocket. “Ha,” I said, grinning haughtily. “We were too much for ‘em to handle.”
Millie climbed unsteadily to her feet. “W-what was that?”
“Further proof that we have to hurry,” I replied distractedly, lifting up the canister of pesticides. “Those were Leaf Erikson’s. Creations of our rogue foliage.”
Millie blanched. “They did that in one day?”
“Get the gasoline,” I directed, choosing not to answer her. “And the sandwiches.”
Millie stood uncomfortably at attention in front of me, her arms full of ammo.
“Okay,” I began. “Do you have the sock?”
She nodded.
“Good,” I said, “good.”
We watched each other in silence.
“What now?” she asked at last.
I didn’t respond. I just continued watching her. She looked ridiculous, loaded down with canisters and plastic-wrapped sandwiches, staring at me bewilderedly and asking stupid questions like, “What now?” What did anybody ever learn by asking “What now?” No one, not even an immortal, ever knows what now; invariably, the answer to that question will be something equally pointless like, “I don’t know” or, “You could push that button, I suppose.” There’s nothing informative you can learn by asking it. You only discover, in some subtle way, the character of the answerer – how confidently and how reasonably he can fake a reply.
Poor Millie – she had no idea what she was doing. She was caught up in a bad science fiction movie turned reality, forced to abandon all her innate logic and practicality in favor of doing things like flying to a distant world to demolish a forest of mutated trees. It was so ordinary for me – the daily grind; but she must have felt like she’d died and woken up in some perverse fairy-tale hell. Which, technically, she had.
“Um, Walker?” she repeated nervously. “What do I do next?”
“Just fly off,” I muttered absentmindedly.
She stared. “Well, yes. But how?”
“There isn’t any kind of trick to it,” I said. I felt strangely like this had all become a dream, suddenly. “You just kind of do it.”
“Oh,” she answered, frowning slightly. “Well, okay.”
Millie looked down to the ground and screwed up her face. She wasn’t mustering all her concentration or applying all her focus; she was just pondering. She thought about the launches she’d watched on television from Cape Canaveral. She thought about model rockets shooting towards the sky. She thought about really fast birds.
The grass beneath her feet began to rustle.
I only looked away for a moment – after all, if I were trying to fly for the first time, I wouldn’t want someone scrutinizing me like I was doing it for a grade. Instead, I made a few useful mental notes about the shape and coloration of the weed growing to the left of my feet.
When I looked back up, she was hovering.
“Come on,” she called, trying unsuccessfully to hide what was indisputably a triumphant smirk. “You can’t stay subservient to gravity forever.”
I shook my head starkly and soared into the air after Millie, following her towards the stratosphere.
I had heard rumors of immortals falling in love with humans – nasty, nightmarish tales force-fed to the constitutionally challenged in hopes of keeping them away from the mortal plane of reality, where they might innocently travel and suddenly find themselves enamored with some Earthling. Good things never came of those relationships. Immortals would do all sorts of stupid things to try to win the affections of their beloved, and it would usually result in the destruction of, or at least expensive damage to, some major city.
They say it was like being hit in the head by a good-sized meteorite. When you least expected it, it will pounce on you from behind and maul you with the mercilessness and severity only love can exhibit. It will infiltrate your brain and rob you of your free will, turning you into some sappy slave to a human girl. You will never be the same again.
I had heard those horror stories many, many times. Needless to say, I was becoming increasingly desirous of just finishing my mission and getting as far away from Millie Abernathy as immortally possible.
Space isn’t exactly what you would call a pleasant place to take an afternoon stroll through.
The sheer barrenness started to get to you, after a while. You could see the glittering stars in the impossible distance and the thin outline of objects orbiting through the solar system, but even those were separated by millions of miles. It was like flying through a big, empty black room without even the repetitive tones of the light music that you generally expect to be playing in big empty rooms for company.
From beside me, Millie readjusted the gasoline can in her hands. “How long do you think we’ve been up here?” she said in an inscrutable way that didn’t exactly involve the use of vibratory waves, but at the same time gave the impression that it did.
“Oh, an hour or so,” I said.
“That’s impossible.”
I gritted my teeth. You would have thought by now that she would realize nothing is impossible.
“It’s impossible,” she went on, “because it should take us years to reach Jupiter even when it’s at its closest to Earth. But it’s right there.”
Millie pointed in front of us. I looked up and saw that we were, indeed, rapidly advancing on the planet Jupiter.
“Well, what do you know!” I cheered, giving Millie a praising smile. “We’re here already! I’ve been sensing the disturbances in reality from somewhere roughly around this planet.”
“Well, they can’t be on it,” she pointed out. “Jupiter has no solid surface.”
I thought about the situation for a moment. What did we know about our enemies? They were trees. Bitter, spiteful trees. They wanted to kill all humans.
I remembered the snowy soldiers they sent to Earth.
“Europa,” I whispered.
“Wha’?” Millie said.
I scanned the area for a small, web-patterned moon. My eyes caught it on Jupiter’s right horizon. The moon Europa was rotating coolly and inconspicuously, like it had no idea what momentous things were happening on its surface. I rocketed off in its direction.
Millie followed obliviously.
The intricately cracked ice of Europa became more detailed as we approached the moon. It looked less like a cue ball that someone had scribbled on with a Sharpie and more like an artic landscape. Millie and I soared over its frozen face and searched for any signs of life.
“There,” Millie said suddenly. “To the north.”
I saw it too, but I certainly wouldn’t call it a “sign of life.” What we had stumbled upon looked like a lumber yard.
With all the grace of seagulls with their legs tied together, Millie and I tumbled to the ground beside the acres of carnage.
For miles and miles, trees of a variety of shapes and sizes laid motionless on the ice. Their branches were construed at unpleasant angles, and hunks of leaves and twigs were scattered across the landscape. I approached a fallen ash and kicked its trunk. It didn’t respond. I noticed that every few feet there was an inanimate pile of icy mush that reminded me distinctly of the creatures that attacked us on Earth.
“What happened here?” Millie murmured, horrified.
Something shuffled from behind us. Deftly, I spun around in search for the cause of the disturbance. Millie tip-toed up to me and hid behind my back.
“What was that?” she squeaked.
I didn’t have time to make up an answer.
“Hello?” said the thing that had made the noise. From within a deep trench to right, a majestic tree stuck its canopy above the ice.
Millie gasped. “You!” she shrieked. “You’re the one from the forest! You started this whole thing!”
The tree shuffled guiltily in the ditch. “Lamentably so,” he sighed.
“You’re Leaf Erikson, aren’t you?” I demanded.
The tree did something that vaguely resembled a nod.
I looked around at the fields of comatose trees surrounding us. “What is this all about?” I asked awkwardly.
Leaf shrugged stupidly. “Military take-over,” he said. “Sir Branchalot, the slimeball, just after we sent off our Clingamajigs to Earth he comes up to me and says, ‘I’m really sorry about this, Erikson, but I’m in command now.’ And I says, ‘Well, what makes you think you can do that?” And he says, ‘I’ve got the army of Clingamajigs, so just move over peacefully and no one will get hurt.’”
“Um, excuse me,” Millie interrupted, holding up her hand, “but what’s a Clingamajig?”
“It’s what we named those little snowball doodads,” Leaf grumbled, waving a branch. “I don’t know, it was Treegor’s idea.”
I bit my lip contemplatively. “That still doesn’t explain how everyone but you ended up dead.”
“Well, it was a difference of opinion, really,” he said. “Some of the trees were all for Sir Branchalot’s takeover, said I didn’t have enough charisma, but some of them remained loyal to me. I guess we broke out into a bit of a civil war over it. Even Marty went off to fight. Died in battle. S’pose that’s okay, though, that’s how he always wanted to go.”
I gaped at Leaf. “Your entire population was killed in one battle?”
“Oh, no,” he chuckled. “It was a series of battles, actually. Six or seven of them. I’d say it was a respectable war for our civilization to go out in. If there were going to be any history books about us, this would be one for them.”
“But how did you survive?” Millie wondered aloud.
Leaf gestured to the pit he was ensconced in. “Hid in this ditch the entire time,” he explained. “Things worked out quite nicely for me. No one ever thought to look down here.”
Millie and I looked at each other and decided not to comment. From what I could tell, we had made an entirely futile trip into outer space. I glanced again at a mound of inanimate ice that used to be a Clingamajig next to my feet. I nudged it with my toe. It reacted like a lifeless hunk of snow should by not doing anything. I surmised that with this Sir Branchalot fellow, the one who had commanded the army, dead, the manic snowballs on Earth were probably in the same state as the ones on Europa.
Millie was thinking along the same lines as I.
“So this whole thing was completely pointless,” she drawled, unamused. “I had to be pounded into the ground and fly into space and lose my favorite pair of socks just so that your society could destroy itself in less than two days.”
“Looks like it,” Leaf said cheerily. “Oh, but don’t think I’m any less disappointed than you. I was quite looking forward to destroying all humans. I guess our plan was a bit of a flop, though, wasn’t it?” He chortled jovially for a moment and then petered out, realizing that it wasn’t really that funny at all.
Millie glared scathingly at Leaf and I in turn. “I am going home,” she said finally.
Without a backwards glance, she jetted into the sky in a trajectory towards her distant home world, leaving behind the moon-full of brittle tree corpses for good.
Leaf Erikson and I glanced at each other, shrugged, and tagged along after her.
Millie and I sat at an outdoor table with plates of half-eaten food placed in front of us. I had heard somewhere that quaint little restaurants like these are the kind of places where humans like to eat. I, personally, found it a little cheesy, and I’m not talking about the lasagna.
“But do you really think he’ll be happy there?” Millie sighed, forking around her spaghetti. “I mean, Leaf’s used to big forests with a whole huge entourage of trees surrounding him.”
“Twa’ meh, yoh bach yah ha’ plend o’ tweh,” I garbled with my mouth full.
“Excuse me?” Millie said politely.
I swallowed. “Trust me, your back yard has plenty of trees.”
“Oh. I suppose that’s true.”
Millie picked idly at the plastic department store bag propped up against her leg. It contained the new socks I had bought for her.
“So,” Millie hummed uncomfortably. “We just completely failed to play any part in preventing a world takeover by a bunch of crazy, talking trees. What now?”
I looked up from my steak and gazed absently at the clear Earth sky, the busy streets surrounding us, and that perplexed stare of Millie’s which I was progressively beginning to think I had become a slave to.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly.
