Deadwood (10 page)

“Are you okay? You don't look so good,” she said, somehow gazing into his eyes without quite making eye contact. He realized she was looking at his pupils, probably trying to gauge whether he was about to pass out.

“I don't feel so good. Why did you make me stand on a beehive?”

“I didn't know what it was! It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

It didn't seem like a good idea to me
, Martin thought. Follow my lead, she'd said, and he had. Like she had him hypnotized. He said aloud, “Maybe it was the curse.”

“You could have been killed.”

“The day's not over. There's plenty of time for me to get killed after I call Aunt Michelle and she finds out I'm consorting with her worst enemy. Can I borrow your cell phone?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Mine doesn't work right now. Disconnected until the first of the month. But we can't call your aunt, anyway. She'll ask questions.”

“I'm more worried about Jenna. She won't tell us anything if she finds out I'm related to Michelle Medina, Brynwood Estates Community Association President. She'll think I was spying on her.”

“We
were
spying on her,” Hannah said.

“Maybe. But not about her lawn.”

“Then we'd better learn everything we can, as soon as we can. I'll call your aunt. You try to find out if she's the one who cursed the tree.”

Jenna opened the door, and Hannah and Martin leaned as far away from each other as possible. Jenna balanced two glasses of iced tea on an aluminum first-aid kit. “Let's get you taken care of, shall we?”

She handed out the drinks and opened the kit. “You ought to take an oral antihistamine, just in case you have an allergic reaction. I don't want to give it to you without permission from your parents. Could you call them?”

“My mom's in Afghanistan and my dad's in Florida,” Martin said. He realized that sounded whiny, but he couldn't help wishing his mom was there. The pain ran up and down his arm like the fire had in the tree, flaring up in a sharp point of agony at each welt. “I'll have to call my aunt.”

“Go ahead.

“Neither of us have cell phones that work.”

“You must be the last two holdouts on the planet, besides me,” Jenna said. The shiny skin around her eyes crinkled when she smiled. “The phone's on the wall in the kitchen, opposite the door.”

Hannah hopped up. “I'll take care of it.” She scribbled the phone number from Martin's notebook onto her hand, then gave it back, pointing at the notebook and pen with her raised eyebrows. “You take care of Martin, Ms. Blitzer.” She slammed the door behind her, and Jenna opened the bottle of calamine lotion.

“So, you know my name,” she said, dabbing a cotton ball onto the swollen lumps on his skin. “And now I know yours, Martin. Who's your friend?”

“That's Hannah.” He winced, then steeled himself. His whole body hurt and he couldn't think straight. He knew Hannah wanted him to ask questions, but he had an uneasy feeling he was going to be the one answering them.

“What exactly were you two doing to my beehive? There are better ways to get honey. There's some in that iced tea—no theft required.”

“We didn't know it was a hive. We were just looking for you. We're working on a seventh-grade local history project, and we thought you would be a good person to ask.”

“I'm not a historian. But I do believe in preservation,” she said, indicating her antique cottage with a little nod of her head. “What's the project?”

“We're trying to preserve all the messages on the Spirit Tree—you know, that big old tree in the park with all the carvings—and find out the history behind it.”

“The Spirit Tree?” Jenna said, fixing him with her penetrating pale eyes. “The history in that tree has nothing to do with what's carved on it.”

He nodded. “We know it was there during the Revolutionary War, and when the mill was built, when it closed, all that.”

“That's not what I mean. That's
human
history. Plants have a history of their own. To a tree, we're like mayflies buzzing through its leaves. Here one minute, gone in an instant. Its history is written inside.”

“You mean, like the rings on a tree?” Martin said, touching one of the hard, hot welts on his arm. It reminded him of the scarred bark around the carved words on the tree. Was this how the tree felt? “We can't see those unless we cut it down.”

“Don't scratch,” she said, gently pushing his hand away and dabbing at the wound. “I didn't mean the rings. The history is deeper. It's invisible to the naked eye. The language it's written in isn't yet fully understood by science. By humans.”

“Language?” Martin thought of how the tree had spoken to them—the words flashing fire in the bark. She couldn't mean that—could she?

“We call it language, but that's just a metaphor. Humans speak in language, but for plants, history is written in a more elemental way.” She capped the bottle and set it on a wobbly cast-iron table.

“The language of trees? Sounds like something from a fantasy—like magic,” Martin said.

She shook her head. “Magic is another metaphor used to make sense of natural phenomena people don't understand. You could call it a spell, a recipe, a formula, or a code. History is written in the tree's cells. It's in the DNA of the fruit it drops every fall. It's in the chemical and electrical signals it sends through the soil and in the air.”

Martin's skin tingled, adding to the pain. “Signals?”

“In a way. Plants have evolved complex signals to communicate under stress, or to entice pollinators. Not just your friends the bees, but butterflies, carrion flies, even frogs and bats.”

“You're saying plants can talk.” Dryads, wild sylvans—trees that spoke and moved. All those myths had to come from somewhere.

Her laugh was surprisingly girlish. “Nothing of the sort. The idea that plants are sentient is science fiction, not science. Paranormal research. But I know a little about it—maybe because I wish that it were true. It's documented that plants have electromagnetic properties and respond to stimuli. Does that mean they feel pleasure and pain? That they think and feel? It's not possible—they don't have limbic systems. Sometimes I talk to my plants, but the plain truth is that they can't talk back. They can't even hear me.”

Hannah came through the door.
Bad timing
, Martin thought. This conversation was finally going somewhere.

“Martin's aunt said it's okay to give him the medicine,” Hannah said. “But she's too busy at work to pick him up. My brother's coming to get us.”

The fire in Martin's arm cooled slightly as the lotion began to work. He swallowed the antihistamine capsule with a gulp of honey tea. “Hair of the dog that bit you,” his mom would say after a late night with her friends.

Hannah spoke again. “So, did Martin tell you we were trying to save the tree?”

“Save the tree?” Jenna asked, an edge coming into her voice, and Martin could feel her teetering back into distrust. “Save it from what? Martin just mentioned that you were working on a history project.”

“That's how we started out—trying to figure out what the carvings meant. But the tree looks sick. We think it might be dying.”

Jenna drilled Martin with a hard look. “He didn't mention that, either.”

“Well, we wrote down some of the messages, and we wondered if you could help us figure out what they mean.”

“I don't care what the messages say. It's the tree that would interest me.”

“Us, too! That's what we were hoping you'd say,” Hannah said, nudging Martin. He wished she would be more subtle. He could tell Jenna wasn't missing a single gesture or look that passed between them. “We thought the messages would tell us when it all started and how to stop it.”

“If you want to know how to stop the disease, I'm not the right person. I'm not a horticulturalist,” Jenna said. “But maybe one of my colleagues could help.”

“Colleagues?” Hannah asked.

“Didn't you come to me because I'm a landscape ecologist at the university center for sustainable development? I often work with the extension office.”

Martin had no idea what any of that meant, but he knew better than to ask or risk blowing whatever credibility they had. Not only was Jenna buying their cover, more or less, she might be able to help if they played this right. Hannah knit her straight eyebrows and opened her mouth as if another question was about to tumble out.

A loud honk made them all jump.

“There's my brother,” Hannah said. “We'd better get going. We're really, really sorry we disturbed your bees. Can we come back and talk more when Martin's feeling better?”

Jenna nodded, drawing a hand through her wet ringlets as she glanced over at A.J.'s truck. “Next time I'll try to be more presentable if you try not to injure yourselves again. I can ask a few questions at the university, but I can't promise anything.”

“Thanks, Ms. Blitzer.” Martin put out his hand, regretting it when pain vibrated up his arm as she gently grasped his fingers and shook.

“That's
Dr
. Blitzer, Martin. But you can both call me Jenna.”

15

Painted Lady

H
annah had a hard time looking Martin in the eye now that she had nearly killed him. The angry red welt on the middle of his forehead and the one on his cheek didn't help, either.

She took a last look at Jenna's wild garden through the car window. How had she ever thought it was decrepit? It was one of the most beautiful places in Lower Brynwood—the most
alive
. Jenna was still watching them, but Hannah couldn't tell if she looked suspicious or thoughtful. She stretched across Martin to wave at Jenna, who waved back half-heartedly with her crossed arms.

Martin leaned against the door as if he didn't want to touch her. She didn't blame him, but she worried the lock on the door wouldn't hold against his weight. The truck rattled, and with every bump she pictured him falling out into the street.

“Did you find out anything about the curse?” she asked in a low voice, leaning into Martin so A.J. wouldn't hear. Her brother was listening to sports radio, volume turned up too loud, and she knew he'd rather not be interrupted by anything Hannah and Martin said anyway.

“It didn't come up,” Martin said, fingering the swollen bumps on his arm.

“Then what were you talking about? She said she was a doctor, but it sounded like some kind of new-age thing.” Kind of witchy, actually, if Hannah was honest, but she wouldn't admit it. She always meant to be a doctor or scientist, but she had never expected a scientist to be quite like Jenna.

“So she's a new-age doctor—sustainability and ecology and all that. A landscape ecologist, whatever that is.”

“That's even better,” Hannah said. “She could really help us.”

“Don't tell me that you changed your mind about whether Jenna is a suspect.”

“No,” Hannah said, trailing off. She might have jumped to conclusions about Jenna too quickly, but she wouldn't admit it yet. The truck wound through the subdivision, passing stucco houses dominated by double garages facing the street. “She's the best lead we have, but that could mean she's a source, not a suspect. If Jenna's a scientist, she couldn't be all bad.”

“Haven't you ever heard of an evil scientist?” Martin said. “Or one of those eco-terrorist types you were talking about earlier?”

“Okay, we keep an eye on her. She definitely has a lot to tell us, if we can get it out of her,” Hannah said. The houses here were a lot bigger and newer than in her neighborhood, but most of the lawns were just as brown and weedy. It was still Lower Brynwood, despite the fancy name. “Hey, your aunt said she was vice-president of Horizon Network Communications when she answered my call. Can't you get a cell phone from her?”

“I could if I had sixty bucks a month to pay for a plan, same as you. Aunt Michelle doesn't give anything away. Hey A.J., this is close enough,” Martin said, raising his voice as the truck reached the corner of his aunt's cul-de-sac.

“You sure?” A.J. asked. He peered up the block toward the one bright green lawn.

“I'd rather walk up to the house, if you know what I mean,” Martin said. “Fewer questions.”

“Suits me,” A.J. said, pulling to the curb. “Just in case your aunt has some emergency lawn care she wants done off the clock.”

When Martin got out of the truck, Hannah leaned her forehead against the window. She twisted the earring in her right ear, remembering when she had met Jenna before.

A few years earlier, she and Waverly had decided to dress as butterflies for Halloween. Hannah made her own costume, copying a pattern from her Girl Scout handbook, creating a small pattern on a grid and then enlarging it onto poster board. Her mother helped make a shoulder harness and handholds. The wings didn't stick up that well by themselves, but she could flap them.

She had been proud until she saw the costume Waverly had ordered from an online costume shop. Waverly's wings were gauzy pink, dripping with glitter and rhinestones, and her eyelids and cheekbones gleamed with silver and purple swirls. She even wore frosty pink lip gloss, all the better for simpering at A.J., who had agreed to take the two of them trick-or-treating. He was too old to go by himself, but he could collect his own haul if he put on a hobo outfit and accompanied two little girls.

“Oh, a monarch butterfly and a fairy princess!” the first old lady had said when they held out their plastic pumpkins. Hannah tried to tell the first woman that she was a painted lady, the kind of butterfly she had raised from caterpillars every spring since she was five years old. The woman gave her a shocked look, as if she was some other kind of painted lady. The woman at the next house just looked confused, so Hannah stopped correcting them. A.J. told her she'd get more candy that way, and he knew what he was talking about.