The more times Patricia told the story, the more like a story it became: with dramatic touches and a better ending. She threw in more details, like the way the wind felt as it passed through her disembodied spirit form, and the way the trees shimmered as she soared on the wind into the heart of the forest. And by the third night, when Patricia was telling the story to a third group of kids, the Tree had gotten a lot more eloquent.

“It said you were the protector of nature?” said a younger kid from Côte d’Ivoire named Jean-Jacques.

“It said we all were,” Patricia said. “The defenders of nature. Against, like, anyone who wanted to harm it. We all are. We have a special purpose. That’s what the Tree said, anyway. It was like the perfect Tree at the heart of the forest that you can only find if someone shows it to you. A bird took me, when I was very small.”

“Can you take us to it?” asked Jean-Jacques, so excited he couldn’t breathe.

Soon they had a proper club. They got together at night, a dozen kids, and talked about how they were going to find the heart of the forest, the way Patricia had. And how they were going to protect nature from anyone who wanted to harm her. Like the Na’vi. Patricia was the one with the knowledge, but Diantha was the one who could say, “We are all of one accord,” and everybody would cheer.

“We are all counting on you,” Diantha said to Patricia in low, confiding tones, touching her shoulder. Patricia felt a thrill all the way down to her tailbone.

“And the Tree was huge, like forty or fifty feet tall, and it wasn’t an oak or a maple or any kind I’d seen before. It had branches like big wings, and the moonlight came through the thickest part of the branches in two places, so it looked like two glowing eyes looking at me. The voice was like this friendly earthquake.”

The tenth time that Patricia told the story about the night she left her body and went to the Tree, the tale had gotten embroidered to the point where it bore little resemblance to the version Patricia had told that first night. And yet, everybody was bored with it. They wanted to know what happened next. “What do we do?” Sameer asked. “What’s our next move?”

“I honestly do not know,” Patricia said. She told them, for the first time, about when she was in Bogtown and she guzzled chili oil and nothing happened. They traded theories, like it wasn’t the right time, or she wasn’t in the right headspace, or you couldn’t reach the Tree from Eastern Europe because of ley lines.