I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. My head was spinning, filled with sounds I didn’t know and couldn’t name, as foreign and familiar as the fruity sweetness covering my tongue. They twined over and around the voice of the forest, bolstering and concealing it, and I knew them, and I had never heard them before.

// come // was the repeated request, and then, // we will know you. we will see you. we will bloom with you, bloom in you, be you. come. come. come. //

I took another step, and after that, another, unable to stop my feet from moving, not sure I wanted to. The voices were everything, filling the world with security and sweetness. The sound of gunfire had almost stopped. The gunmen, such as they were, hadn’t been expecting a pit filled with waving tendrils primed to strike and slaughter. They hadn’t come prepared for the challenge.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a few small, shadowed figures running for the other side of the ridge, away from the pit. They’d be back with bigger guns and more forces. Not that it would matter. All a seed truly needs to sprout is time. The more time we had here, the better and the more boisterously we would grow.

// come // whispered the voice, and I came.

My feet seemed to stick to the side of the ridge as I descended, not slowing me down, but adding traction to my steps, like I was walking on Velcro. I knew without looking that the bark-like surface of my soles had split into tiny roots, driving them into the soil each time I put my foot down, ripping them free each time I lifted it. Through them, I could taste the subtle life of the desert, fierce and sturdy and eager to survive. There was so much green here, only waiting for the rain to come and set it free.

// come. //

The others were behind me on the ridge, Tahlia and the senator standing side by side and watching me go. They weren’t following. Why weren’t they following? Why wasn’t the voice of the forest calling them to come as well? It had Jeff. Now it was claiming me. Shouldn’t they have been included?

Who was I to speak for the forest? I shook the thought away as the ground leveled out beneath my feet, tilted ridge becoming gravel-covered plain. Blood was pooled in the sand, slowly absorbing into the earth. I stepped on one of the bloody patches, and stopped as the sweetness in my mouth was washed away by the sudden flash of lightning copper flowing through the sole of my foot. If there had been any question about my roots, this answered it: I could taste the dead man with my entire body, drinking him in more intensely, more intimately than I’d ever tasted anything before.