I can feel Imogen like she’s nearby, watching. Now that I’ve seen her at school, I can draw her face up when I close my eyes. I open them fast because I don’t know how to save her.

My breath thickens in my throat. That must be how the rest of the Grays feel every second.

Rush and I are caught together, staring at the end of a ripped-up tree that has more presence, more pull, than Imogen did standing in the hallway. Even death has more life in it than her body does.

Rush sings, and I wait for her to stop.

She sings and I don’t ever want her to stop.

My arm brushes against hers. She shiver-jumps. When she looks at me and smiles, the beckoning darkness of the tree roots is overpowered. Some people have smiles like explosions. Rush has one like a flower, soft and uncurling. “You came.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I’m all yours.”

There is a moment where it’s just the two of us before Hawthorn slides her bare legs down the mother tree and the rest of her follows, thudding to the ground. “Come on,” she says. “The hermit isn’t far.”

“But I was winning!” Lelia cries, throwing down the Queen of Cups.

“Imogen’s gone,” Hawthorn says in a Do I really have to remind you tone. “Nobody’s winning.”

The Trees: Now

There is magic in the woods tonight.

The trees feel it.

The trees feel everything.

This is how redwoods survive. Yes, their bark is unrotting. True, they block the sunlight so other trees can’t choke their view. But that’s not enough to weather centuries. The trees know every whisper, every footfall, every prick of wind. They keep a catalog of beauties: the lemony tang of bark, the glossy red of heartwood, the long glide of forever, and the dart of a season. They know what happens in sunlight and darkness, and what slides through the spaces between.

Magic is moving fast tonight.

Some of it is trapped in human bodies.

The trees do not bother with human names, so much learning and forgetting. Humans might as well be fireflies. They live a breath longer. They love a spark brighter. Blink, and they’ll be gone. But there are other things in the woods.

Things that linger, that settle, that stay.

The trees know those names.

Death is one.

Danny: Now

We tramp through the woods, following some path I can’t see. The tops of the trees are half a mile above us, but for some reason I feel claustrophobic. “So how is seeing some old guy in the woods supposed to help?”

“What makes you think the hermit is old?” Lelia asks.

“What makes you think he’s a guy?” Hawthorn says, hot on her heels.

“Well, he is a guy. But it’s best not to make assumptions,” June says. “For instance, Lelia is nonbinary.”