Despite its towering height, the DoorWay Tree’s branches came down low. They spread out almost as wide as the tree was tall, swooping down, ambling back up, twisting and tangling in one another. The tree was a maze of limbs, a labyrinth of winding ways that finally joined together at the great, gnarled trunk.

Even so, the branches were too high for Wunder to reach from the ground.

“I should have brought a ladder,” he said in frustration after trying and failing to climb the trunk for the tenth time.

“Too late for shoulds, Wundie,” Faye told him. “Climb on David’s shoulders.”

“What? No!” Davy cried. “Wunder’s bigger than me! And I don’t want him using a saw above my head!”

“You think I do?” Faye replied.

Wunder kept trying. They couldn’t have come this whole way for nothing. There had to be something they could do. But the fence wasn’t close enough to the tree, and the eaves of the church roof were too far from it, and his fingertips barely brushed the lowest branch when he jumped.

“Use that gravestone!” Faye shrieked suddenly.

“Shhh!” Davy shushed her.

She was pointing at the bird statue. It was white and shining in the starlight, almost glowing. It seemed ethereal to Wunder. It seemed holy. There was no way he could stand on it.

“It’s the only way,” Faye said. “The dead person won’t care.” She bent down and shone her flashlight on the stone. “Ashley Bride will understand. We need this branch!”

“But the bird,” Wunder said.

“The bird?” Faye cried. “The bird? You think the bird cares? If anything, the bird wants you to do this! It was that deranged bird dive-bombing you that started all this anyway, right?”

And somehow, that was exactly what Wunder needed to hear. The bird was on his side. Ashley Bride was on his side. He was going to do this.

He climbed onto the outstretched wing tips of the bird statue. From there, he could reach one of the low limbs of the DoorWay Tree. He swung up onto it, and then wriggled backward until he came to a forked place. The branches were thick there. He hoped he could cut through one.

“Hand me the saw,” he said.

“Be careful!” Davy had his hands pressed to his mouth as Faye passed it up.

The tree’s bark was smooth underneath him, smoother than any bark he had ever felt, and it was warm too, in spite of the low temperature. The flowers surrounding him were so white that they seemed to glow, and the wind blowing through their petals sounded like a whisper.

The DoorWay Tree felt so alive.

“I hope this won’t hurt, Tree,” Wunder whispered. “But even if it does, you’ll grow back. And this piece of you will grow somewhere else, somewhere new. I promise.”

Then he started to saw.

As hard as the wood beneath him felt, Wunder didn’t have much trouble starting the cut. He took this as a good omen. The tree, he thought as he worked, was willing to give up this branch. The tree wanted him to have the branch.