Charlie Anders - All the Birds in the Sky

Patricia realized with a jolt that she hadn’t been this deep into a forest since the time she’d become a bird, back before Kanot had taken her away to Eltisley Maze.

“My GPS is having a meltdown,” Peregrine said.

Now that they had deep forest all around them, the pigeon seemed chattier. “So I’m not sure if I ought to be bringing your friend along,” it said. “My name is Kooboo, by the way.” At least, that’s what the name sounded like.

“My friends are very respectable,” said Patricia, including Peregrine in that. “And I’m guessing it’s too late to worry about bringing outsiders. Are we going to the Parliament? I’m Patricia, and this is Laurence. And that’s Peregrine that he’s holding.”

The trees thinned out a little, and Patricia had a feeling they were almost at the clearing with the great spread-eagled Tree. She paused and took Laurence’s free hand, the one not holding Peregrine, in both of her hands. “I have no clue what I’m doing here,” she said. “Nothing prepared me for this. But I’m really glad you’re here with me. I feel like I must have done something right sometime, if you’re still in my life after all the stuff that’s happened.”

Laurence typed on the Caddy: “Best friends.” Then he erased the word “Best” and wrote: “Indestructible.”

“Indestructible. Yeah.” Patricia took Laurence’s hand again. “Let’s go see the Tree.”

PATRICIA HAD FORGOTTEN how massive and terrible the Tree was, how overwhelming the embrace of its two great limbs. How like an echo chamber the space in the shadow of its canopy was. She had expected it to seem smaller now that she was a grown-up, just a tree after all, but instead she looked at its great hanging fronds and its gnarled surface and felt presumptuous for even coming into its presence again.

The Tree did not speak. Instead, the birds sitting on its branches all fluttered and shouted at once. “Order! Order!” said a great osprey in the junction of the two huge branches. “This is highly irregular,” said a fluffy pheasant higher up, with a roll of its wings.

“This is as far as I go,” whispered Kooboo the pigeon. “Good luck. I think they were already in the middle of a No Confidence vote. Bad timing!” The pigeon flew away, leaving Patricia and Laurence standing alone before the Parliament.

“Hello,” Patricia said. “I’m here. You sent for me.”

“No, we didn’t,” the pheasant said.

“We did,” the osprey reminded his esteemed colleague. “However, you are late.”

“Sorry,” Patricia said. “I got here as fast as I could.” She glanced at Laurence, who raised his eyebrows, because none of this chatter was making any sense to him.

“We asked you a question, years ago,” the osprey said. “And you never came back to answer it.”

“Give me a break,” Patricia said. “I was like six years old. I didn’t even remember that I was supposed to answer a question. Anyway, I’m here now. That counts for something, right?”

“Late!” an eagle said from the uppermost fork of the right-hand branch. “Late!” some of the other birds chorused.

“We did not think you would make it here soon enough,” the eagle said. “Your time is ending.”

“Why is that?” Patricia said. “Because of the Unraveling? Or the war?”

“Your time,” said a lean crow on the other side of the Tree with a slow dip of its sharp beak, “is ending.”

“In any case, you are here, yes,” the osprey said. “So we might as well hear your answer. Is a tree red?”

“Is a tree red?” repeated the crow.

The other birds took up the question until their voices blended together into one terrible din. “Is a tree red? Is a tree red? Is? A tree? Red?”

Patricia had been bracing herself for this moment, especially since her talk with Peregrine. She had sort of hoped the answer would just pop into her head from wherever her subconscious must have been gnawing at it for years, but now that she was actually here she felt light-headed and completely blank. She still couldn’t even make sense of it. Like what tree were they even talking about? What if you asked someone who was color-blind? She stared at the Tree, right in front of her, trying to figure out what color it was. One moment, its bark was sort of a muddy gray. Then she looked again, and she saw a deep, rich brown that shaded into red. She couldn’t tell, it was too much, she didn’t have a clue. She looked at Laurence, who gave her an encouraging smile even though he was out of the loop.

“I don’t know,” Patricia said. “Give me a minute.”

“You’ve had years.” The osprey scowled. “It’s a perfectly simple question.”

“I … I…” Patricia closed her eyes.

She thought of all the trees she’d seen in her life, and then weirdly her mind slipped to the fact that she’d glimpsed a whole other universe when she was rescuing Priya. And that other universe had impossible colors, with wavelengths that humans weren’t even supposed to see — and what color would a tree be there? That thought led her to Ernesto, who was lost in that universe forever and who had said that this planet was a speck and we were all just specks on a speck. But maybe our whole universe was just a speck, too. And it was all part of nature, all of it — every universe and all the spaces in between — as much nature as this Tree in front of her. Patricia thought of Reginald saying nature doesn’t “find a way” to do anything, and Carmen saying they had been right but rash in Siberia, and Laurence saying humans were unique in the cosmos. Patricia still didn’t know anything about nature, or anything else. She knew less than when she was six years old, even. She might just as well be color-blind.

“I don’t know,” Patricia said. “I don’t know. I’m sorry. I really am.” She felt a deep ache, in her joints and behind her eyes, like she hadn’t really gotten healed from being roasted alive after all.

“You don’t know ?” A heron wagged its long scissor beak at her.

“I’m sorry. I ought to know one way or the other by now, but…” Patricia struggled for the words, feeling tears fill her eyes again. “I mean, how am I supposed to know? Even if I knew which tree you’re asking about, I would only know my perceptions of it. I mean, you could look at a tree and see what it looks like, but you wouldn’t be perceiving what it actually is . Let alone how it would look to nonhuman eyes. Right? I just don’t see how you could know. I’m really sorry. I just can’t.”

Then she stopped and felt a jolt of realization. “Wait. Actually, that is my answer: I don’t know.”

“Oh,” said the osprey. “Hmm.”

“Is that the right answer?” Patricia said.

“It’s certainly an answer,” the osprey said.

“Works for me,” said the pheasant, fluttering.

“I deem it acceptable,” said the eagle at the top of the Tree. “Despite the appalling lateness.”

“Phew,” Patricia said. She told Laurence what the answer to the question had been, and she noticed that as she spoke the answer the Caddy in Laurence’s hand displayed a menu that she’d never seen before, as though something had been unlocked. She turned back toward the Parliament. “So what do I get? For answering the question?”

“Get? You get to be proud,” the osprey said, with a sweep of wingtips. “You are free to go. With our congratulations.”

“That’s it?” Patricia said.

“What else did you expect?” said an owl, poking its head out of the far left side of the Tree. “A parade? Actually, we haven’t had a parade in quite a while. That could be fun.”

“I thought, maybe, a boon or something? Like, I don’t know, if I answer the question I get a power-up? This was supposed to be a quest, right?” The birds all started debating among themselves about whether there was something in their own bylaws that they’d ignored, until Patricia interrupted: “I want to talk to the Tree. The Tree that you’re all sitting on right now.”