Amelia watched the doctor through the open door. He was begging the mother to hold her own child.
“I’m not holding her,” Janet said, pushing back and waving the child away. “I don’t want to hold her.”
“Mrs. Frore,” the doctor pleaded, “this is your daughter.”
Janet looked at the small helpless child, her eyebrows wild. She twitched and rubbed her own forehead. “Maybe so, but I’m in no frame of mind to hold her. Take her away,” she ordered.
Amelia tsked, she and the blonde baby hidden beneath her cloak still blending in with the vending machines. Amelia could see the frustrated doctor wipe his brow. She figured he was probably wondering why someone had not helped him think through the decision to become an obstetrician.
Dr. Scott handed the child to a fat, happy-looking nurse named Pipa, who was the only nongrimacing person in the room. Nurse Pipa gently placed the child on a rolling table with high plastic sides. She clucked her tongue in disgust loudly enough to be heard and walked out of the room and down the hallway right past Amelia and the infant she was holding.
Amelia followed Pipa, the meshing cloak she was under making it look as though the wall was rolling in a wave behind the fat nurse. She slipped into the nursery after Pipa and moved into a far corner to wait.
Pipa bathed the newborn, gave her a couple of shots, and left the infant lying naked under the heat lamp. When she waddled out of the room, Amelia glided over to the newborn. She pulled back the meshing cloak to reveal her own face and the blonde child she was holding in her arms. The cloak made the back half of her look like medical cabinets and a sink, while her exposed face had a lumpy nose. She wore thick glasses that made her piercing eyes look huge. She glanced over her thin shoulders and around the room. She was not a pretty woman, but her countenance was bright, and she had a strong, determined look about her, like a mother protecting her child from bullies. Amelia leaned forward, put the blonde child under the heat lamp, and picked up the baby Janet Frore had just given birth to.
“Come, child,” she whispered to the Frore baby. “You’ll be much better off where I’m taking you.”
Amelia turned from the baby she held and looked down at the one she had placed. “Good luck, and remember,” she whispered ominously, “don’t touch him.”
She glanced at the blonde child one last time, pulled the cloak back over her face, and stepped out of the nursery—unseen, with the once-screaming newborn resting calmly in her arms.
Nurse Pipa returned and stared curiously at the little blonde baby who was now lying there.
“I don’t remember wrapping you up like that,” she muttered. “I’ve got to stop working two shifts in a row,” she said, shaking her head. She moved to the adjoining room to attend to her other duties.
The child lay there in the still room. She was a cute baby, with thick, white-blonde hair, a pink face, and brilliant evergreen-colored eyes. She smiled and laughed softly as the clock on the wall ticked. She rocked her body, flexed, and sat straight up on her hind end. She wriggled out of the tightly wrapped baby blanket and touched the sides of her cradle. She looked about the room and smiled. Sure, she wouldn’t exactly be loved in the home where she’d be living, and yes, what she needed to accomplish in her life would take many long years. But none of that mattered at the moment. She was here, and the journey for her had begun. She took in the room. She couldn’t believe how differently things looked here. The realm she had just left seemed like a dream. The fighting and the desperation she had escaped in Foo felt more like a story she had heard than a situation she had lived through. The thought of Sabine’s eyes and his hatred for her burned in her mind, but even now she could feel the memories dissolving and fading away. She knew her knowledge of where she had just come from would soon be gone. Somehow that didn’t frighten her. What she was here to accomplish made any risk worth taking. She lay back down and gazed up at the fluorescent lights on the ceiling.
Nurse Pipa stepped into the nursery with a skinny nurse named Elizabeth. They stood together and let their eyes rest on the unwrapped child. The baby looked back at them, her green eyes seeming to focus on their faces.
“How’d you unwrap yourself?” Pipa questioned. “That’s odd.” She picked the child up, rewrapped her, and laid her back down.
“Oh, look at the smile on her,” Elizabeth said with wonder. “That’s sort of unsettling—she looks all grown up.”
“All grown up,” Pipa gently scolded, “don’t be silly. She’s got a little gas, that’s all.” Pipa rubbed the baby’s belly and told her she was beautiful, gas and all.
“Look at those eyes,” Elizabeth said. “I’ve never seen such a color. And they look so . . . knowing.”
Pipa touched the baby’s cheek and noted, “She feels a bit cold.” The fat nurse turned up the heat lamp above the baby.
The baby frowned. In a few hours she would no longer know anything about her former self, and she was hot. She frowned again, the reality of who she really was beginning to slip farther away.
“Pity she’s stuck with such an awful mother,” Pipa whispered to Elizabeth as they continued to look at her. “I have never seen such a bitter person.”
“The woman just had a baby,” Elizabeth defended. “Maybe she’ll mellow a bit.”
“Let’s hope so.” Pipa touched the baby’s nose and smiled. “Will you be okay?” she asked in a soft voice.
“I’ll be fine,” the newborn answered.
Both nurses’ jaws fell. Elizabeth dropped the towels and rolls of bandages she was holding.
“Did you hear that?” Pipa whispered in awe.
“I think I did,” Elizabeth squeaked. “Ask her again.”
Pipa touched the baby’s nose again and with more interest than last time asked, “Will you be okay?”
The baby smiled, closed her green eyes, and slept.
Chapter Three
Where Monsters Live
The Rolling Greens Deluxe Mobile Home Park was situated on fifty-five acres of Burnt Culvert’s finest burnt soil. The town, once named Tin Culvert, had rebuilt itself following a devastating fire that had burned most of it down a few years earlier. No one really wanted to build over the actual charred parts, but Mr. Hornbackle, an Irishman with a bad knee and a soft heart, bought fifty-five acres of blackened land. He put in a couple of wells, laid out a few roads, and called it Rolling Greens Deluxe Mobile Home Park. Now it housed over one hundred and twenty mobile homes. Thirty-two of them were double-wides, and all the rest were singles, except for two RVs that had been allotted the tiniest of space to reside near the north end of the park, by the east leech field.
As soon as the park opened people began to move in and either upgrade or downgrade the area. Some residents planted trees. Some put in lawns. A few built sheds or outbuildings. Some paved tiny slabs of concrete so as to have somewhere to put a picnic table and a barbecue. Others added awnings and outdoor carpeting.
Some, of course, did nothing.
Despite what residents did and didn’t do, almost the entire park had sold out. Folks in the area were happy to live somewhere cheap. They were willing to put up with the surrounding scorched earth and the constant smell of smoke in the air. They didn’t even mind that after a rainstorm their streets would run with what looked like tar. If a person could make his mortgage payment and still have money for food and entertainment, that was all that seemed to matter. To heck with the condition of the soil your home rested on if you could still afford to go to the movies every once in a while.
Strangely though, one lot in the Rolling Greens Deluxe Mobile Home Park had never sold. Near the far back at the edge where the park skirted up against a shallow creek bed there sat empty a single plot of land, and as hard as Mr. Hornbackle had tried to sell it, nobody wanted to buy it. That was somewhat surprising, seeing how it was situated in a relatively quiet area and had the only mature tree in the park growing on it.
People were interested, but something always came up to sq
uelch the sale. For instance, while walking around the lot, potential buyers would stumble into deep sinkholes that peppered the ground. Or they would be put off by an odd smell that wasn’t evident just one space over. Unusual weeds also grew on the land—weeds with sharp ends that seemed to have angry or defensive spirits. There had been a number of people poked or stabbed by the wild growth that spot of soil produced.
A ladies’ auxiliary group that focused on community beautification had come and spent a day trying to clean up the area. One of the women ended up in the hospital with serious, weed-related injuries. The foliage was so fearsome that no one had since attempted to yank anything up.
It was simply bad land.
Mr. Hornbackle had lowered the price of the lot until it was almost free, but land that comes with a foul smell, hundreds of sink holes, and weeds with an attitude is not all that desirable, even at a cut-rate price. So the lot had remained unoccupied, watched over by the lone tree, which grew quite well despite the seemingly poor earth in which it was planted. The tree produced huge leaves in the summer, and in the winter its thick gray bark was striking. It had hundreds of gnarled limbs that lifted and twisted in the most unusual manner and directions. It had come a long way from the seed it once was.
A true thing about seeds is that they don’t always stay seeds. In addition, most seeds grow up to be something. Some become plants or trees that then go about producing more seeds. Some seeds get popped and eaten and . . . well, you probably have a pretty good idea of what happens to things after they get eaten.
Some seeds are dried, some are pressed for oil, and some simply end up in bean bags or as the rattle in a baby’s toy. It’s probably fair to say that the life and times of a seed isn’t necessarily the most exciting thing in the world, but what the seed lacks in excitement, it makes up for in miracles.
It’s a miracle that a tiny seed can change from a dot in your palm into a towering tree whose wood can be made into the home you live in or the paper books are printed on.
But the seed that Antsel had slipped from his robe and deposited in the rich soil all those years before was not an ordinary seed. It was a transplant from the realm of Foo, a fantrum seed that contained the exiled soul of a great lithen named Geth.
The plot of ground in which Geth was planted might very well have remained unsold forever if it had not been for Addy and Terry Graph. They drifted into town like an unpleasant odor. She was loud and self-righteous, with a head full of perpetually bad hair. He was loud and usually soused. When they inquired about buying a lot at the Rolling Greens Deluxe Mobile Home Park, they were told by Mr. Hornbackle that the place was full up.
“Full up?” Terry snapped, obviously used to people finding or making excuses to keep him out of their neighborhood.
“No vacancies,” Mr. Hornbackle insisted. “Except . . .”
“Except?” Terry questioned, suspiciously.
“There is one open lot, but I’m not sure it would suit you and your lovely family.” Mr. Hornbackle looked at Addy Graph as she held an almost two-year-old Leven on her lap.
“That’s not my family,” Terry insisted. “I’m married to the woman, but the kid belongs to my wife’s half sister who died. He doesn’t even have our last name.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Mr. Hornbackle said sincerely.
“We’ve been tried heavier than most folks,” Terry offered. “Now where’s this lot?”
“It’s unlivable,” Mr. Hornbackle insisted.
“We’ll see about that,” Terry snorted, his lumpy nose and forehead growing red.
Mr. Hornbackle instructed the Graphs and their young burden to get into the cab of his pickup truck. He then drove them to the one open spot he had never been able to sell.
“It’s not perfect,” Mr. Hornbackle primed them as he drove. “The ground’s not very good, and it’s a bit overgrown with weeds.”
“Oh, great,” Terry whined, turning his bloodshot eyes to Addy. “I’m not spending my days pulling weeds someone else let grow.”
“There’s also a tree,” Mr. Hornbackle pointed out.
“A tree,” Addy sniffed sarcastically. “Did you hear that, Terry, a tree?” She rolled her puffy eyes.
Terry laughed, making an annoying gurgle in his throat as he did so. “Are there any other mobile home parks around here?” he asked. “My wife’s employment is just up the street.”
“I’m afraid not,” Mr. Hornbackle said sadly, wishing he had never met these two. “The town is slowly rebuilding from a huge fire that came through here a few years ago. There are a couple of mobile home parks about fifty miles west.”
“I’m not driving fifty miles to work each day,” Addy declared. “You’ll pull weeds before I submit myself to that.”
“I’m not pulling any weeds,” Terry whined. “Where’s this lot?”
“Right around this bend,” Mr. Hornbackle answered. “I’m sure you’ll find it—”
Mr. Hornbackle’s jaw dropped as he turned the corner and saw the lot. There at the end of the road sat 1712 Andorra Court, a spectacularly beautiful piece of land. The tree was lush and full. Around its base, the ground was covered with an array of dainty white and purple flowers. Chirping birds flitted in and about the leafy tree, which was illuminated beautifully by a shaft of brilliant sunlight.
“That’s it?” Addy asked in amazement. “That’s the unlivable lot?”
Mr. Hornbackle was too busy gawking in disbelief to respond.
“Just as I thought,” Terry bit, wiping his lumpy nose on his sleeve. “Holding out on us, huh? Well, it’s not going to work. We’ll take it.”
“I don’t—” Mr. Hornbackle tried to say.
“I said, we’ll take it.” Terry reached into his wallet and fished out enough for a down payment. “We’ll be back next week with our home.”
Mr. Hornbackle took the money, still gaping at the serene and beautiful lot that lay in front of him. Just yesterday the place had been nothing but weeds and darkness. Today it was a section of land he could have easily charged double or triple price for.
Mr. Hornbackle turned the pickup around and slowly drove back to the office. Once there he stayed in the truck as Terry, Addy, and the small child got out.
“Don’t even think of leasing that out to anyone else,” Terry warned. “We’ll have you in court. Unlivable my eye.” He turned and spat on the ground.
Mr. Hornbackle just stared, his mouth still hanging open.
Chapter Four
Geth
Fate was working splendidly. Geth stood tall, shading with his branches the newly parked trailer house of Leven. He stretched his trunk, creaking as he took on inches. Geth peeked with the tips of his limbs through the windows of the single-wide, looking for Leven. Terry and Addy had finally settled in, but there would now be some wait for the child to grow into his role.
Geth twisted the tips of his branches inward to look at himself. He was a long way from what he had been in Foo. Geth, you see, was a member of the First Order of Wonder. He was also a lithen, a rare species that travels and lives by fate. Lithens know little of fear or confusion because they let fate move them. A true lithen would think nothing of walking off a four-hundred-foot cliff because he would know that if it were his time, he would hit the ground and die. But if it were not meant to be, he would simply be picked up by the wind or rescued by a giant eagle. Lithens were fearless and honest to a fault. They were also the original inhabitants of Foo, given a sacred charge to guard the realm that gives humans the privilege of dreaming.
Geth had grown well where he was planted. At first a tiny shoot, he had emerged through the soil and into the blue sky knowing that there was plenty of time to grow as he waited to accomplish what needed to be done. But by the time he had grown two stories tall, Geth had discovered the power of his limbs. It had happened quite by accident. A family of birds had made themselves happy in his top branches, and he had simply thought about shooing them away. Well, no sooner had he thoug
ht it than his branches began whipping around, waving the birds off.
He also had the remarkable ability to see from every tip of his branches. He could see in front, in back, and on all sides continually. There was not a creature or person who could approach without him knowing.
By simply willing it, Geth could also extend his roots hundreds of feet underground, boring effortlessly into the earth to fill it with holes and pock marks. He could collect rainwater in these underground channels and use that water to produce wicked sprouts that sprang out of the earth like angry weeds. Geth knew all of these tools would be necessary for what was coming.
Antsel had known there was no way for Geth to return to Foo without help. He had been well aware that in order for hope to continue, Geth would need a bit of assistance on his return. Antsel also understood that there was only one person who could both bring Geth back and thwart Sabine’s evil plan.
It was that person Geth was now watching over—Leven Thumps. It was only a matter of time before Leven would be old enough to complete the task at hand.
Geth stood tall in the Oklahoma soil, growing stronger each moment, and behaving like the lithen he was. He had no worries, no concerns, and no panic. Fate had put him where he was, and if he did his part, fate would get him back home.
Geth uncurled the tips of his branches and gazed into eternity. The waiting had begun.
Chapter Five
Fourteen Years Old
Terry and Addy Graph couldn’t stand to hear Leven talk or fuss, so from the time he was a little child, they insisted he sleep in an old twin bed on the screened-in back porch of their trailer house.
Leven didn’t mind. He liked sleeping outside by himself. He would listen to Terry snore or the neighbors argue and count stars and trace the long swaying branches of the huge tree in his yard.
His life was not charmed. He had no friends, no cousins, no grandparents, not even a single kindly neighbor who looked out for him or waved as he walked by. Terry wouldn’t let him get a pet, and Addy insisted he stay away from other kids for fear that Leven would form some unhealthy attachment to some hoodlum who would only grow up and steal her good jewelry when he came by to visit Leven. So, for the bulk of his childhood, Leven had been alone.