FILTERS 2

WORLD TREES, DIRE BEASTS

Climbing comes naturally to the boy. He likes trees and finding the right places to put his hands and feet on the branches and bark as he pulls himself up. The row of maple trees behind his house are best for this, their trunks fork and mingle in such a way he can cross between them without touching ground. Each tree has a nook where he can sit comfortably, and the tree closest to his house, taller than the rest, has a place he likes to stand. In warm weather this high spot is obscured by leaves and pleasantly secluded, and in cold when the leaves have fallen he can look out over the neighborhood. In all seasons he can see the roof of his own house, which he has always wanted to jump to.

The boy's mother often watches with concern. She thinks he's too young to climb so high but the boy's father says it's fine, he did the same when he was young, and he's not far removed from the kind of fear a tree could never evoke.

It is the summer and the boy stands in the highest spot, one foot flat at the fork, the other at an angle on a rising branch. He looks at the edge of the roof, where the gutters stop and there's a lip he could grab on to. He has spent enough time in the trees that he knows how age has made them easier to climb through, how his arms and legs are longer, how his grasp is stronger, and on this day, as his movements feel easier and more natural than ever, he decides to jump.

He flies, arms extending out for the gutter and his fingers graze the eaves and grab onto empty air as he comes up just short. He falls unturning, not thinking of blocking his face. His hands hit the ground first, then legs, chest, and finally head.

He pushes himself up, brushes dirt from his shirt and pants, and climbs the tree again.

He jumps again, and falls again, and climbs and jumps and falls and climbs again.

His mother has come into the kitchen and sees him through the window. She sees his fluid ascent, catching glimpses of spots and skin behind the leaves. When he falls, she sees that clearly. She screams and it catches in her throat as he hits the ground and gets up and runs back to the tree. She doesn't see him fall again and by the time she's in the yard he's already climbing.

She sputters concerns; the boy grins, cavalier. Worry and surprise stymie her response and the boy is so fast in the limbs that an order is only just beginning to form when his hands at last make the edge and he clambers over. The boy cheers and marches around the roof in self-satisfaction. Then his mother's command charges over the house and he meekly returns to ground.

She examines him for cuts and bruises, none are found. He is prodded, and when he does not react from pain but annoyance and embarrassment, she relents. When her husband is home she tells him about the boy and the tree and the roof and he laughs, happy and proud. She walks her husband to the tree and points first to the spot where the boy leapt and then to where he fell, and the boy's father looks to one and then the other. He asks again if the boy is fine, and adds, "Do you think he should see the doctor?"

The boy and his mother sit at the clinic. She assures him he isn't there for a shot but he doesn't listen. His arm is resting on a wooden table he looks intently at. His mother describes how the building and practice are new, and how very nice the walnut furniture is, with green velvet upholstery and tables with glass inlays below stylish lamps. There is even a color television–a combination of words that make it through the boy's ears, but he returns to idle when he sees the screen is off, and so he does not hear his mother say the physician is young and must know the newest techniques.

The receptionist says "We're ready for your son."

There are two doctors at this practice, they are seeing the man whose name is first on the sign. The man looks about the age of the boy's father, in white lab coat and shirt and black tie and a serviceman's haircut.

He asks "How's the boy?"

As the doctor moves his stethoscope and gives instructions to breathe, his mother speaks slowly, filled with strange uncertainty. She describes watching him fall from the tree, and how he fell at least once more before he reached the roof. She adds how her husband said he thinks the fall is closer to twenty feet than ten. Too high to fall twice, she says.

The boy shakes his head and says "I jumped a lot more than that but I made it!"

The doctor's eyebrows raise. He presses and moves one shoulder, then the other, asking if this or that causes pain. The boy always answers no. Elbows, forearms, wrists, and hands, same question, same answer. He says his head feels fine, and his mother says he has been eating and sleeping fine, and has had no issues in the bathroom.

The doctor stops writing and taps his pen on his board.

"When was the last time he was sick?"

The sun is low, and the doctor is at his desk finishing notes when his partner joins him for their daily recounting.

"I had another one of those kids today."

The maples the boy so loves produce samara, the whirlybird seed. These plant the first real idea the boy can remember. Most fall straight down in little spirals, but some catch the wind and travel great distances. He loves to imagine the seed traveling, taking to earth far away to form another tree, and for seeds from that tree to continue the chain. He develops an interest for trees that becomes a passion, and that passion drives him in school. He reads anything he can, from his teachers and from the library. In his adolescence he realizes with some melancholy that he will soon be too large to climb his childhood trees, but he knows there are larger trees to climb, and he will find them, for his life's work will be trees.

From Southern Appalachia he moves to Northern California in pursuit of dendrology. Before the move his only knowledge of Sequoia came from books, and learning their enormity from text and poor pictures did nothing to prepare him for his first real sight. He was stricken as if by God, an ineffable feeling of rightness, driven to that point, to see the forests, his purpose as solid as the quiet giants.

The young man completes his studies, now himself a doctor, and goes to work for the university. When concerns over deforestation rise, a partnership is made with the Forest Service, and the doctor goes to national forests to oversee the mass planting of trees. The work brings him joy, but out of conviction that he can do more, he takes to guerrilla forestry, cultivating saplings of his own to spread in his many cross-country drives.

On a trip home for work and his brother's marriage, he reconnects with a childhood crush and they soon marry. His passion for trees inspires the same in her, and she joins his work as an assistant, keeping track of every sapling they plant in secret. They marvel at the thought of the many trees being appreciated by their children and grandchildren to come.

Because of his field, the doctor hears the rumors first. Saplings purportedly growing faster than ever recorded, with relative infants showing the development of trees decades older. These rumors are difficult to substantiate and originate from commercial operations interested only in the principal; their books are accounting, not scientific.

There is excitement in his department when the doctor explains his secret work, and how his wife has encompassing notes on what and when and where they planted. It is in California, close to the university, where the first true positive is identified. Sequoia Sempervirens, only a few years old, is now approaching thirty feet. Appreciative of the data, the government overlooks any hesitation it may have had about his work, and he publishes the first of many papers on the phenomenon. It is not limited to trees; vegetation of all kinds randomly exhibit rapid growth, and among fast-growing crops, they first observe gigantism.

The doctor takes a professorial position in his home city, where his wife and now-young children are free to spend time with their relatives. He teaches a new generation, leading with his earlier work in planting trees, and following with his work in first identifying giants. Again because of his field, the doctor is early to hearing the rumors of the emergence of gigantism elsewhere: in animals. He recalls, with instinctive concern, of hearing and validating the claims of rapidly growing trees.

When his Sequoia approaches ten years, the university invites him to return, to guide groups of the students to the tree and to lecture. With his wife and children staying behind, he takes a rare flight across the country.

His preparations are abruptly halted, for just after his arrival, his old department head takes him to a meeting with the leadership of the school. A group of students had been in the forests when they encountered a great brown bear–"As large as an elephant."–One of the students was killed, the others fled. "The military is sending soldiers." says the head of the school. "Guardsmen?" asks one administrator, and the head of the school shakes his head.

"No. Something else."

The doctor sleeps poorly, uncertain of whether to return home or if he should offer his assistance. He reasons at first there are forest rangers who surely know the area better, but this sits unwell, he feels some sense of duty. It is only when he decides to offer his help in guiding them he is able to find rest.

He arrives at the school before sunrise, joining the assembled group of professors and administrators. Forest rangers arrive in trucks and are followed by two military jeeps. The doctor observes with apprehension the six soldiers who have been sent, each who seems to bear the demeanor of his father. As they discuss their plans, the doctor offers his assistance. "He knows the woods as well as anyone." says the department head.

The doctor feels ambivalence when they accept his offer, fear and obligation intermingling.

The soldiers don their kits and give him a helmet, pistol, and vest, and they take the jeeps north into the forests.

They reach his tree easily. Aside from orange markers and signage, it is now more than one hundred feet tall, dwarfing the thirty-foots around it. They move in a line, three soldiers ahead of the doctor, and the department head, forest rangers, and the remaining soldiers in the rear. With the doctor's guidance they reach the place of the attack, with dried blood and massive paw prints. They follow the prints, through the wide spaces between the trees, into the hills. The ground here is rocky yet soft, and the prints are clear and deeply set.

The doctor notices a stillness in the air when the soldier at the front holds up one hand that clearly means Stop, then a gesture that clearly means Move forward, slowly.

They climb to the top of a small outcrop of rock, a steep slope is ahead of it, leading to a small pond and a recess in rock and their target. Awake.

His heart has little time to pause; the soldier at the front snaps his fingers as the bear begins its charge. He fumbles for his earplugs, but even with them the sound is deafening, the thrum of pops and thuds from light and heavy automatic fire filling his head and chest. The bear does not falter, continuing up the hill, and now he finally appreciates its enormity. He fires the pistol they gave him, and with its obvious impotence he begins to feel he should run. The doctor realizes amidst the smell of gunfire and blood he also smells burning fur, and watches bits of gore explode violently from the bear. The soldiers fire unrhythmically, emptying and replacing the boxes attached to the sides of their weapons and firing again. The bear is at the crest of the hill when a bullet finds its eye and it drops in front of them.

The group stands behind the carcass and pictures are taken, the doctor looking grimly at the camera. A craned military truck reaches them and lifts the bear onto an attached flatbed, and the group rides the truck to the jeeps and return to the university.

At the school, the captain gives the doctor a tooth and claw, saying "Hell of a thing to stand down a dire bear without running."

"Will you take one?" the doctor asks.

"We have plenty." says a soldier.

He drives, he flies, he drives again. He kisses his wife and hugs his children, and he shows them the tooth and claw. "What was it like?" she asks.

"Too great, too terrible. I never want to see one again."

When she was born, her mother knew her difference. She looked and smelled as cubs before her, but she had intrinsic strength, something that went beyond her mother's milk. Males sensed this and would often try to kill her, and so she watched and learned as her mother became a vicious, pure protector. With the seasons came great growth, and when she surpassed her mother's size, her mother made herself strange and they were apart. She would not fully mature until the seasons passed again. She was head-and-shoulders above any male she encountered, but they found a way to mate. Her first cubs did not have her strength, but she could protect them with ease. When they had grown and she chased them away and was ready again to mate, a strange presence was felt in her forest, a male of a size even greater than her own. Their meeting resulted in three cubs, and in one, a male, she felt the strength her mother felt in her.

He grows. He goes apart. He kills other males and their offspring and he takes many mates, although none as large as himself or his mother. If he could understand it, he would know his life as one of great leisure, with sleep and easy foraging and mating as his only needs or wants.

He does not know he is a target, and this day is closest he will ever be to understanding it.

Two great sounds split the forest and he roars as much as he whimpers. He has been shot, and these jagged wounds at critical angles have not mercied him with swift death nor simple wound but has condemned him to misery as one pierces eye and shatters teeth and jaw bone and exits through tendons and the other shatters radius and ulna. First the bear flees, but in pain and primal ferocity the bear stops and awaits the next attack so that he might retaliate, but when nothing comes he retreats in fear and angst to his hollow.

He sleeps, he wakes in pain, he sleeps again.

He wakes to greater hunger and delirious pain, and he looks for food.

He wanders far, struggling to find and eat enough for winter. He scrapes through warrens and digs in great fields, coming upon unfortunate wild dogs and lost livestock, but it is not enough. He becomes accustomed to the smell of men and the association of men with food, and he moves ever closer to a verdant city, sleeping in the day, foraging in the dark. But his options become more scarce until one night when he is overcome with hunger.

He smells the man and something in his instinct tells him he is different.

His instinct tells him to run, but the man is coming closer, and his pain and his hunger overpower his fear. He breaks through the trees, and the man is just ahead of him.

He sees the man raise his hands to his sides, palms out.

He sees the man raise his arms above his head and his fear is at its peak, but he must eat.

He is upon the man when his entire body is halted as if enclosed by a great invisible hand. His mouth is clamped shut, and a growl comes out instead as a guttural groan. His pain and hunger vanish, with panic replacing them, and absolute fear takes him as life is crushed from him.

The man is already running.