“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.”
“Oh, sure,” said the pheasant. “Talk to the Tree. Do you want to talk to some rocks while you’re at it?”
“She wants to talk to the Tree,” a turkey chortled.
“I am,” said the Tree beneath them, in a great rustle of breath, “here.”
“Uh, hi,” Patricia said. “Sorry to disturb you.”
“You have,” the Tree said, “done well.”
The Parliament was silent for once, as the birds looked down at their own meeting chamber, starting to converse on its own. Some of the birds flew away, while others stood very still, heads tucking into wings.
“We spoke before,” Patricia said. “You told me a witch serves nature. Do you remember?”
“I,” the Tree said, “remember.”
Its voice came from deep inside its trunk and rose up to its branches, causing them to vibrate and shower leaves down. More members of Parliament were fleeing, although a few of them were trying to organize a motion to hold their own Parliamentary chambers in contempt.
“It remembers me,” Patricia told Laurence and Peregrine.
“The Tree is speaking English,” Peregrine informed her.
Peregrine’s screen still showed that weird screen — which looked like the Caddy’s source code or something. Rows of hexadecimal strings, like machine addresses, plus some complicated instructions with lots of parentheses.
“What are you?” Patricia asked the Tree. “Are you the source of magic?”
“Magic is,” said the Tree, “a human idea.”
“But I wasn’t the first person you ever spoke to, was I?”
“I am many quiet places,” the Tree said. “And many loud places.”
“You talked to others before me,” Patricia said. “And you shared some of your power with them. Right? And that’s how we got witches? Before there were Healers, or Tricksters, or anything.”
“It was,” the Tree said, “a long time ago.”
“Listen, we need your help,” Patricia said. “Even the birds knew it, time is running out. We need you to intervene. You have to do something. I answered the question, so you owe me. Right?”
“What,” said the Tree, “would you have me do?”
“Do?” Patricia tried, really hard, to hold it together. Her hands were nuggets. “I don’t know, you’re the ancient presence and I’m just some dumb person. I barely managed to answer one yes-or-no question. You’re supposed to know more than me.”
“What,” the Tree said again, “would you have me do?”
Patricia did not know what to say. She needed to say something, she needed to find a way to make this day something other than the day everything fell in the dirt around her. Her friends, dead. Laurence, speechless. And much worse to come soon. She couldn’t let this … She couldn’t let this be all there was. She couldn’t. She trembled and groped for the right thing to say, to fix everything. She stumbled over words.
Laurence stepped past her, walking right up to the Tree, which by now was empty of birds. Patricia wanted to stop him or to ask what the hell he was doing, but Laurence had a look on his face that said, I’m doing this, don’t argue, and she wanted, needed, to trust him.