Page 13 of The Wild Beneath

“Just for a minute, and we’ll come right back,” Evan says. His voice reassures her. He’s already starting up the trail, so she follows.

He bounds ahead of her. Annie tries to keep up, her eyes on where his feet meet the ground. He runs the way she swims, with pure power.

Cotton ball clouds drift overhead and the sunlight dapples their arms. They climb the trail for a good ten minutes until Evan stops.

“This one’s perfect!” At the base of a mammoth arbutus tree,he grabs a branch above his head and pulls himself up. “Come on, Annie!” he calls, a grin on his face.

The orange wood feels smooth and ancient under her fingertips. She braces her knee on the trunk and levers herself up.

On a higher branch, Evan presses his ear against the bark, his eyes closed.

“Are you listening to the tree?” Annie asks.

“My mom always said they can hear us.”

Nearby, a grinding motor hiccups, then sputters to life.

Evan opens his eyes with a start.

“What’s that noise?” Annie says.

“A chainsaw. Let’s go higher.”

They climb to the highest branch, until they can see into the canopy and across to a balding patch of earth on the mountainside, about fifty metres away. The hemlocks and red cedars have been clear-cut. The chainsaw motor fills Annie’s ears again, so loud it hurts.

“They just got a licence to log over here,” says Evan.

“Is that a good thing?”

“My dad was excited.” Evan frowns.

According to her dad, Isaac Hale is as close to royalty as you can get in Hale’s Landing. His family tree stretches back to when they practically clawed their name into the dirt seventy years ago. Evan’s great-grandfather was granted licences for thousands of hectares of interior old-growth logging and his family has been cutting it down, piece by piece, for decades. Hale’s Landing sprung up around it as a by-product.

Now it’s only Isaac and Evan left.

“My mom would have been sad,” Evan says.

“Did she listen to the trees like you do?”

“She wanted Dad to stop.”

A shower of sawdust explodes high overhead as a cedar falls. Its giant trunk rolls down the mountainside in the distance.

“Annie?” Mara’s voice calls up from below. “Both of you—­”

“But he wouldn’t stop?” Annie asks.

“Maybe,” Evan tries. “Maybe he would’ve.”

“Come down this minute,” Mara calls.

“We’re coming.” Annie’s voice wobbles and goes nowhere.

Evan is still looking at the spot where the tree fell, his cheek against the bark of the arbutus. Annie’s skin is prickling. She can sense her mom’s impatience and should get back to her. But Evan is stuck watching. The two of them stay sitting in the tree’s branches, long enough for sawdust to float down and settle in their hair.

By early September, everything is sliding toward autumn. The light is subdued, darker in the evenings. They need sweaters again.

“Time to join the real world,” Isaac Hale says to Evan. He stands on Ruth’s dock, his burly shoulders set back, hands in his pockets. “School starts tomorrow.”