Trees Swallowed the World

Grandma dreamed the trees would swallow her, so she slept in the attic. That’s what we called it, Grandma’s room. It was a metal box, caught up in the middle of the canopy, caged in by twisting branches. It used to be a mobile lab, a long time ago, before the Growing. We could tell because there were still a handful of beakers and test tubes that hadn’t broken. We just used them as cups.

Grandma’s cot was on one end under a little window that let in the light. The other end had a row of cabinets where we kept grandma’s equipment and the things we needed to keep away from ants. There was a fold out table that tucked against the wall where Grandma had been teaching me to build solar panels. There were only three walls, the other one was pushed back by the tree, like fingers prying open a can. The window was still there, tipped up to gaze at the sky through the branches above.

Most nights, I slept lower down. My room was built into a pocket in the trunk with woven walls and my collection of light bulbs strung through out the mess of branches above. That low down the pollen levels could get thick, but I didn’t need to wear a filter mask, like Grandma did sometimes. She said it was because I’d grown up there that I wasn’t as affected.

That night it smelled like rain. I rolled up my sleeping bag and climbed up the series of rope ladders to get to the attic. Grandma was up waiting for me when I tugged myself over the warped edge of the trailer. She worried. About the trees. About me. It had been getting worse since she got sick.

“Hi, Grandma. You should sleep.” I crouched to roll out my bag on the floor.

“It’s going to rain, Banks.” She said. She knew I knew, because I always slept in the attic when it rained, but sometimes Grandma just liked to talk. She had something metallic caught in her fingers. She looked old, but her eyes and her hands were still good. She never struggled while she worked with her wires and circuits.

“Mmhm.” I tugged my roll into my favorite spot beneath the upturned window, so I could look up at the leaves silhouetted against the evening sky.

“The branches will be wet tomorrow.” She added. Her solar lights flickered on as the sun faded from the sensors. I turned them down, so they were just a gentle glow and went to get a beaker to fill with distilled water to set beside Grandma’s bed.

“I’ll climb carefully, Grandma. And I’ll take my mask, in case I meet outsiders. And I’ll wear my gloves and boots.” I had started making trading trips by myself, since Grandma got sick. She rarely made the climb down anymore, but she always made sure I had my filtration mask and wore the boots and gloves she had made for me. She was always worried about how much I touched the trees. She said they felt it. Her hand caught my arm as I turned.

“Banks…” she trailed off and slid her hand down to squeeze my fingers. So much had changed since she had gotten sick. Her face was the same weathered brown and her hair had been white for a while, but her eyes were different now. She said it was the pain medication, but I knew it went deeper. At first, she was angry, then resigned, which was worse. And she was always afraid. I’d never known that she was ever afraid before. I just thought she preferred the attic.

I eased myself down on the edge of her cot gingerly. We’d had to reinforce the mattress supports with ropes because the springs had been rusted through and I’d broken it by flinging myself at it a while back. I hadn’t realized until then how much heavier than Grandma I’d become. I was fifteen and a few inches taller than her too. I wasn’t sure if that made me tall or not. Grandma was the tallest person I knew. I'd only ever seen outsiders from a distance when I went to Knob’s to trade. And Knob was tiny.

We sat there until the rain came pinging down on the metal roof and streaming gently through the gaps along the bent wall. Grandma turned my hand over in hers and dropped something into my palm. I felt my feet go cold when I looked down at it. It was the gold heart shaped locket she always wore around her neck. I opened my mouth to refuse, but words didn’t come. I shut my mouth and reached for the beaker to take a quick gulp. I didn’t want to cry.

“It’s time to leave, Banks Baby.” Grandma said. I couldn’t look at her. She hadn’t called me that in years.

“O.K.” I said. I couldn’t make my hand close. It just sat there open on my knee, cradling the locket.

“There’s a picture of your mom in there and something else.” I wasn’t focusing on her words. I was trying to imagine Grandma climbing down in the morning. I would take the packs. She could make it if she didn’t have any weight on her. We had always been planning on leaving. It wasn’t because she would be gone. She couldn’t be gone. “You need to get to Knob’s and show them. They will know where to send you.”

I must have said something, because Grandma gave my hand a little shake. “Banks! Don’t just tell me, ‘Ok!’ Are you paying attention? Listen to me. You need to get the locket to Knob’s. Keep your head down. Don’t talk to strangers. Knob will tell you what to do next.”

“I don’t want to go to Knob's…” The words came out embarrassingly small, squeezing over the lump in my throat. I swallowed and glared down at the beaker in my lap.

“I know, Banks Baby. I know.” She talked for a long while. Grandma was always the talker between us. I never had much to say, but she never minded. That night she talked about the trees and how they had swallowed the world. How the pollen sickness had lowered the human population till there were fewer and fewer babies, especially boys. How the humans had retaliated with attacks on forests and seed banks, distrusting plant material to the point of self-destruction. The trees kept growing, but they changed as well. They stopped producing seeds all together and in the chaos no one noticed until it was too late. I handed her a pain pill and passed her the beaker when I felt her hand tighten in mine. She kept talking, her voice fading in and out. At points I thought she was talking to the trees, themselves. She was always saying how they were listening.

Eventually, Grandma’s voice was replaced by the pinging of the rain and my choked sobs.

I woke up when the rain stopped, leaving behind only the gentle dripping from branches and leaves. It wasn’t just the sound of quiet though. It was the feeling of absence. Grandma was gone. I was half propped against her cot, her hand still resting in mine. I slipped free and the heart locket clattered to the floor. I’d almost forgotten it.

I climbed out of the attic and sat on the rain slicked roof in the early grey light. I’d looped the locket around my fist and it dangled down over the steep edge of the bent out wall. For a moment I thought about letting it fall. I imagined it clattering over grooves and catching the sun just as it jumped out to plummet into the forest below. I was angry. She couldn’t help it, but now I was alone, and she thought she could just send me to Knob. I was old enough to decide what to do with my life…

I shook off that thought before it could eco inside the hollows left in my head. Instead, I opened the locket. There was a picture of my mother, just like Grandma had said, and something else. It took me a moment to recognize what it was I was looking at. I’d never seen anything like them before. There were several, small and papery, in a shade of faded green. Their shape almost mimicked the shape of the locket and for a moment I considered if they could be manmade. Then the answer came, like a whisper through the leaves. Seeds. Grandma had left me with tree seeds.