Oliver Finch's Arc

Chapter 1 of 9

Oliver Finch wanted one blue flower from the tallest tree in the swamp, and the sun was already sliding down. His mother said the highest bloom was worth the most, that it could pay a month of bills for the six of them. Their tall green townhouse creaked with sapphire trim and yellow window frames, and it needed every coin. So Oliver waded out at dawn in his red sneakers, now sucked black with mud. He stopped where the water reached his knees. Dozens of giant trees rose around him, all with deep green bark and clusters of dark blue flowers. From the ground they looked the same height. One had to be tallest. He couldn't tell which. He picked the fattest trunk and climbed it. The blooms up top were small and dull. Beyond them, three other trees clearly rose higher. He had wasted an hour. The sun dropped lower, and his arms shook from holding wet bark. Oliver slid down and slapped the water. Guessing was useless. He needed a better way to measure than his own two eyes. Then a tiny centipede crossed his hand. Its body was sleek and finely segmented, its eyes a bright ocean blue. It had dropped from somewhere above. Oliver watched it hurry up the nearest trunk, then leap to a branch of the next tree, always climbing, never down. He followed the little thing with his eyes as it traveled tree to tree. It kept choosing higher branches. At last it stopped on a far tree, the one crowned with the biggest cluster of dark blue flowers, and it climbed no further. That was the top. That was the tallest. Oliver marked the tree by a bent root shaped like an elbow. He splashed toward it while daylight held. The trunk was wide and slick, but the elbow root gave his sneaker a grip. He climbed hand over hand, past the low blooms, past the middle blooms, until the branches thinned and the whole swamp spread gray below him. At the very top hung one flower larger than his fist, deep blue and heavy with petals. Oliver reached, gripped the stem, and twisted. It snapped free. He shoved it into his yellow vest pocket and held on, breathing hard. He had the tallest tree's fruit. But when he looked down, the light was nearly gone, and the water below him had changed. It moved now, dark and slow, and the bent elbow root he had climbed was underwater. The swamp was rising, and the way he came was gone.