Will bush's Arc

Chapter 36 of 41

Inside the cherry tree, Will was everywhere and nowhere. His self spread thin through the grain, thinner along the outer branches, thinner still at the tips of the blossoms. He tried to think Kate's name and the thought slid out along a thousand small twigs. He could not find her below. He could not find the porch. The wood pulled him wide and would not let him gather. He pushed against it. He tried to draw himself down to one place, the joint where trunk met root. Instead he felt himself lean out through a leaf and drift. Another hour and he would be sap. Another hour and he would be nothing that remembered a sister. "Elspeth," he pushed through the bark. "Elspeth, I'm coming apart." Her voice reached him from outside the wood, small through the closed thread. "You put yourself in a thing that grows. It will grow you into it. You need a knot." "A knot." "One place in the tree that holds only you. Pick it. Press everything into it. The rest of the tree can be tree." He reached for a place and found nothing to reach with. He was too spread. He could not choose from inside himself. Marrow's voice came next, low against the trunk. She had climbed the slope from the daisy patch. "Will. I'm at the bark. Tell me where to mark." "I can't find me," he said, and the words came out through every blossom at once. Pink petals shivered along the whole canopy. "Then I'll pick," Marrow said. "Kate's sitting under the low branch. The one over the porch step. That's where she'll put her hand." The low branch. He felt for it. It was one direction among hundreds. He pushed toward it and slipped past. He pushed again. "Think of the coffee," Marrow said. "Two sugars. She stirs it under that branch every morning." The memory was still his. He had not traded it. He held the small picture of Kate's spoon turning in the cup, and the picture had weight. He fed it down through the wood toward the low branch. The scatter began to fold. His edges pulled in from the far twigs. He gathered along one line and pooled at the joint above the porch step. A knot rose in the bark there, dark and round, the size of a fist. Below, Kate looked up from the jar in her lap. She saw the new mark in the tree. She stood, walked to the trunk, and set her palm flat against the knot. Will felt her hand. One hand, one place. He held there. He could not speak to her. The thread was closed. But he was one thing again, small and whole, pressed into the wood under her palm. She left her hand there a long time. She did not ask what the knot was. She only kept her hand on it until the sun moved.