The Changelings Part 12

Spike strolled up and stood at my other elbow. "Well, what the h.e.l.l. I had to do the striptease, Jared. It's only fair if you have to do it too." He didn't c.o.c.k his slingshot, but it's not like it would have been very scary if he had anyway.

"Striptease? Are you guys drinking out here or something?" Jared laughed, looking from person to person while giving all of us his most charming, innocent smile.

Mr. Innocent, my a.s.s.

Chase pulled his gun out of hiding. "Just do it, Jared, then we can move on to other things."

"Let me get this straight. You want me ... to pull up my shirt?"

I nodded silently.

Jared sighed. "Whatever ... " He let his spear drop to the ground next to him, and reached down to pick up the bottom of his shirt. "This is ridiculous, you know."

We all watched as more and more of his torso was revealed.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone that white before. He was glowing like the moonlight out here. "Holy s.h.i.t, man, does anyone have any sungla.s.ses?" I asked. I could already see that his chest was a smooth as a baby's b.u.t.t a no stab wounds anywhere.

Jared's face was still under the lifted shirt. "Can I get dressed now?"

Chase put his gun back in his waistband, walking away.

"Yes, please," said Spike. "I'm getting snow blind from looking at you."

Everyone giggled. Then we all started laughing. Hard. Apparently, trying to stay quiet when you laugh, while also worrying about being killed by a vampire, is impossible. Pretty soon we were all grabbing our stomachs and moaning.

"Stop ... stop laughing ... my stomach ... ," said Becky.

Even Chase was smiling. His eyes were looking bluer too.

"Chase, your eye color is coming back," I said.

Tony squinted in the darkness, trying to see Chase's eyes.

Finn tried to do the same. "How can you see that from here?" he asked.

I shrugged. "It's as plain as day. The moon is lighting him up like a candle."

Tony looked around and up into the sky. "No, it's not. It's pitch black out here ... now that Jared's pulled his shirt back down."

"Oh-ho! Zingah!!" I shouted, laughing my a.s.s off all over again before collapsing in near exhaustion.

Eventually we all quieted down, once the adrenaline had left our systems. I knew now that Jared wasn't the vampire. I still wasn't totally convinced he wasn't somehow in on it, though. His lame excuse for where he'd been mirrored Spike's, but it was less believable since he had been gone for so d.a.m.n long and neither Spike nor Chase remembered seeing him there in the clearing during the attack. Still, it was a good feeling to have everyone together again, to see Chase's eyes returning back to their usual blue, and to have some kind of a plan.

We decided we were going to sleep under the trees at the edge of the clearing tonight and get up bright and early to kick this test's a.s.s tomorrow. Then we were going home.

I fell asleep wondering just where home was for me.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

We got up as the first rays of sun were penetrating into the clearing where we'd spent the night. I didn't see how bright the morning light was at first because there were so many d.a.m.n leaves on me; the trees around here have a serious shedding problem. No wonder the ground was so soft everywhere. I threw the green leaves off of me as I sat up, pulling several of the more tenacious ones out of my hair. Once they were gone, I realized just how low the temperature was. Apparently, leaves made good insulation. I began shivering from the cold and my still sleepy metabolism. I'm not much of a coffee person, but I sure wouldn't have turned down a cup of it just then. I stood up and stomped my feet a little, getting the circulation going and my body warmed up.

Chase was still sleeping, snoring lightly. He had stayed up for the first watch and had wrestled with a vampire and lost, so I didn't blame him for being extra tired.

Jared took the map out of his backpack and began looking it over with Finn and Tony.

Spike was staring off into the trees, eating crackers out of one of his meal bags. It was easy to see he was more of a night owl than a morning person. I'm not sure his brain was totally functioning yet. His hair stuck out in all directions, making me wonder if he was called Spike because of this particular style. Even unkempt and unwashed, I loved it. Now if only he'd take his shirt off again ...

Becky stepped up next to me and nudged my hip with hers. "Wanna go pee with me?"

"Sure. I'm glad you said something; I've had to go all night."

We began making our way out into the trees.

"Me too. I guess I'm glad we have limited food and water right now."

"You said it."

Once we were out of earshot, Becky asked, "So, do you feel better about Jared now?"

"Enough to let him sleep with us, so long as we have a guard a but no, not totally. Becky, you missed it. He seriously was giving Dardennes some kind of look, and Dardennes was returning it."

Becky shrugged. "Well, I think he seemed good last night, right?"

"Yeah, but his explanation of where he'd been didn't really make much sense, did it?"

Becky sighed. "Maybe not. But I have to believe he's with us, Jayne, on our side. He's been really good to everyone, including Sam. He really helped her out. He almost didn't come without her; she insisted though."

That really didn't work with my theory so well, but I wasn't going to give up that easily. "Let's just agree to disagree on this for now. I'm sure it will work itself out in the end."

Becky smiled. "Deal. Now the question is: what are we going to use as toilet paper?"

"Leaves?" I suggested.

"Just don't use any poison oak or poison ivy."

I hesitated, instantly picturing an itchy red rash on my hoo-hah. Yikes. "I have no idea what poison anything looks like a unless it's in a container marked with a skull and crossbones."

"I think we'll be okay if we take a leaf off a tree a I think the poison stuff is on the ground."

"Yeah, but did you notice how high up those branches are? How are we going to reach a leaf?" I pouted for effect. "Dammit, I want a leaf."

Suddenly, a giant, long tree limb that was above our heads began moving, slowly lowering itself down to stop next to my shoulder. The sound of its huge body of wood straining and cracking to move in such an unnatural way was eerie as h.e.l.l. I stood stock still, unable to make my feet go. "What the f.u.c.k?" I whispered desperately to Becky, looking for some kind of guidance. The panic from last night was back. Was the tree going to kill me? Was it in league with the flamboyant, Chase-nibbling vampire?

Becky's eyes were nearly bugging out of her head a again. She whispered loudly, "I think it wants you to take a leaf!" She grabbed my hand, squeezing the c.r.a.p out of it. I was glad for the contact, though, and squeezed back.

Please don't let this tree kill me please don't let this tree kill me. I'm not sure who or what I was praying to, but I hoped he, she, or it was listening.

I slowly reached up to the branch sitting next to my shoulder and gingerly plucked two leaves off. As soon as I pulled my hand away, the branch sprang back up, making a mighty groaning sound, the branch and leaves creating a whooshing sound as they rocketed from my shoulder level back toward the sky. Tons of leaves, loosened by the branch's unnatural movement, flew off the branch and floated down around us.

Becky held her hands up, catching some as they fell. She looked at me, her hands now grasping a bunch of leaves to her chest. She was still whispering. "Holy c.r.a.p, Jayne. What just happened?"

"I have no friggin' idea." I looked up at the tree. There was a crack in the limb that had moved for me a and there was no doubt in my mind that this branch had moved for me. I had said I wanted a leaf and it gave me a thousand of them a from its own ... body. I saw sap coming out of the crack in the branch near the place where it connected to the tree. I was suddenly overwhelmed with sadness. Tears sprang into my eyes and my heart started aching a little bit.

"Jayne, what's wrong? Why are you crying?" Becky giggled a little bit, confused about my seemingly incongruous emotions.

I pointed. "Look at the sap coming out of that crack. The tree is bleeding a it's bleeding because I asked for a stupid leaf to wipe my a.s.s! I caused that to happen. I don't know why, but it's making me really sad." My explanation was nuts and my feelings being so over the top made no sense, but it was what it was.

Leaves began to rain down on my head, the tree shuddering, loosening them and causing them to fall.

It just made me even more unhappy. I stood there being showered with leaves while I cried like a baby.

Becky rubbed my back, and in an understanding, soothing voice said, "PMS sucks."

I frowned through my sadness, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up my eyebrows in concentration. I'd just finished my period, so according to my calculations, this wasn't PMS; but I didn't say anything to Becky. Let her think I had a chemical reason for being so wacky right now. It was probably the stress. I was going to figure this out with Tony later ... on second thought, as soon as I got back.

I wiped the tears off my cheeks and took a deep breath. "I still have to pee."

Becky laughed. "Me too." She looked around and then up at the tree, apprehension written all over her face. "Where should we go?" she whispered.

I looked up at the tree too. It had stopped sending leaves down on me, which was a good thing because pretty soon I was going to be completely covered in a mound of leaves, and the tree was going to be naked. I seemed to recall from biology cla.s.s that trees needed their leaves to absorb the sun's energy and feed themselves. Why I decided at that moment to remember some random fact from one of my science cla.s.ses, I don't know, but it managed to make me feel guilty all over again. s.h.i.t. Focus. Move on.

"Well," I said, getting back to the business at hand, "I don't really want to pee with this tree watching me."

No sooner had the words left my lips, than I felt the ground under our feet start to tremble. The tree began groaning again, twisting its trunk.

It hit me then that the tree was actually pulling itself up out of the ground. "No! Wait! Tree, don't move!" It stopped moving, so I continued my begging. "You can watch me pee! It's okay! Here look, I'm peeing! I'm peeing! You can stop uprooting yourself." I looked in desperation at Becky, nearly yelling, "Start peeing for chrissake, Becky!"

She yanked her pants down and started peeing on the spot, not saying a word.

The ground had stopped moving and the tree had ceased its groaning and shuddering. The only thing I could hear was my heart beating in my throat and our pee splattering on the leaves beneath us.

After we were finished and had stepped to the side, we stood there, looking at each other, at the tree, and at all the leaves around us - completely weirded out, not knowing what to say. Both of us had seen it, so there was no denying it had happened. I was pretty sure I wasn't crazy. But then a thought came to me.

"Maybe this is one of those ma.s.s hysteria things, you know, where stress causes people to have the same psychotic episodes?"

Becky thought about it for a second, still not moving, and said, "Yeah, but what about all of this?" She gestured to the pile of leaves and the crack in the branch above us.

"Maybe it was already here and we just made up situations to fit the scene?"

Becky shrugged, not looking very convinced. "Maybe."

"Come on, let's go back," I said, turning towards our camp, with Becky anxiously following and then quickly overtaking me in her hurry to get to the clearing. I glanced over my shoulder at the tree and stopped. I spun around to go back.

"What are you doing?" asked Becky, now ten paces farther down the path we'd made coming in.

Without answering, I went up to the tree and stood at the base of its trunk. After all that it had done for me, even if it was just a psychotic episode in my mind, I couldn't just take from it and then leave without doing something in return.

I didn't think about what I was going to do too much; I just did it. I put my arms around the trunk and squeezed, turning myself into the type of person I had mocked many times in the past a the proverbial tree hugger.

I can't describe the feeling that came through that tree and into my arms at that moment. There just aren't words for it in my vocabulary a which isn't saying much, I know. But take everything you love, like cotton candy and the smile on your best friend's face and a tiny, fuzzy-wuzzy kitten ... and wrap it all up into one sensation. This is what hugging that tree felt like. I couldn't stop the smile from bursting across my face.

I felt joy from the tree too. I don't know what trees like a probably not cotton candy and kittens a but whatever ... I was sure that my tree was feeling those things when we connected.

Don't get me wrong; the tree didn't hug me back, not with its branches anyway. But I felt an energy coming to me from it, so I was calling it a hug. I guess if someone wanted to put a scientific label on what was happening with our touch, they'd say it was an exchange of life forces a human and plant.

Whatever it was, whatever it was called, it was f.u.c.king awesome. I wondered if I'd get the same sensation from every tree in this forest or just this one.

"Um, Jayne? ... What are you doing?" Becky had crept back over and was standing a few feet away from me.

"Come over here and do this with me. You're not going to believe this s.h.i.t." I didn't want to let go just yet, so I spoke with my face resting against the tree's rough bark.

Becky walked over hesitantly, looking at me with a worried expression. "Are you okay?" She was obviously concerned for my mental health.

"Shut up and hug the d.a.m.n tree, Becky."

Becky sighed. "Oh, screw it, I might as well. I've done stranger things." She went to the other side of the tree, wrapped her arms around its wide trunk and started squeezing.

"Do you feel it?" I asked, excitedly. Now Becky was going to see firsthand how awesome this was.

"Feel what?"

"It. The awesomeness."

"Uh, no. All I feel is hard and pokey tree bark."

"Maybe you're not doing it right."

"I wasn't aware there was a technique to tree hugging." She started to pull away.

"No, wait! I'm coming over there. Stay put."

I released the tree and lost my connection. b.u.mmer. Back to regular life a no cotton candy, no kittens. I walked around to the other side of the tree to look at what Becky was doing. She seemed to be hugging the tree properly; not that I was an expert, but I seemed to have a knack for it.

"Maybe put more of your body on it ... not just hug with your arms, but with your whole body."

"I'm not going to hump the tree, Jayne."

"s.h.i.t, Beck, I'm not talking about humping. This is hugging only a Rated G, like a Disney movie."

She sighed, but moved closer so her whole body was touching the tree.