Bongo darted to my top branch. “Red!” she cried in a strangled whisper. “You can’t—”
“Oh, but I can,” I said. “What have I got to lose?”
“But—”
“As I was saying.” I returned my attention to Stephen and Samar.
They were staring at me, jaws dropped, eyes wide, as frozen as Flash had been not long ago.
“We’re dreaming,” Stephen murmured. “Right?”
“At the same time?” Samar asked. “Is that possible?”
“Pinch me,” Stephen said.
Samar complied.
“Definitely felt that,” Stephen reported.
“Maybe it was a dream pinch,” Samar suggested.
“Excuse me,” I interrupted. “I have two hundred sixteen rings’ worth of wisdom to convey. And not much time.”
Stephen reached for Samar’s hand.
“If it’s a dream,” he said, “at least it’s a cool one.”
And so I began.
31
I haven’t always been a wishtree.
It happened in 1848, long before I was surrounded by concrete and cars, when I was just a few decades old—still a youngster, by red oak standards. No longer a lanky sapling, I was solid and strong, but not anchored to the earth the way I am now.
This was a time, like many other times, when hungry, desperate people sailed on crowded boats to settle here. Many of them ended up, as they always seemed to, in my neighborhood. The blue and green houses were brown then, and filled to overflowing with new arrivals.
Sometimes the newcomers were welcomed. Sometimes they were not. But still they came, hoping and wishing, as people always do.
One of our new residents was a young Irish girl named Maeve. She’d voyaged across the Atlantic with her nineteen-year-old brother, who’d died of dysentery during the trip. Their mother had passed away shortly after Maeve was born; their father, when the children were nine and twelve.
Maeve was solid and plain, but when she smiled, it was like sunshine peeking through clouds. She had a deep laugh, and her hair was as brilliantly red as my finest autumn attire.
Sixteen, alone, and penniless, Maeve shared a tiny room with five other immigrants. She worked night and day, cleaning and cooking and doing whatever she could to stay alive.
Maeve soon discovered she was gifted at caring for the sick. She had no special knowledge. No secret remedies. But she was kind and patient, and she knew how to soothe a fevered brow with a cool cloth as well as anyone. What she didn’t know, she was willing to learn.
As time passed, word grew of Maeve’s abilities. People brought her their sick piglets and their lame horses, their coughing children and fretful babies. Always she explained that she wasn’t sure she could help. But since people in the neighborhood were too poor to go to a doctor, they turned to Maeve.
And since people believed she could help them get better, Maeve tried to live up to their hopes.
When she succeeded, and even when she didn’t, patients and their families would leave small tokens for her: a whittled figurine of a bird, a hairpin, half a loaf of bread. Once someone even left a leather-covered journal, with a tiny silver key that opened its lock.
When Maeve was out tending to someone who was sick, people took to leaving their thank-yous in my lowest hollow. It was still a fresh wound, just a couple of seasons mended. But because it faced the house where Maeve roomed and not the street, it was a safe place to leave a token of gratitude.
That’s when I realized that hollows can be a good thing for people, not just birds and animals.
Little did I know just how good.
32
The years passed, and Maeve became as connected to the neighborhood as I was, even as newcomers from other lands added their music and food and language to our little part of the world. No matter where people were from, Maeve cared for them as best she could.
I grew tougher, my older limbs less pliable, my shadow longer. More trees and shrubs joined me, but there was plenty of sun for all of us, and we never wanted for water.
I’d hosted many families by then, mice and chipmunks in particular. My closest confidant was a young gray squirrel named Squibbles. (All squirrel names begin with the letters S-Q-U.)
Squibbles was especially fond of Maeve, who often fed the little squirrel table scraps.
Privately, Squibbles and I worried about Maeve. Along the way, Maeve had seen a suitor or two, but nothing much came of those flirtations. She had friends aplenty and work to do from dawn till dusk. Still, she seemed lonely. Sometimes Maeve would sit on the porch steps, watching happy families stroll past, and her eyes would well up with tears. At night, she’d gaze out an open upstairs window, and her sighs would float to us on the breeze, melancholy as the call of a mourning dove.
Often Maeve would sit at the base of my trunk and write in her journal. Now and then she’d read passages aloud. She spoke about the Irish countryside fading into fog. She spoke about her family she’d lost. She spoke about her secret hopes and fears and longings. She had love to give, and no one to give it to.
Maeve adored early mornings, when the world was bathed in mist and the sun was still a promise. She would lean against my trunk and close her eyes and hum a tune from her childhood.
One day, the first day of May, Maeve joined me at dawn. To my surprise, she reached up to my lowest bough and gently tied a scrap of blue-striped fabric in a careful knot.
“I wish,” she whispered, “for someone to love with all my heart.”
That was my first wish. And the beginning of many more.
33
As the weeks passed, the piece of fabric on my branch drew many comments.
Some of the folks in our neighborhood, the ones from Ireland, would nod knowingly and smile. To them, Maeve would simply say, in her lilting voice, “That’s my raggy tree. She’s not a hawthorn, but she’ll do just fine.”
People who’d come here from other lands—and there were many of them—would frown at the rag, or even reach up to remove it. Maeve would warn, “Don’t you be touching my wish, now.” Patiently, again and again, she would explain how in her old home, leaving wishes on a raggy tree was a time-honored tradition.
Now and then, people would ask Maeve what she’d wished for. She’d tell them the truth, with a sigh and a wry smile: “Nothing much. Just someone to love with all my heart. Nothing much at all.”
Sometimes people would laugh. Sometimes they would roll their eyes. “A wish on a rag won’t bring you love, dearie,” they would say.
But usually, people gave Maeve a kind smile, a squeeze on the arm, a knowing nod.
And then they, too, would ask if they could add a wish of their own.
34