25. Dig

Yuan works his fingers deeper into the dirt. It's a little bit cool outside, mist-laced and damp, and the leaves are dripping in the just-dawn quiet. If he digs deep enough though, Y thinks he can feel warmth, radiating from the heart of the earth itself.

Marta will scold, as she always does, when he goes back inside with mud-covered hands and mud-covered feet and mud on his shirt and trousers and converts it all to mud on the floor and on stair railings and chairs, but it's worth these few moments every morning that he can be away from dead-tree and artificial-fiber floors and feel the ground. The Matron and maintenance did end up winning the battle over putting plastic down on the floor of his room (he hates the feel of plastic under his feet even worse than the carpet) but it means he can keep his potted plants in there now. He likes plants.

He likes the garden better.

Down, down, deep, Yuan thinks, imagining or willing his fingers to twist and knot and branch like roots, anchoring him in this one spot, growing slow and steady as smaller beings shoot up and wither around him, thick-skinned and strong and impervious to wind and rain and words and blows.

This is how we could be. That is how people should be, he thinks.

No one he's suggested that to has ever agreed with him, though. And it's not what they are, not yet; distantly he becomes aware that his stomach is growling, and that his roots are fingers and cannot actually absorb nutrients from the ground, and that he will be late to breakfast if he doesn't get a move on. Slowly, reluctantly, he uproots himself, and slowly becoming small and gawky and clumsy-footed again.

Click!

Startled, Yuan falls over and lands on his butt in the dirt. Quinn, a stringy little girl much younger than Y, is crouched several feet away, peeking over her giant camera.

Yuan is not at all certain what the appropriate social procedure is in this situation, though Dr. Bull has been working with him on how to have conversations—make eye contact, he knows that's important, so he studiously does so, but the longer he stares the more awkward it feels. Should it be? He hopes that Q will say something first to spare him the trouble, but she's distracted, fidgeting and eyes darting from Yuan to a passing bird to Yuan to a rustling shrub and back to Yuan again. Her hazel eyes are much too big in her face, unnaturally round and bugged a little. Yuan can't help thinking she's one of the oddest humans he's ever set eyes on, now that he's getting a good look at her. Like a tiny, twitchy tree frog. Y hasn't talked to her much. Mostly he's heard her screaming and throwing tantrums when she doesn't want to go to bed or to class. That doesn't seem like a very interesting thing to talk about, though. Mulling over the problem, he thinks falling back on well-established convention and saying "Good morning" might be a good start, but if Q gives the traditional repeating reply, he's not sure where he'll go from there.

Before he quite comes to a decision, Quinn finally speaks. "You were being a tree."

"Yes." That's easy enough.

"I never seen somebody be a tree b'fore." Her fingers fiddle at the camera strap. "How come you doin' that?"

"I…" Yuan wavers a moment, then thinks, She's just a little kid. And worrying about what other people think is a problem for short-lived creatures. "Cuz I'm practicing. For when we evolve ourselves."

Quinn stoops quickly, and for a short embarrassing moment he thinks he's lost her attention already, but she's just prodding at the small white flowers of a pea plant, leaning down to sniff at them curiously. Aiming her camera, she fiddles with a few knobs and dials, sticks the lens right into a cluster of blossoms and clicks a picture. "You think we gonna evolve inna trees? I don't think that possible. An' would take kazillions of years anyhow."

Yuan smiles magnanimously. "I didn't say we evolve into trees. I think we evolve ourselves into part-trees. We got the technology—cloning and splicing and genetic manipulation—trees live longer than people, you know—and they produce oxygen—it would solve deforestation, and a lot of diseases, and, well, and other stuff," he concludes a little lamely, not quite ready to share the big reason. Trees are still, trees are strong. Redwoods and bristlecones aren't fragile like little boys. He doesn't reason it quite as explicitly as that, but there's that awareness there, that being that way makes him feel better.

"Oh," Q says, eyes following a rabbit that skitters across the grounds then pauses. Quickly she lifts her camera and twists a dial, making the lens spin and whir. "Is bein' a tree hard?" Click.

"No. It very easy," Yuan tells her.

"Is it fun?" Letting the camera swing free around her neck, Quinn hops over the peas into the stripe of bare soil between the rows. "Can I try?"

"Um…I guess so…." Bouncing animatedly in place, her fingers tapping and twitching, Yuan thinks he's never seen someone less tree-like in his life. A fast-growing vine, perhaps, or rattling long grass, but definitely not a tree. "Well first just…hold still."

"I am holding still," Quinn protests, hands dancing impatiently on her knees. "Now what?"

He supposes that may be as still as she will get, so he leans forward, burying his hands into the soil again. "You gotta put down roots. Like this. Dig 'em down. Not like that!" he admonishes, as she scrapes away eagerly at the dirt. "Slower."

Chastened, the little girl quiets a bit, wriggling her fingers in the dark soil. Yuan struggles to put into words what goes through his mind when he puts down roots.

"That's better. Just concentrate on, um, you know, reaching down and stuff—"

"Oh!"

For a moment Yuan thinks she felt it, the earth and slow-growing sleepiness and warmth of wellbeing that he always feels when he's 'being a tree', as Quinn puts it. Far from relaxing, however, Q dives down so her nose is a few scant centimeters from the ground and declares excitedly, "Look! A worm!"

It is indeed. Yuan examines the creature gravely. It waves tentatively in the open air, then begins squirming its way back to shelter.

Click!

"I don't think I would be a tree," Quinn says, dropping her camera back against her thin chest with a painful-sounding thunk and hopping back to her feet, wiping her filthy hands on her pajama trousers. Yuan privately agrees. "D'you think Cookie made waffles today?"

"I dunno. Maybe." He doesn't much care (nutrients are nutrients) but it reminds him again that he is quite hungry. Clambering clumsily to his feet, he limps after Quinn. She moves a lot faster, but it's not hard to keep up because she keeps stopping every time a scrap of flower-color or wind-movement catches her eye to exclaim and click her camera at it.

Two days later, his attention is yanked from his plant biochemistry textbook by an enthusiastic shout.

"Yuan!"

Quinn scrambles up into the chair beside him. "Look," she says happily, shoving something under his nose, then yelps as the stack of photos in her hands goes scattering across the table. "Oops—"

"Keep it down b'fore Addy kick us out," he whispers, mortified, as kids all over the library turn to see what all the noise is and Addison raises his eyebrows, making a volume-dial gesture with one hand.

"I being quiet!" Quinn says in a stage whisper, standing up on the chair so she can heap all of her photographs back into a haphazard pile. Glancing over the pictures, Y notices the one of the pea blossoms, a shell-pale cloud of porcelain curves glimmering green with early sunlight, and of the rabbit, poised and looking back in such a way that it seems to be gesturing to a friend beyond the frame of the photo. They're all quite eye-catching. Suddenly, another is thrust before his eyes.

"Here it is!"

Yuan has to lean back to see it. It's him, he realizes, astonished. And he doesn't look like he does in the bathroom mirror, either, gangly and knobbly and resigned. The way Quinn cropped the shot, the trees by the garden shed are visible behind him and give the illusion of being the same size. The dappling of the light in his tumbled hair blends almost seamlessly with the light on the leaves and his cinnamon-skinned arms appears almost to be one of their tall trunks. His misshapen foot is hidden by his folded legs, and he looks…peaceful. Like a dryad, Yuan thinks. Like a tree. Q is beaming at him, and he tentatively returns the smile.

"It came out real good, huh? I make a copy for you, hao ba? Here y'go!" Dropping the photo onto his book, Quinn scoops up the other photos in her arms and jumps off the chair again with a clatter. "Bye!"

"Thanks," he says absently, picking up the photo and staring at it.