Even if they were about to win some serious bucks any time now, the Scooby Gang wasn't all that happy. Maybe it had something to do with Xander's wide smirk easily seen in the moonlight of the Vermont state park clearing where this one-eyed man was sitting on the gnarled root of an enormous, centuries-old maple tree growing over a hundred feet into the night sky. More likely, it was because four young women and an older man in the middle of Groton State Forest mutually felt their ears, noses, and every other bit of exposed skin had over the last couple of minutes turned into icicles.
At where five annoyed people (Buffy, Dawn, Willow, Faith, and Giles) stood in a half-circle in front of Xander, the shivering group comprising the New Council's senior staff clearly regretted having Xander talk them into coming here. Especially well past midnight in early March, when there was still snow on the ground and it was cold enough to freeze the you-know-what off a brass monkey.
It'd seemed like a fun thing to do only yesterday back at the Cleveland Slayers House when a phone call from Xander dared the gang to come visit him in Vermont and experience the absolutely weirdest supernatural event his friends would ever see. He'd been there in the first place to find a just-activated Slayer in nearby Montpelier and explain to her about the New Council which had gone well enough, but that hadn't been the main purpose of his call.
Xander was rather vague concerning the specifics of the aforementioned uncanny occurrence, clearly entertained by Buffy and the rest listening by speakerphone in Giles' office and wondering out loud how he could possibly think anything could top their previous life in Sunnydale and then afterwards with all these major bouts of magical eccentricity. However, when challenged to put up or shut up, Xander raised the bar by wagering actual cash money on it.
The New Council's troubleshooter was staying at Seyon Lodge, a bed-and-breakfast inside the state park where whatever had impressed Xander happened there. All that the gang needed to do was to join him, and he'd show Wils, the Buffster, et al, what was the what. If they agreed it was in fact bizarre to the max, surpassing by far everything else the Boca del Infierno had thrown at the Scoobies over seven years at his hometown, then each of them owed Xander a hundred bucks.
If it wasn't, though...there'd be a ten for one penalty. Xander would pay anyone who showed up a cool thousand dollars apiece—
Just before the office phone was dropped with a clatter to the floor after being grabbed by Buffy, this Slayer happily declared through it to Xander, "See you real soon! Have your money ready! Mommy needs a new pair of Manolo Blahniks!"
Sure enough, the very next day, his friends arrived at the bed-and-breakfast lodge to check in. Buffy and the others accepted with equanimity the news that what Xander was acting so mysterious about wouldn't be revealed to them until later that night, so the New Council members spent the next few hours doing the usual tourist stuff at the nearby state capital of Montpelier. After a big dinner and some quick naps in their assorted rooms, the group piled into Xander's rented SUV around midnight, dressed in their warmest clothes which would hopefully fend off the low temperatures.
He drove them throughout the Groton State Forest for several miles, all the while refusing to spill the beans even in the face of Buffy's pouting, Dawn's puppy eyes, Willow's incessant questions, and Faith's offer to let him cop a quick feel. Giles, on the other hand, just sighed and patiently waited in the back seat of the car until they got to wherever the lad was taking them.
This turned out to be a completely ordinary forest clearing set back a few hundred yards from the park road. After stopping by the roadside, the puzzled Scoobies followed after Xander trudging along a snow-covered path from a recent storm until they came into the clearing. There, Xander went straight to the biggest maple tree at the far side of the clearing, and promptly sat down on the exposed root as thick as his waist. He then proceeded to sardonically grin at the others surrounding him, showing all the exasperating signs of knowing something they didn't.
Buffy put up with this only until her exposed ears felt like they'd shatter in the cold, snarling at Xander, "Okay, buster, enough's enough! If you brought us here just for some sort of half-assed practical joke, I'm seriously considering kicking you right from this spot into that lake we passed a mile back! You know I won't have any trouble doing it?"
Xander glanced around. Yeah, the disgruntled expressions currently on the others' faces showed they agreed with Buffy.
He held up a hand in a casual gesture requesting a few more moments of forbearance accompanied by, "Just a little longer, please. Look, the whole thing started because of the new Slayer I came here for, Jacquie Emerson. Did you know she's part Abenaki, one of the local Indian tribes? Her grandpa I met at the family get-together, he told me some really old stories about demons and other strange creatures their tribe knew about before us whites showed up. One of 'em's still around at this place, and I got curious enough to come here to see if I could find it. Well, guess what? It's here."
"Demon?!" both Faith and Buffy exclaimed at the same time. They also acted equally swiftly at drawing from under their coats their personal stakes, holding them ready while staring around in a Slayer's ready eagerness for battle. Willow herself had a pulse of magical energy appear from the witch's hands, signifying her mystical powers were ready to defend Giles and Dawn now at Willow's side. As for Xander…
Still seated on the tree root, this man simply rolled his remaining eye. "Will you just relax? Yeah, it might be a demon, or maybe not. Nobody's really sure, but the one thing that Jacquie's grandpa was insistent about, just as his ancestors were, was that there's never been any stories at all of it ever harming a single human. So, the Abenakis pretty much left it alone, except when it went after what they were collecting too every spring."
"Huh?" came in a baffled chorus from the rest of the Scoobies. This promptly turned into panicky yelps and a prompt retreat of several steps by them, when the large maple tree which Xander was sitting upon then came to actual life.
With loud, cracking sounds, the tree shuddered and flexed its bare branches not yet into springtime leaf. Next came the slow grinding of roots pulling themselves out of the hard ground. This included the sluggish flexing of the same thick root where Xander had taken his seat.
Nonchalantly hopping off there, Xander next strolled over to where a nervously-clustered group was gawking at how the tree proceeded to extract its entire trunk, using the roots as multiple legs to lurch out of the newly-created crater at the clearing edge.
When the tree then commenced staggering towards the other side of the clearing, Xander heard from a fascinated Giles quoting under his breath, "'Macbeth shall never vanquished be until Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against him.'"
"Naw," an equally awestruck Faith commented, "It's a fuckin' Ent, right from the Lord of the Rings!"
At the sudden dumbfounded silence this produced from the others, Faith glowered at them all. "What, I can't like those movies? Viggo Mortensen, he's one sexy guy!"
Barely fighting down a snigger, Xander instead cleared his throat. "Uh, sorry…but you're all wrong. Anyway, don't you remember the bet? Is that the weirdest thing you've seen or not?"
The Scoobies stared after the tree still making its tottering way across the clearing. They then turned back to Xander in unison. Dawn was the first to speak, telling him kindly, "Sorry, Xan, but even though it's pretty impressive, I still have to say it doesn't go higher than the list of, oh, the top twenty-five weirdest things which happened to us in Sunnydale."
Nods of agreement came from the others, but this didn't seem to faze Xander. He just pointed at the tree now reaching the other clearing edge. "Just wait. I guarantee there's more."
Following Xander's indicating finger, this showed how the tree was now in front of another, much smaller maple tree. Leaning forward, the larger maple tree curled its branches around the other tree and brought together their woody trunks with a clunk! noise which rang hollowly throughout the forest. These tree-trunks remained pressed onto each other for the next several seconds, accompanied all throughout this by a continuous…slurping…sound.
Once this peculiar glugging finished, the larger tree let go and began lurching backwards, retracing its path across the clearing. It soon ended up in its former nesting place, pushing down into the ground its roots so that everything swiftly returned to where it'd been before the tree had performed its unusual actions. Only two things differed from mere minutes ago.
The now stock-still tree was definitely a little bit thicker. As for the other maple tree on the opposite side of the clearing…the only way to describe it was as 'wilted.'
Their mouths open in amazement, the Scoobies looked at where Xander was once more smirking at them. This time it was Buffy's turn to speak first.
"It's a vampire tree?!"
Xander nodded firmly. "Yeah, but instead of blood, it sucked up all the maple sap inside that other tree."
"'Kay," Faith surrendered. "You win. That's the strangest goddamn thing I seen my whole life as a Slayer."
Glancing at each other, Dawn and Giles had to concur, even though the former Sunnydale High librarian mentioned, "Actually, there is a Japanese yōkai spirit known as the Jubokko tree which subsists on human blood…but it certainly isn't anything like that." Giles finished his own capitulation with a rueful nod at the innocently-seeming maple tree.
Swelling up in imminent victory, Xander turned to the very last hold-out who seemed unable to yield, judging from Buffy's stubborn expression. Fine, then.
"Hey, Buff," Xander began, "If that wasn't enough to convince you, here's one last piece of total weirdness. Like I said before, the Abenaki usually left that whatever it is alone, except when it moved onto their own maple trees they were tapping for maple syrup. So here's a question for you: how did they get rid of those? Back then, the tribe didn't have any iron to make axes or saws to cut down the tree. Setting it on fire risked burning down the whole forest, including their maple trees. Oh, and it's not like stakes really work on it either. What's the answer?"
Clearly not having any idea, Buffy just grumpily shrugged once in sullen defeat.
Knowing he'd pushed her as far as it was safe, Xander then revealed, "To be fair, I couldn't guess either when Jacquie's grandpa asked me. The old guy was snickering through it all, how his ancestors hunted down a squirrel sleeping through the winter. After that squirrel went to the big heavenly nuthouse in the sky, they stored it in the nearest snowbank until it was nice and stiff. Then, all while holding it like some furry knife, the bravest man in the tribe looked for a handy knothole—"
"OKAY!" shouted Buffy. She glared at Xander grinning from ear to ear. "You win! But you'd better take an IOU! I don't have a hundred dollars on me!"