Free When She Flew by Jennie Shortridge

against the wood and then I was as close to flying as I could be, greens and browns whirling around me before the rush of air blew the silver dress up over my head so that all I could see were sparkles, and morels falling from the pocket, landing with soft pocks all around me as I hit the ground feetfirst and tucked and rolled.
    I sat up and pulled the dress off over my head. I looked up at Pater and he was laughing, shaking his head. His face was the right color again. That dress has got to go, he said. It’s just going to trip you up if we have to move quickly. I nodded and stuffed it deep inside my pack. Maybe I would throw it away next time we passed a Dumpster. It wasn’t beautiful anymore, not with all the wear and tear it got, and maybe it never was. Maybe it was just my wanting it to be that had made it so.
    It was Wednesday, our day to go to the library, but Pater said we should go to our hiding place instead, up over the ridge from our camp, behind the huge fallen cedar. Pater says the cedar is probably one of the most ancient trees in the forest, it’s so big around, and must have fallen right before we got here five years ago, because back then it still looked like a normal tree. Now the bark falls away in strips, and the pileated wood-peckers have gotten to it, carving out rectangular holes with their pecking, trying to get at insects, leaving places for other, smaller birds to roost. Red sawdust carpets the ground around it, scenting the air with cedar perfume.
    Our forest has very few areas of old-growth trees left. I studied this in Miss Frischmann’s book; I even taught something to Pater, because he did not know this before. We live in the next highest stage to old growth, where the trees are eighty to two hundred fifty years old. That makes them very tall, and when you look up, you see long, naked trees reaching to the sky, and only then are there leaves or boughs of needles. It’s like the green stuff needs to be on top, where there is brighter light. Down where we are the light is always silvery gray and the air moist and cool. It’s like being inside the biggest, most beautiful church in the world, especially on a sunny day when the sun is shining way up high through the top branches, making green and blue windows of light.
    We sat in our cleared-out space behind the big cedar on a blanket, eating dried apples and peanut butter sandwiches. It was like being on a picnic until we heard the chopper coming.
    Pater looked up. We stayed very quiet. It moved slowly overhead, so slowly that I thought it had stopped. All they can see is canopy, Pater said, but he was saying it to himself, like he sometimes does when he’s nervous about us getting caught. His forehead was shiny with sweat. Finally, the chopper moved away, and it was quiet again.
    I couldn’t believe that anyone would go to such lengths to look for me. Why would they? I wasn’t lost. I wasn’t in trouble. Everything was fine. But somehow I knew it was looking for me. I finished my sandwich and lay on the blanket, tucking myself tight up against the length of the tree, inhaling its scent. I would have fallen asleep if it hadn’t been for the chopper coming back, then going away, back and forth, back and forth.
    Pater sat with his back to the tree, pretending to whittle something with his penknife, staring up at the sky, sometimes saying how there was no way they could see us. At first I thought we’d have to wait there for a while until they gave up, until we were sure no one was coming, and then we could go back to our tree house, and Pater would climb up and throw down the rope ladder, and then we would go to bed, and in the morning everything would be the way it had always been. That’s what waiting a long time does to you, makes you start to invent stories to make yourself feel better. I’d been making up stories my whole life, but I started to realize this one wasn’t going to come true. The chopper kept coming back, and Pater