Free Listen! (9780062213358) by Stephanie S. Tolan

the picture her mother took for her of the fairy castle.
    It isn’t really a fairy castle, of course. It is only the stump of an ancient pine tree, broken off a foot or so above the ground. The black-and-white photo was taken early one morning, when mist was still rising from the moss in the first rays of morning sun. The plates of the pine tree’s bark, layer after thin layer, form a jagged ring of concentric circles—the castle’s battlements—around the central core, a space like a courtyard, carpeted with moss. In the middle of the courtyard a tower of splintered wood, crusted with lichen, rises another foot. Between two roots a hole leads into darkness beneath—like an entrance to the mysterious interior.
    It was Charley who named it the fairy castle, playing there while her mother took photographs or waited to take them. A million times she must have imagined herself going into the hole between the roots, down into darkness and then up again into the candlelit, glittery rooms of the castle. The kitchen, the bedrooms, the dining hall.
    The stump must still be out there, just a plain old stump like plenty of others, probably nearly hidden now by leaves that have never been brushed away, as she used to do to keep the courtyard clear, the entrance open. But it was magical when she was little enough to believe—almost believe—in fairies. The photograph used to hang on the wall across from her bed, where she could see it as soon as she opened her eyes. Even now she can almost see a figure standing in the castle courtyard dressed in shades of brown and green, slim and winged like a dragonfly with transparent, iridescent double wings.
    Charley turns the photo around again and straightens up. The cheerful, friendly clutter that was her mother’s way of working has been tidied away. Her father—or Sarita—has packed most of her mother’s belongings into boxes that stand open on the table. By the door at the far end of the room that leads outside, boxes are stacked on the daybed under the window. The bigger equipment has been draped with cloth, standing now like hulking ghosts. The door to the darkroom stands ajar, the sign that used to warn Charley away when the darkroom was in use hanging crooked from its hook. She has been right to stay away from here, she thinks.
    She goes to turn off the lamp and notices a stack of books on the desk. They are new and all the same—a coffee table book she has never seen before. Trees and Stones Will Teach You by Colleen Morgan. Charley stares at her mother’s name. Colleen Morgan. What use is a name when there is no person to attach it to, no person to answer if you say it aloud? The book’s cover photo, taken from the water, is of the sweet gum her mother called Tree.
    Surrounded by woods, thousands and thousands of trees, her mother loved this one best. Somewhere in these cabinets, in these drawers, Charley thinks, there must be hundreds of photos of Tree. In every season, in every kind of weather, in every kind of light.
    â€œWeed trees,” people call sweet gums. When a pair of beavers started chewing the bark of Eagle Lake trees, the community considered getting someone in to kill the beavers and save the woods, until they found out that beavers have a preference for sweet gums. “They can take all of those they want!” the president of the board said. Charley’s mother pointed out later that the beavers never laid a tooth on Tree.
    â€œHe’s a survivor,” she said. Enormously tall, Tree was growing on the hillside above the creek more than seventy years ago when the dam was built. As the water rose, the lake gradually surrounded Tree so that it was growing almost completely in the water. Other trees along the waterline gradually died, their roots drowned, but Tree stayed on, green, then red, then bare boned, then green again. Charley went with her mother to see Tree by water more times than she could