Free Tree Girl by T. A. Barron Page A

the back of her neck prickled, and goose bumps swelled on her arms. The sky seemed ready to split open in a storm. But she’d never known a storm like this.
    Slowly, the last blush of sunlight disappeared.Anna shivered, and not just from the chilly air. She slid across the moss until her shoulder touched her friend’s.
    Just then the lowest leaf on the rowan’s lowest branch started to quiver. It trembled ever so slightly at first—then faster, and faster. Next more leaves, higher on the tree, started to shake, as if touched by the same swelling wind.
    Except there was no wind. Not that Anna could feel, at least.
    Like Sash, she sat up, clasping her knees, watching.
What was happening?
    All around them, trees shivered and quaked to the hidden wind. Then came a single, low-pitched note from somewhere in the forest. Like a great wooden horn it blew, with a sound so deep that it shook the very ground. And shook Anna, too, somewhere under her skin.
    Another note came—somewhat higher, ringing like a faraway chime. Then another. And another.
    Soon a whole chorus filled the air. Blown and bonged and whistled, the notes rang out, echoing from every grove, rolling in a great river of sound. As the notes lifted higher, so did the trees, their boughs raised upward like thousands of arms. Andas the notes fell lower, burly roots stirred and dug deeper into the soil.
    A new wind gathered, a wind that moved the air as well as the trees. It wailed through the forest, shaking elmwood and oak, hawthorn and beech. Leaves and cones and flakes of bark spun all about. The air smelled of cedar sap and walnut oil. Branches tapped and creaked and shushed, joining with the chorus in one united call.
    This was the call of the forest itself—its truest cry, its deepest voice. Anna was sure of it. Aye, this was the voice of the wild woods alive!
    She glanced over at Sash, and he met her gaze. His green eyes sparkled as if embedded with stars.
    High Hallow Eve had arrived.
    Suddenly Anna turned. A face—right there in the bark of the rowan tree beside them! She stared at the face as it sprouted from the trunk. Her whole body tensed. And yet…this face looked very different from the one she’d seen before in the forest. This face was round and cheery with huge eyes and a wide, wrinkly mouth. And despite the deepening darkness, the eyes shone with their own inner light, a greenish glow that looked like moonbeams on leaves.
    Anna watched, holding her breath. Here was a tree spirit, about to emerge from its home!
    The rowan’s face bulged outward, swelling like a burl on the trunk. Then came two long-fingered hands, a belly as round as the tree itself, and a pair of bumpy feet. Slowly the figure pulled apart from the trunk, oozing out from the gaps in the bark. Finally, with a moist, sucking sound, it came free.
    Standing on his own at last, the fat little fellow raised his arms above his head and started to dance. He slapped his feet on the tree’s roots so hard, his round belly jiggled. With a broad wink at Sash, he twirled himself around, howled with joy, then twirled again, faster than before.
    All around, spirits emerged from their trees, pulling themselves out of knotholes, through chinks in bark, or up from roots. Right away they, too, started dancing. One elder spirit, as knobby as the old oak where he lived, spun himself in so many circles that he fell to the ground with a thud—and a dizzy grin. Pale-skinned birch spirits threw aside their dangling braids and turned cartwheels and somersaults on the forest floor. Above Anna’s head, a thin girl hung with both hands from a branch. She wore a suit of summer grasses that coveredeven her fingers and toes. As she swung slowly to and fro, her long hair fluttering across her arms, she looked every bit as graceful as a young elm.
    Anna didn’t know which way to look. It was all so real—yet so amazing.
    While the drumalos danced, the strange music swelled even louder. The wind swelled, too,