by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Animal Voices, Unicorn Whispers, October 2024
[Part 1]
Alone in his boat on a clear sea in the glow of early afternoon, Elijah found he could almost believe the whole morning had been a daydream, perhaps caused by nibbling on a psychotropic jellyfish tentacle. Were there jellyfish whose flesh could cause such hallucinations? Elijah wasn’t sure, but perhaps one of his mothers would know. As he sailed onward toward home though, he realized: there were still two sacks of nut-butter sandwiches and joiberries in the boat with him, and that was hard, physical evidence that he had met with someone out here on the sea this morning.
Though, Elijah began to wonder if the specifics of his memories could be at all accurate, because it was simply too, too strange that he’d met a village of squirrels who believed their entire city skipped across time like a stone across a lake and a nice, young otter couple who seemed utterly, irrationally convinced that in spite of the lack of an age difference between them, Elijah was their son.
Well, he supposed he would have an entertaining tall tale to tell the young sea lions around the cooking fires at home while they prepared his lion’s mane jellyfish for the feast tonight. A feast provided by him.
By the time Elijah had pulled his little boat up on the shore of the sea lion isle, his confusion about Treegadoon had melted away like morning mist under the beating sun of midday. He laughed and joked with the sea lions who helped him drag the heavy lion’s mane jellyfish across the isle to the cooking fires. The giant jellyfish had to be handled very carefully due to its poisonous stinging tentacles which Elijah had become half-convinced he must have been grazed by when he’d first hauled it over the side of the boat earlier that morning. It would explain a lot.
The sea lions danced their funny dances — involving a lot of swaying in place — around the fires as the spoils of jellyfish baked into flat breads and simmered into soups. The lion’s mane jellyfish was wrapped in a woven cover of seaweed and then roasted over one of the fires on a spit, slowly turning and sizzling as it dripped grease onto the fire below. It all smelled wonderful. Even though jellyfish itself is generally a bland meat, desired more for its fun, chewy texture than its flavor, the sea lions had salted and spiced everything, throwing in peppers, tubers, and fancy mushrooms, so the fires radiated sensuous, sumptuous smells along with cheerful flickering light and deep, compelling warmth — the kind of warmth that sinks right into the sand and slips under an otter’s thick fur until it feels like it’s warming you from the inside as much as the outside.
Elijah decided he wouldn’t tell anyone about Treegadoon after all. He didn’t want to think about Rosalee and Martin, still looking for their lost baby, so eager to avoid tragedy that they’d almost followed him home like ducklings imprinting on the first being they saw after hatching. It was all too weird and sad. Elijah preferred to stay rooted in reality, anchored to the home he’d known for as long as he could remember. And yet…
Elijah kept touching the notch in the webbing on his left paw. He’d never thought about it much. The notch had been there for as long as he could remember, and he’d always assumed it came from some injury when he’d been a careless, carefree toddler, unaware of the dangers of sharp rocks and cooking knives. But now, Elijah couldn’t stop thinking about the way Martin had grabbed his paw and what Rosalee had whispered about it being a mark that had been with him since birth.
The notch did seem more like a birth mark than a healed wound. There was no scar. Just a notch in the webbing. And even more telling, he didn’t remember how he’d gotten it. So, it really could be something that had been with him since birth.
The more Elijah thought about it, the more he couldn’t deny that there was a sliver of his life unaccounted for, before Mama Arlene and Mama Angelica had taken him in. If there weren’t, then Rosalee wouldn’t have been able to slide into it, worming her way into claiming a part of his past for herself. She wouldn’t have been able to claim to know him.
Perhaps other adopted children worry about their birth parents and wonder if they’re still out there. Elijah never had. Maybe it was because he was already a fish out of water by being a river otter surrounded by sea lions, or maybe it was just the way his personality worked. He didn’t know. But now, for the first time, he couldn’t stop wondering: who were the otters who’d been his parents before Mama Arlene and Mama Angelica? What had happened to them? Were they lost at sea?
They couldn’t be Rosalee and Martin. That didn’t make sense. But they could have been a lot like Rosalee and Martin.
With a sigh, Elijah realized that he had to know. He had to close the door on this fantasy and slide shut the narrow gap where Rosalee had inserted herself. She was not his mom. Both of his moms were here, enjoying the feast with him, sharing in the life they’d built for him and welcomed him into as a lost, wayward child.
But why had he been lost? The question echoed and echoed in his mind, until his whiskers turned downward and his shoulders slumped. It wasn’t hard for his two mothers to read the despondency in his demeanor which clashed considerably with the festive atmosphere around the cookfires that evening.
Mama Arlene sat down beside Elijah on the driftwood log where he’d settled to watch the dancing and feasting. Mama Angelica came up on his other side and stretched out comfortably on the sand. Most of the sea lions preferred laying on the sand to sitting on logs, but Mama Arlene and Elijah had pulled a nice driftwood log up close enough to the cooking fires for them to share with each other long ago, and it didn’t get in the sea lions’ way enough to be a problem.
“I expected you to regale us all with some tall tale about how you caught the lion’s mane jelly,” Mama Arlene said. She had a twisted, gnarled driftwood stick with her, and as she spoke, she idly drew curlicued patterns in the soft, dry sand.
“You’re a very good storyteller,” Mama Angelica added. “But it’s also okay if you don’t have a story to tell.” The sea lion looked at her river otter wife, quietly communicating that they shouldn’t push their son to talk if he didn’t want to.
“I have a very tall tale, actually,” Elijah mused. “Almost too tall. As tall as a redwood tree towering up to the sky.” If the curse were true, then Treegadoon would be gone soon. Gone for years and years. But it couldn’t be true, because that simply didn’t make sense.
Elijah told Mama Arlene and Mama Angelica his toweringly tall tale, and when he was done, he held up his left paw, pointed to the notch in the webbing and asked, “How did I get this? Did I cut it on a rock or a knife when I was small? I can’t remember.” The past is a place that grows dim over time, and the light of his memory simply didn’t shine that far back.
But Mama Arlene shook her head, and Mama Angelica said, “We don’t know. Your paw has been like that for as long as we’ve had you. It never looked like a cut to me. It looked more like a good luck mark.”
“A good luck mark?” Elijah asked.
Mama Angelica explained that sea lions thought minor deformations like his notched paw were a sign of good luck when they were found on newborn infants. “It’s like fate has put a mark on you, promising a piece of good fortune in your future, already paid for by an inconsequential price exacted while you’re still in the womb. Very lucky.”
Mama Arlene smiled with the kind of forbearance she always showed for her sea lion wife’s more mystical beliefs. Then since the conversation had lulled, the river otter inventor launched into a pensive monologue musing on how a whole forest could have come to be growing straight up out of the ocean — whether they might be a special kind of tree that thrived in sea water or perhaps whether the coastline had moved to engulf the forest after it had already grown. It was a fascinating subject, and she found she had a lot to say about it before winding down into quiet thought.
“You don’t believe in a city jumping across time or a curse cast by a phoenix though,” Elijah stated, knowing it to be true. He knew his mothers well.
“No,” Mama Arlene agreed. “But I’m always up for an adventure, and I do love a good mystery. So, we should go find out what you actually saw and see what more we can learn.”
While the two river otters had continued talking, Mama Angelica picked up one of the sack lunches her son had carried home from the alleged mythical isle of squirrels who had fallen out of time. The sea lion opened the sack up, examined the nut-butter sandwiches inside and then exclaimed with surprise at the sight of the purple heart-shaped berries. “Are these… joiberries?” Mama Angelica asked in utter surprise and bewilderment.
“Yes,” Elijah answered. “That’s what Shaun called them. Why?”
“I’ve never seen joiberries before,” Mama Angelica said in wonder. “Only heard about them and seen drawings in history books. They went extinct hundreds of years ago…” Her dark brown eyes got a misty, faraway look, but then her attention snapped back, locked on the pretty little berry held with the tip of her flipper. She asked, “May I try one?”
Elijah nodded, and as Mama Angelica popped the purple berry in her muzzle, he pulled another one out of the lunch sack to offer to Mama Arlene.
“They’re lovely,” the river otter inventor said after eating the joiberry. Her sea lion wife had her eyes closed, savoring the flavor, but when she opened them, she looked very serious.
Mama Angelica said, “I’ll come with you. I want to see this place as well.”
Elijah felt like a young pup, well cared for by his parents. The mysteries of the squirrel city had been daunting when he faced them alone, but he wasn’t afraid to go back there with his mothers. If Rosalee and Martin were still mourning their lost babe, still trying to drag him into their tragedy, then surely Mama Arlene and Mama Angelica would know how to handle them.
The family agreed they would voyage back to Treegadoon the next morning.
* * *
The water sparkled in the early morning sunlight the next day. Both river otters — Elijah and Arlene — rode in the little boat with its motor running. Angelica swam alongside. As a sea lion, she was too large to fit comfortably inside the small boat, but Arlene had rigged the boat with a net that could be thrown out behind it and trail along attached to the back. Angelica could rest in the net like a hammock if she grew tired of swimming before the trip home.
The sky was clear, and they could see for leagues in every direction. And there was no sight of any trees growing out of the ocean. Elijah shouldn’t have been surprised. He wasn’t the first resident of the sea lion village to go exploring, and he’d never heard of Treegadoon before. And if it had been real, how could he not have heard of it? Surely, there would have been word passed around.
Elijah was beginning to feel like an absolute fool and to suspect that his mothers had only come along on this voyage to humor him. Well, that, and also to see if they could figure out why their son had spent the previous morning hallucinating — had he hit his head? Gotten dangerously dehydrated? Eaten something poisonous?
And yet, there were the joiberries. All three of them had eaten the joiberries, and Mama Angelica insisted she’d only ever seen sketches of them in historical scrolls before. So, they must be growing somewhere, even if it wasn’t in a city of trees rising straight up out of the ocean.
* * *
Elijah and Arlene sat in the boat together, eating day old nut-butter sandwiches, and silently staring out at the empty sea. Sparkling, green, beautiful. Totally empty. Angelica floated on her back beside them, and Arlene occasionally tossed purple joiberries at her sea lion wife who snapped them straight out of the air with her muzzle like it was some kind of game. The sack lunches that Shaun had packed made a lovely breakfast. But when breakfast was done, Elijah had to admit — there was no Treegadoon. Somehow, in spite of the sack lunches, he must have imagined it.
“We should go home,” Elijah said, despondently. He’d looked forward to seeing Shaun again. He’d wanted to prove the superstitious squirrel wrong and open his eyes to the wonders of a rational worldview. The marvels of science that could be discovered when superstitions were put aside. And in spite of himself, Elijah had hoped to hear good news of Rosalee and Martin — that they’d found their lost baby and gone on their merry way.
Instead, Elijah was left with the broken fragments of an unfinished story, as if he’d woken up in the middle of a dream.
“If we can’t find where the joiberries came from,” Mama Angelica suggested, “perhaps we can use the remaining ones to grow some joiberry plants of our own.”
Mama Arlene looked in each of the two paper sacks, shaking them a little to rearrange the contents and get a better count of how many berries were left. “Yes, I think there are enough left for that, but this does mean you should stop eating them.”
Mama Angelica’s whiskers spread widely as her pointed snout twisted into a grin. “Then you should stop throwing them at me!” she countered.
Mama Arlene laughed and folded over the open tops of each sack. Then she set them aside, saving the remaining berries for later.
Elijah was just about to start the motor up on the little boat when, suddenly, a thick fog rolled in all around them. For a moment, he thought he’d gotten something in his eyes, but then he heard each of his mothers exclaim in surprise.
“I’ve never seen a fog come on so quickly!” Mama Angelica said.
“The air got warmer,” Mama Arlene observed, ever the acutely focused scientist, looking for telling details and useful explanations. “I wonder why…”
And that’s when Elijah looked up and saw the trees towering above them. The shade from the trees mixed with the haze of the fog, making everything darker, which would almost explain how Elijah didn’t notice the trees immediately, but it didn’t explain how they’d sprung up around their boat when they hadn’t been moving at all.
“Remarkable,” Mama Angelica breathed.
“I guess the trees explain the warmer air,” Mama Arlene said. “Their branches hold the warmth in, but that doesn’t explain…” She trailed off. There was no way her science could explain a whole forest appearing around them like a mirage. Unless it was a mirage… But she grabbed one of the oars from where it was attached to the side of the boat and used it to reach out and tap the closest tree trunk, gnarled, dark brown, and very real looking.
Wood hit wood with a satisfying clonk. Mirages don’t act like that. They don’t have substance when you touch them. They don’t push back against the exploring tip of an oar and cause your boat to wobble in the calm water.
Mama Arlene made a begrudging sound of acknowledgment. The trees were real, not a trick of the light.
Mama Angelica barrel rolled onto her belly, splashed her tail, and swam circles around a few of the tree trunks before returning to the side of the boat. “This is amazing,” she said. “You say there’s a dune island to the north?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Elijah said slowly. He felt disconnected from his body, from reality, like he’d fallen backward into a dream. But then a familiar, chittering voice shouted from above, and Elijah looked up to see a red squirrel’s face looking back down at him from a bridge way up in the forest canopy. It was Shaun! The red squirrel was real, and he was smiling in a beguiling way, like he was a mythical creature himself. But then, young people in love always think the object of their affection seems at least halfway mythical, and Elijah definitely had a crush on Shaun.
Elijah waved and called up to the squirrel: “Hallo! Shaun! I came back!”
The squirrel’s grin widened, but then his face disappeared as he went scurrying the rest of the way across the bridge he was on. He made it to a tree and began spiraling down the stairs around its trunk far faster than a river otter could ever hope to. All in all, it took barely a few breaths before Shaun was down at sea level, grinning like a child on their birthday, facing a pile of colorfully wrapped presents, fully convinced the wish they’d made on the candles gracing their birthday cake was about to come true.
“Elijah?” Shaun asked, unbelieving yet believing at the same time. “Is it truly you? Actually you? And still young like me? Like yesterday?”
Elijah wanted to scoff at Shaun’s ridiculousness. Of course they were both the same age! But the trees… they had appeared as if out of nowhere. They had appeared in a sudden fog. And all Elijah could manage to say was, “Yes, it’s me,” before his words dissolved in happy laughter, overwhelmed by the power of a boy he liked smiling so beatifically at him. He took the oars up in his paws and rowed his small boat over the platform at the bottom of the tree Shaun had come spiraling down.
Angelica kept apace with the boat, swimming alongside, and as she did, the sea lion caught the eye of her river otter wife. Angelica and Arlene looked at each other, each recognizing that the other had seen the simple truth of their son’s crush bare on his face. Together, they shared the kind of silent amusement that parents share when they see their child take another step toward becoming more grown up. It’s a kind of communion that can’t be voiced, because it would wreck the moment if the child saw it happening.
Arlene and Angelica had both heard about Shaun the night before. They’d known he was squirrel tour guide who’d told ridiculous stories about curses and pressed sacks of nut-butter sandwiches and joiberries on their son, but neither of them had managed to fully interpret the wrought tone in Elijah’s voice as he’d talked about the squirrel. They hadn’t realized Shaun was so young and so pretty. Some of their son’s urgency and confusion about Treegadoon made more sense now. Young people have a way of getting carried away by their hearts. Arlene and Angelica should know. They’d both been young and in love at least once before.
“Wait,” Shaun said, the joy on his face dissolving like cotton candy in a sudden summer rain as Elijah stepped out of the boat to join him on the dock. “Did you camp on the dune island last night? You must have. You can’t have really left. That must be why–”
Shaun’s words came in a rush, but Elijah just laughed even more as he stood beside the squirrel who only came up to his shoulder, even counting the bright red tufts on the top of his pointed ears.
“No,” Elijah said gently, getting his laughter under control. “I went home — all the way home — and brought my mothers back with me to see your city.” The river otter gestured at both his otter and sea lion mothers. “Mama Arlene wants to see how your buildings are constructed, and Mama Angelica would really, really like to take some cuttings home from your joiberry plants.”
“It’s unbelievable,” Shaun said, wonder returning to his voice. The pretty young squirrel looked up at the river otter, and their smiles reflected between each other like they were mirrors, and with each reflection their smiles just grew brighter.
While Elijah was completely focused on Shaun, his mothers both kept looking around, marveling at the signs of the city high above them, and as they watched, more and more squirrel faces had began staring down from the bridges and platforms above. It looked as if the whole city were rushing out to see them, even more so than when Elijah had been greeted by a crowd yesterday.
In spite of the pretty squirrel boy staring up at him, Elijah collected himself enough to ask, “Did Rosalee and Martin find…” He faltered over referring to the idea of a missing baby and settled for saying, “…anyone else from the shipwreck?”
Now Shaun began laughing, a bright, musical sound. “How could they?” the red squirrel managed after his peals of laughter quieted down. “That shipwreck happened many years ago, when you were a baby.” The squirrel sobered and looked from one face to the next of the three visitors to his town, finally acknowledging the mothers that Elijah had brought along with him.
“You still don’t believe,” Shaun said with surprise. “You’ve finally broken the curse we’ve lived under for countless eons, and you still don’t even believe in it.” He shook his head and drew a deep breath through his buck teeth, trying to steady himself. Shaun had lived under the curse of Treegadoon for his whole life. The idea of disbelieving it had never truly occurred to him until yesterday, and it still seemed strange to him. A denial of everything he’d known his whole life long.
“I suppose it would be a disbeliever who could break the curse…” Shaun pondered out loud. “If you’d believed, you would never have bothered to come back, no matter who you’d left behind here. You would have known better than to expect to find us again before you were an old man.”
Neither Elijah nor his two mothers knew what to say to that. It’s one thing to know intellectually that another person wholeheartedly believes in something you find ridiculous, but it’s quite something else to look them in the eye while they state their ridiculous beliefs as plainly and matter-of-factly as you might tell someone that the ocean has a way of getting things wet. And more than that, the two river otters and one sea lion could now see the squirrels of Treegadoon swarming all around them, crowding onto the closest bridges and platforms. The whole city — its entire population — must have turned out to see their arrival. So, whatever they said or did next, from this point on, Elijah and his mothers would have quite the audience.
* * *
Far above the lapping ocean waves, among the crowd of squirrels, two river otters followed the movement of the smaller creatures around them, confused by the commotion and still heartbroken from their loss the night before. Neither Rosalee nor Martin had wanted to leap out of Elijah’s boat the previous morning, and they’d spent the rest of the day together trying to find their way past the ineffable borders around Treegadoon, trying to follow in the path of their wayward son. But no matter how hard they’d tried to swim away from the trees, they always ended up right back among them.
Long after sundown, Martin had given up in despair and cried all night long. Rosalee had worn herself out, alternating between swimming and taking short breaks to rest her body, unable to give up so long as her limbs could still move. By sunrise, she finally joined her husband in absolute despair, facing the certainty that they’d never see their son again as either an infant or a grown otter.
The squirrels of Treegadoon had been kind to the tearful otters and found a spare room with a comfortable cot where they had crashed, wrapped in each others’ arms, each trying not to sob, trying not to be the one that dragged the other down by wallowing in their shared despair, both dreading that they would eventually have to share words with each other, face the topic of what had happened to them head on… and if they couldn’t find a way to face this unimaginable loss together, then they might have to face losing even more before the ordeal was done.
The two of them had risen from their dreary half-sleep to the sound of squirrels chittering and chattering, paws scuffling and claws skittering, as every resident of Treegadoon hurried to see the impossible: a visitor who’d left and returned the same age the next day.
For even though Elijah and Arlene were convinced they knew what was and was not possible, over the millennia, the squirrels of Treegadoon had seen visitors come and go, reappearing the very next day for them, impossibly aged over the course of a single night, telling wild stories of waiting and waiting for the trees that rose out of the ocean to reappear. Waiting for years and years. Waiting a lifetime to spend one single day more in Treegadoon.
And, sure, most of the squirrels of Treegadoon had not personally met such a visitor, but they had heard the stories from parents and grandparents they trusted. And furthermore, many of the squirrels of Treegadoon had shared an experience similar to Rosalee and Martin’s thwarted attempts to leave — finding it impossible to escape the gravity of their small town, no matter how much their young, rebellious hearts cried for adventure on the high seas or exploration of further shores.
What Elijah had accomplished with his simple visit home and return the next day should have been impossible, based on everything the squirrels knew of the rules that governed the small corner of the universe that comprised the entirety of their available world. They had lived under the curse of a long gone, long remembered phoenix every day of their lives.
Until today.
Today as the throng of squirrels and two teary-eyed otters stared down at the ocean below, a rosy mist began to rise off the water around Elijah’s boat. The tendrils of mist twisted and twined, shining more and more brightly with the colors of sunset, like melted gold coalescing. The bright fog gleamed and came together, creating the hazy form of a giant bird with its wings outstretched. With a flash too bright to look at, the formless shape solidified, and the phoenix from the legend returned to the city that had turned her away so long ago.
Should the city welcome her now? When the albatross had visited Treegadoon in the distant past, she had brought ruination on the squirrels’ city. But these were not the same squirrels who had turned the albatross away. These squirrels were the great, great, great, great grandchildren of those original squirrels, and they had grown up in a very different world. They had grown up in a world that had been closed off, shut away from the natural passage of time, and locked up like a pretty gem — too beautiful and valuable to be looked at every day, collecting dust and wasting away on its pedestal.
These squirrels were eager for something new, for some connection to the world outside their small, unchanging home. These squirrels cheered at the sight of the phoenix returning to them, immediately ready to open their homes and hearts to the powerful visitor.
The phoenix’s curse had changed them.
The phoenix spread her wings — as wide as the bridges spanning the distance between trees in the village — and her long pinion feathers dripped with fire. The sparks falling from her wings sizzled as they hit the cold ocean water below.
Elijah’s muzzle fell open, and Mama Arlene’s eyes narrowed. Mama Angelica swam up closer to the side of their boat, avoiding the bits of fire falling from the giant bird’s wings.
Shaun fell to his knees and averted his gaze from the phoenix’s glory, and all the other squirrels in the city — like a pattern made from dominoes — saw his reaction and followed suit, falling to their own knees and lowering their own eyes, until only the four river otters — two in the boat and two on a platform high above — were left standing tall, uncowed by the sight of a flaming bird four times their size.
The fiery albatross let herself sink down to the level of the water, landing with her webbed feet and sizzling feathers on the lapping waves. She floated on the water like a pile of sea foam, and steam rose all around her. But slowly, her flaming hot feathers cooled, and the fiery flickers of flame died down, leaving her wings a tarnished, ashy shade of gray and her body as snowy white as that of any normal albatross. Her dark eyes stared judgmentally at the smaller animals gathered all around her in the trees.
The albatross looked at the squirrels like a parent might when their child has disappointed them, but also, in dealing with the natural consequences of their actions already been punished more than enough. Like the bird wanted to say something snarky, something cutting and incisive, but she held her long, hooked beak shut.
Silence echoed between the trees. The only sound came from the lapping wavelets of the sea. Not a one of the squirrels dared speak first, and none of the visiting otters nor sea lion felt it was their place.
Finally, after many long moments, the albatross flapped her wings once, causing a stirring among the nervous squirrels watching, and then said simply with a voice that echoed like a fog horn cutting through a storm, “The curse is broken, as you’ve clearly surmised. As of this morning, Treegadoon has rejoined the normal stream of time.”
Sometimes the most effective thing to say is nothing at all. Even so, after a few moments, brave or perhaps foolish squirrels here and there among the crowd began chittering, “Thank you!” and other empty niceties or expressions of gratitude. The chirruping rose in volume as one squirrel took heart from another until the entire crowd was cheering and whooping and celebrating.
The albatross flapped her wings again, bits of fire fanning into existence as the air whooshed under them, and a gasp of fear fell across the crowd of squirrels, quieting them again.
“Off with you all!” the albatross squawked. “You’ve learned your lesson, paid the price, and our story together is done. Unless you wish to have another lesson taught to you? Hmm?”
More gasps came from the crowd of squirrels, but this time, they were accompanied by the skittering sounds of scurrying paws as almost all of them rushed back to their individual houses or other nearer rooms where they could shelter away from the malevolent gaze of the malicious bird who’d cursed their entire town for many generations. The few brave squirrels who didn’t immediately turn tail and run to hide were pulled and pushed by their fellow citizens, until the only squirrel left in sight was Shaun, standing beside Elijah at the level of the sea.
* * *
The albatross folded her wings behind her and sat floating on the ocean for all the world like nothing more than a massively large sea bird. She looked at each of the remaining fuzzy mammals in turn — the tearful pair of river otters still on a bridge above, the river otter in the boat beside the floating sea lion, and the river otter standing on the dock beside the one squirrel who hadn’t scurried away to hide. They were all watching her with varying degrees of curiosity, wonderment, confusion, and fear.
“I see there are a few loose ends left from my spell to untangle,” the albatross sighed. “A few innocent casualties, as it were. ”
“Innocent casualties?” Rosalee hissed between teeth sharp enough to tear the feathers from the throat of a bird four times her size. Even though she spoke quietly, her words echoed in the relative stillness of the city, now devoid of any trace of its main inhabitants. The squirrels were all too afraid of the albatross to cross her. Not so with Rosalee. She might be a river otter, but right now, she was a classic mamma bear. “Is that what you call this?” Her voice twisted with pain and loss.
Elijah felt strange listening to her. He was beginning to believe that he really was the child she’d lost. And yet, he was right here. He was perfectly happy with this life. His heart broke for the mother who had lost him so many years ago… But he’d only been an infant then. The wound had healed for him long ago during dark nights when Mama Angelica had rocked him in her flippers and Mama Arlene had sung to him.
Elijah barely knew Rosalee now. He certainly didn’t think of a river otter his own age who he’d met yesterday as a mother.
“Come down here and tell me what happened,” the albatross squawked. “I have great powers, but I’m not all-knowing.”
Rosalee and Martin looked at each other, and then they began the trek the rest of the way across they bridge they were on, followed by two more bridges and then spiraling down the stairs on the trunk of the tree where Elijah’s boat was docked. When they made it to ground level, Rosalee looked like she was ready to roast the albatross with scathing words… until her eyes caught Elijah’s, and then all the fire died inside her, and all that escaped her muzzle was a strangled sound of inarticulate grief and sadness.
Martin put a paw on her shoulder, trying to comfort her while also steadying himself. He looked at Elijah, tilted his head as if he were trying to measure or somehow understand the distance that had stretched out between him and the infant child he’d held in his arms only yesterday. A distance that had sprung up literally overnight. It was unfathomable. So, he turned to the albatross and spoke, stating simply what had happened: “The trick you played on this town robbed my wife and me of raising our child. Of knowing him. Of being there for his life. You kept us in stasis while he lived an entire life without us.”
Martin gestured with a paw to the grown otter standing on the dock beside him and Rosalee.
The albatross nodded, her long beak bobbing up and down with the expression. “The love that binds you has served its purpose in freeing Treegadoon from their curse. You’ve played your parts here. Would you like me to send him back to you? You would always be remembered here in Treegadoon for the parts you’ve played. I won’t change how you’ve affected the squirrels here, but I could send the three of you back so that as soon as you leave Treegadoon, you’d find yourselves in the past, and you’d find your son, still an infant, still waiting to be found.”
Elijah wanted to object, but he found himself speechless at the idea of losing his entire life, starting over and becoming a different person who had never known Mama Arlene, Mama Angelica, or the sea lion island at all. Fortunately, he didn’t have to say anything at all — both of his adopted mothers immediately, unhesitatingly cried out, “No!”
Angelica followed her declaration with a repositioning in the water, flipping from floating on her back to facing the albatross more directly, as if she were ready to fight to protect her son. A sea lion fighting an albatross would be quite the sight if it happened. Arlene, on the other paw, continued talking and said, “Even if I don’t believe you can travel through time, I don’t want you messing with my son.”
The albatross’s face creased around her beak, creating the avian version of an enigmatic smile. “I see the young man in question is claimed by two sets of parents. And what does the young man want for himself?”
Everyone turned to look at Elijah. He felt like the fulcrum in the middle of a lever, and his slightest move might cause the lever to become unbalanced, letting the hopes and dreams of half the people here fall off the edge of it forever. But he couldn’t hold still forever. “I love my life,” Elijah said, steadfastly refusing to look at any of his parents — adoptive, alleged, or otherwise — as he spoke. Instead, he looked at Shaun who he hoped would show up a lot in his future. “I don’t want to start over. I don’t want a different one.”
Even Rosalee and Martin couldn’t be unhappy with that answer. What does a parent want more than for their child to live a good life? A life they’re happy with, a life they’re enjoying enough that they wouldn’t trade it.
Even so, the phoenix had robbed them. Perhaps Rosalee could make peace with having missed Elijah’s past, but she couldn’t stand being a stranger to him now. “I don’t want you to take Elijah’s life away from him,” Rosalee said, voice shaking as she dared to look at him again. It was frightening — even just looking in her estranged son’s eyes. Yesterday, it had felt like they could be something to each other, like they could find a way to be connected, even if it wasn’t the connection she’d expected to have with her child. But then he’d sailed away through a barrier that wouldn’t let her through, and he hadn’t looked back.
Something had died inside Rosalee when she’d seen exactly how little she had become to the child she’d carried in her heart, her body, and her arms until a storm and a whimsical phoenix had ripped him away from her. How easy it was for him to leave her behind forever.
“I just wish…” Rosalee’s voice broke, but she wouldn’t leave these words unspoken. She needed Elijah to understand how much it had meant to her when he’d been telling her stories of his childhood on the sea lion island. She needed him to let her be a part of his life going forward. “I wish I could share in the memories of everything I missed. I wish through sharing them, we could find a way back to each other.”
It was such a small thing to ask coming from a mother who had been separated from her child.
“Is that all?” the albatross asked archly. “Well, that’s done easily enough.”
In spite of the seriousness of the moment — or perhaps because of it — Arlene broke out laughing. No one else did. When the river otter inventor got herself under control again, she said, “What do you plan to do, oh magical one, fuse our minds together, transferring the memories of raising Elijah straight from my mind and Angelica’s to theirs?” Arlene waved a paw dismissively at Rosalee and Martin, less to dismiss them and more to dismiss the ridiculousness of her suggestion. Certainly, the albatross had pulled off a number of impressive tricks so far with the fire that fell from her feathers and the way she had cowed an entire city of squirrels, but Arlene knew how magic tricks worked. They were tricks. Not magic.
“If you consent,” the albatross squawked primly, “then yes, that’s exactly what I plan to do.”
Arlene snapped her muzzle shut a little too quickly, revealing that she’d had more ridicule ready to bound off the tip of her tongue.
“Wait…” Angelica said from her place in the water. The sea lion looked very concerned — there was a lot to be concerned about. “You wouldn’t take our memories away from us, would you? We’d still have them too?”
“Of course,” the albatross answered. “My intention in none of this has been cruelty. Only justice. And now, only kindness.”
As the albatross said the word ‘justice,’ Shaun’s tufted red ears splayed, and he stepped a little closer to Elijah. The young red squirrel was witnessing events that would become the new legends of his people, and he was the only squirrel here to see them. It was a heavy burden for a young person, and right now, all he really wanted to do was get to know the handsome river otter who’d come to town, full of stories of the wide world, and freed his people from a curse that had hung over their pointed ears since long before either one of them had been born.
Elijah offered a paw to Shaun, and the squirrel eagerly grabbed it. They were both in over their heads, but on the bright side, this experience would bond them together.
“I consent to sharing my memories,” Angelica said. Elijah wasn’t surprised. His sea lion mother had always been the parent he could count on to overflow with generosity and kindness. She was always a warm pair of flippers ready to hold him and a soothing voice ready to sing his cares away, even now that he was all grown.
Arlene looked more skeptical. The gears in her mind were turning as fast as they could, going over what she had seen today, what she had heard from Elijah last night, and how she could possibly make sense of this young couple — two river otters — who looked like they truly could be the parents of her adopted son, if they’d been displaced through time by many years. Except skipping across time like a stone skips across a lake was clearly impossible.
Or was it?
Could this albatross be a visitor from the future? A future where technology that allows minds to blend together, sharing memories, had become commonplace?
How much more was there to discover about the rigid rules that governed the workings of this magnificent world — a place already so magical that it had allowed such amazing creatures as otters, sea lions, and squirrels to even exist in the first place?
Arlene didn’t know. And she didn’t know how much she didn’t know.
But she knew that Rosalee and Martin were looking at her with hopeful, pleading eyes that looked so, so very much like the eyes of her son.
What harm could come from consenting?
Arlene bowed her head and said, “I agree to sharing my memories as well.”
* * *
The albatross held out her wings and said, “Each of you come forward and put your paws against my feathers. I will be the conduit for you.”
Angelica was the first to move, swimming up close to the tip of the albatross’s left wing. The albatross lowered her wing until the tips of the longest pinion feathers brushed the surface of the water, making it easy for Angelica to roll onto her back and touch the ashy-gray tip of the wing with her flippers.
Rosalee, Martin, and Arlene a moment later all followed suit, stepping right up to the edge of the dock where the albatross’s right wing was in reach. Each of them laid a webbed paw against the ashy feathers.
As soon as all four of Elijah’s parents were touching the albatross, sparks began crawling over her wings like embers glowing in the dregs of a fire when a breeze hits it, blowing new life into the heat.
Elijah felt strange watching this process, knowing that memories of his life and his childhood were being shared with people who were relative strangers to him. It felt a little like a violation, but also, they weren’t his memories to control. They were Mama Arlene and Mama Angelica’s memories. Adjacent to his, but not his. And if they were willing to share their minds in this way, risk this kind of vulnerability, then he fundamentally had no say in the matter.
Perhaps if Elijah had objected, his adopted mothers would have honored his request to hoard their memories for themselves, but it wasn’t his place. It would have been a controlling and miserly action, and he was better than that. If his mothers could be so vulnerable for the sake of broken-hearted strangers, then he could certainly withstand the lesser vulnerability of allowing it to happen without interference.
Shaun sensed Elijah’s vulnerability in this moment, and the squirrel squeezed the river otter’s larger webbed paw with his own smaller, more delicate paw.
Elijah noticed that all four of his parents had closed their eyes. When the sparks died down and stopped crawling across the albatross’s feathers, all four parents opened their eyes and for a flash of a moment, their eyes were filled with the ember glow of fire. The moment passed, and Elijah found himself wondering if anything had actually changed. Unlike his inventor mother, he hadn’t imagined a possible story to explain how the albatross could be empowered by science from the future, and he still doubted.
But then Mama Arlene turned to him and said, “I remember finding the notch on your paw when you were a brand new baby.” There was wonder and surprise in her voice. Elijah’s cool and collected scientist-mother was overflowing with emotion. “I remember it. You were so tiny.”
“So tiny,” Mama Angelica echoed from her place floating in the water.
“I’ve never seen you that tiny before,” Mama Arlene continued, her voice filled with simple, straightforward wonder. She had no doubts any more. “The notch was never an injury. You’ve had it since you were born, and I remember finding it on you.”
However the albatross had accomplished it, the giant fiery bird truly had helped Elijah’s four parents to share their memories of him with each other.
Rosalee stepped toward her son shyly, nervously, spreading her arms in an inviting way. She was full of joy, knowing how good his life had been so far and being allowed to know the details of his past — the past she had missed — so well. But she still deeply craved a connection with who he was now.
Elijah looked uncertainly at first Mama Arlene, who nodded, and then Shaun at his side who smiled encouragingly. He didn’t look to Mama Angelica, because he knew what she would say, and in fact, the warm-hearted sea lion went ahead and said it anyway: “Go on, Elijah, give your poor birth mother the hug she needs! You wouldn’t keep me waiting like that.”
Elijah laughed. He’d kept Mama Angelica waiting for hugs many, many times over the years, and she knew it. He supposed Rosalee knew it too now. But still, Elijah took his sea lion mother’s point to heart and opened his arms to the mother who’d lost many seasons of his life. She fell into his arms and squeezed him as tightly as she could, as if she could secure him to her with her arms and stop time from ever driving them apart again.
After a few moments, Martin came in and joined the hug, and then so did Mama Arlene. Even Mama Angelica pulled herself out of the water, up onto the dock beside the four river otters, and they made room for her blubbery bulk in their now five-way embrace. They had become a complicated sort of family with one pair of parents closer in age to littermates to the shared child, but even so, they were definitely a family.
* * *
The phoenix left while Elijah’s family wasn’t watching. Only Shaun saw the feathered magician spread her wide ash-gray wings, flap them once, and then with a mischievous wink, disappear in a flash of shimmering fire that continued to dance in the air like a mirage for long moments after she was gone. Her presence had left ripples in so many lives.
Treegadoon was a beautiful but exquisitely delicate gemstone of a city, founded long before a time that could properly protect it.
If it hadn’t been for the phoenix’s interference, Treegadoon would have been washed away by ocean storms long before the island of the sea lions was populated, drawing the attention of a quirky river otter inventor who brought steam power and electricity to cities all along the coast when she settled there to be with her sea lion love.
However, since Treegadoon had skimmed across the surface of time, disappearing when the worst of the storms occurred, the lovely city in the canopy of the trees escaped its natural fate and was still around for Arlene to examine it.
The river otter inventor taught the squirrels to light their nights in the forest canopy with twinkling lights, but she also figured out clever ways to protect the city from storms. The squirrels added lightning rods throughout the city to direct any harmful bolts away from the trees themselves; they constructed wind sails that could be tilted and tuned to the angles of the wind, protecting the whole forest in a slipstream that directed the worst gusts and gales around them; and they reinforced the trees with metal cables, anchoring them more firmly to the sandy ocean floor far below.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the sea lion island — which had been growing crowded from its swelling population for some time — set up a satellite colony on the crescent-shaped dune island to the north where Angelica could grow a garden of joiberries, and the sea lions helped build stone wave breakers at intervals all around the small forest, so the largest waves would break apart before hitting the trees at all.
Although the squirrels never knew it, the phoenix had protected them, saving their city until Elijah — bound to Treegadoon by Rosalee and Martin’s love for him — could bring them a savior scientist and an ally city. The squirrels even set up platforms with pulley systems that allowed the much larger sea lions who now lived nearby to occasionally come visit their neighboring city in the sky.
And sometimes, when Elijah went out hunting jellyfish — because he still loved chasing down the delectable, tentacular treats — he brought Shaun with him. Even though the squirrel didn’t share the river otter’s love of chewy jellyfish flesh, he loved escaping the confines of the city where he’d grown up for a day of adventures on the rolling seas.
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