“I cut down some diseased trees,” she says before draining her glass and stretching for the bottle to pour herself another. “It needed to be done.”
His forehead crinkles, but he remains unfazed. “I’m sure you were right to do that. You’re the expert. Now look, I’m not here to pressure you. If you’re not quite ready to go through with it, just return the journal to me, and you can contact us as soon as you’d like to proceed. You did bring it, didn’t you?” Silas gives her a frozen, faintly panicked smile, like someone posing for a photo he doesn’t want to be in. He holds out his soft hand for the journal, as if she owes it to him, as if it could ever mean more to him and his firm than it does to Jake.
The bourbon has hit Jake hard and things are already happening too fast. Davidoff knows that Jake has visited Silas here at Villa Twelve once before, so the Rangers could burst in at any minute. But at least she’s found a way to save Euphemia’s journal from vultures like Silas. She takes another belt while holding his eyes. “I burned the journal,” she says coldly. “This morning.”
A muscle twitches repeatedly somewhere just beyond his mouth, and two red patches appear on his neck. “You did what?”
“It was mine to burn.”
“Including the”—he walks over to the sofa and begins pacing around it—“slipcase?”
She nods. Then she laughs nervously, a single burst, a noise she realizes might come across as insane.
For a man who specializes in adaptation, in poise, in adjusting his beliefs to the shifting circumstances of a shifting world, Silas is rattled. “Okay, you burned it. You burned it?” He rubs his face with both hands. Then he shouts, “Like completely burned it?”
“To a crisp,” she says.
“All right,” he says, tying and retying his robe while he paces. “That’s okay. Of course it’s not fucking okay!” he shouts again. “But it happened. We do have scans on file, all verified by notaries, but this still seriously damages our case, Jake. Just the optics are awful. And personally, this hurts because we have a history and I went out on a limb and entrusted the journal to you. I don’t know how my firm will react when I tell them. I might not be able to shield you from further litigation, and frankly, I’m not sure I want to.”
“The inscription said Proportee of Willo Greenwud, Silas—that will show up in all your scans. That means it was mine, legally. And if your firm has a problem with that, they can sue me. I’ve got tons of money,” she says sarcastically, setting down her empty glass.
At this, Silas seems to collect himself, and begins to speak with the false, parental empathy she always loathed: “Jake, you’ve had a long day and too much to drink. All of this can be worked out tomorrow.” He goes to the kitchen and picks up his phone from the counter. “Here, I’ll have them make up the Villa’s guest room.” As he thumbs the screen, she creeps up behind him and sees him call up the button that summons the Rangers in case of an emergency.
She bats the phone from his grip and it clatters to the tile floor. Then she stomps on it with the heel of her boot and makes for the door. And for the final time, Jake Greenwood abandons Silas for the trees.
CATHEDRAL PROPERTY
THEY FIND HER at dawn the next morning, tucked behind a decomposing nurse log, among the lesser stands of the once-burned trees that surround the staff cabins. Her face is pasted with dropped cedar needles that smell of grapefruit when crushed against her cheekbone.
Jake’s dehydrated skull pounds with each tug and jostle as the Rangers lift her from the ground and lead her through the Cathedral, past trunks garlanded with moss, over thick black roots that surface from the ground like eels. Each of the five Rangers carries a small, snub-nosed machine gun that appears all the more terrifying for its diminutive size. At her staff cabin they stand sentry by the door while she removes her Forest Guide uniform and hangs it in her locker for the last time. Then she digs into the locker’s deepest recesses to unearth a garbage bag that contains the tattered pants and shirt she wore when she first arrived on Greenwood Island, dusty, starving, and broke. When she’s dressed she begins to pack Knut’s paperbooks, tucking the first-edition Muir and Linnaeus into her father’s cardboard box, along with the woodworking tools and the records of poetry that he left her.
But the lead Ranger enters and speaks just as she’s about to lift the box. “This one is Greenwood Property,” he says, his accent from somewhere Jake can’t place. “You must leave it.”
“No, no—‘Liam Greenwood’,” Jake says, running her finger along the words, trying to keep her tone under control. “It’s my father’s name, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the Cathedral.”
With the barrel of his gun he points to the word Greenwood and says, “Cathedral property. You are allowed only what is yours.”
It’s then Jake realizes that like so many of the Rangers—mostly war-ravaged souls flown in from the various dusty hellscapes around the world—this man likely can’t read, and can only recognize the G because he’s seen it so many times here at the Cathedral.
Jake knows better than to embarrass him or make a scene, especially after what she’s done, so she clenches her jaw and kisses the box goodbye. Knut can get more books, and her father’s tools and strange records never held much significance for her anyway. She draws her hair back then pulls on her Leafskin jacket.
“Also Cathedral property,” the Ranger says, now pointing at her coat with his gun.
“The wind will cut right through me out on the open water,” she pleads. “Please, sir. It’s the only coat I have.”
The Ranger glances at his comrades standing outside the door, none of whom are listening closely. He tightens his lips in what seems like a flash of pity and nods affirmatively. “Go,” he says.
Outside they parade her past the row of staff cabins, then past the dining yurt, while being careful to avoid the Villas. Soon they reach the trailhead, where a small group of eager Pilgrims have already assembled to look at their phones and await their morning tours.
Just as they reach the wharf, Jake spies a yellow paste floating on the surface of the waterfront hot tubs. At first she assumes it’s algae, a common flare-up at the Cathedral, brought in from other oceans on the bathing suits of their jet-setting guests. But Jake also notices a thin, yellow tint to the air. She’s dragged aboard the supply barge, which soon pulls back from the wharf, and it isn’t until she’s out on the bay that she can glimpse the thick, lemony haze, caught in the highest branches of the Cathedral’s trees, like a great yellow curtain drawn around their crowns. The trees are masting, she realizes—releasing their pollen together—more furiously than she’s ever seen before, and six months out of season. Most tree species only ever reproduce so vigorously when conditions are dire, when they’re stressed by disease or after they’ve been licked by wildfire or emaciated by drought. Whether they perform this reproductive gambit because they believe things will get better after the threat subsides, or they believe they have nothing left to lose now that everything has gone to hell, no researcher has been able to say for sure. But Jake can’t help but admire their optimism.