I’d seen pictures. I stared anyway. The half-hidden buildings seemed more like sculptures than research centers, and they blended into the wooded hills as if they’d been planted. All had turf roofs; they had walls of shiny glass, of mortared plastic bottles, of dirt and old tires. Wohlleben Dendrological Station could’ve been an earthie commune or an ultra-high-end resort. My heart kicked up. Since I was small, I dreamed that they’d pick me. I wished on trees like most kids wished on stars. But they grew up and gave up. They stopped believing they could become astronauts or cowboys or paleontologists.

Not me. I held my dream tight.

As my self-driver trundled into the September drizzle, I stepped onto the slate path. Rain pattered on leaves while I walked to the welcome center. I touched every tree I passed and whispered its name: eastern hemlock, black birch, American beech, witch-hazel. I’d never given up.

Signs led me to Wohlleben’s main base, a glass-and-earth structure with soaring, slanted windows, where a redhead waited behind a big desk. “Hi,” she said. “You must be Bay Aylin.”

I nodded and shifted my backpack. I wouldn’t need much at Wohlleben. “Yeah,” I said. “Hi. I guess this is where I’m supposed to be?”

She broke into a big smile. “Welcome. I’m Anya. Come meet everyone—we’ve been waiting.”

Waiting? Meet everyone? My toes curled in my boots. “Everyone” meant the top tree scientists in the world. It meant the most brilliant minds in dendrology. She couldn’t mean everyone.

Some researchers were missing. But not many. Not the best and brightest.

They’d made me a cake, and beer helped my starstruck stumbling. We talked trees and field research. Sometime around midnight, Anya led me through the forest to a hobbit-hole in a hillside. I passed out cold. At seven o’clock sharp, I reported to a bottle-and-wattle building that seemed almost a part of the beech grove surrounding it.

“Good morning, Bay,” said Dr. Khatun, a researcher with wild white hair and an aquiline nose. The night before, she’d told stories of tramping through mountains in the rain. Her eyes had crinkled up when she smiled.

She wasn’t smiling.

“This is your last chance,” she told me.

“Doctor?” I bit my lip instead of saying, I don’t understand, or Why aren’t you happy for me, or Why do you look so mean?

“This is your last chance to change your mind, Mx Aylin.”

“Why would I come all this way to do that?” I shifted from foot to foot in my rough linen scrubs. “I’ve wanted this since I was—I mean, I don’t remember not wanting this.”

“It’s not glamorous.” Her narrowed blue eyes were fierce and almost frightening.

“I know.”

“You can never go back.”

I closed my eyes for a moment. Did she think I’d come so far, only to back out? “I know that, too.”

“We’ll need you to sign some things before we begin.” She pointed to a door on her left. “I’ll check on you in a while.”

That didn’t sound good.

I had to sign waivers. I had to notarize medical forms. I had to make a living will, then an actual will. Dr. Khatun returned at noon. “Is this—” I began.

“Really necessary? Yes.” She handed me lunch.

I finished around two o’clock, stood, and cracked my back. Dr. Khatun peeked in. “Right on schedule,” she said. “Let’s meet your medical team.”

It was happening. I tensed as I followed her down a sunlit hall. It was real.

She stopped before a regular, boring-looking door, then paused. “One piece of advice,” she said, hand on the knob. “Don’t look at the needles.”

I shook my head. “I never watch when I get a shot.”

She smiled for the first time that day. It was a gentle smile, a smile for a child. “No,” she said. “I mean don’t look at them at all. Everyone who sees the size of the needles bows out at the last second.” She opened the door and laid her hand on my shoulder. “You’ll love this, Bay. Everyone who goes through with it says they would never go back.”

But the medical team couldn’t root my nanoskin until my fungal inoculation. I hadn’t known that would happen so soon. I would have looked more. I would have watched the sunrise. But I couldn’t cry, or they’d think I was giving up.

“It’s just like a spinal tap,” the head doctor said. “But you have to stay perfectly still so we can hit your spinal fluid. Don’t move.”

My legs dangled over the edge of a hospital bed. With my gown open in the back, I felt exposed and gendered—they’d seen me without clothes and kept messing up my pronouns. Those they used carried certain expectations, and that weight was creeping up on me.

“I’ll stay still,” I told the doctor. I would not close my eyes.

“Uncross your arms,” he said. I hadn’t realized I was hugging myself. “You might want to grip the bed.”

I held tight as they swabbed me with antibacterial wash, then injected a local anesthetic. “Okay, here we go,” the doctor said. I didn’t scream or move as that needle went through muscle and into something else. It popped. I kept silent as a deep chill sped up my spine and wrapped around my head. I felt the needle come out.

Then I screamed.

Something alien rushed through me. I wanted to throw up and run and flail all at once. I may have tried. But I was pinned down and flipped on my back. Everything went fuzzy and far away. My heart beat slower and slower as the world turned black.

*     *     *
I couldn’t see. I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t move. My mind was a bird beating against black walls. I screamed and couldn’t be sure I made sounds. Did my mouth open? Fuzzy static rose. “They’re coming around,” someone said.

I calmed. I could move my toes and fingers.

I opened my eyes. Nothing. I was blind.

“Shhh.” A cool hand touched my forehead. “It’s hard to lose sight. That’s the worst of it. It’s the hardest part, and it’s over now. It’s a side effect of the fungal inoculation. We’ve found people do best if they don’t know when it’ll happen.”

I’d known and not known. My eyes filled. I should’ve watched more sunrises. I must’ve said so, because someone laughed gently. “You’ll know so many sunrises,” she said—Dr. Khatun. “You’ll be alright, Bay.”

They gave me time to recover. Dr. Khatun was right: it was hard. But every ending carried that beautiful spark of beginning, and that was my first real step. Still, it was an ending, so I couldn’t deny its sadness. The other scientists listened; they didn’t quite understand, but they were kind. It helped.

If the first operation had narrowed my world, the second threw its doors wide open. “What do you think, Bay?” Dr. Khatun asked—her voice, but so different, such richness in pitch and timbre and tone. My sheets rustled as I sat. So many sounds I’d never heard, but I could guess at many of them. Birds were loud. I had to sift out the endless machines, but outside was a world of noise.

“It’s beautiful,” I said. “The bees are talking.”

I heard her smile. “What do they sound like?”

“Squeaky.”

She laughed, and it was beautiful. They helped me dress and more scientists came, Dr. Hightower and Dr. Ramirez. “Do you want to go outside?” Dr. Khatun asked.

I nodded.

“Be ready to catch them,” Dr. Khatun told the others: a warning, but a note of joy, too. She led me outside for the first time in a month? Two months? So long since I’d come in.

At first it was faint. But I honed in and listened hard, then broke away from Dr. Khatun. “Whoa, whoa!” she said, half-laughing as I stumbled into a beech and threw my palms against its smooth trunk.

The beech was speaking.

They caught me when I broke down and slid to my knees, palms still against its trunk. I couldn’t understand what it was saying. But it spoke.

Everything happened fast after that.

They implanted a device near my vocal cords that let me make sounds on the same frequency as the beeches and birches and hemlocks. They all spoke, a forest chorus that always dropped me weeping into the leaves. Time outside became a reward for endless briefings about my new life—endless briefings and injections into the backs of my hands. Those injections contained genetic material that turned cells into sensitive chemical receptors.

“Why are you so stressed this morning?” I asked Dr. Hightower when he came to see me one morning. He carried a sharp, metallic edge. “Are you okay?”

“Dammit, I hate when they get to this stage,” he said as acrid annoyance rose. I shut up.

Five months into my time at Wohlleben, I held out my hand to Josie, my med-tech, for my daily injection. She smiled as she flipped it to my palm.

They were giving me cells to emit pheromones.

They had decided on my first assignment.

*     *     *
“Okay, Bay,” Dr. Khatun said as our team unpacked our truck near a field in Unionville, Pennsylvania. “Your nanoskin will keep you warm and protect you from insects. Like a trunk.” She had a smile in her voice. “We’ll bring you food and water.”

I chewed my lip and asked the question that scared me the most. “How will I learn to talk to them?”

“You’ll figure it out.”

The sun warmed me as we tramped through knee-high grass. They’d cleared a Bay-sized space of dirt for me under the Northern red oak. My stomach jumped as it began speaking—no, shouting. Facing it, I dropped to the earth and crossed my legs. They arranged me like I’d expected: my legs were held in place with U-shaped metal rods, and a sturdy metal trellis propped my back.

“See you soon, Bay,” Dr. Khatun said. She touched my shoulder. “Good luck.”

The team swished away through the dry grass.

“I guess it’s you and me,” I told the oak. No one could remember a time when this field hadn’t been cut for hay. They’d left this oak alone in its middle as a windbreak. Who knew how long it had been isolated?

The oak spoke on and on. When I mimicked their sounds, they shouted so loudly my ears hurt. I must have thrown off distress pheromones, and they quieted. The warm sun disappeared. In the morning, the oak spoke again: one word. One word over and over.

What do you say when you meet someone whose language you don’t speak? I turned that question over and over until it slammed me.

You say your name.

A long time later, I understood they called themselves Lonely. But then their name was only a series of sounds.

“Bay,” I said. “Bay, Bay, Bay.”

“Bay?” they asked, using the higher frequencies of my name.

“Bay,” I replied. “Lonely?”

“Lonely,” they said, and a wave of joyful pheromones hit me. “Lonely, Lonely, Lonely.”

*     *     *
“They told me their name,” I reported to the researchers who brought me liquid food. They left a water bottle for me; nanobots processed my waste.

“What is it?” asked Dr. Patel.

“Um, a really high frequency I can’t translate yet,” I replied.

That fungal injection began working as soon as I hit the dirt. But my fungal cells didn’t meet Lonely’s until the second day. Then their emotions really slammed me. Joy. Sadness. I cried for them, though I didn’t know why. They sent me comforting pheromones and sang. At least I understood the tone and timbre of their happiness, if not their words.

The next morning, just as the sun rose, they said a word. I repeated it.

We’d just said “Sun.”

“Sun, Bay, sun,” Lonely said. “Sun, sun, sun!”

“Sun!” I replied.

“Yes, Bay, sun.”

That word must have been “yes.” Thank God trees spoke in discreet words, not broad concepts. They brought me recording equipment that day, and I recited what I knew. They could slow it and understand my faster, higher-frequency sounds.

*     *     *
Lonely and I took a long time to understand one another: four months and three days, really, since trees have a very fine-tuned sense of time. They were 265 years, 9 months, and 12 days old (we needed a long time for numbers, despite their importance). They had once been part of a forest that went on and on and on, they said, filled with the types of trees I’d expect from a southeastern Pennsylvania forest: hickories, red maples, white oaks, red oaks, and (they said the last so sadly) chestnuts. We both sent out sadness pheromones whenever they mentioned chestnuts, and twined together by our fungi, stayed in that sadness together for a long time.

“A blight,” they told me. “They blighted and died. So sad, Bay. We keep their stumps alive, and sometimes a tiny sprout grows from them. I hear it call from far away. It dies fast.”

“People brought the blight,” I said, and I was ashamed. “They brought a blighted tree from far far far. They didn’t know.”

“How did they not see?” Lonely seemed aghast.

“People don’t understand trees.” It was all I could offer.

153 years before, people had clearcut Lonely’s part of the forest. “They took my mother and siblings and saplings.” Their sadness was heavier than their sadness for the chestnuts. “They screamed. They did not go to the earth, Bay. People pulled up their roots.” I finally understood they meant that people had ripped out stumps, and the trees’ largest roots had come up, too. Lonely only spoke of that day once. If they were human, they would have sobbed through it, as if they were recounting a terrible slaughter.

They were recounting a terrible slaughter.

I couldn’t talk to the researchers for two days after that. The world hurt too much. After people had pulled the stumps, Lonely’s fungi network didn’t reach other trees. They had to shout to be heard, and their pheromones only reached more Northern red oaks when the wind hit just right. Other trees’ answers came dimly and seldom. They had called themselves “Lonely” ever since.

“What were you called before?” I asked as wind rustled their leaves. It had become one of my favorite sounds.

A small bit of joy came to me, like a tiny smile. “My mother-tree called me ‘Early.’ I was the first spring sprout.”

Our fungi tangled closer. “Can I call you ‘Early’?” I asked.

“Yes,” they replied. “Yes, yes, yes.”

They released a pheromone I didn’t know. I felt gingerly around its edges and tried to understand. Love. Early loved me.

“I love you, too,” I told them, and I didn’t need words.

*     *     *
“Bay, why did you come?” Early asked. “Humans do not talk like trees.”

I thought hard. “I always wanted to talk to trees,” I told them. “So I learned about them until the people who come here made me like a tree. They changed me so I could hear you and talk to you, and send chemical messages like you, and understand yours. And so I could make fungi to talk to your fungi.”

“Complicated,” Early said. “But why?”

Why did I want to talk to trees so much? “I don’t know,” I said. “I was always different from other people.” Early was both male and female. It was hard to explain that I wasn’t either. We spent awhile on that before they understood. “And I don’t—” I reddened. Trees couldn’t see, and I couldn’t see, but I did release fear and sadness chemicals that translated to embarrassment. “Trees mate,” I finally said.

“I don’t understand.”

“Make little trees?” I threw off more embarrassment chemicals. Early sent out comforting pheromones and soothing signals. I nestled into the ground a bit. Grass brushed my face.

“In spring I grow two different flowers. I send out pollen from my staminate flowers. Sometimes pollen lands on my pistillate flowers, and I grow acorns there.” Sadness came. “Pollen doesn’t come often, and it’s hard for acorns to grow. A few of mine have sprouted. They died.”

We were sad together for a while. They had hoped and that hope died over and over.

“We were talking about you, Bay,” Early said finally. “Then you talked about making more trees.”

I chewed my lip as I tried to find the right words. “Humans like the act that makes more humans,” I said. “They like it a lot. It doesn’t always make more humans, so they do it for fun.” For fun: in Early’s language it was close to, “sending happy chemicals to each other over and over.”

Early seemed to think about it. “It’s not like that for trees.”

“It’s not like that for me, either.” I drew my arms closer. “I’m different. Other humans don’t understand.” Once I started, I couldn’t stop. “They think it means I don’t want—most of the time, humans love one other human best? Sometimes more than one, but they love them most of all. They think I don’t want that. I do. I just don’t want to do the thing that makes humans.”

“I understand loving one tree more than others.”

“It’s a special kind of love.” I needed so much for Early to understand. “You love them the most, and always want to be together, and you tell them everything. You want to cuddle with them—” Cuddling came out as “tangle your roots together” “—and they feel like that about you, too.”

“Yes.” Early sent signals through our fungi that reminded me of head-pats. They were quiet for a moment. “If you were not such a young sprout, I might feel that love for you. If you had roots, and we could share sunlight, and you were not so small.”

I think they didn’t want to say, If you were a tree.

I didn’t want to say, If you were a human.

*     *     *
As September ended, Dr. Khatun visited. “We’ve recorded their story,” she said. “We’re going to pack you out in a few days.”

I hunkered toward the soil. Tall grass rose above my head, as if I were hiding in it, like a fawn. “No.”

Her voice came closer—she was kneeling. “Can you tell me why?”

Annoyance drifted from her, but kindness, too. “They used to call themselves ‘Lonely.’” My voice caught. “I can’t leave them.”

“Okay.” Dr. Khatun swallowed. “Let’s see what we can do. It hasn’t frosted yet.”

“Bay?” Early asked. “Why are you sad?”

“Not sad.” I swiped my cheeks as the team left. A light wind bit. Fall was coming fast.

“Why do you tell me you are not sad when you signal that you are very sad?” Early seemed puzzled.

Their confusion hurt. “Humans call it ‘dishonest.’ We do it when we don’t want to tell something.” I felt worse. I had taught Early how to lie.

“What is it you do not want to tell me?” Waves of worry and sadness washed over me.

I huddled as small as I could. “If I wanted to tell you, I would tell you.” A sob escaped, and I tried to stop my distress pheromones. It didn’t work. Early’s leaves rustled in that light wind, but it didn’t comfort me. It only made me sadder. I would miss it so much.

“But we tell each other everything, Bay.”

“I don’t want to tell!” I cried harder. “I said I don’t want to!”

We didn’t speak again. Early tried to comfort me. They were confused and sad. But they tried anyway.

*     *     *
The team returned the next day. Early had tried to talk to me about the sunrise and the breeze. I’d only cried again. Soon they’d have no one to talk to. But when I caught the team’s happiness and worry, I shouted. “What is it?” I called. “What’s happening?”

“Ask them how far back we should plant another oak,” Dr. Khatun said. Something metal dinged—a shovel. Some team members panted hard; they must have been carrying—were they carrying—

“Ow! Ow ow ow ow ow!” yelled a tree, a small tree, squeaky-voiced. Branches shook hard. Roots ripped—I screamed for them.

“You’re hurting them!” I shouted. “Stop!”

Panic flew from Early. “Who? Who is it? Bay, make them stop! They are hurting a sprout!”

“Oh, God.” I startled when Dr. Khatun touched my shoulder. “We brought another Northern red oak, Bay, the largest we could find. It’s—”

“They! They’re a they and they’re hurting them!” A shovel dinged again and Early yelled in pain.

“My roots! Bay!” Early shouted over the yelling baby. Distress chemicals nearly overwhelmed me, as if I were watching something horrible, yet powerless to stop it. I shoved my hands under my arms. Their chemical signals dimmed, but I still heard both trees crying in pain.

“You’re hurting Early! Stop!” I tried covering my ears instead. It didn’t help.

Dr. Khatun knelt and said something. It didn’t penetrate. I could hardly hear her and if I could, it wouldn’t have helped, anyway. Nothing could have stopped Early’s pain and this baby’s shrieks.

They screamed for fifteen minutes, fifteen minutes of misery that Dr. Khatun hugged me through. She shushed me while I wept. Finally, the baby quieted.

“Water,” Early said. “There is water coming where my roots hurt.”

“We brought another Northern red oak,” Dr. Khatun said. “You wouldn’t leave because you said the tree would be lonely. We brought them a friend.”

“Who are you?” Early asked. They were confused and happy and a bit frightened. “You are a little sprout.” Dr. Khatun still held me. I shook.

It babbled, nothing intelligible, no language like Early.

“Bay? They are a Northern red oak but they do not talk. I do not understand.”

“They’re not talking?” I said to Dr. Khatun. “What—”

“Oh God. I never—it didn’t occur to me—” She seemed shocked and drew back. “It—they grew on a tree lot with other saplings. They never had a mother tree. Maybe they never learned to speak.”

I relayed that to Early, and I had to explain tree lots. “They never had a mother tree?” Early asked.

“No.” I felt their terrible sorrow, and we were together in it.

“They were so alone, Bay. They were as alone as me. I will teach them to talk.” A small sliver of happy came to me. “It will be easier than teaching you.”

“We’re going to start packing you out now,” Dr. Khatun said.

“Early, I have to leave.” Sadness radiated from me. I began to cry again. “I love you. I’ll come back. I’ll see you again. But they need me to talk to other trees.”

“Like the birds leave.” They went quiet for a moment. “Birds come back.”

“I’ll be like a bird,” I told them.

“I will love you forever, Bay,” Early said.

A tech began to take out the metal rods fastening my legs. “Forever,” I told Early, a long phrase in Northern red oak. I whispered each individual word in that phrase like a promise. “Until I return to the earth that made me.”