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planet, but it is also an organism. This whole world. It is made up of everything on it, in it, around it, but it is also a single mind. Its mind is called Gaia. It is a mystery. It will save itself from destruction, it always has. It will save itself from the human race by its own methods—and it plans to use us. We are its agents.”
    Annie said, “And so are you, and that’s why you are here.” She was looking at Lou. I didn’t know whether I was included in this. Lou gave her his sweet inscrutable smile.
    I said, “But what does that mean? What’s going to happen?”
    â€œLou will tell us,” Annie said.
    I was beginning to think they were all mad. “Lou can’t talk!” I said.
    Math reached up and clutched at Annie’s arm, struggling to get to his feet. His lean, lined face looked a bit less pale than before. “We must get on,” he said.
    Bryn had climbed up onto one of the huge tree roots; his head was constantly turning, looking from side to side, up and down. All around us there were strange unsettling noises, mutterings and whistlings and the occasional distant shriek, and a sound like a continual wind in the trees, though no branch seemed to move.
    â€œBryn!” Math said sharply. “Can we go?”
    Bryn climbed down. A vine had curled itself round his leg, and he ripped it violently away. I could have sworn I heard it whimper.
    He said, “Lou will show us the way.”
    â€œLou?” I said. “Are you crazy?”
    â€œThe tree will call him,” Bryn said.

FIVE
    T he forest was thick and lush, with high bushes and leafy vines tangling between the trees, and giant ferns and mosses mounded over everything on the ground. Rocks, earth, fallen branches or trees—they were all turned bright green, all swallowed by growing things. Yet it wasn’t like any forest I’d ever seen; there was something very spooky about it. Not a glimmer of sunlight came down through the high canopy of branches and leaves; the light was dim, and the air was thick and still and humid. After that one horrific yellow moth, there were no insects to be seen, no butterflies or beetles or wasps or flies, and no birds either. You could hear harsh cries and croakings out there in the trees, but nothing flew or fluttered through the air, or moved on any branch.
    As I looked more closely, I began to see that all the trees were exactly the same kind of tree, great spreading giants with broad roots and strange scaly bark, and that the vines were all one kind of vine, thousands of clambering, twining stems, thick as a man’s leg andsprouting clusters of broad round leaves. The ferns were all alike too: tall arching fronds as high as my head, with yellow-green leaf-divisions like fingers, the back of each one of them studded with those brown spore-cases you see on most ferns. I put out a finger to touch one, and the thing vanished in a puff of floating brown dust. It smelled bitter, like vinegar.
    And Lou walked through all this as if he were following a route he had known all his life.
    â€œThe tree will call him,” Bryn had said, but what did that mean? The place was full of trees, and trees don’t talk. But from the moment those words came out of Bryn’s mouth, my little brother Lou stood still, and stiffened, and seemed to forget that anyone else was there. Even me.
    He started to move ahead through the forest, slipping through ferns and around trunks and low branches, with such silent certainty that we all followed him. I stayed close behind him, and soon I realized that he had taken us to a kind of path, a clear way through the thick tangled growth that showed no sign of having been cut or cleared, yet was wide enough to let a full-grown man pass through.
    Math was at my heels; I glanced over my shoulder and saw him looking ahead at Lou intently, out of his bright dark eyes. I also saw, for the first time, that the handle of a big knife