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pretty awe-inspiring.” He scanned a clipboard.
    “Especialy if you’re all by yourself.”
    I should correct him. I should tell him someone had been with me.
    He eyed my coat. “Looks like she did more than scare you.”
    “Oh, this.” I fingered the torn patchwork. “It wasn’t on me. I was…hitting her with it.”
    Dad’s eyes widened. Wel, at least that got a rise out of him.
    Officer Mark puled out a pen. “So, where were you when this happened?”
    Mom walked over, brushing dirt from her hands, and began to rub my shoulders. I licked my lips. “If you folow that path and cross a footbridge, it comes out in a clearing. Look up and you’ll spot a tree house in one of the cedars. It’s kind of hard to see.” Next to me Natalie and Tarah listened with rapt attention.
    Once I told about Luke, Natalie would pump me for every detail. And even if I didn’t tell al, she’d still move in and try to manage everything, exactly the way she had with Devon. Not that Luke was my boyfriend. Not that he’d even promised to come back.

    come back.
    I took a breath. “Across from the tree house there’s a Doug fir that’s two hundred years old.”
    Dad had once let me count Adam’s rings by using a holow drill to take a sample of the tree’s core. (That was before he decided such a violation would anger the tree’s spirit.) Tree house. Old growth Doug, Officer Mark wrote.
    Of course, I couldn’t leave Luke out. Officer Mark would need to know his part of the story. But the Luke aspect of the experience belonged to a tender place in me. Not the gossipy place Natalie kept all her mental boy files and her celebrity image galery.
    Dad fingered his drum, frowning. All his “journeys to the spirit world” and he’d never seen a cougar in these woods. Maybe it bugged him that I had.
    As far as anyone knew, I had been by myself. It had just been Forest Girl sitting under a tree elder, communing with nature.
    Mom rested her hands on my shoulders. Natalie, Tarah—
    every eye was on me. A breeze set one of Dad’s feathers fluttering.
    All Officer Mark needed were the facts about the cougar’s behavior. Did it matter whether there had been one human or two?
    “I was…sitting on the ground…”
    “Was there anyone else in the vicinity?”
    “No.” I looked at Dad’s bare feet. “No. I was alone.”

chapter
six

    When I’d finished, Officer Mark reached into his truck and retrieved a rifle-looking thing. Mom let out a long breath.
    Where would they release the cougar once she’d been tranquilized? It would have to be remote—where she wouldn’t encounter more humans. It seemed unfair. Weren’t we in her forest?
    “We contacted almost everyone on the surrounding properties,” Officer Mark was saying to Dad.
    Natalie leaned in on full alert. Most of our neighbors were already here: Tarah and Rainbow, Buck, Clyde. “How about the Hansen mansion, over that way?” She pointed.
    “We’ve tried several times,” said Officer Mark. “No one seems to be home.”
    Not home? Where was he?
    Officer Mark whistled for Mack, and they disappeared into the woods. Mom went back to the Shivat Eiden group and her bean rows, which always calmed her nerves. Dad began drumming again. Rainbow smiled wanly and motioned Tarah back to the car.
    “Trent’s probably off on a press tour,” sighed Natalie.
    “That must be it,” I said. “I’ll keep my eyes peeled for swarming paparazzi.” I browsed the huckleberry bushes as Rainbow and Tarah puled out. That morning after I’d blurted out the Trent Yves line, Luke had let out a little groan. Maybe people had said that to him before. I wished I hadn’t.
    But then he’d winked and shot back, “And you look exactly like a dryad.”
    It occurred to me now that dryads are usualy naked.
    I imagined him realy being Trent. Now that I’d saved his life, he’d invite me into his private plane and take me to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre where I’d put my hand right into his