#tree tour

“Anyway, the third floor. The medics there specialize in treating things that aren’t human, though they do have basic human medical supplies for us.”

“Fourth floor is where I work—the demon division. We’re made fun of for having the most boring set up, but that’s just because we do the most work. Because the Under has its own monarchy, we’re essentially a police force. A lot of our job is capturing naebans and ferrying them back to the Under.”

“Fairy tale cops,” he mumbles. I ignore him.

The elevator finally opens up and we walk in. “The Elemental Hub starts on the next floor up. The Hub is the collective name for the four divisions that deal with all the elemental creatures and their problems,” I explain before he can ask.

“This sure is a lot,” he comments as we ride the elevator up to the fifth floor.

This actually makes me laugh once or twice. “You don’t even know. There’s a floor for each element, except for Oceanic, which has two. The fifth floor, the one directly above ours, concerns itself with the more common monsters. And the sixth floor devotes itself to the open ocean and deep sea types.” That’s all I have time to explain before we’ve arrived.

Walking through the elevator doors into Oceanic gives Zach an eyeful, which is the first entertaining thing I’ve seen tonight. We spot an angry river nymph, and a rain sprite. “It’s certainly something, isn’t it?” I ask as we walk. The pale boy nods, speechless at all the sights. I have to nearly drag him up the stairs.

The sixth floor is quieter, and more dimly lit. Pings of sonar and whale calls echo through speakers. It’s soothing and eerie at the same time, and is a major reason why I don’t come to the sixth floor that often. Someone in a wheelchair speeds around us, and I notice the blanket wrapped around her lower torso. Mermaid?

The seventh floor is the Earthen division, where a towering troll nearly stomps Zach flat. He’s so alarmed that I have to laugh. He’s pulled out of the way by a dryad, who he can’t stop staring at. I’m not sure if it’s because of her skin the color of a tree trunk or her eyes the color of autumn leaves, but it takes a lot for me to drag him away.

*

The next flight of stairs brings us to the Hub itself.

“Where are we?” Zach asks me. There’s more wonder in his voice now than when he had been faced with actual nonhuman creatures. Where are his priorities?

“The Hub takes up the entire eighth floor,” I explain, “and is stationed in between Earthen and Airborne. It serves a few purposes—as a cafeteria, a place to meet up with friends and coworkers, and as a place to hold meetings for the Elemental workers.”

“I could spend all day in here,” he says, grinning. “Smells amazing.”

“We’ll come back later,” I promise, “but we really need to move on.”

*

Zach’s eyes nearly pop out of his skull when he steps through the door and into the Airborne division. Griffins dive through the air, and wind sprites gust through the area. “This is why we do our paperwork on actual paper,” I explain as I try to reign in my hair, “and they get to use the good computers. Can you imagine if we made the poor Airborne employees work with as much paper as we do?”

“It would be a mess,” he agrees. “What the hell is that?” he asks, pointing at a tall, androgynous looking being with golden and white wings.

“I think that’s an angel,” I whisper. “They must be here for something important, let’s go.” The aura put out by the angel is a strange one, and Zach doesn’t seem to mind getting away from it.

*

The last division that makes up the Elemental Hub is Volcanic, where Zach comes face to face with a tank of flaming salamanders. “A lot of Volcanic employees work on research, since their specimens are the rarest,” I tell him as we stare at the flickering creatures.

After Volcanic, we finally come to the last floor: the Faery division.

“The entire upper half of the building, ten stories, is devoted to Faery,” I say as we walk through the offices. “Most of that space is needed to accommodate the large tree in the center of it. That plant has been growing for nearly 150 years,” I tell Zach, “but the faeries grew it large when they first gifted it to us.”

“So is that where you got the name, then?” I’m confused until he elaborates further. “You know. TREE. And the gigantic tree that you’re hiding. There’s no connection there?”

His theory is so unexpected that it makes me laugh. “No, I don’t think so. This is just a place for faeries to take refuge.”

He looks at me, trying to decide whether to be offended or join in the laughter. Finally he just gives a lame shrug and smiles. “You never know. Can we climb it?”

“What, the Faery tree?” I laugh again, and this time he does look a bit insulted. “No, of course you can’t climb it. Nobody climbs the Faery Tree unless you’re a Faery worker, or an actual faery.”

Okay, that was a LOT but I hope it gave you a bit more insight into TREE!