The Girl in the Tree, page 1
For my parents
—Ellen Potter
For Caterina and Emilio
—Sara Cristofori
1 The Girl in the Tree
Cordelia was a girl who lived in a tall elm tree in Central Park. No one knew where she came from. A squirrel named Shakespeare found her one evening under a shrub, when she was just a wee baby. Shakespeare didn’t like the looks of this small human creature with its drippy nose and big staring eyes. He certainly had no intention of taking care of it. He enjoyed his alone time too much. Some squirrels are like that.
Still, thought Shakespeare, there is a coyote roaming around the park. A coyote might eat a human baby. Coyotes have no shame.
Shakespeare hurried over to his neighbor, Miss Gertrude, an elderly squirrel who lived in the larch tree next door. Miss Gertrude was a very clever squirrel. When she saw the baby under the shrub, she knew exactly what to do.
She found three strong pigeons. The pigeons each took a beakful of Cordelia’s onesie and flew her straight up to an old squirrel’s nest in Shakespeare’s tree. The nest was big and sturdy enough for a small human baby. Cordelia curled up very comfortably and fell straight to sleep.
“But I don’t want a baby,” Shakespeare complained to Miss Gertrude. “Their noses run and their crying makes my ears feel all buzzily.”
Shakespeare liked to make up new words, like “buzzily” and “giggle-wig” and “minglebum.”
“You found her for a reason, Shakespeare, even if you don’t know what that reason is yet,” declared Miss Gertrude. Then she turned and headed home to her larch tree, calling back, “Good night! I’ll bring you some mashed acorns for her in the morning!”
Shakespeare climbed up his elm tree. He sat beside the nest and looked down at the little human creature. In her sleep, Cordelia reached out and held his tail, the way she might have held the hand of someone she trusted very much.
Shakespeare felt a little funny in his chest then. He thought it might have been because of a bad walnut that he’d eaten. But later, much later, he realized why he had felt funny. It was because at that moment he knew Cordelia belonged to him, and he belonged to Cordelia… and that was simply that.
2 Nut Day!
It was a bright autumn morning in the park. Cordelia was curled up asleep in her tree house. She was eight years old now and had long since outgrown her nest. Shakespeare had built her a cozy tree house high up in the elm tree. In the winter it was as warm and snug as your own bedroom, and in the summer she could open a window and look up at the night stars.
The moment she awoke that morning, Cordelia remembered what day it was. She scurried out of her tree house, grabbed a branch, and swung herself to a limb lower down. Then just for fun, she did two somersaults across the narrow branch until she reached the trunk of the tree.
There was a large hole halfway up the tree trunk in which she kept all her stuff. She had a blue comb with a handle shaped like a mermaid. She had several good books, an old baseball, a chess piece shaped like a horse, and two stubs of chalk, one red and one purple. All her clothes were in the hole in the trunk too. It was surprisingly easy to find clothes in Central Park, since parents were always leaving things behind at playgrounds. But she also had new clothes, which Viola Berry, the park’s groundskeeper, gave her. She even had dress-up clothes—a football helmet and a unicorn headband and fairy wings.
Now she combed her hair with the mermaid comb. She put on a red-and-white-striped T-shirt and a pair of cargo pants with extra pockets. She was going to need them today!
After a moment’s thought, she decided she should dress up for the holiday, so she put on the football helmet and the fairy wings.
When she was done, she hopped lightly from branch to branch, as nimble as a circus performer on a tightrope, until she reached Shakespeare’s nest.
“I’m ready,” she said to Shakespeare.
Shakespeare opened his eyes and twitched his whiskers. “Ready? For what?”
“Shakespeare,” Cordelia said very severely, putting her hands on her hips. “Today is Nut Day.”
“Is it Nut Day already?” he asked sleepily.
“Yes, and don’t forget, you said I could choose the—” Cordelia looked around to make sure no one was listening, then lowered her voice. “The top secret place.”
“Did I? Oh, I suppose I did. Okay, let me just stretch.…” He stretched very slowly and lazily, then he patted his rather large belly. “And I’ll just give my paws a good cleaning.…”
“SHAKESPEARE!” Cordelia stamped her foot on the tree branch, making it tremble.
Shakespeare laughed. He’d only been teasing her. Then he leaped out of his nest. He was a fat squirrel but very agile. Zippity quick, both he and Cordelia scrambled down the tree and jumped to the ground.
It was so early in the morning that the only person around was Viola Berry, who lived in the groundskeeper’s cottage next to the elm tree.
“Happy Nut Day, Cordelia!” Viola said. “The acorns are ripe and ready!”
Viola knew everything about Central Park. She knew which trees weren’t feeling well and how to make them feel better. She knew the secret places where the red-tailed hawks built their nests in the spring. She knew which hollowed-out trees held raccoons that cuddled together in the winter.
And she was the only person who knew that Cordelia lived in a tree.
“Wouldn’t you like to live in a real house, Cordelia?” Viola once asked.
“I live in a tree house, which is even better,” Cordelia replied.
“But wouldn’t you like to live with a family?”
“Viola, I do live with a family! I have Shakespeare, and I have you, and I have all the squirrels in the whole entire neighborhood.”
Viola understood every creature that lived in the park, and so she understood Cordelia, too. But still, she made sure that Cordelia had warm coats and blankets for the winter and new shoes for her growing feet. And though acorns and walnuts are fine for a squirrel, a human girl needs to eat other things as well. So Viola made sure that Cordelia had three meals a day, including dinner in Viola’s cottage every night.
That morning, the squirrels were everywhere. They were darting between trees, leaping onto benches, and somersaulting in the grass. Nut Day is a big deal for squirrels. If you think about your favorite holiday and the bouncy way you feel when you wake up that morning, you’ll understand what Nut Day is like for squirrels.
A small red squirrel named Bianca ran up to Cordelia. Waddling behind her was a young rat named Fenton.
“Good day and may you never have fleas!” Bianca said.
“Good day and may you never have fleas!” Cordelia replied, smiling.
This is the way all squirrels greet each other. If you go to Bulgaria or Senegal or France, you’ll find the squirrels there will greet each other exactly the same way.
“Play Dragon King with us, Cordelia,” Fenton said.
Dragon King is a little like tag, but with more tree-climbing and tail-grabbing. No one ever wins or anything at Dragon King. The game is over when everyone is totally pooped out.
“Okay! I call Dragon King!” Cordelia shouted, and the chase was on. Cordelia raced after Bianca and Fenton, and when she caught Fenton, he chased Bianca. They were all having loads of fun, when suddenly Cordelia heard a snorty laugh from just above her head. She stopped running and looked up. Lounging on a tree branch was Bianca’s older sister, Kate.
“What are you laughing at?” Cordelia asked her.
“You.”
“Why?”
“Because you run like a human,” said Kate.
“I do not!” Cordelia replied.
“Yes, you do. When you run, your arms go all wonka-wonka-wonka.” Kate waved her paws around in a silly way.
Most of the time, Cordelia forgot she was a human. But when someone reminded her, like now, it made her feel all funny inside, like she’d swallowed a handful of earthworms.
“Don’t pay any attention to her,” Bianca told Cordelia. “Kate’s the worst.”
“She calls me a rat,” Fenton said in a mopey way.
“You are a rat,” Cordelia said.
“Yeah, but it’s the way she says it,” Fenton complained. “Rrrat! Like I eat garbage and stuff.”
“You do eat garbage,” Cordelia said truthfully.
“I eat leftovers,” Fenton corrected her. “There’s a difference.”
They kept playing Dragon King, but the whole time Cordelia kept feeling those earthworms squirming in her belly.
3 You-Know-Whats
After the young squirrels were finished playing Dragon King, Cordelia watched the Fearless Five perform on the grassy lawn. The Fearless Five were five teenage boys who did acrobatics. The audience gasped and hooted and clapped each time one of the Fearless Five did a daring flip in the air.
That looks like fun, Cordelia thought. She wondered what it would feel like to be one of the Fearless Five. Except for Viola, she had no human friends. Cordelia was curious about humans, but they also made her feel shy and a little nervous.
“Ah, there you are, Cordelia!” Shakespeare said as he trotted up to her. “We’d better go hunting for nuts before the day gets away from us.”
Hunting for nuts was the whole point of Nut Day. When the cold weather arrived, there would be no more fresh nuts or berries. On Nut Day, the squirrels had to collect as many nuts as they could and bury them in secret hiding spots. That way they’d be sure to have food to eat in the winter.
He didn’t want to say the word “butternuts” out loud. That’s because butternuts are squirrels’ favorite sort of nuts. When the weather was brrrr and spring seemed like a million years away, there was nothing Shakespeare liked so much as a delicious butternut.
* * *
The neighborhood they lived in was called Shakespeare Grove. It was named after Shakespeare’s great-great-great-great-grandfather, who was named after a very famous human writer. It was a beautiful neighborhood, with its own garden and an outdoor theater, where they put on many plays written by Shakespeare. (The human Shakespeare, not the squirrel Shakespeare.) It also had the only butternut tree in all of Central Park… and Shakespeare was the only squirrel who knew where that butternut tree was.
As Cordelia and Shakespeare walked to the butternut tree, they picked up acorns and an occasional walnut along the way.
“Hey, ho, one more for us!” Shakespeare would sing whenever he found a nut, and Cordelia would put the nut in a pocket of her cargo pants. Every so often, Cordelia let a few nuts fall out of her pockets, where one of her neighbors was sure to find them. After all, it wasn’t really fair that Cordelia had pockets to store the nuts in, while all the other squirrels only had their cheeks.
The butternut tree was in a forgotten corner, right behind the Delacorte Theater. Shakespeare and Cordelia collected the small, green football-shaped butternuts. There were never as many as Shakespeare would have liked. Still, there were just enough to make a cold winter’s night a little cozier.
“I choose the first hiding spot for the butternuts this year, remember?” Cordelia said.
“Lead the way, Captain!” Shakespeare cried. Pockets full of nuts always put him in an extra good mood.
Cordelia took him to the quiet little thicket where the trees grew snug together. She had discovered it one day while playing hide-and-seek with Fenton.
Shakespeare looked around.
“Well done, Cordelia,” he said finally. “This is an excellent place to hide butternuts!”
Cordelia was filled with pride. Butternuts were valuable treasures, so choosing a hiding spot for them was a very important job.
Shakespeare began to dig the hole in the ground, his front paws working furiously.
All of a sudden, Cordelia got a spooky, goose-pimply feeling. It felt like someone was watching them.
“Shakespeare?” she said, looking all around. “Does that coyote still live in Central Park?”
“I think so,” Shakespeare replied. “Butternuts, please.”
Cordelia reached into her pocket, took out some of the butternuts, and dropped them into the hole. Then she nervously looked around the little thicket again. There were lots of shadows where a coyote could hide.
“Would a coyote eat a girl?” Cordelia asked.
“Not a girl as big as you,” Shakespeare answered as he covered the butternuts with dirt.
“But a coyote would eat a squirrel, wouldn’t it?” Cordelia asked.
Shakespeare paused. He didn’t want to upset Cordelia. But he also always told her the truth about things.
“Yes, a coyote would eat a squirrel. But don’t worry. I’ve got plenty of smarticles.”
“What’s that?” Cordelia asked.
“It means I avoid coyotes.”
Shakespeare inspected his work, then waved his tail with satisfaction. “Done! Now let’s find the next hiding spot!” He scurried out of the thicket and Cordelia followed him. But suddenly she stopped. That goose-pimply feeling had returned.
She grabbed a thick branch off the ground. If the coyote was nearby, she would scare it away with the stick. No squirrel-eating coyote was going to slink around her neighborhood!
There was a scuffling sound back in the thicket where they had buried the butternuts. Cordelia held her stick high, and as quietly as possible, she snuck back toward the dense cluster of trees and shrubs. Then, with a loud cry of “Ayiyiyiyi!” she ran into the thicket.
But what she saw made her stop short and gasp!
4 Thief!
The hole they’d buried the butternuts in was all dug up. Their precious butternuts were gone! And standing by the empty hole was a squirrel with very bulgy cheeks.
The squirrel looked at Cordelia for a moment. His ears twitched and his tail flicked up and down. Then he turned around and ran like crazy.
“Thief!” Cordelia shouted, and she dashed after him.
She’d never been out of Shakespeare Grove in her entire life. As a rule, squirrels stay in their own neighborhoods. But this was an emergency.
The squirrel was fast, but so was she. He tried to lose Cordelia in a woodsy part of the park called the Ramble. The squirrel skittered beneath bushes and leapt over tree roots. Most humans would have given up the chase, but not Cordelia. She followed him through the woods, crashing through shrubs and ducking under low branches, staying right behind him.
When the woods ended, the squirrel darted into a crowd of people. For a moment, Cordelia lost sight of him.
“No, no, no!” she cried.
But then, on a statue of Alice in Wonderland, she saw the tip of a gray bushy tail peeking out above the brim of the Mad Hatter’s hat.
In a flash, Cordelia scrambled up the statue.
“Got you!” she cried, reaching for the squirrel’s tail. But the squirrel leapt off the statue before she could grab it. The chase was back on!
The squirrel ran down a busy path filled with tourists taking pictures and people sitting on benches. The squirrel jumped on the back of one of the benches. People sitting on the bench screeched as he ran along its edge and then leapt to the next bench. It was a leap that only a squirrel could make. Well, a squirrel and Cordelia. Cordelia jumped onto the back of a bench and followed the thief. People stopped walking and watched in amazement as the girl in the football helmet and fairy wings leapt from bench to bench. When there were no more benches, the squirrel sprang into the air and landed on a tree branch. Cordelia followed right behind him. The two of them climbed the tree, higher and higher, until they reached the uppermost branch.
Now Cordelia had the squirrel trapped. He was at the tippy-top of the tree. There was nowhere else for him to go.
That’s when the squirrel surprised Cordelia and made a daring leap to a nearby lamppost.
It was too far for Cordelia to jump. She knew she wouldn’t make it. Still, she was determined to get those butternuts back!
Suddenly she had an idea. She grabbed a sturdy tree branch, took two mighty swings, one… two… and then she let go. She flew through the air, high over the heads of the people below her. Stretching out her arms, she grabbed hold of the lamppost just in time and hugged her arms and legs around it. After that it was easy to shimmy up to the very top, where the squirrel was perched.
“Give them back,” she demanded, holding her palm under his mouth. “NOW!”
The squirrel knew when he was beaten. He made a short screech of annoyance, but he spit out the butternuts into her palm.
On the path below her, tourists had stopped to gawk up at her. As she slid down the lamppost, they hooted and clapped. They assumed she was a street performer, like the Fearless Five.
Cordelia thought it was silly that everyone was so amazed by what she had done. She did things like that almost every day! It was all part of living in a tree. Still, when Cordelia reached the ground, she smiled and bowed, just like she’d seen the Fearless Five do at the end of their performance.
But Cordelia’s smile faded when she saw a woman with short dark hair walk up to her. The woman looked very serious. Maybe climbing lampposts was against park rules.
“What’s your name, little girl?” the stern-looking woman asked.
“Cordelia.”
“Well, Cordelia, I’m Ms. Bird, and I need to speak to your parents. Immediately.”
