She stood, still and breathing rapidly, her arm still raised, the sense of power no longer with her, the voices no longer shouting, the urgency now removed. She stood, unmoving, unthinking, incapable of thought that did not terrify her, and she stood and listened to the song which was now the quiet crooning of a voice that desired nothing more for her than peace. Rest, healing, peace. She dropped her arm to her side; her vision returned to a focus that was on the sidewalk at her feet, the branch in her hand, the coming of night. Moving carefully, hoping not to jar herself into thought, she turned around and walked back home.

By the time she had reached her house, she was in the process of talking herself into believing that her eyes had played tricks on her, that the boy had merely dropped, feet first, from the branch, that he had never been in no danger and that her scream of "No!" had perhaps frightened him more than the fall. The drop. Her mind was quite willing to believe that story, but when she tried to tell it to herself, to convince herself further, the sound of those words created a horrible clashing screech with the song being sung from the place inside her. The song was telling a different story, and her desire to be just an ordinary person whose eyes had played a trick on her in gloom of late dusk fought against the insistence that she admit to the truth of what she had done. The fight was not a fair one, not for her, who, whatever her faults and shortcomings, was an honest person.

"What I saw?" she thought, as the battle between stories fell away, the little fiction she had tried to create vanishing on the breath of the song. "What did I see?" The song continued in words she did not recognize, although she was sure the sound of the words was Chinese or Vietnamese or... she felt embarrassed to being mixing together such different languages, embarrassed that she could know the meanings being sung to her and not know the words. "What did I see?" But she knew what she had seen, had no doubts what she had seen, a small boy falling to his likely death and then caught and dropped gently to his feet, unhurt and apparently not even startled. That was what she had seen, the memory was clear and undeniable. What she had seen was clear, was something she could bear to admit. What was unbearable was not what she had seen but what she had done.

She knew the word and refused to say it. She heard the voices trying to sing the word, and she would not let them. She could do that, she realized with a shock, she could stop the voices. She could understand the meaning of words she did not know, she could stop the singing of words she did not want to hear. She could lift her hand and catch little boys falling from trees. Something in her mind, a part of her mind that ached with a comprehension of the enormity of what she could do, begged the voices to quit singing. "Leave me alone." It was a small part of her, but a vulnerable part. A frightened part. And so, to this part of her mind, the voices sang not of fearlessness but of the greatness of all that is unknown. The song told of how huge the unknown was, and then asked the simple question: If the unknown of all is so vast, how tiny then is your unknown? Do not fear that tiny thing that you do not know. Daily you exist in the greatest of unknowns and yet you survive. Do not fear your tiny unknown. The song sang to the heart of her fear, and the song healed that place.

She was home, standing once again beside her ruined Japanese maple, holding still the branch she had picked up earlier in her anger and horror. The trees roots had pulled from the ground, not entirely but enough to have ripped many of the finer strands. The trunk was broken about a foot above the ground, not a clean break but a bending and shredding of the live wood. Most of the branches were broken and torn; few remained on the tree itself. Yet somehow, despite the destruction, she could not find it in herself to admit that the tree was in fact destroyed. She knew she ought to just pull it up, put the pieces in the yard refuse bin and go to the nursery in the morning and get a new tree. But she did not do that, did nothing but stand and look at the roots dripping bits of damp soil, the filaments of wood fiber exposed under the torn bark. She was unable to accept the idea possibility that the tree was dead. Hurt, yes, but not mortally. Not till she turned her back on it, walked away from it and left it to die entirely. And that she would not do.

Gently setting the branch she had held so determinedly on the grass, she knelt by the tree. She scooped out the loose dirt that had fallen into the hole created when the roots had been yanked from the ground. Carefully, she pulled the dirt out and formed a basin deep and wide enough to lay the roots into. She pulled the tree's trunk upright, firmly but gently, until the it was at its former angle and the roots were in the hole she had dug out. She spread the roots out evenly, taking care not to pull or twist or otherwise cause unintentional harm. When she had them laid in the basin, still holding the broken trunk with one hand, she gently spread the dirt back over the roots, burying them as they were meant to be. She tamped down the dirt firmly, knowing that air pockets were not good for tree roots. When she had finished, she looked at the rest of the tree, wondering if the packed dirt would hold the tree upright.

There was little of the tree left to support. The trunk was only four feet tall or so, and only a few branches remained. She could not sit and hold the tree like this for months, so she slowly released her grip, hoping the tree would not topple. And although it did not, pulling only slightly on one side, she knew she had to do more to support it. She had to do something to repair the twisting rip of the trunk's bark and woood.

She had nothing for arboreal repairs; she had planted this and a few other trees using a shovel, and she watered them. That was the extent of her career as a tree surgeon. She knew there were special tools and materials for this kind of work, but she did not have the time to find them, certainly not at this time of night. She would have to make do with what she did have.

Duct tape, of course. A couple of ski poles. Twine and tent pegs. These would have to suffice. She took one of the ski poles and held it against the broken trunk like a splint, and she gently wrapped the duct tape around the trunk and pole. She did not want to use too much, but she had to use enough; tomorrow she would visit the nursery and get the proper kind of tape and whatever else she needed. She then put three tent pegs in the ground about six feet from the tree and strung twine to pull and hold it upright. When she had finished, the tree appeared to be standing securely; not a professional job, but good enough to give it a chance at survival.

But as she had worked, she had known this would not be enough. The tape and poles and gentle return of roots to the ground was only part of what the tree needed to survive. The other part she knew, but again, fear drove the insisting song away from her. Fear of what she had to do, of what she could do. Of what she must do.