Mimi Ma/Mulberry Character Analysis

“They see every answer. Nothing hurt them anymore. Emperor come and go. Qing, Ming, Yuan. Communism, too. Little insect on a giant dog. But these guy?” He clicked his tongue and held up his thumb, as if these little Buddhas were the ones to put money on, in the run of time.

At that click, a teenage Mimi lifted from her own nine-year-old shoulders to gaze at the arhats from high up and years away. Out of the gazing teen rose another, even older woman. Time was not a line unrolling in front of her. It was a column of concentric circles with herself at the core and the present floating outward along the outermost rim. Future selves stacked up above and behind her, all returning to this room for another look at the handful of men who had solved life.

These people are nothing to Plant-Patty. And yet their lives have long been connected, deep underground. Their kinship will work like an unfolding book. The past always comes clearer, in the future.

Years from now, she’ll write a book of her own, The Secret Forest. Its opening page will read:

You and the tree in your backyard come from a common ancestor. A billion and a half years ago, the two of you parted ways. But even now, after an immense journey in separate directions, that tree and you still share a quarter of your genes….

"People are so beautiful."

He turns to her, horrified. But he's a man of faith, and waits to hear whatever explanation she cares to deliver. And, Yes, she thinks. The thought makes her stubborn. Yes: beautiful. And doomed. Which is why she has never been able to live among them.

"Hopelessness makes them determined. Nothing's more beautiful than that."

"You think we're hopeless?"

"Den. How is extraction ever going to stop? It can't even slow down. The only thing we know how to do is grow. Grow harder; grow faster. More than last year. Growth, all the way up to the cliff and over. No other possibility."

“I see.”

Clearly he doesn't. But his willingness to lie for her also breaks her heart. She would tell him—how the towering, teetering pyramid of large living things is toppling down already, in slow motion, under the huge, swift kick that has dislodged the planetary system. The great cycles of air and water are breaking. The Tree of Life will fall again, collapse into a stump of invertebrates, tough ground cover, and bacteria, unless man…Unless man.

"You're a psychologist," Mimi says to the recruit. "How do we convince people that we're right?"

The newest Cascadian takes the bait. "The best arguments in the world won't change a person's mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story."

Maidenhair tells that story that the rest of the campfire knows by heart. First she was dead, and there was nothing. Then she came back, and there was everything, with beings of light telling her how the most wondrous products of four billion years of life needed her help.

“A forest knows things. They wire themselves up underground. There are brains down there, ones our own brains aren't shaped to see. Root plasticity, solving problems and making decisions. Fungal synapses. What else do you want to call it? Link enough trees together, and a forest grows aware.”

Her words sound far away, cork-lined and underwater. Either both her hearing aids have died at once or her childhood deafness has chosen this moment to come back.

“We scientists are taught never to look for ourselves in other species. So we make sure nothing looks like us! Until a short while ago, we didn't even let chimpanzees have consciousness, let alone dogs or dolphins. Only man, you see: only man could know enough to want things. But believe me: trees want something from us, just as we've always wanted things from them. This isn't mystical. The ‘environment’ is alive—a fluid, changing web of purposeful lives dependent on each other.”

There are seeds that need fire. Seeds that need freezing. Seeds that need to be swallowed, etched in digestive acid, expelled as waste. Seeds that must be smashed open before they'll germinate.

A thing can travel everywhere, just by holding still.

She sees and hears this by direct gathering, through her limbs. The fires will come, despite all efforts, the blight and windthrow and floods. Then the Earth will become another thing, and people will learn it all over again. The vaults of seed banks will be thrown open. Second growth will rush back in, supple, loud, and testing all possibilities. Webs of forest will swell with species shot through in shadow and dappled by new design. Each streak of color on the carpeted Earth will rebuild its pollinators. Fish will surge again up all the watersheds, stacking themselves as thick as cordwood through the rivers, thousands per mile. Once the real world ends.

“They see every answer. Nothing hurt them anymore. Emperor come and go. Qing, Ming, Yuan. Communism, too. Little insect on a giant dog. But these guy?” He clicked his tongue and held up his thumb, as if these little Buddhas were the ones to put money on, in the run of time.

At that click, a teenage Mimi lifted from her own nine-year-old shoulders to gaze at the arhats from high up and years away. Out of the gazing teen rose another, even older woman. Time was not a line unrolling in front of her. It was a column of concentric circles with herself at the core and the present floating outward along the outermost rim. Future selves stacked up above and behind her, all returning to this room for another look at the handful of men who had solved life.

These people are nothing to Plant-Patty. And yet their lives have long been connected, deep underground. Their kinship will work like an unfolding book. The past always comes clearer, in the future.

Years from now, she’ll write a book of her own, The Secret Forest. Its opening page will read:

You and the tree in your backyard come from a common ancestor. A billion and a half years ago, the two of you parted ways. But even now, after an immense journey in separate directions, that tree and you still share a quarter of your genes….

"People are so beautiful."

He turns to her, horrified. But he's a man of faith, and waits to hear whatever explanation she cares to deliver. And, Yes, she thinks. The thought makes her stubborn. Yes: beautiful. And doomed. Which is why she has never been able to live among them.

"Hopelessness makes them determined. Nothing's more beautiful than that."

"You think we're hopeless?"

"Den. How is extraction ever going to stop? It can't even slow down. The only thing we know how to do is grow. Grow harder; grow faster. More than last year. Growth, all the way up to the cliff and over. No other possibility."

“I see.”

Clearly he doesn't. But his willingness to lie for her also breaks her heart. She would tell him—how the towering, teetering pyramid of large living things is toppling down already, in slow motion, under the huge, swift kick that has dislodged the planetary system. The great cycles of air and water are breaking. The Tree of Life will fall again, collapse into a stump of invertebrates, tough ground cover, and bacteria, unless man…Unless man.

"You're a psychologist," Mimi says to the recruit. "How do we convince people that we're right?"

The newest Cascadian takes the bait. "The best arguments in the world won't change a person's mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story."

Maidenhair tells that story that the rest of the campfire knows by heart. First she was dead, and there was nothing. Then she came back, and there was everything, with beings of light telling her how the most wondrous products of four billion years of life needed her help.

“A forest knows things. They wire themselves up underground. There are brains down there, ones our own brains aren't shaped to see. Root plasticity, solving problems and making decisions. Fungal synapses. What else do you want to call it? Link enough trees together, and a forest grows aware.”

Her words sound far away, cork-lined and underwater. Either both her hearing aids have died at once or her childhood deafness has chosen this moment to come back.

“We scientists are taught never to look for ourselves in other species. So we make sure nothing looks like us! Until a short while ago, we didn't even let chimpanzees have consciousness, let alone dogs or dolphins. Only man, you see: only man could know enough to want things. But believe me: trees want something from us, just as we've always wanted things from them. This isn't mystical. The ‘environment’ is alive—a fluid, changing web of purposeful lives dependent on each other.”

There are seeds that need fire. Seeds that need freezing. Seeds that need to be swallowed, etched in digestive acid, expelled as waste. Seeds that must be smashed open before they'll germinate.

A thing can travel everywhere, just by holding still.

She sees and hears this by direct gathering, through her limbs. The fires will come, despite all efforts, the blight and windthrow and floods. Then the Earth will become another thing, and people will learn it all over again. The vaults of seed banks will be thrown open. Second growth will rush back in, supple, loud, and testing all possibilities. Webs of forest will swell with species shot through in shadow and dappled by new design. Each streak of color on the carpeted Earth will rebuild its pollinators. Fish will surge again up all the watersheds, stacking themselves as thick as cordwood through the rivers, thousands per mile. Once the real world ends.