Olivia Vandergriff/Maidenhair Character Analysis

"We're not saying don't cut anything." She dangles her arm, reaching out to the men from two hundred feet away. "We're saying, cut like it's a gift, not like you've earned it. Nobody likes to take more gift than they need. And this tree? This tree would be a gift so big, it would be like Jesus coming down and…"

She trickles off on a thought that Watchman has at the same moment. Been there. Felled that, too.

"It's so simple," she says. "So obvious. Exponential growth inside a finite system leads to collapse. But people don't see it. So the authority of people is bankrupt." Maidenhair fixes him with a look between interest and pity. Adam just wants the cradle to stop rocking. "Is the house on fire?"

A shrug. A sideways pull of the lips. "Yes."

"And you want to observe the handful of people who're screaming, Put it out, when everyone else is happy watching things burn."

A minute ago, this woman was the subject of Adam's observational study. Now he wants to confide in her. "It has a name. We call it the bystander effect. I once let my professor die because no one else in the lecture hall stood up. The larger the group . . ."

"…the harder it is to cry, Fire?"

"Because if there were a real problem, surely someone—"

"—lots of people would already have—"

"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.

“How long can it last?”

“Not long,” he promises.

She claws at him, an animal falling from a great height. Then she calms again. “But not this? This will never end—what we have. Right?”

He waits too long, and time replies for him. She struggles for a few seconds to hear the answer, before softening into whatever happens next.

The single best thing you can do for the world. It occurs to her: The problem begins with that word world. It means two such opposite things. The real one we cannot see. The invented one we can't escape. She lifts the glass and hears her father read out loud: Let me sing to you now, about how people turn into other things.

Neelay’s shouts come too late to break the room's spell. The speaker raises her glass, and the world splits. Down one branch, she lifts the glass to her lips, toasts the room—To Tachigali versicolor—and drinks. Down another branch, this one, she shouts, "Here's to unsuicide," and flings the cup of swirling green over the gasping audience. She bumps the podium, backs away, and stumbles into the wings, leaving the room to stare at an empty stage.

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.

"We're not saying don't cut anything." She dangles her arm, reaching out to the men from two hundred feet away. "We're saying, cut like it's a gift, not like you've earned it. Nobody likes to take more gift than they need. And this tree? This tree would be a gift so big, it would be like Jesus coming down and…"

She trickles off on a thought that Watchman has at the same moment. Been there. Felled that, too.

"It's so simple," she says. "So obvious. Exponential growth inside a finite system leads to collapse. But people don't see it. So the authority of people is bankrupt." Maidenhair fixes him with a look between interest and pity. Adam just wants the cradle to stop rocking. "Is the house on fire?"

A shrug. A sideways pull of the lips. "Yes."

"And you want to observe the handful of people who're screaming, Put it out, when everyone else is happy watching things burn."

A minute ago, this woman was the subject of Adam's observational study. Now he wants to confide in her. "It has a name. We call it the bystander effect. I once let my professor die because no one else in the lecture hall stood up. The larger the group . . ."

"…the harder it is to cry, Fire?"

"Because if there were a real problem, surely someone—"

"—lots of people would already have—"

"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.

“How long can it last?”

“Not long,” he promises.

She claws at him, an animal falling from a great height. Then she calms again. “But not this? This will never end—what we have. Right?”

He waits too long, and time replies for him. She struggles for a few seconds to hear the answer, before softening into whatever happens next.

The single best thing you can do for the world. It occurs to her: The problem begins with that word world. It means two such opposite things. The real one we cannot see. The invented one we can't escape. She lifts the glass and hears her father read out loud: Let me sing to you now, about how people turn into other things.

Neelay’s shouts come too late to break the room's spell. The speaker raises her glass, and the world splits. Down one branch, she lifts the glass to her lips, toasts the room—To Tachigali versicolor—and drinks. Down another branch, this one, she shouts, "Here's to unsuicide," and flings the cup of swirling green over the gasping audience. She bumps the podium, backs away, and stumbles into the wings, leaving the room to stare at an empty stage.

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.