Prologue

                                                                      
It had been quite some time since Hugo had woken to the sounds of morning. With his internal clock always out of synch with the 24-hour cycle of the day, he more often woke in the still, cold dark of night or the waning heat of late afternoon.
Now, though, the bleaching sky permeated his consciousness along with the first haughty twitters of birds. It wasn't accurate to say that the landscape was just coming alive with the seeping light of dawn. If anything, the forest teemed more with life during the night, when so many nocturnal creatures conducted their business. It was fascinating to Hugo to observe the night-loving animals and insects whose existence he was scarcely cognizant of before, when he was human. Those species were now burrowing in to escape the impending day's heat, just as Hugo focused himself out of the grog of sleep. He listened as every small creature that stirred on the forest floor registered to his senses. Without eyes or ears, Hugo was nevertheless so attuned to his surroundings that such faculties as sight or hearing would have been redundant, even useless.
When Hugo wanted to, he could sense a bee in flight ten miles away and know instantaneously not only the bee's location, but his mission as well.  Hugo normally tuned out such tedious information, preferring to focus inward, straining to identify a sound far more subtle than a bee's vibrating wings. Now, he tried to suppress annoyance at the grating sound of a mother raccoon licking her cubs and the thunderous scratching of a mole, its digging as endless as it was seemingly pointless.
Shutting out external stimuli, he listened for the collective voice of the Great Council. They would tell him when it was finally time to act. Until the voice came, Hugo was rooted in place, quite literally. His will belonged to the Great Council, and his freedom was contingent on their directives. For the time being, Hugo could do little more than stretch his mental muscles to the point of breaking, trying to develop the patience he needed for this mission. Until he heard the voice, Hugo was trapped. Trapped inside a dying, yet majestic Sitka spruce .

Trapped may have been an inadequate description of Hugo's physical state. The reality was that Hugo was an integral part of every fiber, every molecule of the 40-foot Sitka. The reaching branches, two of which housed sparrowhawk nests at that very moment, were less like appendages than they were extensions of Hugo's consciousness. He felt his powerful thought process course through every last needle of the evergreen, especially when he was concentrating on listening for the voice. The tiny nests did little to distract Hugo from his mental exercises. There were far larger animals than sought refuge in his branches, deer and foxes, and even those were acceptable to Hugo's mind, except for all the racket they made.

Hugo knew precisely how his spirit had taken over the tree. The second his human body had died, he was filled with a complete knowledge of what was happening.   He just didn't know why. During that split second when his spirit left his human body and was forcefully taken by the Great Council, Hugo understood vastly more than his brain had been able to process when he was human. There was absolutely nothing in his new store of knowledge that his religious upbringing had taught him to expect. Becoming one with a spruce was never an option any of his Sunday School teachers mentioned. Hugo wasn't sure there was a religious tradition on earth that would have predicted his fate. He had a weak recollection of a Native American tradition he'd heard about in a freshman class at U. of M. Hugo had taken the class for the easy A its reputation promised. Listening closely wasn't something he was in the habit of doing during the Monday morning class. Now, he berated his former self for his lack of interest in the class. If only he could recall the Native American beliefs he had heard about, he had a desperate hope the information could help him somehow. The Sioux Indians believed there was a small part of the Great Spirit in every rock, tree and blade of grass. Every seemingly inanimate object in nature was a vessel for life. For the so-called life of him, Hugo couldn't recall whether the professor had said anything about how the spirit got INTO the rocks and trees. He understood that this tree would keep his spirit intact until the mission could be completed. Even with his improved mental facility, Hugo could not know anything the Great Council wanted to keep from him. The time had not come for Hugo to understand the mission. Hugo sighed at the thought.

Just then, the sun overpowered the thin cloud cover. Hugo felt nourishment touching each of his millions of needles, pushing itself downward into his branches and trunk. A flawless system, Hugo reflected. Trees never have heart attacks. They never willingly take in food that will harm them, clogging their systems, like humans were wont to do. Trees were never clumsy. They never lost their footing...

Human fallibility must be reserved strictly for humans, Hugo thought with a mental smirk. Even as he amused himself with this irony, Hugo felt a sharp prick of remorse, of regret, remembering the moment he ceased being human. He had lost so much more than his lean, muscular 18-year-old body at that moment when his hiking boot slipped.  He had failed her. He had left her without a good-bye. Why hadn't he been stronger, more careful, less fallible? Another ironic thought twisted Hugo's mind: Why couldn't he have been just a little less human that last day?