Everyone in the village knew about the Old Sentinel — the tallest oak tree on the hill, so tall its top branches disappeared into the clouds on foggy mornings. The children dared each other to climb it every summer. Every summer, most of them chickened out at the third branch.
Isla was nine years old and afraid of heights. Not a little afraid. A lot afraid. She couldn't climb the rope in gym class. She didn't like escalators. She stood far back from the edge of things.
"Aren't you going to try?" her friend Marco asked one Saturday morning, staring up at the Sentinel's bark-wrinkled trunk.
"No," said Isla.
"You sure?"
"Yes," she said. And then, without entirely meaning to, she said: "Maybe."
She stood at the base of the tree for a long time, looking up. The first branch was only knee-height. She stepped up. The second branch was shoulder-height. She reached for it. She didn't look down.
The tree was old and the bark was rough under her hands and smelled of earth and summer. She focused on the branch above her, not the one below. One at a time. Don't look down. One at a time.
She stopped at the fifth branch because her heart was loud in her ears. She held on and made herself breathe. The wind moved through the leaves. The leaves moved like water.
She looked down. Just once. The ground was far away.
Her hands tightened on the branch. I don't like this, she thought. And then, because she was the kind of girl who told herself the truth: But I am doing it anyway.
She kept climbing.
Seven branches. Eight. Her arms ached. At the ninth branch, she came through the thickest part of the canopy and suddenly the world opened up.
She could see everything.
The village rooftops, small and terracotta-coloured in the morning light. The river curving between the meadows like a silver ribbon. The hills beyond, layer after layer, fading to blue. The sky so wide and so blue it almost hurt.
Isla pressed her back against the trunk and looked at all of it, the wind in her hair, her legs solid on the branch beneath her.
She wasn't not afraid. She was afraid and she was here. Both things at once.
That, she decided, was probably what brave actually meant — not not being scared. Just not letting scared be the only thing.
When she climbed back down, Marco was waiting at the bottom with wide eyes. "You went really high," he said.
"I know," said Isla.
"Was it scary?"
"Yes," she said. "Completely. And also brilliant."
She brushed the bark off her hands and looked back up at the Sentinel, towering above her. From down here, you couldn't tell how wide the world was from the top. You just had to go and find out for yourself.
