Willodeen

It takes Willodeen a while to recover from the fire. Once she does, she spends most of her time in the forest, where she feels calm and like she belongs. Her constant companion is Duuzuu, her pet hummingbear. Duuzuu also survived the fire, but his wings are damaged and he struggles to fly for more than a couple of seconds. Willodeen appreciates his company and hopes hers is enough for him. She reflects that she tried to return him to his kind once, but the other hummingbears wanted nothing to do with him because “they could fly, and he could not” (19).

The hummingbears migrate to Willodeen’s village of Perchance every fall to build their nests of sparkling bubbles in the blue willow trees. The event is typically marked by a huge fair that brings the village enough money to last the rest of the year. In recent years, however, the fires and other disasters have kept tourists away, and fewer hummingbears arrived in the fall migration. Willodeen notices that the screechers are also disappearing, but where lots of people care about the hummingbears, Willodeen is “quite sure I was the only one who cared” about the screechers (25).