The banyan tree goes down. (photo courtesy of Richard Carter)
The sheet metal sails seemed to have momentarily stalled and the power had gone out around 4pm, so the children cautiously left the humid bathroom and came back out to the living room. Lack of windows made the room safer but it also contributed to lack of oxygen. Their next door neighbors had come over and the adults were sitting around the Coleman lantern drinking. The wind had died down a little but now picked up again, and after a particularly powerful blast, there was a series of booms that sent them rushing to the windows to peer around the beds to see what had gone down. The air was suddenly filled with swirling waves of leaves and splinters and vines that wrapped themselves around any still standing object.
“What the hell was that?” shouted Jean.
“The only tree big enough around here to produce that much mulch is the banyan on the edge of Tafuna,” mused Larry.
“Oh, no,” moaned Chrissie, for the banyan tree was her favorite place to hide and climb. There were several troll dolls stored there for later use, or had been. Now they were apparently in the upper atmosphere somewhere, swirling through the clouds toward Tonga.
The Samoan Letters 