"Gaia," said Jesus. A huge tree stood in the middle of the valley, hundreds of feet in diameter and stretching into the sky high above them. The ground around it was dry, cracked, and without life. Everything was dead. The tree appeared to be drawing the very life out of the soil, transforming it into the desert of death like the encroaching desert in the east. Mary knew that Pan was hiding somewhere in the tangled knot of roots along with a very dangerous demoness, one she knew all too well. Mary had visited the goddess Gaia many times. She had secret passageways in the folds of her bark that led down into her bowels below the soil."