me. The ancestor trees had never offered me advice. ‘I did not know I could seek your advice,’ I said stiffly. I was so tired. It was hard to make the words form in my mind.
‘Why do you think we exist, if not to answer questions and give advice? What other value could the ancestor trees have? A silly, selfish continuation of life and pride? No. We exist to guide the People. We exist to protect the People.’
‘And the People are failing to protect you.’ I felt a deep sadness and shame.
‘The magic is given to you to protect us. Use it as you are supposed to use it, and we will not fall.’
‘But – the magic showed me the forest, alive and complete. The road is the death that cuts through it. If I can remove the death, if I can stitch the halves of the forest back together …’
‘You are like a little child, who sees the nut but does not comprehend that it came from a tree, let alone that it holds another tree. Look larger. See it all.’
He lifted me or perhaps he released me to rise. What he showed me is hard to put into words. I saw the forest again, as the magic had shown it to me, as a perfectly balanced dance of lives. And the road still intruded into it, a skewer of death. But the forest elder lifted me higher still, and I saw the road not as a single stripe of death, but as a feeler reaching out from a foreign organism. The road was to that system, not a stripe of death but a root, securing it in new soil. And just as I had imagined the pathways and byways that would spread out from it as small rootlets, so they were. And if I followed that root back to its source, I saw the Kingdom of Gernia, growing and spreading just as organically as a vine crawling up a tree. The vine that used a tree to reach the sunlight did not intend evil to the tree; it was incidental that it sucked all life from the tree as it climbed and spread, shading the tree’s leaves with its own tendrils and foliage. The roads fed Gernia, and were focused only on sustaining their own organism. For Gernia to live, the road must grow. It could not survive without its growing, spreading roots. My civilization and the forest were two organisms, competing for resources. One would shade out the other.
Then, just as quickly as I had risen over all, I was in my own flesh again, leaning against the severed tree, bereft of strength and hope.
Defeat soured even my brief memory of the triumph I’d felt. I spoke softly. ‘Magic can’t change it, Tree Man. It isn’t the road or the fortification at Gettys. It isn’t even the people who have come here. It’s so big, it can’t be stopped. You know that even if I could kill all the intruders, I would not. But if I did, if we killed every last man, woman and child in Gettys, it would be only like clipping off the end of a tree’s branch. Other branches grow. Next summer would see more people here, and the road building would start again. For the Gernians to come here is as inevitable as water flowing downhill. Now that some have come, others will follow, seeking land to farm or routes to trade and wealth. Killing them will not stop them coming nor from building this road.’
I drew a breath. It took so much effort. I thought again of the vine, climbing and choking and overshadowing the tree. ‘I see only one possible path. What we must do is find a way to persuade the intruders to take their road elsewhere. Show them a route that does not come through the groves of the ancestor trees. Then both our peoples can live alongside one another in peace.’
It was getting harder and harder to organize my thoughts. Speaking seemed a great effort. My words were slurring but I couldn’t find the energy to sit up and speak clearly. I closed my eyes. A final thought jabbed at me and I made a vast effort to voice it. ‘If I can stop the road builders, if I can divert them, cannot you send up a new sprout and live? Tree Woman has.’
‘Lisana’s trunk was not completely severed. Although her crown and trunk fell, enough of a connection was left that her leaves could go on making food and one of her branches was positioned well to become a new sapling. But I am cut off short, and have no leaves left. Even if I could, I would have to send up a sapling from my roots, beginning as no more than a sprout. I would be greatly diminished for scores of years.’
‘But you would be alive. You would not be lost to us.’
He was silent.
All my exhilaration at spending my magic was suddenly gone. We had come full circle back to my great failure. Everyone insisted that the magic had given me the task of making all the Gernians leave and putting an end to their road building. It was impossible. I’d told them that, endlessly, but no one listened. Even the tree elders know that the intruders could not be stopped. Not even with magic.
I managed to lift my hand and placed it against his bark. Something was very wrong with me. I could not feel my legs and my vision suddenly faded. Had I closed my eyes? I could not tell. I forced out sluggish words. ‘I have used too much magic. I do not have a feeder to revive me. If you wish, take whatever nourishment you can from my body. Use me up. Perhaps you can live that way. Perhaps someone else will find a way to stop the road and let the Gernians and Specks live in peace. It is beyond me.’
Silence greeted my offer. Perhaps I had offended him. As strength fled my body, I decided it no longer mattered. I pushed my fingers into a fissure in his bark; my hand would stay in place even if I lost consciousness. My whole body was clamouring for sustenance and rest. I suspected it was too late. I’d passed the redemption point. ‘Use me up,’ I offered him again and let go.
‘You have no feeder? You are a Great One and no one attends you? This is intolerable!’ His words reached me from a great distance. I sensed he felt insulted more on his own behalf than concerned for me. ‘This is not how a Great One dies, untended and treeless. What have the People come to, to allow such a thing to happen?’
My hearing was fading. I was distant from his dismay and alarm. I wondered, dispassionately, what the penal workers would think when they found my deflated body here. It would certainly be a mystery for them. A great mystery.
Everything stopped.
‘Lisana,’ I said.
She did not hear me. I saw her more clearly than I had in many days; she was as she had been in my dreams when I was at the Cavalla Academy in Old Thares. The tree woman was sitting with her back to her tree trunk. Her glossy hair was tangled on the bark. She was naked, a fleshy woman of indeterminate years. The day’s early sunlight dappled her flesh as it streamed through the canopy foliage, and I could not tell the real dappling of her skin from that which the sunlight created. Her eyelids were half-closed, her breathing heavy and slow. I smiled down at her, my gaze fondly tracing the lines of her plump lips, the small furrow in her brow that deepened when she was annoyed at me. I came closer to her, and whispered by her ear, ‘Lisana! I’m here.’
Her eyes opened slowly, sleepily, without alarm. The little line on her forehead deepened in puzzlement. Her eyes moved past me and looked through me. Her rounded shoulder twitched in a small shrug. She started to close her eyes again.
‘Lisana!’ I said, more urgently.
She caught her breath, sat up and looked around. ‘Soldier’s Boy?’ she asked in confusion.
‘Yes. I’ve come back to you. I’ve done my best to stop the road building. I failed. But I’m finished. Finished with all of it. So here I am, come to be with you.’
She
