Page 52

I look at the seedlings.

“Is this what you meant in the cultivation? About keeping trees alive too long?”

“Yes.” He looks along the broken trunk. “When I finally let her fall, I didn’t come here for years. I thought I’d ruined it.”

“What brought you back?”

“Reivaka wanted me to see the cedars.”

I touch the bark beneath the nearest sapling. It’s soft enough to crumble under my thumb.

“I’m glad you came back.”

“So am I.”

He points to the hollow beyond it.

“Would you like to see inside?”

“Can I get up there?”

“I can lift you. Or ask that root to make a step.”

I look at the broad root curved beside the trunk.

“The step.”

It rises slowly, moss folding along its edge. Daurek offers his hand after it settles. I climb onto the root, then onto a flat section beside the hollow. He joins me, leaving enough room that I can turn to look down.

Tiny shoots grow between the mushroom shelves. Water trickles from one pool into another beneath them. I wouldn’t have seen any of it from the ground.

“I thought it would be empty,” I say.

“I did too.”

His arm goes around me when I lean against him. We stay there while I ask which seedlings will survive and how long the trunk will feed them.

Then I run out of questions and simply look.

I wish I could have heard her the way he did.

On the way down, I stop on the root step. It brings my face almost level with his.

“This is convenient.”

Daurek smiles and comes closer.

I kiss him before he can offer to grow one outside my door.

At this height I can rest my hands easily on his shoulders. He comes close, and the warmth of his mouth makes me linger. I want him to remember this morning for more than the tree he couldn’t save.

The next day, a horn sounds from the southern clearing while I’m coming back from the kitchen. Reivaka hurries past me with her coat half fastened.

“What’s happened?”

“Two caravans are waiting at the southern bridge. The keeper has held them while the drivers argue over who needs to cross first.”

“Is anyone hurt?”