She rested for a while, letting the sun harden her leaves to a dark shiny green and ripen her fruit a little. Then she cried wordlessly to the sun, “Look! Remember our bargain. I am an entirely new kind of tree—as strong as an oak, but I bear fruit that everything can eat. Love me. Love me now!” Proudly she shed some of her three-cornered nuts onto the hilltop,
“I see you,” said the sun. “This is a lovely tree, but I am not sure what you expect me to do with you.”
“Love me!” she cried.
“I do,” said the sun. “There is no change in me. The only difference is that I now feed you more directly than I feed that animal at your feet. It is the way I feed all trees. There is nothing else I can do.”
Phega knew the sun was right and that her bargain had been her own illusion. It was very bitter to her; but she had made a change that was too radical to undo now, and besides, she was discovering that trees do not feel things very urgently. She settled back for a long, low-key sort of contentment, rustling her leaves about to make the best of the sun’s heat on them. It was like a sigh.
After a while a certain activity among her roots aroused a mild arboreal curiosity in her. With senses that were rapidly atrophying, she perceived a middle-sized iron-gray animal with a sparse bristly coat, which was diligently applying its long snout to the task of eating her three-cornered nuts. The animal was decidedly snaggle-toothed. It was lean and had a sharp corner to the center of its back, as if that was all that remained of a wiry man’s military bearing. It seemed to sense her attention, for it began to rub itself affectionately against her gray trunk, which still showed vestiges of rounded legs within it.
Ah, well, thought the tree, and considerately let fall another shower of beech mast for it.
That was long ago. They say that Phega still stands on the hill. She is one of the beech trees that stand on the hill that always holds the last rays of the sun, but so many of the trees in that wood are so old that there is no way to tell which one she is. All the trees show vestiges of limbs in their trunks, and all are given at times to inexplicable thrashings in their boughs, as if in memory of the agony of Phega’s transformation. In the autumn their leaves turn the color of Phega’s hair and often fall only in spring, as though they cling harder than most leaves in honor of the sun.
There is nothing to eat their nuts now. The wild boar vanished from there centuries ago, though the name stayed. The maps usually call the place Boar’s Hill.
DRAGON RESERVE, HOME EIGHT
Where to begin? Neal and I had had a joke for years about a little green van coming to carry me off—this was when I said anything more than usually mad—and now it was actually happening. Mother and I stood at my bedroom window, watching the van bouncing up the track between the dun green hills, and neither of us smiled. It wasn’t a farm van, and most of our neighbors visit on horseback, anyway. Before long we could see it was dark green with a silver dragon insigne on the side.
“It is the Dragonate,” Mother said. “Siglin, there’s nothing I can do.” It astonished me to hear her say that. Mother only comes up to my shoulder, but she held her land and our household, servants, Neal and me, and all three of her husbands, in a hand like iron, and she drove out to plow or harvest if one of my fathers was ill. “They said the dragons would take you,” she said. “I should have seen. You think Orm informed on you?”
“I know he did,” I said. “It was my fault for going into the Reserve.”
“I’ll blood an ax on him,” Mother said, “one of these days. But I can’t do it over this. The neighbors would say he was quite right.” The van was turning between the stone walls of the farmyard now. Chickens were squirting and flapping out of its way, and our sheepdog pups were barking their heads off. I could see Neal up on the washhouse roof watching yearningly. It’s a good place to watch from because you can hide behind the chimney. Mother saw Neal, too. “Siglin,” she said, “don’t let on Neal knows about you.”
“No,” I said. “Nor you either.”
“Say as little as you can, and wear the old blue dress; it makes you look younger,” Mother said, turning toward the door. “You might just get off. Or they might just have come about something else,” she added. The van was stopping outside the front door now, right underneath my window. “I’d best go and greet them,” Mother said, and hurried downstairs.
While I was forcing my head through the blue dress, I heard heavy boots on the steps and a crashing knock at the door. I shoved my arms into the sleeves, in too much of a hurry even to feel indignant about the dress. It makes me look about twelve, and I am nearly grown up! At least, I was fourteen quite a few weeks ago now. But Mother was right. If I looked too immature to have awakened, they might not question me too hard. I hurried to the head of the stairs while I tied my hair with a childish blue ribbon. I knew they had come for me, but I had to see.
They were already inside when I got there, a whole line of tall men tramping down the stone hallway in the half dark, and Mother was standing by the closed front door as if they had swept her aside. What a lot of them, just for me! I thought. I got a weak, sour feeling and could hardly move for horror. The man at the front of the line kept opening the doors all down the hallway, calm as you please, until he came to the main parlor at the end. “This room will do nicely,” he said. “Out you get, you.” And my oldest father, Timas, came shuffling hurriedly out in his slippers, clutching a pile of accounts and looking scared and worried. I saw Mother fold her arms. She always does when she is angry.
Another of them turned to Mother. “We’ll speak to you first,” he said, “and your daughter after that. Then we want the rest of the household. Don’t any of you try to leave.” And they went into the parlor with Mother and shut the door.
They hadn’t even bothered to guard the doors. They just assumed we would obey them. I was shaking as I walked back to my room, but it was not terror anymore. It was rage. I mean, we have all been brought up to honor the Dragonate. They are the cream of the men of the Ten Worlds. They are supposed to be gallant and kind and dedicated and devote their lives to keeping us safe from Thrallers, not to speak of maintaining justice, law, and order all over the Ten Worlds. Dragonate men swear that oath of Alienation, which means they can never have homes or families like ordinary people. Up to then I’d felt sorry for them for that. They give up so much. But now I saw they felt it gave them the right to behave as if the rest of us were not real people. To walk in as if they owned our house. To order Timas out of his own parlor. Oh, I was angry!
I don’t know how long Mother was in the parlor. I was so angry it felt like seconds until I heard flying feet and Neal hurried into my room. “They want you now.”