He smiled in a flustered way. Phega saw that he was somewhat snaggle-toothed, not to speak of highly diffident in spite of his gray and military appearance, and possibly in awe of her. She could not see how he could be in awe of her, but his uneven teeth made him a person to her. Of a sudden he was not just the man her parents had procured for her to marry, but another person like her, with feelings like those Phega had herself. Good gods! she thought, in considerable surprise. This is a person I could maybe love after all, if it were not for the sun. And she told him politely that he was very welcome.
They went indoors together and presently sat down to the feast. There Evor got over his awe a little, enough to attempt to talk to Phega. And Phega, knowing he had feelings to be hurt, answered the questions he asked and asked things in return. The result was that before long, to the extreme delight of Phega’s parents, they were talking of his time at war and of her knowledge and laughing together as if they were friends—old friends. Evor’s wonder and joy grew. Long before the feast was over, he knew he could never love any other woman now. The effect of Phega on him was like a physical tie, half glorious, half painful, that bound him to respond to every tiny movement of her hand and every flicker of her lashes.
Phega found—and her surprise increased—that she was comfortable with Evor. But however amicably they talked, it was still as if she was only half alive in the sun’s absence—though it was an easy half life—and, as the evening wore on, she felt increasingly confined and trapped. At first she assumed that this feeling was simply due to her having spent so much of the past year out of doors. She was so used to having nothing but the sky with the sun in it over her head that she often did find the manor roof confining. But now it was like a cage over her head. And she realized that her growing liking for Evor was causing it.
If I don’t take care, she said to herself, I shall forget the bargain I made with the sun and drift into this human contract. It is almost too late already. I must act at once.
Thinking this, she said her good-nights and went away to sleep.
Evor remained, talking jubilantly with Phega’s parents. “When I first saw her,” he said, “I thought things were hopeless. But now I think I have a chance. I think she likes me.”
Phega’s father agreed, but Phega’s mother said, “I’m sure she likes you all right, but—I caught a look in her eye—this may not be enough to make her marry you.”
Saying this, Phega’s mother touched on something Evor had sensed and feared himself. His jubilation turned ashy; indeed, he felt as if the whole world had been taken by drought; there was no moisture or virtue in it anywhere from pole to pole. “What more can I do?” he said, low and slow.
“Let me tell you something,” said Phega’s mother.
“Yes,” Phega’s father broke in eagerly. “Our daughter has a strange habit of—”
“She is,” Phega’s mother interrupted swiftly, “under an enchantment which we are helpless to break. Only a man who truly loves her can break it.”
Hope rose in Evor, as violent as Phega’s hope when she bargained with the sun. “Tell me what to do,” he said.
Phega’s mother considered all the reports her servants had brought her. So far as she knew, Phega had never once turned into a tree all the time her father was away. It was possible she had lost the art. This meant that with luck, Evor need never know the exact nature of her daughter’s eccentricity. “Sometime soon,” she said, “probably at dawn, my daughter will be compelled by the enchantment to leave the manor. She will go to the forest or the hill. She may be compelled to murmur words to herself. You must follow her when she goes, and as soon as you see her standing still, you must take her in your arms and kiss her. In this way you will break the spell, and she will become your faithful wife ever after.” And, Phega’s mother told herself, this was very likely what would happen. For, she thought, as soon as he kisses her, my daughter will discover that there are certain pleasures to be had from behaving naturally. Then we can all be comfortable again.
“I shall do exactly what you say,” said Evor, and he was so uplifted with hope and gratitude that his face was nearly handsome.
All that night he kept watch. He could not have slept, anyway. Love roared in his ears, and longing choked him. He went over and over the things Phega had said and each individual beauty of her face and body as she said these things, and when, in the dawn, he saw her stealing through the hall to the door, there was a moment when he could not move. She was even more lovely than he remembered.
Phega softly unbarred the door and crossed the yard to unbar the gate. Evor pulled himself together and followed. They walked out across the fields in the white time before sunrise, Phega pacing very upright, with her eyes on the sky where the sun would appear, and Evor stealing after. He softly took off his armor piece by piece as he followed her and laid it down carefully in case it should clatter and alarm her.
Up the hill Phega went, where she stood like one entranced, watching the gold rim of the sun come up. And such was Evor’s awe that he loitered a little in the apple trees, admiring her as she stood.
“Now,” Phega said, “I have come to fulfill my bargain, sun, since I fear this is the last time I shall truly want to.” What she did then, she had given much thought to. It was not the way she had been accustomed to turn into a tree before. It was far more thorough. For she put down careful roots, driving each of her toes downward and outward and then forcing them into a network of fleshy cables to make the most of the thin soil at the top of the hill. “Here,” she said, “I root within the soil you warm.”
Evor saw the ground rise and writhe and low branches grow from her insteps to bury themselves also. “Oh, no!” he cried out. “Your feet were beautiful as they were!” And he began to climb the hill toward her.
Phega frowned, concentrating on the intricacy of feathery rootlets. “But they were not the way I wanted them,” she said, and she wondered vaguely why he was there. But by then she was putting forth her greatest effort, which left her little attention to spare. Slowly, once her roots were established, she began to coat them with bark before insects could damage them. At the same time, she set to work on her trunk, growing swiftly, grain by growing grain. “Increased by yearly rings,” she murmured.
As Evor advanced, he saw her body elongate, coating itself with mat pewter-colored bark as it grew, until he could barely pick out the outline of limbs and muscles inside it. It was like watching a death. “Don’t!” he said. “Why are you doing this? You were lovely before!”
“I was like all human women,” Phega answered, resting before her next great effort. “But when I am finished, I shall be a wholly new kind of tree.” Having said that, she turned her attention to the next stage, which she was expecting to enjoy. Now she stretched up her arms, and the hair of her head, yearning into the warmth of the climbing sun, and made it all into limblike boughs, which she coated like the rest of her, carefully, with dark silver bark. “For you I shall hold out my arms,” she said.
Evor saw her, tree-shaped and twice as tall as himself, and cried out, “Stop!” He was afraid to touch her in this condition. He knelt at her roots in despair.
“I can’t stop now,” Phega told him gently. She was gathering herself for her final effort, and her mind was on that, though the tears she heard breaking his voice did trouble her a little. She put that trouble out of her head. This was the difficult part. She had already elongated every large artery of her body, to pass through her roots and up her trunk and into her boughs. Now she concentrated on lifting her veins, and every nerve with them, without disturbing the rest, out to the ends of her branches, out and up, up and out, into a mass of living twigs, fine-growing and close as her own hair. It was impossible. It hurt—she had not thought it would hurt so much—but she was lifting, tearing her veins, thrusting her nerve ends with them, first into the innumerable fine twigs, then into even further particles to make long, sharp buds.