The Trees Tale

Chapter Eighteen

No sooner did Hero feel the bark of the branch beneath him than he leapt to his feet. "Hell's teeth!" he yelled, blindly waving his sword. "I've really had enough this time, Eldin. Sucked in by a whirlpool and sicked up in a swamp-victimized by vampire vines and chased by frenzied foliage-and now tackled by a Titan tree? Damn it to hell, where's it all to end?"

"Right here and now if you don't stop dancing about," Eldin replied with feeling. "Have you any idea how high we are?"

"Yes, do sit down, David," said Aminza crossly. "He doesn't like you stamping about like that!"

"I don't give a damn what the old duffer likes or doesn't like," Hero shouted. "I-"

"I didn't mean Eldin," she cut him off, and Eldin gave a pained snort in the dark.

"Eh?" Hero asked, suddenly deflated. "Then who did you mean?" He sat down beside his friends and peered at them in the leafy darkness. Now that his eyes were growing accustomed to the gloom he could see that slender green creepers enwrapped them and huge soft leaves trembled above them like great listening ears.

"If you'll only sit still a minute and put your sword away, he'll talk to you, too," said Eldin. "Damned if I'd converse with someone who threatened to cut my tendrils off."

"You haven't got any bloody tendrils!" cried Hero, but he nevertheless sheathed his sword. No sooner was the blade out of sight than several tendrils fell down from above and settled tentatively on his shoulders. A great leaf unfurled close by and brushed his face. At first the touch of these appendages made him start, at which the leaf and tendrils immediately drew back, but as soon as he settled down they approached once more and at last he was permitted to know the source of that throbbing yet ethereal voice he had heard down on the ground. , "Ah!" said the voice. "But you are an angry one-and therefore you are not of Lathi's brood, for they are without emotion. No, you are a man of the waking world, as is your companion. You are a pair of wandering dreamers, adventurers in Earth's dreamland; and the girl-she is a real girl!"

Hero took in all the voice said but was at first too astounded to answer. For he knew now that he heard the tree's voice in his mind-that its messages were sent to him telepathically through the tendrils-which would have been an amazing trick even for a wizard, let alone a tree. And the tree could hear his mind as well as it would hear the spoken word.

"Oh, I'm no wizard, David Hero. I'm the Tree, that's all. But I am a rather special tree."

And yet again Hero was stumped; for what does one say to a tree? Aminza, on the other hand, was positively voluble and full of questions. "But who are you?" she asked out loud. "And how did you get here? And what did you mean about the eidolon Lathi's-Ter-men?-coming to steal your leaves?"

"Slowly, my child, slowly," said the Tree, stroking her face with a great downy leaf. "It's a wonder I've not altogether forgotten how to talk to people, for my visitors have been few indeed in the hundreds of years since the eidolon Lathi built her city on the southern coast. There once was a time when I'd meet, oh, a dozen wanderers in any given year-aye, even a few from the waking world- but all of that is finished now." The Tree's branches soughed in a great sigh before he continued. "A pity, for men are full of wonder. Now-" (and it was as if the Tree gave a sad shrug), "now all has changed."

"What has changed?" asked Aminza. "And what is it that makes you so sad?"

"Ah, no, my child," answered the Tree. "My problems are insoluble and therefore can wait. First you must tell me how you are come here and why, and then say how I might help you. For I sense that you have troubles at least as great as mine."

At the Tree's invitation, in bits and pieces, the three then told their story; and when finally they were done it was as if the Tree applauded.

"Bravo!" he told them. "Well done! And so you have come this far, and you follow the way pointed out by Thinistor's wand. And so inventive, and so daring! You are wonderful creatures. And the size of you, so tiny-but you forge ahead like giants-as I myself should go if things were as they used to be ..."

"Come, come," said Eldin gruffly as the Tree lapsed into a troubled silence. "We've told you our tale, as you requested, and there doesn't really seem to be a lot you can do to help us. So why not unburden yourself on us? We can listen as well as you, you know. And who knows? There may even be some way hi which we can be of assistance."

"Once we know the problem-" Hero conservatively answered.

And so the Tree set about to tell his tale:

"My forebears," he began, "grew on a remote world far away in space and time. And their world was vast and there were many of them. Indeed, they were as a forest! Long-lived, the very oldest of Earth's great trees are as saplings by comparison. There came a time, however, when our world began to die, as all worlds must in the end. The air grew chill and the ground froze with the winter of the world, and spring nevermore came. One by one the race of Great Trees died, and sheets of ice moved inexorably across the whole planet.

"On one small island in what had been the tropics, in an acreage sufficient only to sustain them, stood the three last Trees. In the heart of their topmost branches they tended their life-leaves and mourned the new Trees which might have been but now were doomed. And each day the dying sun's rays were fewer and the cold more penetrating.

"Then, by some miracle of chance, a ship of the Elder Gods found the world of my forebears. The ship bore one of the Chosen Ones of (he Elder Gods, who was a man. He was the white wizard Ardatha EH, also the last of his people, which had been great in primal Pu-Tha. And he had found his way to Elysia alone and unaided, for which reason the Elder Gods adopted him. And now, because he was restless and a wanderer by nature, he ventured out from Elysia among the worlds of space and so came to the world of the Trees.

"There Ardatha Ell found the last Trees, all three of them, and there he remained while they withered and died, for he was much too late to save them. And he comforted them in their dying, which is why the race of Man will always be held dear in the hearts of Great Trees wherever they are found.

"And before they died, the Trees asked a further boon of Ardatha Ell: that he take their life-leaves with him on his voyage and plant them in warm and gentle worlds where there would be men and women to talk to. He agreed, and when the three Trees shed their life-leaves and settled down to die, gathered up the golden life-leaves and bore them to his ship.

"Thus, when Ardatha Ell left that frozen world circling under its cinder sun, he carried with him the entire future of the race of Great Trees.

"Now eventually, he returned to Elysia, home of the Elder Gods, and mere he planted one of the three life-leaves in the mountain-girt gardens of Nymarrah where it grew into the most fortunate Tree! I cannot swear to this, however, but such are the rumors I've heard over the centuries. Of the second Tree I can tell you nothing, for no word of him has since reached me; but I assume that indeed Ardatha Ell planted him also. And of course I myself am the third Tree, whose life-leaf the white wizard planted here in Earth's dreamland all those thousands of years ago on his way back to Elysia.

"Now I nurture my own life-leaf, which you may see if you desire, against the time of my dying, when I will release it to drift on the winds of dream to some lovely land, there to live and grow in splendor. And alas-the day of my dying may not be too far away ..." The Tree paused.

"Come now," cried Hero, suddenly aghast at the thought of this magnificent creature's dying. "Explain yourself. What can possibly harm you here on this verdant plain? And why would any one or thing desire to harm you in the first place?"

"Why indeed?" whispered Aminza. "For you must be the very gentlest of beings."

"Patience, my children," signed the Tree in a soughing of branches, "and let me finish my tale ...

"When first Ardatha Ell planted me here the plain was warm and green and lovely; even as it is now, with one exception, of which I shall speak presently. My rooting was lengthy, however, and centuries passed before the great network of roots which supports me became established. Even then nothing of me showed above the surface for my life-leaf had long returned to dust. And it was just as well that I remained-so to speak-dormant, for all that long time.

"For in Earth's waking world the Northmen were in their ascendance, and they were fierce dreamers. They brought with them snow and ice and mammoths, and for a time it seemed that I, too, like my long dead parent Tree, must shrivel and die in the cold which the northern dreamers brought with them.

"But at length other dreamers came from warmer lands of the waking world, and gradually the climate of the dreamlands swung full circle. Then I put up my trunk and first leaves and drank of the hot sun and cool rains and drowsed in the heady nights of this, Earth's dreamland. And I was favored here, so that I grew quickly and began my long, slow walk."

"Your walk?" gasped Hero incredulously. "A giant like you, and so firmly rooted?"

"Indeed," the Tree answered. "Why, you yourself have followed the road I took!"

"The path of dry and crumbly soil!" rumbled Eldin. "The dead track we followed from the hills to the north."

"Correct," said the Tree in a nodding of leaves. "That was my road. I have walked-however slowly-in the manner of all Great Trees, for that is how giants such as we survive. So great are we that the nourishment we take from the soil rapidly deplenishes it, which means that we must move on or perish. And once the walk is begun, it may only end in the days of our dying. For ten thousand years and fifty miles I have walked, less than one inch every day, and now my journey is almost at an end."

"But why?" cried Aminza. "Are you grown old?"

"No, child, not that," the Tree chuckled, however sadly. "1 am a mere youth in the number of my years."

"What then?" growled Eldin. "Why must your walk end here?"

"Because of Thalarion!" the Tree answered, unable to mask a certain bitterness from the three adventurers. "But there, they are so many and I am only one; and what is my life compared to so many of theirs? Nor shall I truly die, for all of my memories, the memories of my entire race, are locked in my life-leaf."

"What of Thalarion?" asked Hero, fascinated with the Tree's tale. "How may the life of Thalarion's peoples so drastically affect your own?"

"I will explain," said the Tree, and presently continued:

"I have told you of my walk; its mechanics need not trouble you. But as I move along so I send my roots on ahead-deep in the earth, often for distances of many miles-seeking pastures which are favorable to me. Of course, this is a long and tedious process. Certainly it would seem so to you. Also I have my tendrils, many of which are longer than you could possibly imagine. These I send out over the surface, seeking ways between hills and shallow fords across the rivers which may lie in my path. Already I have forded one such river and passed through one such range of hills.

"To the south, beyond the last hills and standing on the shore, there towers Thalarion, the eidolon Lathi's city. Some years ago, knowing nothing of Lathi or her city, I sent my rootlets there, my long tendrils also. My rootlets discovered the earth to be dry, dead and honeycombed with strange tunnels, and my tendrils found the city where it sprouts above. Ah, and the denizens of that city, they found my tendrils!

"The Lathi's brood, you see, eats only green things, and ray tendrils were green and tender. When my tendrils were cut and I felt the pain, then I drew them back to heal them, but in so doing I alerted the eidolon Lathi to my presence. And from that day to this I have known no peace. For it would seem that of all the flesh of all the green things in Earth's dreamland, Lathi and her people prefer mine."

"That's monstrous!" Hero burst out, leaping to his feet. "We'll not permit that. Why, there are green growing things galore on this plain! And you say they cannibalize you?"

"Indeed," the Tree sighed. "But please sit down."

Hero sat, but the muscles jumped in his face and his agitation-that of his companions, too-was an almost tangible force in the forest-gloomy air.

"Daily they come," the Tree continued, "in their hundreds they come, and I bow down my branches so they only take the older leaves which are dying; but I can feel in them the desire, the lust for my younger leaves and tender shoots. And ever that lust grows stronger."

"When do they come? When?" roared Eldin, unable to contain himself a moment longer. "Damn it, they've a surprise in store!"

"They come in the morning, after the sunrise, and always they leave before noon. And such is their harvesting that I am no longer strong enough to protest it. They sap my strength, you see, forcing me constantly to grow new buds with which to replace the older, stolen leaves. And if I did not bow down my branches, why, then they would steal whatever they could reach! And I would be devastated ..."

"And they know you for an intelligent, lovely being, these people?" asked Aminza, horrified. "Do they speak to you?"

"They know it," the Tree answered. "And they speak to me, aye, to give me their orders and tell me to bend to them."

"Are you telling us that men do this thing?" Hero cried in outrage and disbelief.

"Ah!" said the Tree. "They are men, yes, of a sort. But not real men; not like you. They are Lathi's Ter-men."

"Not real men," Aminza mused. "And earlier you said that I was a real girl. Now what did you mean by that?"

"I meant what I said," answered the Tree. "That you are real, while the eidolon Lathi's handmaidens are not."

"Explain that later, if you will," said Hero impatiently, "but first tell us why you do not fight back. After all, you have these massive branches, and the great tough tendrils that bore us aloft. Why, Tree, you're a mighty army!"

"I'm a Tree," the Tree sadly answered, "and trees burn!"

"They threatened you with fire!" Aminza gasped.

Suddenly, Eldin, who had been quiet for a while, yawned a great yawn that had him stretching his limbs in all directions at once. "Damn, I'm tired," he said by way of an apology. "It's all the walking and talking, I fancy. You know, you two, if we have a fight on our hands in the morning it's best we get some sleep."

"No!" protested the Tree at once. "You must not fight for my sake. And the Ter-men are far too many. As for feeling tired: that is my fault. My leaves breathe air but the air which they give out-it is filled with the dust of dreams. Men may sleep as they never slept before beneath a Great Tree!"

Now, in sympathy with Eidin, Aminza and Hero found themselves stifling yawns. In another moment it was more than they could do to keep their eyes open. "But this is no good at all," protested Hero as he stretched himself out across the great branch. "There's so much to talk about, to be explained." And he yawned again and blinked eyes that refused to stay open.

Aminza, lying with her head on Eldin's massive chest, mumbled something quite unintelligible and Eldin himself began to snore. His snoring was almost volcanic as his waking voice, but Hero's eyes had closed and he did not hear it.

Out of the darkness a great fur-lined leaf descended, covering all but the heads of the three where they lay in their dreams within dreams; and not one of them heard the Great Tree's sigh before he, too, went to sleep ...