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think you saved our family’s honor today at high cost to your future,” he said, his voice as soft as Mama’s. “Even less than a bride possessed by a demon will a young man like a wife who can kick his ribs in.”
    I looked at the Falcon. “Why should I want to study the ways of warriors out of grandmother tales?” I asked him, feeling my heart beat a little faster.
    He got to his knees and pulled a stone half the size of my head over in front of him. His eyes half-closed, he seemed to go away a little, for a moment. I did not even see him cock his fist and punch the stone.
    The stone broke in half.
    For the first time since we had met Awochu in the street, I felt like myself again. “How did you do that?” I asked. “Will you teach me that? And what is your idea of a fair bride price? If I am to be a Shang warrior, I must not dishonor my family with a few coppers.”

E LDER B ROTHER
    Shriveling. He shrank. Leaves, twigs, branches, roots, all curled in on him. His trunk went limp. His apples dropped to the earth in a green rainfall. He mourned them with tears of sap. These apples were his last crop, his children-to-be. His chance to spread his family with his seeds now lay on the ground, doomed to rot.
    Even his tears dried until he had no more. He was dying. He had to be dying, but this was no death he knew. Without lightning or axes no tree ended so fast, in one night. At sunset he’d been vigorous, alive. The rising sun touched him as he fell, dying, from his earth.
    Wasn’t death a hard dark? He was soft. Sharp and slick things pricked newly tender bark. Lumps under him were his apples, his unborn children. Would he feel such things if he were dead? Even his heartwood, where his thoughts were paced like the seasons, was different. Now his thoughts tumbled like hailstones in a high wind. They were not made by normal scents and vibrations but by things he could not even name.
    Within his heartwood, among these new and frightening thoughts, a shape formed. It was the image of a big rootlessone, like those who picked his fruit. This rootless made signs in the air with his twigs. The sign-shapes blazed, then vanished.
    Suddenly the tree knew big rootlesses were
humans
. This one, his thoughts whispered, was a man, a
mage
, who had just used magic on him.
    “I beg you, forgive me,” the mage-human said. “I’ve done a dreadful thing to you, and I can’t undo it. I turned an enemy into an apple tree. Half a world away an apple tree—you—became a man.”
    When the tree said nothing, the stranger went on. “I am needed here—I can’t come help you. What I
have
done is place a spell so you can understand what your senses tell you. My spell also gives you the ability to speak. You won’t be helpless, this first day of your new life.” He cocked his head. “I’m being called. Listen—you need a name. It’ll be easier to find you, if I have your name. Can you think of one?”
    The tree was about to say that trees had no names, but a strange thing happened. Memory whispered that a human female had once spoken to him. A visitor, she had silently touched every tree there. Only when she came to him, the last, did she speak as she took her hand from his bark: “Qiom.”
    “Qiom,” he said now, tasting the name with a human tongue. “I am Qiom.”
    “Qiom,” the man repeated. “Thank you. Each night, when you sleep, I’ll enter your dreams and answer questions. I’ll do my best to help, I swear it.”
    The human faded in Qiom’s heartwood—his
mind
, whispered new, magical knowledge. As he faded, the humansaid, “Some of your old self stayed with this body. You will know more about plants than most humans; you’ll be strong. You can use those things to feed and protect yourself.” He was only a shimmer of light among shadows. “
My
name is Numair. Again, forgive me.” He was gone.
    Qiom sat up and looked himself over with human eyes. He was rootless, his trunk changed beyond belief. His skin was