“It’s decided then.” Dagan grinned, bright as the sun, and then dove back under the water smoothly.
Hendrik didn’t watch him after that. Instead, he focused on surrendering to the water and getting his granite block of an ass to float. It even worked, after a while.
*
“Look,” Dagan whispered urgently.
Hen nearly jumped to his feet, reaching for his knife. But when he saw where Dagan was pointing, he settled immediately, leaning forward to get a better look at the orange rodent staring at them from the edge of their blanket.
“Is it a squirrel?” Hen wondered, taking some of the walnuts from his half-eaten lunch in hand. “Will it eat these?”
Dagan nodded and accepted the small handful and held it out to the flashy rodent. “Are you hungry, little one?”
“Little one?” Hen snorted with laughter but tried to keep it quiet.
“Well, they’re a little something. Like you, little someone,” Dagan insisted.
Hendrik chuckled again at the nickname. He’d come to like it, for some reason. It represented where he’d been when Dagan had found him. Though it had only been weeks ago, and Hendrik didn’t feel at all removed from his previous nothing-state…it was no longer everything. Something new was emerging from the emptiness.
He was almost afraid to find out what. But then, fear and excitement felt almost identical. That’s what they’d taught all the guards at the Academy, when teaching them how to overcome their human flight or fight response in defense of their charges.
In a flash, the squirrel darted forward onto the blanket. Hen jumped, but Dagan held perfectly still, allowing it to snatch two of the nuts from his hand and make off with them. It ran all the way up the nearest tree, disappearing into the foliage.
“It’s not good to feed wildlife,” Dagan said, popping the extra nuts into his own mouth. “But a little here and there won’t hurt. Anyhow, food could grow scarce soon.”
Hen frowned. He’d almost forgotten the larger threat facing, well, everyone now. “Your brother doesn’t know what’s wrong with the river? Or his master? Really?” Hen could understand, if Dagan had more information than he’d been willing to give a stranger. But surely someone as powerful as the Head Verder of the Heart Wood, which Hen thought must be akin to a high priest of the See, maybe even higher, must know something?
But Dagan only shook his head. “Not that he told me. Which doesn’t mean he doesn’t know. He’s the type that likes to have secrets. But he wouldn’t put me in danger, that much I’m sure of.”
That, at least, Hendrik could approve of. The rest of Dagan’s siblings sounded like an interesting, mostly entertaining mixed bunch. Alonza, not so much. Though he had to admit, “I’m sure if Kajja described me to people, they’d think I was a boor, too.”
Dagan laughed. “Is that what I make him sound like?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t wait to tell him.” Dagan’s eyes lit up at the very prospect.
There was a kind of glass in the windows of the Great See, colored with deep yellow-gold glaze that made it flare up like a candle when the sun hit it just right. That was what Dagan’s eyes reminded him of.
Funny. Hen hadn’t thought he’d kept any good memories about that place.
“What are you like at home?” Hen asked, suddenly aware that he was staring at Dagan stupidly. It was a question he’d been meaning to ask, though. Dagan was different when he was in the woods and in the settlements. It stood to reason he’d also have a different feeling to him when he was with his family, too. Everyone did, probably, but Hendrik hadn’t known anyone so close to his family, before Dagan.
Dagan’s dark lashes fluttered briefly, then he said, “How do you mean?”
“I mean, you’ve told me about your siblings. What do you do while you’re at home? Do you help Korina and your father and mother in the kitchen? Do you practice lifecasting with Nika or—I don’t know, check up on the grove with the twins?”
With a silent laugh, Dagan leaned back on both hands. His unlaced shirt fell off one shoulder, and he had to readjust to put it back into place. The shade of the great willow left dappled patterns on his skin, brown here, darker there, as if he were covered in shadowy vines. “Actually, last time I was at home I was a miserable idiot, if you must know.”
“Never.” But Hendrik was intrigued. Perhaps he wouldn’t have to wait to meet Dagan’s family to hear the embarrassing bits.
Not that he really thought Dagan would introduce him to his family. Dagan had a life, a profession, friends, lovers, family to return to, and he couldn’t spend his whole life shepherding about a refugee, so—
“Oh, I assure you, my dear, it was a pathetic display.” Dagan sighed and let his head loll to one side dramatically.
“This, I have to hear.”
“The things I do to amuse my friends.” Dagan smiled crookedly, proving that he was enjoying the attention regardless of how or why it came. “Fine. But no mocking.”
“I wouldn’t,” Hen lied.
“Well, I’d just passed the final tests to become a scout about two conservancies north of Black Walnut Grove. It was grueling: a test of wit, where I had to solve an ancient, tree-shaped maze—”
“Sorry, wait. Tree-shaped?”
“Oh. Yes, that’s important.” Dagan sat forward, holding both hands up and gesturing in circles vaguely. “So, when a tree is young and flexible, you can slowly, carefully bend it onto a frame so it grows at a certain angle, right?”
This seemed unlikely, but Hendrik said, “If you say so.”
“It’s an ancient art form passed down by Verders, even some grove-keepers, though my parents have never done it. It’s the painstaking, year-by-year shaping of a tree or multiple trees to grow into a certain configuration. The Head Verder’s house has an entire facade that’s tree-shaped.”
Hendrik narrowed his eyes, searching for a sign of sarcasm or irony.
“I’m serious,” Dagan insisted with a laugh. “I’ll show you sometime. It’s beautiful. But also a little bit sad, somehow.”
“How is it sad?”
“Trees naturally grow straight upward, toward the sun.” He held both hands over his head, stretching high. “That’s where they want to go. To bend them to human ideas seems cruel, somehow.”
