“You’ve spoken to them. Do the trees seem sad?” Hen couldn’t believe he was asking this question, and yet, here it was.
Dagan considered it seriously, however, pursing his lips. Finally, he decided, “No, not exactly. Trees do register pain, blight, famine, drought. So, in that sense, they feel, and they communicate with one another about those things. But I don’t know that they feel sadness. And the shaped trees of the maze and the Head Verder’s house don’t feel any different from trees that were allowed to grow naturally straight, either. They still communicate with the other trees in their conservancy like all the others.”
“Sorry, when you say communicate, do you mean actually speaking?” Hendrik had thought this was just some kind of poetic metaphor romanticizing the woods, like Dagan’s forest gods. But this sounded literal, of a sudden.
Dagan nodded. “They don’t use words, of course, but there’s an exchange of information along with water and sugars. It’s how all the black walnuts in my home conservancy know to mast in the same year and then not for the next two or three.”
That did seem like some kind of communication. And yet, “This is beyond me,” Hendrik had to admit with a laugh. “I’ve barely seen a tree until this year, let alone considered them living things with, I don’t know. Communities.”
“They breathe, eat, sleep, and talk,” Dagan assured him. “They’re not human, but they are alive.”
“You almost make me want to try lifecasting,” Hen said.
“I’m sure you could.”
“I couldn’t stand the disappointment when I inevitably failed.” But Hen laughed as he said it. “I’d rather listen to you talk about it.”
Dagan sat a little straighter and lifted his chin, grinning. “Now who’s being charming?”
A warm sensation, like the elderberry wine hitting his belly, took Hendrik by surprise. He surrendered to it, though, and kept chuckling. “You were saying, about the tests?”
“Oh, yes, so. The maze. I had to solve several little puzzles and escape a few traps, most of which were just annoying but a few of which were quite dangerous. It’s an old test, though, and everyone knows most of it before they go in. It’s just a kind of tradition, you know?”
Hen nodded. “Guards have similar ceremonies before we get our charges.”
“Humans do love our rites of passage. I don’t think trees have those either.” But Dagan paused as if to think about this seriously.
Hen shook his head. “What other tests were there?”
“Oh, combat, of course, which involves a lot of more experienced scouts flinging themselves at you while armed to the teeth. That was no trouble, obviously.” Dagan’s expression went adorably smug, at that.
Hendrik didn’t care if he was telling the truth or embellishing it; Dagan was fun to listen to. “And then?” he asked.
“Then the history and law exams, which were brutal. History, I don’t mind so much, and Tiber helped me study for it. He knows all the old bard songs and histories, since he’s a musician himself.
“But the Law of the Wood has so many ancient ins and outs, and scouts have to be able to recite them off the top of our head. We could encounter any scenario out here in the wilds, and we can’t exactly carry a library in our packs. I thought I’d fail that one, if anything got me.”
“I’d fail them both,” Hen said.
“No. You know all sorts of things off the top of your head. All the things the priests made you learn.”
“Useless things.” Hen said with a shrug. He wasn’t mad that he’d been made to learn a bunch of lies verbatim, exactly. He was just mad that he’d believed them and been complicit in making others believe them, too.
“Trust me, most of our histories are useless out here, too. But I suppose they want to know we’re willing to go the extra distance. A test of devotion to scouting.”
“Fair enough.”
“See, that’s where you’d excel,” Dagan said.
Hen snorted. “There’s such a thing as too much devotion. Blind devotion.”
“It burned you, yes. But it’s still an admirable quality. You should be proud of it.”
“If you say so.” Hen just shook his head, though, unable to agree. He and Kass had both been blindly devoted to things. And both of them had ended up screwed.
Dagan rolled his eyes. “So, I passed all the tests, and I was dead on my feet by the time I got back to the Black Walnut Grove settlement. I was too tired to go around the market square, even though I knew I’d see people there who’d want to talk. And they all swarmed me and wanted me to judge a drinking contest. And of course, I couldn’t say no to that.”
“You could,” Hen pointed out.
“No, you could,” Dagan corrected. “I could not.”
“You would not. But you could.”
Dagan’s eyebrows went up. “Who’s telling the story, here, sweetness?”
Hen held up one hand in surrender. “Okay, fine, you tell it.”
Dagan proceeded to tell the tale of his long, drunken evening in the Black Walnut winery, of returning home after dawn, and of spending the next week ducking all his friends and acquaintances in the settlement in favor of what peace and quiet he could find at home with his family. He told the story as if he knew it was absurd, despite earlier protestations that he couldn’t have done otherwise.
He made Hendrik laugh. Over and over again, things that seemed simple and silly, told with Dagan’s contradictory combination of self-confident rhetoric and self-deprecating humor, got Hendrik to smile so much that his face hurt by the end of the story. “So, you hid behind your siblings rather than just tell people you didn’t want to see them?” was how he summed it all up in the end.
Dagan made a face. “Well, when you say it like that…”
“Is there a better way to say it?”
“I found creative ways to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings,” Dagan reasoned.
“Why?”
