“Yes.” Lark graced Foxbrush with possibly the smuggest expression he had ever seen. “She is my great-great aunt. She lived with us until I was five years old. Then she left. But she taught us how to appease the Faerie beasts so that they don’t harm us.”
These claims fit nowhere in Foxbrush’s view of reality—dragons, sylphs, totems, and Faerie queens aside. He smiled. “If you say so.”
Once more, Lark rounded on him. “You don’t believe me.”
“I didn’t say—”
“You don’t believe me!” She brandished her fists at him. “Do not speak to me like I’m a child! I know what I know, and I know more than you do! You don’t even know about the totems! If my father hadn’t found you in the jungle, the Faerie beasts would have eaten you alive, and then where would you be?”
“Easy, easy.” Foxbrush, quite alarmed by now, raised both his hands. The jungle, interested by the goings-on below, gathered in many feathery, furry, winged forms in the branches above and called down encouragement in all manner of animal voices, urging a fight. Its hopes were disappointed, for Foxbrush, in a tone far humbler than he had perhaps ever used in his life, said, “Forgive me, Eldest’s daughter. I am out of my time and equally out of my depth. I do not know your land or your laws, and the things you say to me seem like nursery tales. It is difficult for me to understand, and I beg your patience.”
Lark was quick to wrath but quick also to forgiveness. Her scowls vanished in smiles, and she reached out to take Foxbrush’s hand, smiling even more when he flinched at her touch. She led him on in peaceful silence, leaving him to wonder how much he believed of her strange stories and how much he dared not believe.
They passed another totem like the first two. Here a tall white egret stepped out of the greenery, its head moving in pulsing rhythm with each step. It took the cake Lark offered and walked on without a word; and as far as Foxbrush could guess, it may have just been a bird tamed to expect food from this devoted source.
But Lark said, “He is pleased,” and they continued on their way.
Sooner than Foxbrush expected—though it was difficult to gauge time on this green-grown trail—the jungle thinned and he saw the gorge opening up before them. He also saw the destination of their day trek: the gnarled, rock-grasping black fig tree.
Foxbrush’s footsteps faltered even as Lark continued on her way. His memories of those first moments after he’d climbed from the gorge were convoluted at best. He remembered the wasps well enough, and he remembered the burn of their stings. He also remembered the inhuman voice that had responded to Redman, but he did not want to remember this, so he nearly convinced himself it had been a dream brought on by his terror.
This lie comforted him briefly. Even as he stood on the fringes of the jungle, Lark approached the tree and called out:
“Oh, Twisted Man, whose bark is thick,
Who plunges rocks for wells to find,
Here is tribute! Here is tribute!
Take it, Twisted Man, and quick!”
This time she withdrew from her pouch a handful of dried lily petals, which she threw at the tree just as her father had done days before. Even as she clapped her hands and spun about in place, a wind seemed to rush through the fig tree’s leaves. Its branches spread like grasping fingers, caught the fluttering petals, and drew them up inside.
Then the Twisted Man stepped out.
He was exactly what his name implied, every limb twisted and gnarled like a branch, the skin—if such it could be called—deeply creviced like old bark. From each limb sprouted many branches as twisted as the arms themselves, and at the end of each branch was a twiggy hand. His face, on a trunk-like torso with no sign of a neck, was that of an old, craggy man, and his hair was green leaves.
“I like the tribute well,” he said in an inhuman language that, horribly, Foxbrush understood. Black eyes shot with green looked down on Lark contemplatively. “You are smaller than the mortal who usually pays me.”
“He is my father,” Lark replied without even the slightest tremble in her voice. “I am his sapling, sprung from his seed, grown at his roots. I have come for your benevolent bounty.”
The Twisted Man tilted his whole body as a dog might curiously tilt its head. The many little grasping hands joyfully shook their fists full of petals.
“I like the tribute well,” he said. “You may take of my bounty.”
“Call off your wasps, then, Twisted Man,” Lark said. “Send them sleeping to their nests until it’s time for them to wake.”
“Very well,” said the Twisted Man. Then he stepped back and vanished into his tree. Its great boughs wavered a moment, the big leaves rustling before going still.
Only then did Foxbrush realize he’d stopped breathing.