CHAPTER 15

An Awakening

“Wake, Halfling,” said a deep, thrumming voice.

Little Fur yelped in fright to see the enormous tree creature bending over her, its eyes as green and bright as emerald pools of water. “Your song of love woke me. It was very beautiful. Perhaps even beautiful enough to be worth waking to such a dark dream as this.”

“This is not a dream,” Little Fur whispered.

“Indeed it is. All life is a dream,” the creature said ponderously. “Do you know what I am? Perhaps there are stories of me and my sisters that have leaked from other dreams into this one. Tree guardians, we are called.”

Little Fur shook her head, hoping it would not be offended by her ignorance. “Maybe others came before who would have known. . . .”

“No one has come here before,” it said. “Those who might have done so were repelled by the bleak dream which I brewed in the chasm. If that had not turned them away, the pool would have shown them their heart’s desire, so that they would never look away from it.”

“That’s cruel,” Little Fur couldn’t help saying.

“Why? They would die with a vision of their dreams before them.”

Little Fur was reminded of an elderly tree pixie who dwelt in the wilderness and was given to gloomy reflections whenever he made a rare appearance. Brownie said this meant the pixie was a philosopher and the only way to deal with philosophers was to be very clear and practical with them. Surely this creature, too, was a philosopher. So Little Fur got to her feet and smoothed her tunic before saying firmly, “Excuse me, but I came to ask you for magic to stop humans from burning trees.”

The tree guardian sighed. “Once, in another dream, I helped humans who yearned to nurture and harvest the wild world. That dream became a nightmare, for their true desire was to enslave all that was wild and use it for their own purposes. Now you tell me that humans are burning trees. It does not surprise me. But I have no magic that will stop them—no seeds to plant, from which warriors will grow to destroy them, nor rings that will let you bend their will to your own.”

“I don’t want to destroy them or bend anyone’s will to mine,” Little Fur said hastily and with some alarm.

“You don’t? Then what do you want?”

Little Fur had not imagined that she would have to tell the sleeping power how to stop humans from burning trees, but the tree guardian was waiting and it seemed to her that it would wait for years. So she frowned and thought hard, and at last she gave a little cough.

“Yes?”

“Well, you could make humans understand.”

“Understand?”

Little Fur saw that there were motes of gold moving slowly in the depths of the tree guardian’s green eyes, like fish swimming in a deep pool. “You see,” she said hesitantly, “I have learned in my journey here that not all humans are bad. I thought they were, and that they couldn’t help it because they were made that way. I thought the badness was part of them like a bird’s wing is part of it. But then I smelled humans that were not bad, so maybe badness is something that they could decide about—if they realized they could decide. So if you have the power the Sett Owl says . . .”

Her voice failed because the green eyes positively blazed at her. “I do have the power, Halfling. But when I and my sisters withdrew from the dark dream we had helped to build, we vowed to meddle no more in dreams, for do they not all fail in the end? I do not know where my sisters went, but I came here, and after ensuring that I would never be disturbed, I sank my will into a sleep so deep that the dream of life that grew here barely touched me . . . until your song woke me.”

“I’m sorry I disturbed you, but the whole world isn’t like this chasm,” Little Fur said eagerly. “Why, the moon is—”

“The moon is no stranger to me, Halfling,” the tree guardian said heavily. “I knew her when she was young. She, too, has seen the rise and fall of many dreams. I cannot help you.”

Its voice was so stern and certain that Little Fur did not know what to say. She did not have the silver tongue of Brownie or the sober authority of the Sett Owl, or even the dramatic insistence of Crow. She saw that shadows began to shift in the tree guardian’s dimming green eyes and realized that it was going back to sleep.

“Please,” she cried. “Couldn’t you try?”

The tree guardian said nothing, but a flare of gold in the deep green eyes gave Little Fur the courage to go on. She clasped her fingers together as she took a step closer to the tree guardian, feeling suddenly that this was her last chance to save not only the trees and her beloved Old Ones, but the earth spirit itself.

“You see, if this world is a dream, then you are part of it. And dreams don’t fail by themselves. Everyone who believes in them has to stop believing first.” Little Fur swallowed. “And sometimes maybe you have to believe even when it seems hopeless. That’s why I came to try to wake you when the owl said someone must. I thought a hero was needed, but now I think there are no such things as heroes except in Brownie’s stories. There are only things that must be done and somebody must try to do them.”

She did not dare to look into the tree guardian’s eyes for fear of seeing that the shadows in them had gathered more thickly. But after a long pause, the tree guardian said, “Perhaps it is true that my sisters and I abandoned our dream. And so, I will send a dream to the humans.”

Little Fur was dismayed, for she did not see how a dream could do very much to help. But the tree guardian smiled as if it saw her thoughts. “The dreams of my kind are not the greedy dreams of humans or trolls, nor the bright, high dreams of elves. They are powerful”—and now its eyes were kind—“though perhaps only a little more powerful than the dreams of halflings.”

“What . . . what dream will you send?” Little Fur asked timidly.

“You have asked that I make humans understand and so I will unravel the dream they have made and let them see how their choices have shaped the world.” The tree guardian heaved itself forward with a great shuddering and creaking onto thick, rootlike legs and lumbered awkwardly through the brown mist.

Little Fur followed, coughing at the dust it stirred up. When the tree guardian came to the edge of the pool, it stopped and raised its branch-like arms. Then it began to chant. The sound was musical and monotonous at the same time, changing tone sometimes to become softer or louder, but never faltering. The tree guardian stopped chanting for a moment and said, “Watch if you will, Halfling, but take care not to touch the water.”

Then the chanting continued. Little Fur looked warily into the pool and was amazed to see one of the human high houses reflected. A cement path ran around it, bounded by a black road upon which a great, impatient herd of road beasts crowded, hooting and growling and huffing their impatience.

For an instant, the high house stood gleaming and perfect, but then humans appeared and began crawling over its surface, as industrious as ants. Where they went, black gaps appeared and spread, and the shining carapace gradually peeled back to reveal the complex innards of the building. The humans labored, carrying away bits of it until only its gleaming metal skeleton remained. Then this began to be cut away by great road monsters with long arms that had appeared beside the building.

Above the shrinking high house, the eyes of the moon and sun blinked rapidly from one to another until there was nothing at all left but a hole gouged in the ground and humans toiling to fill it. Black patches were beginning to show on the other high houses that had stood around it, and suddenly a big, low building appeared where the hole had been. Again, humans came to swarm over it and holes appeared, but it was not until trees began to spring up that Little Fur understood what she was seeing. The pool was unmaking time.

Soon all of the high houses were gone and the city was shrinking inward like a puddle of water drying up. All around it trees sprang into lovely, stately life. Black roads narrowed and melted away to become stony roads and then earthen tracks through dense woods; finally grass flowed over the worn tracks in a green tide. The sight was so lovely that it made Little Fur laugh aloud.

At last there was only a single cloth hut. A human emerged from it carrying an ax that glinted in the sunlight, and strode backward into the forest. It passed beneath all the wondrous majesty of the great trees without seeming to see them. Its expression was grim and brooding as it stopped beside a fallen giant of a tree. It watched as the tree rose gracefully to join its stump. The human moved forward and hacked at it with the ax, but instead of the ax’s cutting into it, pieces flew back into place until the tree was whole. Little Fur saw the human’s expression shift from arrogance to fear and then to confusion and, last of all, to awe. Now its expression was fair and its eyes shone with wonder.

“What changed it?” she whispered.

“At first the heart of the human was touched by the beauty and age of the tree, but then it saw how short its own life was and it became afraid. The human hewed the tree to sever itself from the flow of life,” the tree guardian said. “It wished to be only itself and to control all other things without having to care about anything but its own wants. But watch. It has not ended.”

Little Fur looked back into the pool and gasped, seeing trees burning. The sight was all the more appalling after watching the forests restored to life. Through her tears, she saw the tree burners at their dreadful work, brandishing fire torches and laughing with mad, furious joy. Then she saw, very close and clear, the soot-smeared, fire-bright face of one tree burner after another. Then the vision faded.

“Now the dream is brewed, I will send it out to the humans and return to my sleep, Halfling,” the tree guardian said.

“But . . . is that it? I mean, will the dream make humans choose not to be bad?”

“Halfling, those who sleep this night will dream my dream, and they will understand the darkness in their natures, but whether this will make them choose to resist it, I do not know. Maybe they will rub their eyes and forget the dream. Humans are very good at forgetting. Almost as good as they are at not seeing.”

Little Fur was dismayed. “But the tree burners. Will they change?”

“They are wholly given to trollish visions, and their minds will not accept the dream. That is why I wove their faces into it. The other humans will know them now for their brutish deeds and prevent them from causing further harm.”

“Will the other humans believe the dream?”

“Even if they do not, they will watch the tree burners closely and catch them when they act again.”

“What is the darkness in humans?” Little Fur asked.

“They fear to die,” the tree guardian said. “They think if they can control everything, then perhaps they will be able to choose not to die.”

“But why?” Little Fur asked, astonished. “All things die and return to the earth. Death is part of the flow of life.”

“Ah, but humans have cut themselves from the flow and so they see their dying as an end. That makes them want to destroy anything that will live longer than they do, or which reminds them that they will die. But now look, the dream goes into the world.”

A thick green vapor was rising from the pool and coiling into the air to mingle with the murk. Very slowly, brown gave way to green and the air went from being thick and dry to being as damp and sweetly scented as the wilderness after a spring shower. Little Fur sent her own longing into it just as she sent her mind inside trees, and she had the strange sensation of being unraveled into the mist.

Then it was over.

Little Fur felt that she ought to feel triumphant, but instead she felt strangely sad.

The tree guardian’s eyes were kind. “You are weary, Halfling, for you sent your own song into the dream I brewed, and who knows what that will mean.”

Little Fur struggled to open eyes that had closed without her quite knowing it had happened, but when she managed it, she could see neither the tree guardian nor the pool. All of the world had become a shifting green fog-cat, winding itself about her.

“Sleep, Halfling,” the tree guardian whispered. “Dream your dearest desire, and I will dream it with you.”