In the Night Garden

Of course she would know that. My luck would have it no other way.

“Unfortunately for me, it is.”

“What would you say then, oh mallard mine, if I were benevolent enough to offer a trade instead of compelling you to do what I want?”

“Why would you do that, if you know I can’t refuse you?” I asked, still woozy from the loss of my plumage.

She smiled, and her teeth, too, were pale green, the color of pear skin. “Call it manners, gallantry. Chivalry. Call it the fact that I, unlike some, would rather barter fairly for goods than get them by knavery. The weed takes what does not belong to it and gives nothing back but more weeds; the apple tree takes what is freely given to it, and returns cider and pies and tarts and jams.”

I wanted to say that it is hardly the weed’s fault if its seed is blown into an apple orchard, and anyway, some plants are good whether or not they are useful in pie-making. But I thought better of it. “Well,” I answered instead, picking flecks of dirt from my wings, “what sort of trade?”

“The pick of any fruit I own, in exchange for a fruit I do not.”

At this I was finally piqued, and all my remaining feathers flushed fiery with interest.

“Would I have to steal it?”

She laughed, and her leaf-dress rustled. “I’m afraid you might. But at least no one particularly owns them, so the theft would be technical at best—in the sense that the harvesting of any fruit is a theft from a tree. I need the seeds of the Ixora tree, which are not unlike cherries themselves, so I would not begrudge you if you took a few for your cousin. The Ixora grow in the Tinderbox Desert, and their branches burn all day and night. But I think this will not be a problem for you.”

“No, my lady.” I chuckled. “The fire has not been kindled which can harm me.” I did not want to tell her yet how well I knew the Ixora, how I had been born in their scalded shade, and how it was in the ruin of one that my cousin even now waited for me.

“Then it is a trade?”

“It is. Will you give me back my feather now, since we are such good friends?”

She looked at the long red quill, and again at the tree. “No,” she said slowly, “I prefer fair barter, but one ought never to fully trust a thief. You may have it back when I have my fruit.”

I scratched with one claw at the soil around the golden roots. I was caught, well and truly. “I had better be off, then. The desert is far away. But I think I ought to say, before I go, that I have never heard of a pumpkin tree in any corner of the world, and since everyone knows pumpkins grow on vines, I suspect you have done something vicious to it to make it wind up into a tree, and I ought not to trust you, either.”

She leaned against the unnatural tree, lovely as it was, and grinned. Before my eyes—little goose, I would not lie to you—she leaned further and further in until she was entirely swallowed up by the orange trunk, and only her green toes waggled outside of it.

“I collect rare things,” came her voice, only a little muffled by the pulp, “and that is what got me into such trouble in the first place.”

Her head appeared in the high branches, and bit by bit she emerged, the long ropes of her hair popping free and tumbling nearly to the ground, until she sat quite comfortably on a branch between two still-infant pumpkins. “You see,” she said with a sigh, “when you become famous for the variety of your produce, all manner of folk appear at your gates, demanding that you satisfy their appetites, however horrid they may be…”

I AM A TREE.

But it is as easy to say this tree is me. I was born when the tree before it dropped seed; I opened my eyes under ground and ate dirt, dirt like cake and jam and wonderful water dripping through the earth like honey through a sieve. I was always thirsty.

And one day I came up through the ground in a little green shoot. I opened the shoot as easily as a door, and stepped out into the sun, a child like any other child. But I still slept in the tree every night as it grew, and as I grew. I loved it like a limb, and it loved me like a torso, and we were very happy together.

Once a peddler came by the brick wall with a sack full of marvels to sell. I ran up to him, since I had never seen another person before, and asked his name, his city, his profession, how many brothers and sisters had he, all the things an excited child will ask of a stranger. He was very kind, and invited me to come over the wall and see what he had to sell—and what he had to sell were seeds.

Apples, persimmons, walnuts, lemons, almonds, dates, and yes, cherries, anything you can name and many I certainly couldn’t. I wanted to go over that wall the way certain men want to go to war, and others want to go to women. But I had no money, being a tree only lately sprouted. The peddler felt sorry for me, a grubby little orange-haired girl with green teeth and nothing to her name but a few acres of empty mud. He crouched down very close to my face and told me that should I like to come with him and peddle and tinker and barter and do all the sorts of things traveling folk do, he would give me a penny a month, buy me a real dress, and I could have all the seeds I liked.

I thought this was a very fine plan. I hopped over the wall as graceful as a jackdaw—and fell down dead.

Or as near to dead as makes no difference. When I woke, it was already deep in the furrows of night, and the peddler had carried me back over the wall, laid me in what grass he could find, and left a bulging sack of seeds in my hand.

I could not cross the wall, not ever, no more than a tree can cinch up her roots and travel by coach to another forest. This was sobering. I was as curious about the world as any child, and I knew then that I would never see it.

So I planted it. Apples, persimmons, walnuts, lemons, almonds, dates, and yes, cherries. Anything you can name and many I never could. I had all the time in the world; the life of a tree is long. I learned the arts of irrigation and aeration, of the tripartite field and the leaving of the fallow, fertilization and pruning, and the science of grafting. And all the while the pumpkin tree grew, and gave fruit, and wherever I mashed the pulp into the roots of the new trees, they would bear their own fruit all the year. The acres of mud became a forest, an orchard, the loveliest of any that ever grew, and at the center my tree that is me and me that is the tree, and we all grew together, and we were happy.

Eventually, folk came, and they were not kind peddlers with sacks full of seeds for a dirty-cheeked little girl. Oh, some of them were kind enough, wanting a basket of pears or a bushel of figs for one reason or another—but what do I need with money, when I drink rain and eat dirt? Finally, pressed by their outstretched hands, I began to trade. Fruit for seed—if they could bring me a seed I did not have, I would give them whatever they liked. And so my orchard grew even wilder and more marvelous, and more folk came. I learned about the world from their lips, and I was a good student.

Finally, three fortnights ago, a man came to my wall. I did not like his look, but who is a tree to judge the looks of men? An oak may be gnarled, and still have a kind and sap-wet heart. His hair was iron and his skin was hazel-bark, and his clothes were bright red, as bright as any robin who chirps on my apples. His neck, though, his neck was pale, almost blue, as though it had not seen sunlight since it slipped from his mother’s womb.

“Good afternoon, Ravhija,” he said, and bowed, and I have long since ceased to be surprised when all manner of strange creatures know my name. “I have come with a long list.”