“I need the properties of both these,” she said.
She carried away branches of leafing twigs to study as she walked home, noting the join of twig to twig and the way the leaves were fastened on. Evergreens impressed her by the way they kept leaves for the sun even in winter, but she was soon sure they did it out of primitive parsimony. Oaks, on the other hand, had their leaves tightly knotted on by reason of their strength.
“I shall need the same kind of strength,” Phega said.
As autumn drew on, the fruiting trees preoccupied her, since it was clear that it was growth and fruition the sun seemed most to love. They all, she saw, partook of the natures of both oaks and elders, even hawthorn, rowan, and hazel. Indeed, many of them were related to the lowlier bushes and fruiting plants, but the giant trees that the sun most loved were more exclusive in their pedigrees.
“Then I shall be like the oak,” Phega said, “but bear better fruit.”
Winter approached, and trees were felled for firewood. Phega was there, where the foresters were working, anxiously inspecting the rings of the sawn trunk and interrogating the very sawdust. This mystified the servants who were following her. They asked the foresters if they had any idea what Phega was doing.
The foresters shook their heads and said, “She is not quite sane, but we know she is very wise.”
The servants had to be content with this. At least after that they had an easier time, for Phega was mostly at home in the manor examining the texture of the logs for the fires. She studied the bark on the outside and then the longwise grains and the roundwise rings of the interior, and she came to an important conclusion: an animal stopped growing when it had attained a certain shape, but a tree did not.
“I see now,” she said, “that I have by no means finished growing.” And she was very impatient because winter had put a stop to all growth, so that she had to wait for spring to study its nature.
In the middle of winter her father came home. He had found the perfect husband for Phega and was anxious to tell Phega and her mother all about the man. This man was a younger son of a powerful family, he said, and he had been a soldier for some years, during which time he had distinguished himself considerably and gained a name for sense and steadiness. Now he was looking for a wife to marry and settle down with. Though he was not rich, he was not poor either, and he was on good terms with the wealthier members of his family. It was, said Phega’s father, a most desirable match.
Phega barely listened to all this. She went away to look at the latest load of logs before her father had finished speaking. He may not ever come here, she said to herself, and if he does, he will see I am not interested and go away again.
“Did I say something wrong?” her father asked her mother. “I had hoped to show her that the man has advantages that far outweigh the fact that he is not in his first youth.”
“No—it’s just the way she is,” said Phega’s mother. “Have you invited the man here?”
“Yes, he is coming in the spring,” her father said. “His name is Evor. Phega will like him.”
Phega’s mother was not entirely sure of this. She called the servants she had set to follow Phega to her privately and asked them what they had found out. “Nothing,” they said. “We think she has given up turning into a tree. She has never so much as put forth a root while we are watching her.”
“I hope you are right,” said Phega’s mother. “But I want you to go on watching her, even more carefully than before. It is now extremely important that we know how to stop her becoming a tree if she ever threatens to do so.”
The servants sighed, knowing they were in for another dull and difficult time. And they were not mistaken because, as soon as the first snowdrops appeared, Phega was out in the countryside studying the way things grew. As far as the servants were concerned, she would do nothing but sit or stand for hours watching a bud, or a tree, or a nest of mice or birds. As far as Phega was concerned, it was a long fascination as she divined how cells multiplied again and again and at length discovered that while animals took food from solid things, plants took their main food from the sun himself. “I think that may be the secret at last,” she said.
This puzzled the servants, but they reported it to Phega’s mother all the same. Her answer was, “I thought so. Be ready to bring her home the instant she shows a root or a shoot.”
The servants promised to do this, but Phega was not ready yet. She was busy watching the whole course of spring growth transform the forest. So it happened that Evor arrived to meet his prospective bride and Phega was not there. She had not even noticed that everyone in the manor was preparing a feast in Evor’s honor. Her parents sent messengers to the forest to fetch her, while Evor first kicked his heels for several hours in the hall and finally, to their embarrassment, grew impatient and went out into the yard. There he wondered whether to order his horse and leave.
I conclude from this delay, he said to himself, that the girl is not willing, and one thing I do not want is a wife I have to force. Nevertheless, he did not order his horse. Though Phega’s parents had been at pains to keep from him any suggestion that Phega was not as other girls were, he had been unable to avoid hearing rumors on the way. For by this time Phega’s fame was considerable. The first gossip he heard, when he was farthest away, was that his prospective bride was a witch. This he had taken for envious persons’ way of describing wisdom and pressed on. As he came nearer, rumor had it that she was very wise, and he felt justified—though the latest rumor he had heard, when he was no more than ten miles from the manor, was that Phega was at least a trifle mad. But each rumor came accompanied by statements about Phega’s appearance which were enough to make him tell himself that it was too late to turn back, anyway. This kept him loitering in the yard. He wanted to set eyes on her himself.
He was still waiting when Phega arrived, walking in through the gate quickly but rather pensively. It was a gray day, with the sun hidden, and she was sad. But, she told herself, I may as well see this suitor and tell him there was no point in his coming and get it over with. She knew her parents were responsible and did not blame the man at all.
Evor looked at her as she came and knew that rumor had understated her looks. The time Phega had spent studying had improved her health and brought her from girl to young woman. She was beautiful. Evor saw that her hair was the color of beer when you hold a glass of it to the light. She was wearing a dress of smooth silver-gray material which showed that her body under it when she moved was smooth-muscled and sturdy—and he liked sturdy women. Her overgarment was a curious light, bright green and floated away from her arms, revealing them to be very round and white. When he looked at her face, which was both round and long, he saw beauty there, but he also saw that she was very wise. Her eyes were gray. He saw a wildness there contained by the deep calm of long, long thought and a capacity to drink in knowledge. He was awed. He was lost.
Phega, for her part, tore her thoughts from many hours of standing longing among the great trees and saw a wiry man of slightly over middle height, who had a bold face with a keen stare to it. She saw he was not young. There was gray to his beard—which always grew more sparsely than he would have liked, though he had combed it carefully for the occasion—and some gray in his hair, too. She noticed his hair particularly because he had come to the manor in light armor, to show his status as a soldier and a commander, but he was carrying his helmet politely in the crook of his arm. His intention was to show himself as a polished man of the world. But Phega saw him as iron-colored all over. He made her think of an ax, except that he seemed to have such a lot of hair. She feared he was brutal.
Evor said, “My lady!” and added as a very awkward afterthought, “I came to marry you.” As soon as he had said this, it struck him as so wrong and presumptuous a thing to say to a woman like this one that he hung his head and stared at her feet, which were bare and, though beautiful, stained green with the grass she had walked through. The sight gave him courage
. He thought that those feet were human after all, so it followed that the rest of her was, and he looked up at her eyes again. “What a thing to say!” he said.
He smiled in a flustered way. Phega saw that he was somewhat snaggle-toothed, not to speak of highly diffident in spite of his gray and military appearance, and possibly in awe of her. She could not see how he could be in awe of her, but his uneven teeth made him a person to her. Of a sudden he was not just the man her parents had procured for her to marry, but another person like her, with feelings like those Phega had herself. Good gods! she thought, in considerable surprise. This is a person I could maybe love after all, if it were not for the sun. And she told him politely that he was very welcome.
They went indoors together and presently sat down to the feast. There Evor got over his awe a little, enough to attempt to talk to Phega. And Phega, knowing he had feelings to be hurt, answered the questions he asked and asked things in return. The result was that before long, to the extreme delight of Phega’s parents, they were talking of his time at war and of her knowledge and laughing together as if they were friends—old friends. Evor’s wonder and joy grew. Long before the feast was over, he knew he could never love any other woman now. The effect of Phega on him was like a physical tie, half glorious, half painful, that bound him to respond to every tiny movement of her hand and every flicker of her lashes.
Phega found—and her surprise increased—that she was comfortable with Evor. But however amicably they talked, it was still as if she was only half alive in the sun’s absence—though it was an easy half life—and, as the evening wore on, she felt increasingly confined and trapped. At first she assumed that this feeling was simply due to her having spent so much of the past year out of doors. She was so used to having nothing but the sky with the sun in it over her head that she often did find the manor roof confining. But now it was like a cage over her head. And she realized that her growing liking for Evor was causing it.
If I don’t take care, she said to herself, I shall forget the bargain I made with the sun and drift into this human contract. It is almost too late already. I must act at once.
Thinking this, she said her good-nights and went away to sleep.
Evor remained, talking jubilantly with Phega’s parents. “When I first saw her,” he said, “I thought things were hopeless. But now I think I have a chance. I think she likes me.”
Phega’s father agreed, but Phega’s mother said, “I’m sure she likes you all right, but—I caught a look in her eye—this may not be enough to make her marry you.”
Saying this, Phega’s mother touched on something Evor had sensed and feared himself. His jubilation turned ashy; indeed, he felt as if the whole world had been taken by drought; there was no moisture or virtue in it anywhere from pole to pole. “What more can I do?” he said, low and slow.
“Let me tell you something,” said Phega’s mother.
“Yes,” Phega’s father broke in eagerly. “Our daughter has a strange habit of—”
“She is,” Phega’s mother interrupted swiftly, “under an enchantment which we are helpless to break. Only a man who truly loves her can break it.”
Hope rose in Evor, as violent as Phega’s hope when she bargained with the sun. “Tell me what to do,” he said.
Phega’s mother considered all the reports her servants had brought her. So far as she knew, Phega had never once turned into a tree all the time her father was away. It was possible she had lost the art. This meant that with luck, Evor need never know the exact nature of her daughter’s eccentricity. “Sometime soon,” she said, “probably at dawn, my daughter will be compelled by the enchantment to leave the manor. She will go to the forest or the hill. She may be compelled to murmur words to herself. You must follow her when she goes, and as soon as you see her standing still, you must take her in your arms and kiss her. In this way you will break the spell, and she will become your faithful wife ever after.” And, Phega’s mother told herself, this was very likely what would happen. For, she thought, as soon as he kisses her, my daughter will discover that there are certain pleasures to be had from behaving naturally. Then we can all be comfortable again.
“I shall do exactly what you say,” said Evor, and he was so uplifted with hope and gratitude that his face was nearly handsome.
All that night he kept watch. He could not have slept, anyway. Love roared in his ears, and longing choked him. He went over and over the things Phega had said and each individual beauty of her face and body as she said these things, and when, in the dawn, he saw her stealing through the hall to the door, there was a moment when he could not move. She was even more lovely than he remembered.
Phega softly unbarred the door and crossed the yard to unbar the gate. Evor pulled himself together and followed. They walked out across the fields in the white time before sunrise, Phega pacing very upright, with her eyes on the sky where the sun would appear, and Evor stealing after. He softly took off his armor piece by piece as he followed her and laid it down carefully in case it should clatter and alarm her.
Up the hill Phega went, where she stood like one entranced, watching the gold rim of the sun come up. And such was Evor’s awe that he loitered a little in the apple trees, admiring her as she stood.
“Now,” Phega said, “I have come to fulfill my bargain, sun, since I fear this is the last time I shall truly want to.” What she did then, she had given much thought to. It was not the way she had been accustomed to turn into a tree before. It was far more thorough. For she put down careful roots, driving each of her toes downward and outward and then forcing them into a network of fleshy cables to make the most of the thin soil at the top of the hill. “Here,” she said, “I root within the soil you warm.”
Evor saw the ground rise and writhe and low branches grow from her insteps to bury themselves also. “Oh, no!” he cried out. “Your feet were beautiful as they were!” And he began to climb the hill toward her.
Phega frowned, concentrating on the intricacy of feathery rootlets. “But they were not the way I wanted them,” she said, and she wondered vaguely why he was there. But by then she was putting forth her greatest effort, which left her little attention to spare. Slowly, once her roots were established, she began to coat them with bark before insects could damage them. At the same time, she set to work on her trunk, growing swiftly, grain by growing grain. “Increased by yearly rings,” she murmured.
As Evor advanced, he saw her body elongate, coating itself with mat pewter-colored bark as it grew, until he could barely pick out the outline of limbs and muscles inside it. It was like watching a death. “Don’t!” he said. “Why are you doing this? You were lovely before!”
“I was like all human women,” Phega answered, resting before her next great effort. “But when I am finished, I shall be a wholly new kind of tree.” Having said that, she turned her attention to the next stage, which she was expecting to enjoy. Now she stretched up her arms, and the hair of her head, yearning into the warmth of the climbing sun, and made it all into limblike boughs, which she coated like the rest of her, carefully, with dark silver bark. “For you I shall hold out my arms,” she said.
Evor saw her, tree-shaped and twice as tall as himself, and cried out, “Stop!” He was afraid to touch her in this condition. He knelt at her roots in despair.
“I can’t stop now,” Phega told him gently. She was gathering herself for her final effort, and her mind was on that, though the tears she heard breaking his voice did trouble her a little. She put that trouble out of her head. This was the difficult part. She had already elongated every large artery of her body, to pass through her roots and up her trunk and into her boughs. Now she concentrated on lifting her veins, and every nerve with them, without disturbing the rest, out to the ends of her branches, out and up, up and out, into a mass of living twigs, fine-growing and close as her own hair. It was impossible. It hurt—she had not thought it would hurt so much—but she was lifting, tearing her veins, thrusting her nerve end
s with them, first into the innumerable fine twigs, then into even further particles to make long, sharp buds.
Evor looked up as he crouched and saw the great tree surging and thrashing above him. He was appalled at the effort. In the face of this gigantic undertaking he knew he was lost and forgotten, and besides, it was presumptuous to interfere with such willing agony. He saw her strive and strive again to force those sharp buds open. “If you must be a tree,” he shouted above the din of her lashing branches, “take me with you somehow, at least!”
“Why should you want that?” Phega asked with wooden lips that had not yet quite closed, just where her main boughs parted.
Evor at last dared to clasp the trunk with its vestigial limbs showing. He shed tears on the gray bark. “Because I love you. I want to be with you.”
Trying to see him forced her buds to unfurl, because that was where her senses now were. They spread with myriad shrill agonies, like teeth cutting, and she thought it had killed her, even while she was forcing further nerves and veins to the undersides of all her pale viridian leaves. When it was done, she was all alive and raw in the small hairs on the undersides of those leaves and in the symmetrical ribs of vein on the shiny upper sides, but she could sense Evor crouching at her roots now. She was grateful to him for forcing her to the necessary pain. Her agony responded to his. He was a friend. He had talked of love, and she understood that. She retained just enough of the strength it had taken to change to alter him, too, to some extent, though not enough to bring him beyond the animal kingdom. The last of her strength was reserved for putting forth small pear-shaped fruit covered with wiry hairs, each containing four triangular nuts. Then, before the wooden gap that was her mouth had entirely closed, she murmured, “Budding with growing things.”