Terran man was clay, red dust. Athshean man was branch and root. They did not carve figures of themselves in stone, only in wood.

all. You have gone farthest. And at the farthest, at the end of the black path, there grows the Tree; there the fruit ripens; now you reach up, Selver, now you gather it. And the world changes wholly, when a man holds in his hand the fruit of that tree, whose roots are deeper than the forest. Men will know it. They will know you, as we did.

And what I wanted from my life, I have had, and more. I have had my whole life. Days like the leaves of the forest. I’m an old hollow tree, only the roots live. And so I dream only what all men dream. I have no visions and no wishes. I see what is. I see the fruit ripening on the branch.

“The son of forest-fire, the brother of the murdered. He is the one who is not reborn.

If they are men, they are evil men, having denied their own gods, afraid to see their own faces in the dark.

Bad as his dreams were, all terror and shame, yet he welcomed them. He had feared that he was cut off from his roots, that he had gone too far into the dead land of action ever to find his way back to the springs of reality.

For Ebor Dendep was a practical woman. When a Great Dreamer, her brother, told her that Selver was a god, a changer, a bridge between realities, she believed and acted. It was the Dreamer’s responsibility to be careful, to be certain that his judgment was true. Her responsibility was then to take that judgment and act upon it. He saw what must be

We may have dreamed of Selver these last few years, but we shall no longer; he has left the dream-time. In the forest, through the forest he comes, where leaves fall, where trees fall, a god that knows death, a god that kills and is not himself reborn.”

“Do you hold the dream in your hands?” “Yes.” “Do you weave and shape, direct and follow, start and cease at will?” “Sometimes, not always.” “Can you walk the road your dream goes?” “Sometimes. Sometimes I am afraid to.”