“Your explanation is satisfactory,” said Greyhame, “but it is neither here nor there, as food is entirely lacking. And for my own part I have no idea as to where it might be obtained.”

“I could attempt to make some,” said Thingor, “but I know not the form of it, and imagining what it would be like to eat a thing made of iron gives me no foretaste of pleasure.”

“I have a thought on the matter,” announced Freewander, “easier to show than to explain.”

“Shall we join our auras then?” said Ward.

“No,” said Freewander, “I had in mind that you would instead accompany me to a certain place that I know of in the Garden.” And she rose from her chair and took wing in the same quick movement. The other souls, less nimble, followed her afoot. Outside it was nearly dark, but some light from the sun still shone flat into the Garden through gaps in the surrounding hedge.

Freewander led them to a small gnarled tree that grew near the fountain. Egdod had created it many years ago with a thought of seeding many such in a part of the Land that struck him as ill suited for tall trees. Thus far he had made little use of it, though, and Freewander, seeing it as a lonely and neglected part of creation, had adorned it with white blossoms. Egdod had found this ridiculous, since flowers to him were small plants growing close to the ground, but as often happened with Freewander’s whims, it had grown on him, and he now had to admit that the tree had been pleasing to look at and to smell during the spring when its flowers had grown so dense as to obscure its green leaves, and drawn swarms of bees. Now it was late summer and the blossoms were long gone. “The petals fell months ago,” Freewander pointed out, “and left behind only small dry apertures at the ends of the twigs that had once supported them. The bees who had so loved this tree abandoned it, and I thought it seemed lonely. But lo, the ends of the twigs swelled. The buds that had once sported white blossoms did not develop into leaves but rather into these round things, which can now be seen all over it.” She was cupping one of the round things—a little green moon—in the palm of her hand. But indeed as the others looked they saw more such all over the tree—as many of them as there had been flowers in the spring. “I put it to you,” Freewander announced, “that somehow, by their visiting of this tree, the bees—”

And here her ability to put thoughts into words failed her. But Spring knew. “The bees, having life, conferred a new kind of life on this tree, and altered its nature so that it would produce these.”

“Apples,” said Ward. “They are called that. We should eat them.”