She followed me.

The man clasped himself and rocked from side to side as I approached the body. “Great One, I fear you are wrong. Listen to him. He wishes to stay.

He will make a fine tree. When the trees of your people fill our forest, the cutting will have to stop. Your own trees will stop you.”

I understood each word that he said, but I could not take his meaning. “I will ask him what he wishes,” I told the old man as I dropped the canvas next to the body. I knelt briefly by the body and pretended to listen. “Yes.

He wishes to go back to the cemetery,” I told them.

I pulled the rope free of the canvas and unrolled the cloth. I bent to seize the corpse by the shoulders. Insects buzzed over my head, and the distinctive smell of death surrounded me. I held my breath. Resolved to get it over with quickly, I seized him by his shoulders, intending to pull him over onto the canvas and then quickly roll him up in it.

The corpse didn’t budge. I tugged at him several times, and then had to step away to take a deep breath of untainted air. The stench of death clung to my hands, and it took all my will to keep from retching. All this while, the Specks had watched me, the man solemnly and the woman with amusement. Their presence bothered me; if I must do such a distasteful task, I would rather have done it without an audience. Obviously, they had fastened him to the tree somehow. I stood up straight, unsheathed my knife, took a deep breath of air, and once more approached the corpse. I could not see any binding. When I could hold my breath no longer, I took another gasp of air through the sleeve of my jacket. Then I tried to slide my hand down behind his back, between him and the tree. Immediately, I encountered a number of tiny rootlets projecting from the tree and into the corpse, thrusting right through the fabric of his jacket and shirt and into his flesh.

I could scarcely credit it. I knew that the man’s body had not been here more than a few hours. That a tree could send greedy, questing roots into him so quickly was macabre. I tried the blade of my knife against those I could reach; it was a hopeless task. They were pencil thick and as hard as oak knots. I do not like to recall the next half hour. The stench was stronger because the rootlets had pierced his dead flesh in so many places.

Every atom of my nature rebelled against the idea of manhandling the dead. Yet, in the end, that was what it came down to. I jerked him loose.

The rootlets that had entered his body so quickly had fanned out inside him as a network of tendrils. By the time I pried the body loose, it was leaking foul fluids from dozens of gaping wounds. It smelled far worse than it should have; I suspected something in the roots was hastening the breakdown of the corpse. Pulling the body free of the roots left the tangled root masses dangling from the tree and dripping gore. Liquids and particles of flesh and gut smeared my hands and arms before I finally managed to lay him out on the canvas. I flung an end of it over him and then dropped to my knees to roll him up in the coarse shroud. I bound the parcel with my rope. I was tying the final knot when the Speck man spoke again. “I do not believe he wished to go. But in this I will defer to your wisdom, Great One.” He sounded ineffably sad.