Ark tentatively walked along the road, with each step soaking up the rays of sun that darted about the curving path. As the rays warmed his face, he felt strength returning to his body. After a few hundred yards, he saw a huge trunk looming upward. The way widened and began to shelve into a perfectly round cruck pool, its surface smooth like a giant eye reflecting the blue of the sky above. Only this pool appeared to be natural, untouched by Dendran saw or chisel. Instead of sluice gates and aqueducts to channel the rootwater from far below, this concave hollow where two giant branches met the rearing trunk must have been filled with rainwater. To one side, on a raised wooden platform, sat Corwenna, cross-legged, her eyes closed, her body still as stone.

Ark coughed lightly.

“Ah!” said Corwenna, opening her eyes. “Are you hungry? I’m starving.”

“I don’t know. Why?” The dawn meal suddenly seemed a long time ago.

Corwenna stood. The fingers of her left hand uncurled, beckoned to Ark from across the cruck pool. “If you are hungry, you will learn. Come.”

“What? You want me to walk across the water?”

Corwenna frowned. “No. I think we’ll leave that to the legends. This afternoon we go hunting. We haven’t got much time.”

Ark saw she was pointing out the path around the edge of the pool. He was still tired. If only he could plunge into those delicious depths, but Corwenna had already vanished into the trunk behind her. He ran to catch up, jumping down the stairs inside the trunk two at a time.

The Ravenwood felt different. Yes, there were hollow trunks and branchways. But there, the similarities ended. While Arborium was engineered, this place, hidden on the other side of the mountains, felt as if every part had been grown. Even the stairs he pounded down were higgledy-twiggledy. Perhaps the tree itself had decided to take up carpentry. Edges melted into each other, and the steps were concave hollows rather than carefully planed treads. As he caught up with Corwenna at the next level down, she paused by a hollow archway strewn with ivy. The branchway that led out ahead of them kinked and twisted as if it was a snake fossilized into wood. Instead of scaffolding and supports, the giant branch wriggled out from the trunk and fused into the branch of the next tree. The track that crossed between the trunks and over the great deeps below had been gouged and pressed into the bark by the hooves of unknown creatures.

“Where are we going?”