She pushed back from him so that they were face-to-face. Her smile reflected a child’s wonder as she reached up to touch his cheek. “Pen, I saw everything. The aeriads showed me. I don’t know how they managed it, but they let me see it all. They took shape and flew all around me, like tiny rainbow butterflies, changing colors and shimmering so brightly they seemed like pieces of the sun. It was so wonderful! Then they changed to become like me—girls, no older than I am! We danced and played! We laughed until I could hardly stand up! Do you know how long it has been since I laughed?”

He stared at her, shocked at the transformation. She had always been effusive, but she was alive now in a way he had never witnessed. It was as if she were being reborn into the world, made over by her encounter with the aeriads. He was surprised to find that he was vaguely jealous.

“Did you find out what they really are? Where they come from?”

She nodded. “They told me. They call themselves spirits of the air—aeriads—but they are much more. They call themselves seedlings, as well. They think of themselves as creatures of the tanequil, his children.” She stopped herself. “Their children,” she corrected. “I don’t understand this part, but they think of the tanequil as both mother and father. The tree is both man and woman to them, able to be one or the other or both as needed.” She shook her head. “I’m still learning.”

Pen thought about the tanequil’s voice in his head. Masculine, he reaffirmed, not feminine. Where was the mother side of the tree, then?

“Are you hungry?” she asked suddenly.

He nodded. “Starved. I’ve been looking for something to eat.”

She took his hand. “Come with me.”

She led the way through the trees, navigating the maze of ancient trunks as if her sight had miraculously been restored. There was no hesitation, no deviation. She seemed able to see even better than she had before, her strange gift enhanced perhaps by the magic of the place and its creatures.

She took him to a cluster of berry-laden bushes near a clear, spring-fed pool. The berries were rich and sweet, and he ate them hungrily, then drank the cool, clear water of the pool, which was nothing like the metallic trickle he had sampled earlier.

When they were finished, sitting next to each other on a grassy stretch by the pool, made lazy by the food and drink and the warmth of the sunlight through the trees, Pen asked, “How did you find this place? Did the aeriads show it to you?”