Free The Lost Gate by Orson Scott Card Page B

do it for thanks, she told herself. So it doesn’t matter that he never said thanks.
    Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe he speaks only tree language now.
    Or maybe he was born inside the tree … somehow. Maybe he was never human. Maybe he is the tree’s clant. Why shouldn’t there be trees that had the talent of manmagery? Then the outself of the tree would ride inside the boy, struggling to understand the world around him.
    Eko lay there, weeping quietly, until the others awoke and saw that the Man in the Tree was no longer there. They were all so frantic with questions and disappointment that Eko could barely get them to listen to her as she told what she and Father had done that night.
    â€œBut you let him go!” said Immo.
    â€œIf he was done with being the tree’s prisoner,” said Father, “why should Eko have tried to make him her prisoner?”
    All morning Father and Mother tried to restore the sense of frolic, but it was wasted effort. Everyone could see how Father grieved. The Man in the Tree really had been part of their family’s life from his youngest memories. And now he was gone.
    By noon everyone knew that it was time to go. It was no longer the meadow of the Man in the Tree. It was just an oak meadow now, and noplace special. Now other families could come here with no mysterious trapped man to frighten them. But their family, who had not feared the Man in the Tree, they would not be back to this place again in their lives.
    As they walked home along the barely detectable track which was nevertheless engraved in memory, Eko thought she caught glimpses of movement in the woods to either side. Was the boy dogging them, keeping them in view? Was he hungry? Thirsty? What if he broke the rules of the thornmages?
    Ridiculous. The thornmages surely knew where he had come from and would not begrudge him a sip or two from whatever stream they passed.
    They emerged from the woods and began the long climb toward the pass. They had left too late in the day to make it all the way home, so they camped in a cold clearing high up the slope, where the ground slanted so much that Mother and Father tied the little children to sapling trunks so they wouldn’t roll away in their sleep.
    â€œMaybe this is how the man got caught in the tree,” Bokky joked. “He was a baby that his mother tied to the tree and then forgot.”
    â€œI can’t believe he’s gone,” said Immo.
    Gone, but not far, thought Eko, for she had caught another glimpse of a shadow moving just at the edge of her vision.
    The next day, if he followed them through the pass and down to the village, Eko never saw. And yet she knew that he had done it somehow, naked as he was, cold as it was. That’s why, when they got home, she took a ragged old outworn tunic of Father’s that Mother was saving to cut up into rags or maybe make into something for the baby to wear—she hadn’t decided yet—and, along with a bit of her own dinner, left them at the edge of their potato field, in the shade of a slender oak sapling—in case the boy had some particular affinity for oaks.
    The next morning, food and raiment were both gone, and Eko could only guess where he had gone. Perhaps downriver. Perhaps back over Icekame. Or maybe he had flown away like a bird, or burrowed down into the earth to find the roots of yet another tree. Who could guess, with such a magical being?

4
    S HOPLIFTER
    In all his previous ventures outside the compound, Danny had taken great pains to be seen by no one. His pleasures came from watching the drowthers and from knowing he was temporarily outside of a place he was constantly reminded that he did not belong.
    Now, though, it wasn’t enough to watch the drowthers. He had to pass for one of them. Inside Wal-Mart was every item he needed to pass for normal. But it would cost money, and Danny didn’t have any. He had never even held money in his hands. From the