Then Fava understood: the name described the person Tull would become, a man with a crushed heart.

The Pwi came forward and hugged Tull, welcomed him into the family, all of them talking at once.

Fava hugged him, tried to console him. "I have seen you watch Isteria," she said, pronouncing Wisteria as best she could, "that human girl. Now that you are Pwi, you should look at girls among your own people," and Tull blushed. By Pwi standards he was obscenely old to be single, as was Fava.

Twice, Fava knew, Pwi girls had set their belongings on Tull's doorstep, asking him to marry him in the manner of the Pwi, and he had left the belongings on the doorstep until the girls took them away. Fava had been one of those girls.

An old man hugged him and reminded, "I have two daughters, and they both need a husband; perhaps one wife would not be enough for you?"

And when the marriageable girls in the village hugged him, Fava could not help but notice how some hugged him with passion, so that their breasts pressed firmly against his chest. He would be able to feel their soft curves, and Fava knew that it was not done by accident.

Some Pwi left early, for they still sorely mourned the deaths of Denni and Tchar. But others sang and danced, guzzling beer from a barrel until the air smelled sour and warm, ripe, and sticky; then they spun madly and jumped into the air until they could no longer stand.

When Tull looked toward his home, as if to go sleep, Zhopila pleaded that he come to sleep in the home of his new Pwi family.

Fava's heart leapt when he agreed to do so.

They went to the house, dug there into the side of the hill, and Fava put fresh wood on the small fire in the hearth.

For a while, Tull sat up with Ayuvah's little daughter Sava, warmed by the light of the hearth, and carved her a tiny sailboat from a walnut shell.

Ayuvah told his mother about seeing Little Chaa touch the mayor's Dryad, and Zhopila became angry. Zhopila told Little Chaa, "You stay away from that monster, or someday she will carry you away from home to be her lover, and make you her slave."

So she told the boy the story of "Tchulpa and the Dryad of the Pines":

Long ago, the Starfarers created many trees and animals—both the mammoth and the redwood and the beasts in Hotland, but their work was not done. So, to finish their work, they gave birth to seven Creators—beasts terrible to look upon: Xicame to rule the fishes of the sea. Mema and Va to form and to rule the birds, lizards, snakes, the three breeds of dragons, and the serpents. Dwafordotch was made master of the insects. Zheforso to rule the hairy beasts, the Hukm, Mastodon Men, and the Pwi. Theva to rule the deserts and plains. And last of all, Forethorun to rule the jungles and trees.

Each Creator gave birth to new plants and animals, filling the world with life and death.

But when he was yet young, Forethorun made his home in a cave, and one day the mountain fell upon him. So, in his place, the six Creators made Dryads to tend the trees.

In those days, Tchulpa, a man of the Pwi with a beautiful wife and six beloved children, went into the forest with his basket to hunt for pine nuts in the month of White, and as he foraged, he heard a woman singing, and he crept toward her and found her beside a river.

Her skin was green, like the leaves of a young pine tree, and softer than the petals of a flower. Her beauty was above that of any woman, and when she walked, she moved as gracefully as a prancing deer, and her breasts bobbed like peonies in the wind.

Her voice was more beautiful than earthly speech—as if the meadowlark had lent her her song, and she sang of love, so Tchulpa thought that surely this must be the goddess Zhofwa, who blows her kisses upon young people so they fall in love.

He thought he should hide himself, because he did not want to look upon the goddess, so he hid behind a tree and called out to the Dryad.

Tchulpa begged her to leave before the desire he felt for her slew him. He said, "I love my wife deeply, and I want to go home to her."

But the Dryad seemed not to understand his pleas. Instead, she sought him out, smiling and innocent, and he peered into her eyes, paler green than winter ice. She smiled and put her avocado-green lips upon his.

In that moment, Tchulpa knew she must be the goddess Zhofwa, for his desire rose up. So great was his lust that it overwhelmed his desire for all other women. His beautiful wife seemed deformed and twisted in comparison to the Dryad. And just as a husk upon an oat stem will sometimes fool us into believing that we have found grain in winter, he thought that surely his beautiful wife must have been only a husk of a woman after all, and he had somehow been deceived into believing that he loved her.

His love for his children and the Pwi was swept away, too, in this madness. And when he lay with the woman upon the soft moss of the forest floor, he felt as if he were buoyed upon waves of desire, and he thought that surely he was giving his love to the goddess Zhofwa herself.

But when he was done, the beautiful green woman turned her back upon him. He went to stay with her in her home of living trees, but she took no notice of him. During the day she foraged for the dung of giant elks, and buried it at the roots of the pines.

And in the night she did not give love to him the way that a wife should. Instead she searched among the needles of the pines for grubs and caterpillar nests and then she would squash them, and since she barely took time to find food for herself, she fed upon the dead insects, instead.

In time, she learned to speak, but at night, she talked only of her work and of her love for the trees, but she never spoke of her love for Tchulpa.

If he left the room to get firewood, she would take no notice. If he fed her, she did not thank him. Sometimes, even if he tried to simply speak to her, she would only stare away, as if lost in thoughts of trees.

Tchulpa became sad with the despair-that-leads-to- death, and he realized finally that she had no love in her. Instead, he thought she must be a demon, created by the earth to punish men for how they treat the forests. He remembered his wife, and wished he could see her, but each day he would look upon the Dryad and the kwea of the moment when they first met would come upon him. He would think back on the magic of that time together and become her slave all over again, as if he were a Thrall held in chains by a Slave Lord, and he could not leave.

Days melted into months and months blended into years.

After three summers, the Dryad bore a daughter with skin as green as pine needles. Tchulpa became angry, for she had not made love to him during those three years, so it seemed obvious that she had borne a child from another man.

One day, the Dryad wandered away, and in her devotion to the trees, she stayed away for nights catching moths that were laying their eggs. When Tchulpa found her again, he was furious, for he felt sure she had gone off to sleep with another man while he tended her child. (In those days, the Pwi did not know that Dryads mate only once and give birth slowly over the years; so Tchulpa did not imagine that the green daughter was his.)

He dragged his second wife home by the hair and tried to make love to her, but she fought him. He screamed and tore his hair in frustration, but she said, "I love only the pines!"

Tchulpa wondered if she had made love to a tree spirit, and the tree spirit had fathered the green daughter. So he went crazy in his grief.

This was in the month of Dragon, and the forest was at its driest.

Tchulpa picked up a brand from his cooking fire and ran outside and tossed the torch into the pines.

The Dryad ran from the hut with her daughter, and when she saw the fire raging in all the trees, madness came over her. She screamed, and twisted her face into a mask of rage, and took a stick and speared Tchulpa in the shoulder. She leaned toward him, as if she would rip his throat out with her teeth.

In that moment, Tchulpa saw into her eyes and realized that she was an animal. He had not fallen in love with a goddess, or even a woman, only a lowly beast.

He ran from her then, and heard the Dryad give a blood-curdling call, a wail more like that of a wolf than a human. It was a pure expression of her grief for the dying forest.

Tchulpa thought that he was free then, but as he looked back into the forest, he saw many green women with doe eyes chasing toward him, for the Dryad's call had alerted others of her kind.

Tchulpa ran for his life. Some Dryads ripped him with their fingernails and bit him with their teeth, while others clubbed him with sticks, but Tchulpa escaped them all.

The Dryads' cries haunted him through the forest, until he reached a band of oaks, and the pine women stopped.

The Dryads would not leave their beloved forest.

Tchulpa's heart was torn, for he remembered his love for his wife and children. Now, he wished only to return.

For a time, he would not eat, but so great was his sadness that he hoped only to find comfort in the House of Dust with his ancestors. Yet, he knew he could not let himself die without first telling his family what had happened and begging their forgiveness.

When Tchulpa reached his village, his back and legs were swollen and infected with green pus that ran from him like sap from a tree—the worst kind. For this is what comes from the bite of a Dryad

He told the Pwi his story, but everyone imagined that it was only fever talking, for none had ever seen a Dryad in those early days. So they brought him into the house of the healer, lanced his wounds, and washed him gently.

They thought he must have gone through a terrible ordeal, to be gone these three years. They wondered if slavers had captured him. His wife was elated to have her husband alive again, for she thought he had wandered off a cliff and died, or perhaps had become food for a smilodon.

That night, as his wife Azha tended him, so happy to have her husband home again, she put him by the fire and fell asleep.

She woke to the sound of Tchulpa's cry. A nude woman with skin the color of pine needles stood above Tchulpa, and she ran from the room as quickly and quietly as a dream.

Tchulpa cried out again. Azha rushed to her husband, and he coughed blood into the air. In his chest was a stake, whittled from a branch of blackened pine.

Tchulpa raised his head and said, "Remember the kwea of the night we became husband and wife? That kwea is upon me. I feel nothing for that animal anymore."

Azha nodded and took her husband's hand. With his own blood, Tchulpa drew joined circles, the symbol of eternal love, upon her hand before he died.

Tull listened and smiled. Years ago, he'd realized that humans always seem to tell stories of conquest, of men who bulldog mammoths into the ground and slaughter each other in battle, but the Pwi always seemed to tell stories about reconciliation.

Pwi often told of brothers or lovers or friends who went to war in their youth, and only a great act of love or sacrifice could heal the evil kwea built up over the years. Such stories seemed odd—as if the Pwi believed that every fence could be mended, all hate and anger washed away.

Tull only had to look at his relationship with Jenks to see how false this notion was.