True, he was young for it, and true, he was inexperienced in the finer points of tree-keeping. His cousins had done the bulk of the guarding once he'd moved from the grove-flock, protecting him to some extent, until that frost ridden day when Levanlaar's flight became hesitant. She and Hargalaar had gathered in with him, inviting him to add a stick to the top nest and make it his own, and then flown from their ancestral grove and nest tree toward open ocean and the Island of Constant Summer, never to return.

  His time so far as Tree-Master had been eventful only in that he was still discovering his world and himself: the Laar-tree had already done much to establish itself, after all, being the only remaining green-kin on this cliff-top outcrop . The rest of the extended grove was on higher, richer, and more level land where they stood in close formation, inviting root-grubbing rodents, wandering pod-thieves, and all manner of lesser pests. There had been other green-kin here on the outcrop, he'd been told, but they had been uprooted by storms. Perhaps they had not the knack of drinking from the brackish waters and giving back sweet-water fruit to their dragons, and so had fallen to root-grubbers, maybe they were merely that much older and unable to root deep because of rock-rubble. Surely Laar was fruit of another tree, after all.

  Overhead the patterned night-guides gave way to a finer blue-green and the horizon's glow flared with his morning's first sight of the day-guide. From his vantage he could see wave crests where tide met estuary, and now the telltale signs of fins!

  With no repetition of the strangeness that woke him, and with the invitation of a quick breakfast before him, Stregalaar stretched, and then whistled the Tree-Master whistle.

  No, no response. He rarely had visitors, and usually knew as soon as another dragon landed, even if he was asleep, for his tree was as vigilant as he was. Still, one whistled and listened.

  After a few moments he heard other Tree-folk responding from the grove; as if his call was the first of the day.

  Duty done, he climbed to the rim, and fell toward the sea. On his way down he saw the telltale ultra-green of new leaf cradling a pod.

  Wings opening as he sped toward the foam, he tucked the promise of an extra delight in memory and dropped his hunting eyelids into place.

  * * *

  His approach was that of a simple skim-and-snatch. He'd settled on the shadows of three fish swimming together at the surface as a target. As he closed one of them would be more exposed and he felt the claws begin their tension—but no!

  The light reaching him was obscured quickly once and twice and he found two other dragons diving, come from high above, choosing the same fish, sweeping toward him. These were no random beach interlopers but grove members several seasons his senior, now Tree-Masters of the tallest tree in the grove. He thought to out speed them but they hunted together: Klenveer hunting the fish, Trunveer intent on shouldering him aside.

  He tightened wings, not turning away but diving yet quicker, loath to give up the smooth form gliding below. Still, Trunveer came on, now giving out a keening hunting call meant to declare the target as caught-and-held.

  This was where he was weak; with no hunting-mate for his nest and that season yet approaching, the older wings could control the beach run all morning if they desired.

  With Trunveer's weight and wings pressing him from sunside Stregalaar let the target slide by, but felt the excitement rising in him as he turned to follow.

  "Away, ours!" Trunveer's declaration was a brittle screech.

  "My track!" he insisted into the winds, and pivoted against the prevailing breeze in time to see Klenveer miss what should have been a clean-strike. The grove-wings were unpracticed, sometimes going days without turning to the sea. Why should they interfere when they had as much rodent meat as they could use at root edge on any day?

  Klenveer's shriek was clear insult, blaming Stregalaar for his own fumbled approach.

  The fish were gone now: the shadows of multiple dragons was enough to drive them down and out.

  Still, this was the time for fish and he would fish.

  Stregalaar's turn toward the sea was met by the rising Klenveer; and now Stregalaar felt the tension build again in the claws. This interference was—

  "Child-wing, stay away!"

  Trunveer closed, but now she scolded both of them, "Fish and eat, fight later if you must."

  Klenveer rose, fishless, squawking complaints, going so far as to spit and and show talon with each wing-beat.

  "I'll take you down, child-wing," he repeated, unable to gain height on Stregalaar's position. One erratic lurch with talon bared was enough to make Trunveer squeal again.

  Klenveer's bluff was obvious, but with hunting partner beside him they turned toward the beach, where the smaller fish were easier prey.

  Unsettled, it took Stregalaar a few moments to locate the area he sought, where the sea and the sweet-water met and frothed, where the sparkle-fish hunted their own prey and—distant motion caught his attention.

  A stream of dragons were streaming toward the same beach stretch as Trunveer and her mate; as if the whole grove-wing rose and fell in constant swoops. The yells and screeches were angry, even frightened, as they scoured the beach.

  Stregalaar lifted with the grace of the sea breeze, leaned away from the brightness of the day-guide, and saw both fish for targets and even more dragons coming from the land. With economic dip of wing he fell, set for the strike, letting the tension in his claws build, and with a quick jarring of talon grabbed his prey almost before the cool drag of water registered in his brain. Turning speed to height he rose, scanning for other wings, till a convenient turn let him glide at a simple angle all the way to his nest-tree.

  * * *

  The Laar was unsettled; Stregalaar could feel it. Sap ran; tiny leaves sprouted ahead of time. The new pod-leaves he'd seen before were gone to yellow, and the seeds themselves were ripening rapidly. On the branch opposite, where Levanlaar had preferred to eat, grew another pod, though the tree had long realized he kept the nest alone and allowed that branch to go fallow.

  His incoming whistle had been unanswered but with the unsettled nature of the morning he was not surprised. This was not a day for casual visits.

  Stomach full but putting off the usual postprandial half-nap, Stregalaar evaluated the scene before him. He'd seen rare times when the broad-fish arrived in huge schools and leapt from wave tops, a dangerous and rewarding prey because they were large enough to offer damage and willing to engage any who ventured to try them. Dragons gathered then to feast and fight the fish, and after that sometimes each other, for the prey brought with them some strangeness inspiring mating out of season.

  This was not that excitement. His grove-mates, most older than he, were also not sleeping in the warm sun. Some kept to the grove, standing side-by-side on branches until they threatened to break. Some wheeled overhead, and if they searched for the root-grubbers there was no hunt; to Stregalaar's sight there were none to be found. Others departed in a slow and deliberate stream to the hills, carrying with them seed pods from the grove.

  Unable to pull reassurance from his own thoughts and finding his tree's reaction as odd as his grove-mates, the Tree-Master finally brought himself to the place where the broad trunk wall nearest the nest had been willfully shaped by dragon and tree.

  Here there were claw marks of a dozen dragons who had slept in the nest before him; here was the place he felt his first understanding that this tree recognized and accepted him in ways the rest of the grove-trees did not.

  Hargalaar had allowed him to roost in the tree the night he had been expelled from the inner grove, the night he had resisted Pauveer, the shoving, pod-greedy son of Trunveer and Klenveer, and bloodied him for eating the barely ripe pod Stregalaar had claimed as his own.

  The next morning, he had gathered in with Hargalaar and copied the stance shown him, placing his forehead firmly against the Laar's trunk and leaning into it. He had closed his eyes—difficult, when so much information came from his eyes! Still, he could smell and hear—and then he was dreaming. Awake, the dream came upon him, and he stood, forehead pressed to living wood, barely breathing.

  The tree's presence had been clear, its welcome brave and bright, the gift of a special pod a bonus unexpected. Since that morning he had been Stregalaar, branch-with-wings to Laar.

  Now, with the strangeness of the morning troubling him, Stregalaar pressed his forehead against the spot. The dream was upon him quickly; a sense of concern, and a sense of urgency. Something growing—the pods! The feeling that Hargalaar was lecturing him distantly:

  Green-kin can provide only to the limit of our branchlings, and not always that far.

  Together, young creature, we can withstand many dangers. We are not stronger than the rock that falls , though we may split rock, nor do we prevail always against the flames of summer fires nor against the waters and winds of the great gyres though they may pass us by while taking others. You remove the beasts who would feed from our roots; you peel away the tiny flyers who foul us with toxic sap to weaken our bark and burrow under to eat us from within. Too, by sharing our branches you protect our seeds from those others who feed without thought.

  In thanks we give you branches for your nests, in thanks we offer to you, Tree-friend, foods of special nourishment in the times of ice, and as learned by the grove, even foods for your time of mating and your times of final flight.

  These things we share, flyer, and we share this as well. Our grove tells us through root and branch of distant hills and other rivers, of places changing—

  Here the visions were odd indeed, of flying things which were not quite dragons, of rivers drying to nothing, of rocks rising and great moving walls of snow pushing all before. His dreams had never been so full of terror for him, nor so solid that he felt them to his very bones.

  The distant groves we rose from feel what we feel, young one. The tree that sowed me has long ago fallen and returned to the soil, for the root-diggers and the swarms are but life, as we are. The dangers that come from things which are not life—from the rivers and the winds, and the rocks and the fire—these dangers we cannot measure and against which we can give you no aid, other than the pods and a place within our branches.

  Growing now are pods for food and pods for seed; other leaf growth is suspended. Waiting for the next year are the extending roots. Bark is thickened as it can. What comes is not fire, nor is it wind, nor does it bore holes to eat us. Sometimes, like the fire, it threatens and does not arrive. Sometimes it arrives without threat. If it happens—when it happens—you must fly to a height and return only when it stops.

  The pods you have been eating from, those are yours. Eat and eat more; grasp one in your wing-branch and hold it with you while you fly. The other pods, those are for the flyers who come after you, to make their trees, if what comes takes the grove to rot.

  There was an image then, as if Stregalaar was looking through the thickest fog, an image of smoke, shattered trees and fire like a river boiling out of a cave.

  He sat still, more moments, but the tree had no more to say to him, and his blood was full of the urge to eat from the new pods, and to fly.

  * * *

  The air was full of wary dragons, all seeking something they'd not seen before, all full of a nervous energy fostered by whatever their trees and Tree-Masters told them. Stregalaar's calls brought answers from others of his age-mates and those younger, and none from the elders. As of his age-mates he was the only Tree-Master, some followed him with noisy inquiry.

  "Stones that fly! Fire without drought!" said one circling youngling, "Have you seen such?"

  He had seen fire; Hargalaar had taken him wing to wing to watch it sweep a distant valley, and the pair of them had eaten their fill of the animals too injured to move on, while watching from a safe distance the spirals of dragons around a grove in danger. Seaside they had no drought, for the fog was good to them; and they had no fire.

  He had also visited cave fronts, with Levanlaar explaining that some dragons preferred them to trees. Not only rogues but whole tribes of dragons lived in places where trees were few and far between, or where they would be overwhelmed by the mites, the sticky-borers, or the root-diggers.

  The cave front he'd seen was not one he'd dared enter: the odor about was that of multiple males, anger, and old dead meat as if there were no fresh. He disliked such meals: his green-kin was perched perfectly so that he might choose fish or fur-flesh by whim and rarely tasted the old dead.

  "Fire I have seen, and cliffs falling, and rocks," Stregalaar answered the circling young. "Caves I have seen, but none with fire. Rivers, but none with fire."

  These were grove-dragons, living among all the trees, not yet of an age to be granted dreams, not yet mated, most not yet recognized by a tree.

  This last was a puzzlement to Stregalaar. His first tree knew him as early as he could recall and it was to that tree he had returned nightly until the night he had been disowned for fighting. That expulsion was something many of the grove dragons never knew: they simply slept where they would and the grove kept them as they kept the grove.

  His tree Laar, by accident or purpose, grew far enough from the main grove to be seen as an outpost rather than a true grove-tree. Hargalaar had taught him that, when the trees slowly moved up-coast in the past it was because the root-grubbers had grown too common in the south, so common that they had overwhelmed the attention of even a well-guarded grove, permitting the other pests to gain hold. The root-grubbers and other pests were more fond of the heat than the trees, as the former Tree-Master had it.

  The other reason his tree was an outpost was the pods it bore, which many of the dragons disdained as small, and less succulent than those of the main grove. Stregalaar found them of good size for him, but then he was small, small enough to be miscounted as younger than he was no matter his wing's full color display. He had long outgrown the mottled green-gray camouflage of youth for the iridescent blue and silver banded wing-tops of an adult male; his head was nearly as white as his belly and talons.

  Normally the other flyers gave way to Stregalaar when close to his tree, while above the larger grove he was grudgingly admitted to airspace. Below the main grove's hill and over the jutting peninsula it stood on, he was recognized as a power, with only a few of the more flirty females flying close by without permission.

  Today, though, the entire space from the smallest of the fringe saplings to the near beachless cliff to the north of his tree was open to all. Dragons flew until tired and settled where they were to have a moment's rest, or they soared and used the oceanic cliff-face thermals that he loved to ride.

  Uncertainty wore on them all; there was bickering but no fighting. As the day moved on, more and more of the younglings settled back to the grove while the Tree-Masters mediated with their trees or else gyred at height, watching.

  Not all of the younglings rested: several imitated their elders as best as they could within the confines of the grove airspace. Stregalaar caught sight several times of the suddenly graceful Chenachyen, born to the grove's oldest tree. Not as tall as the tallest tree, it was by far the largest nonetheless, with a canopy easily serving a dozen youngsters and a pair of older pairs . The flyers from the Chyen tree were orderly, not at all like the current crop from 'veer .

  As for Chenachyen, the marks on her wings told the story: she'd be strong and seeking her own space, or not strong enough and submitting to another's, as soon as the last of the pale grays faded and her full wing-stripes were clear.

  That thought took hold and held some fancy for him, even with the strangeness of the day. A tree of special pods could use a strong helper, as perhaps he could.

  His tree called; it was in the way the branches fluttered that it hummed loud enough for his attention. Hargalaar told him that the Laar hummed best of all the trees in the grove, and in recognition he dipped a wing sharply and dove toward the nest-front.

  Several top branches were fluttering as he passed by, the notes like those of a pod-offering, and he hurried to grasp the nest and try the newest pod, whistling his approach to the tree.

  Our only branch-with-wing, the tree dreamed at him, even before he could close his eyes, eat and eat and watch and warn and—

  The top branch fluttering grew stronger, but the dream went on, pushing at him:

  Rocks flow like rivers, the tree dreamed to him, rocks have no roots and no wings, rocks sustain with sharp edges and weight, they have no will to touch them, nor claws to hold them, nor do they know the fail or fall. Eat what is here while rocks flow like rivers and shake like leaves—

  The dream stopped on that ungentle image, as if what the Laar wished to teach him went beyond even the thought of trees. Stregalaar grabbed the newest pod with some vigor, the urgent warning calls of dragons filled his ears.

  The pod branch was shaking; there was a stickiness on the bark as if the sap flowed at winter end strength. Deep inside his ears, Stregalaar heard a rumble, and knew it was not just the pod branch shaking but the entire tree. He felt vibrations of some tremendous force through his very leg bones. Around him were popping sounds and great rumbles; as if a thunderstorm was coming up at the tree from the sea below.