The Tree of Ecrof

by Kobe Bryant

  What had Anara done to these golden shoes? What magical spring had she dipped them in? Who had she asked to bless them? It was as if they had given Pretia superpowers. It was as if they had given her grana.

  Pretia skidded to a stop, tripped over a tree root, and went head over heels until she came to rest, her knees streaked with reddish dust.

  What if it wasn’t the shoes? What if it was grana? Finally, after all this time.

  Pretia lay on her back and looked up at the sun through the craggy branches of an olive tree. For the second time that afternoon she began to take stock of her body. Her fingers were tingling. Her muscles were twitching. She could smell different things in the air—the scent of the figs, the warm earth, the seawater hundreds of feet below the cliffs. And she could hear, too, the sound of individual waves crashing, the individual songs of dozens of different birds, the underground river that fed the castle’s lakes and reservoir.

  Pretia clapped a hand over her mouth. It was finally happening!

  Her grana had arrived.

  She could rule Epoca. But even better, she might become an Epic Athlete after all. And now, most certainly, her invitation to Ecrof would come!

  She leaped to her feet. And once more, she was off. Faster this time. Faster and faster and faster. And then the strangest thing happened—it was almost as if she were watching herself run. It was as if she were standing back and another Pretia was sprinting on ahead, doing all the work, feeling all the pain that should have been in her legs and chest after so much exercise.

  But before Pretia could figure out what was happening, a chorus of kids’ voices rose over the woods. She stopped running—the illusion of being two people ceased. Then she tucked herself behind a tree at the end of the Royal Woods and peered into a clearing along the edge of one of the towering cliffs that dropped down to the sea. A group of castle workers’ kids were chasing one another around the grass and laughing.

  Suddenly one of them caught sight of Pretia and stopped running. Soon the entire group was staring at her.

  “I’m sorry,” Pretia said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  The kids all looked at her, unsure about how to address the princess.

  “You can keep playing,” Pretia said.

  The kids exchanged glances. Finally, one of them—Dinara, the Games Trainer’s daughter—spoke. “You’re not going to tell, are you?”

  “Tell what?” Pretia asked.

  “We’re supposed to be helping after the, er, your birthday party. Not playing around.”

  Pretia’s heart sank. She would always be the princess, treated differently because of her royal birth. “I’m sure there are enough adults to handle that,” she said. “Anyway, if they want to throw boring parties, they can do all the cleanup.”

  The kids looked at each other, unsure whether to laugh.

  “I mean, you guys probably don’t have to sit around and listen to speeches about the tradition of our great land on your birthdays.”

  “Absolutely not! I’d rather jump in the sea,” Davos, the son of the Royal Cook, exclaimed. “On my birthday, my father cooks everything I could possibly imagine eating and invites all of my friends over and we stuff our faces until we are sick and then stay up all night.”

  Pretia shuffled from foot to foot. She was itching to keep moving and to test her grana. “What are you guys doing?” she finally asked.

  Once more the kids exchanged curious glances. Finally, Davos spoke. “Playing tag.”

  “Oh,” Pretia said, feeling incredibly stupid. Of course that’s what they were doing. Only someone who had never played tag before would ask such a dumb question. Only someone like Pretia.

  “Do you want to play?” Dinara asked.

  At ten years old, Pretia had never played with other kids before—at least not normal games like tag. First the golden sneakers, then her grana, and now a chance to play tag. Her birthday was certainly turning around.

  “Sure,” she said, stepping into the clearing.

  The kids surrounded her. “Okay,” Davos said, tapping Pretia on the shoulder. “You’re It.”

  Immediately the kids scattered. Pretia stayed put. She swiveled her head, looking at the group spread out across the clearing.

  “Don’t you know the rules?” Dinara said. “Chase us!”

  “I was just—” Pretia began. But instead of inventing excuses for why she hadn’t moved, she began to run. The first person she caught was Christos, the son of the Royal Gardener. He screamed when she tapped his shoulder. He whispered to Pretia, “You’re supposed to say ‘You’re It’ when you tag someone,” then sprinted away after the twin daughters of the Keeper of the Scrolls, who were near the edge of the forest.

  The game whirled around and around the clearing. Pretia mostly avoided getting tagged. Occasionally someone got her, but in no time she had tagged someone else. After a while, Pretia grew distracted, paying more attention to the new sensations summoned by her grana than to the game of tag itself. Everything from the earth beneath her feet to the smell of the salty sea air felt heightened. When she tagged another player, she could feel a transmission of energy in her fingers. From what she’d overheard from her distant cousins, these sensations would settle as her grana developed and as Pretia learned to control them. But for now, they were pinging around in her head, coursing through her arms and legs, making her run faster and jump higher.

  Dinara was It again and quickly tagged Pretia, who had momentarily stopped running, listening to the leaves rustling in the Royal Woods behind her. Do the leaves always make this sort of noise? she wondered. Would they always sound like an orchestra being played by the wind?

  “You’re It!” Dinara cried. “Princess Pretia, come on!”

  It took Pretia a moment to snap back to reality. “You don’t need to call me Princess,” Pretia said. But by then the other kids had spread out across the field except for Davos, who stood smack in the center, challenging her. “Come and get me,” he said, laughing. He was dancing from side to side, smiling. “Pretia, come and get me.”

  Pretia stood at the edge of the woods as the sounds of the forest and sea and grasses crashed in her ears, as her fingers tingled, her legs twitched, her heart raced, and her lungs filled with delicious air. She felt invincible. Of course she could catch Davos. That was nothing. She could do that and a whole lot more.

  Then it happened again. She was standing by the trees at the edge of the Royal Woods as she saw herself take off and sprint in Davos’s direction. This second self was a blur, an arrow flying at an extraordinary pace, speeding toward Davos.

  Davos hesitated and Pretia watched herself—watched herself—race toward him at an amazingly fast pace, faster than she could even imagine running. She watched herself tag him, but not simply tag him. She tagged him with such force that she pushed him toward the edge of the cliff. From where she was standing at the edge of the woods, she watched Davos stumble and watched herself stumbling after him, almost tackling him. “You’re It,” she heard herself shout. But it was too late. Pretia watched herself watch Davos fall over the cliff and disappear from sight.

  A cry from all the kids at once brought Pretia back to herself. She was no longer standing by the trees, but at the edge of the cliff, back in her own body.

  What had she done? What had just happened? Where was Davos? Had she killed him? Had her grana killed him? What was she capable of?

  Holding her breath, not wanting to look but knowing she absolutely had to, she crept to the edge and looked down, expecting to see a sheer drop to the sea below. Instead, what she saw was a more gradual hill with a ledge on which Davos was lying, moaning and clutching his left arm. “It’s broken,” he cried.

  The kids all peered over Pretia’s shoulder as she knelt down to help Davos up. But before she could, Dinara elbowed her out of the way. “We’ll help him,” she said.

>   Suddenly all the kids had crowded in front of Pretia.

  “It—It was an accident,” she stammered. “It was.” Because of course it was—she hadn’t meant to tag Davos so hard. She hadn’t meant to push him off the cliff. But she had. She had stood back and watched as she had done it. Her grana had made her do it. Her grana was uncontrollable.

  Pretia stepped back from the group and the kids closed ranks, leaving her out. She watched them lift Davos back up to the clearing. Dinara flung his good arm over her shoulder as she prepared to help him walk back to the castle.

  Pretia wanted to tell them she’d make sure he got the best medical care. She wanted to tell them that she would make sure he got everything he needed to help him heal—the royal treatment. But she didn’t dare speak. She was too horrified by what she had done.

  She raced back to the castle. For once, what she wanted more than anything was to be alone. She sprinted up the steps, where she imagined her ancestors were staring at her in horror, through the Atrium and up into the Hall of the Gods. Most of the flames had died out. Only those in front of Cora, Somni, and Hurell still burned. Hurell. Pretia skidded to a stop. Her stomach flipped. Her heart felt like a cold stone. Had Hurell granted her wish? Had the Fallen God granted her grana?

  She could feel the panic starting to rise in her throat. She clutched her stomach. She’d lit his flame and her grana had come. And not just any grana. But a grana that seemed evil. A grana that had helped her injure another kid.

  Taking a deep breath, Pretia blew on the flame in Hurell’s ceremonial bowl. Once, twice, three times she blew, but it only made the oil burn stronger. There was no choice but to let it go out on its own like the others around it had. There was no reversing what she had done.

  Her grana had come from Hurell. Her grana was cursed.

  2

  ROVI

  THE SHOES

  Rovi covered his ears as the sorna horn blasted across the Upper City of Phoenis. Overhead, on the bridge that spanned the river Durna, he could hear the first carts rolling toward the Alexandrine Market. He sat up, his back stiff as usual from sleeping on the hard ground. It was market day. There was no time to waste.

  Market days were the best days for stealing, everyone knew that. Which was why merchants tried to hire Star Stealers to be lookouts, paying them with a measly piece of fruit for a whole day’s work. Rovi would never do that. Six hours of standing in one spot in order to get a peach was not good business. And it was boring.

  He preferred to steal.

  Not a lot, and never from the vendors who couldn’t afford it. He stole only what he needed for a few days. Honeycakes from the baker with the line down the street. A bag of plums from the fruit seller whose stand was so overstocked that he didn’t care when a pile of oranges or figs tumbled to the ground.

  But Rovi knew he had to be cautious and keep an eye out. Not just because of the merchants and their lookouts and the red-­turbaned Phoenician guards—members of a severe military order—who patrolled the marketplace, but also because of the other gangs of Star Stealers who might either rat him out to the authorities or steal from the best stalls before he got there. Everyone wanted to catch Swiftfoot, as he was known. Luckily, no one had.

  Rovi had been on his own ever since his father had died. His mother had died many years earlier, when he was only two years old, and he had barely any memory of her at all.

  His father, once one of the brightest minds in Epoca, had wound up a beggar on the streets of Phoenis, the capital city of the Sandlands region. And once his father was gone, Rovi had become just another lost boy, a Star Stealer, neither Dreamer nor Realist. A missing soul.

  It didn’t take long for him to become famous in Phoenis, or rather infamous. From the head of the Phoenician guards to the common street criminals, everyone had heard of Swiftfoot. He had stolen an entire side of beef on its way to the head magistrate. He had stolen a wedding cake made for a visiting Realist princess. He had stolen a crate of fish freshly arrived from the Rhodan Islands. He had stolen a plum right out of the hand of the head of the guards himself and eaten it while running backward to avoid capture.

  But today, Rovi wasn’t out to steal food. There was something else he needed—running shoes. His last pair, hand-me-downs from Issa, had worn thin. There was a hole in the sole of one shoe, and the rubber on the other had come unglued and flapped loudly when Rovi ran. And the last thing a good thief needed was to make additional noise.

  He rolled up his bedding and stashed it in the archway under the Draman Bridge where he and the rest of Issa’s gang slept. He could hear the carts rumbling overheard as merchants flooded into Phoenis. He gnawed a day-old crust of bread and took a swallow from a canteen someone had filled from a public fountain. For the last time, he hoped, he laced up his battered running shoes.

  Today was the final market day of the month—the largest one—when vendors from all over the Sandlands and even from some of the other regions of Epoca traveled to Phoenis. This was the day that the best goods would be available, not just the local crafts, but ones perfected in distant lands. This was the day that the Alkebulan rubber merchant would arrive with his stall of bold and brilliant running sneakers. And Rovi could think of nothing better than a pair of those sleek, gleaming shoes—not a three-course meal, not a roof over his head, not even a bag full of gold coins. He wanted a pair of gold Grana Gleams. And he was going to get them.

  It was early, but the sun was already strong. The first merchants and customers had wound their scarves around their heads to protect themselves from the bright glare. A light wind was blowing, enough to kick up some sand from the streets, but nothing like the sandstorms that could shut down the market for hours, driving everyone away from the stalls, choking the air with yellow grit that flew up your nose and into your eyes. Rovi did his best work during the sandstorms, using the sandy tornado as cover to dodge from vendor to vendor, taking what he wanted and slipping away literally unseen.

  But there would be no such luck today. The weather was not on Rovi’s side.

  He crossed the bridge, darting among carts filled with silky shorts and shirts, handcrafted sandals, woven bags, and hammered bronze replicas of Epic Medals. When he reached the Alexandrine Plaza, Rovi’s nostrils were filled with hundreds of tantalizing smells at once—caramelizing meats, exotic spices, buttery breads, sweet fruits ripening in the sun. His stomach growled. But he couldn’t be careless. If he drew attention to himself too soon, he’d risk being banned from the market for good.

  Rovi glanced up at the blue and purple onion-domed turrets overhead just in time to see the sorna player step out onto a balcony. Immediately the next blast of the sorna filled the air, telling the people of Phoenis that the market was open for business.

  Rovi ducked into an archway at the eastern side of the plaza. From his lookout he could keep an eye on the Alkebulan merchant setting up the stand. He had to get everything perfect. It wasn’t just taking the shoes; it was taking the right size. And this meant doing something that might expose him—scouting the stand up close.

  After an hour, the market had filled up so customers were shoulder to shoulder, bumping and jostling one another. Rovi hoped they wouldn’t notice a kid in their midst, and not just any kid, but one who wore the telltale rags and had the unwashed face of a notorious Star Stealer. A boy who wore neither purple nor blue, who was clearly neither Dreamer nor Realist.

  Rovi darted into the crowd and approached the Alkebulan rubber merchant’s stall. There on the front row, just at his head height, were the gold Grana Gleams. They were the most beautiful shoes Rovi had ever seen—delicate mesh that looked like mercury, thick gold soles, and metallic laces that he knew would look like shooting stars as he raced through the streets.

  Once, twice, three times he passed by the stall until he spotted his size—the fourth box in the stack. It would be a difficult grab, impossible without knocking
the other boxes over. And that would mean drawing attention to himself, causing a commotion. But there would be no other way. He’d have to reveal himself, and then he’d have to run like everything in his world depended on it . . . which it did. To be caught would mean to be taken away to one of the dreaded work-schools where he would spend the next eight years packing sand into bricks for the master builders.

  After a final pass by the stand, Rovi was satisfied that he knew exactly which box to take. He headed back to the archway to plan his escape route. He passed a stand where a young woman was grilling skewers of golden beef from the sacred pastures. The smell was too much and he stopped, knocking into a man in front of him.

  The man turned and looked Rovi right in the eye. He was short and bald and had the paler complexion of someone from Hydros or Helios, the major cities on mainland Epoca. Rovi froze, the horror of discovery running through him. He’d tried to be invisible, a ghost, someone who slipped through the market unseen. And now this man was staring right at him.

  “Are you hungry?” the man asked.

  It took all of Rovi’s willpower not to tell him the truth. He was starving.

  “I bet if I asked nicely, this young woman might add an extra skewer onto my order for you.”

  Rovi bit his lip and shook his head. He clamped his hand over his stomach to silence its growling. “No, thank you,” he muttered.

  “Are you—” But before the man could finish talking, Rovi had darted away, back to the shelter of the arch. On any other day, he would have taken the stranger’s offer in an instant. But today was not any other day. Today was the day he was getting his Grana Gleams.

  From the shadows, Rovi kept an eye on the market. He watched the man eat his skewers then vanish into the crowd. Rovi darted through the covered archways that bordered the market on all sides. He leaped over musicians and beggars and all sorts of peddlers who were confined to the edges of the action. He made three circles, keeping an eye on the market, searching for the mysterious bald man—the one person who might identify him. Satisfied he was no longer in the plaza, Rovi returned to his spot across from the Alkebulan rubber merchant to wait for his window.