The trees began making music before Iven saw them.
At first he thought someone had hung small bells along the road. The notes were too irregular for a signal, too light for a working warning. They came and went with the breeze, separated by long silences in which the leaves themselves seemed to be listening.
Then the path turned into the grove.
Pale growth covered the lower trunks in branching flutes. Some were no thicker than his thumb. Others rose from the wet ground in hollow shapes broad enough to put an arm inside. Water moved through and around them; above the water, the wind found their open mouths.
Glassroot.
Bastel gave him the local name without being asked.
“Don’t knock it with a stick.”
“Was I going to?”
