Uprooted

by Naomi Novik

They whuffed nervously and jerked their heads, their ears pricking forward and back and their skin giving nervous shivers as if flies were bothering them. But there were no flies. Up ahead, the wall of dark trees was waiting.

Then even more unexpectedly she added, “He told me he was sorry I’d been afraid of him—of being chosen, I mean. He said he wouldn’t take anyone again.”

But a tree isn’t a woman; it doesn’t bear a single seed. It scatters as many of them as it can, and hopes for some of them to grow.