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day. We’ve seen your kind before, waiting for a sign to set off on your quest for the Summer Country. Indeed, we saw another one—one who could only come after dark—quite recently.”
    “A man?” I asked, hating the eager hope in my voice. Hadn’t I decided earlier today to give up on Will Hughes once and for all?
    “Not exactly. A man once … but now a creature of the night … a…”
    “Vampire, yes, I get it,” I said irritably despite my relief at the news. I was beginning to find my interlocutor’s speaking style annoying. And his game of hide-and-seek. I made a quick feint to my right and then dashed left around the wooden throne. There was nothing there.
    Peals of gruff laughter shook the hall—and they were coming unmistakably from the throne. I came around and stood in front of the huge mass of carved wood—only it wasn’t carved, I saw now. The root had grown into the shape of a chair, twisting itself into arms and legs, swelling into rococo curves that suggested some anthropomorphic design. A bulbous area looked like a head, tapering roots suggested fingers at the end of the curved arms and feet at the end of the legs.… I peered closer at one of the feet … and then recoiled in astonishment. There, at the end of the roots, was a sliver of toenail.
    I looked back up at the bulbous area at the head of the chair into two dark knotholes sunk deep into the fibrous wood.
    “What are you?” I asked in a whisper.
    The wood slenderly twisted into what I realized with mounting amazement was a smile.
    “I am Jean Robin,” the root answered, “once arboriste to kings and now”—he chuckled—“just arbor. Enchanté, Mademoiselle James.”
    I recollected my manners enough to reply, “I’m pleased to meet you, too, Monsieur Robin. I’ve heard of you. You planted the tree in the Square Viviani.”
    “Yes, little knowing I’d spend eternity below it … or rather, as part of it.” He chuckled again. Now that I was closer, I could make out his features better. He had a high-domed forehead adorned with delicate swirls that I guessed were the remainder of what hair he’d had in life, small, round eyes surrounded by laugh lines, and a dimpled chin that disappeared into rings of rough-skinned root. The face of a small, jolly man whose life as a tree root these last four hundred years had not robbed of his sense of humor.
    “If you don’t mind me asking, how…?”
    “How did I get into my present ligneous state? No, I don’t mind at all. It’s rare I get any visitors, you know. Please sit down.” He slid his eyes toward a low spot before the throne where one of the tree’s roots broke the surface, forming a little stool. I lowered myself down on it carefully, surprised to find it rather comfortable.
    “Yes, well … ahem.” Jean Robin cleared his throat, which sounded as if it had been coated with sawdust. I noticed that a number of lumignon had come to sit on his shoulders and his knees as he began his story, their little, pointy faces cupped in their diminutive hands as they listened. “As you may know, I devoted my life to trees and rare plants.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him that all I knew about him came from the plaque in the park above us, so I nodded, which seemed to please him. “I was rewarded for my endeavors by being made arboriste to King Henry III in 1585. I created the first botanical garden in Paris in 1597. My nephew, Vespasien, and I traveled far and wide—to Spain and Africa and even to your native Western Hemisphere—for my collection. Indeed, it was from those shores that I brought this specimen that has been named for me: Robinia pseudoacacia fabacées .” As he pronounced the name of the tree named for him, I thought I detected a change in his sooty brown complexion, a flush of green chlorophyll, which I imagined was a root’s version of blushing.
    “It was my garden that inspired the Messieurs de la Brosse and Hérouard to found the Jardin des