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closed her eyes and clutched her hands to her breast. She knew. Jalena appeared beside her and led her into the cottage. Kattan was carried inside and placed gently onto his bed. He sighed softly and reached for his wife’s hand. Jakan and the others backed from the room and closed the curtain. The four sedan bearers left without a word, leaving Jakan and Jalena alone.
    Jalena put her arms around Jakan’s waist. “Are you all right?”
    “It was fine.”
    She rested her head on his chest and they remained silent for a few minutes. Megda had lit a fire this evening and it crackled in the fireplace. They could hear Megda’s soft voice in the next room. Jakan sighed.
    “Is this the end?” Jalena's voice was a whisper.
    Jakan nodded.
    “You knew, didn’t you?”
    He tightened his arms about her. “I’ve known for some time, so did he, that it was near. It was yesterday that I knew how near. But he insisted on going to the Speak tonight.”
    They resumed their silent embrace. At last the curtain of the bedroom drew back and Megda appeared, her face strained and her eyes red.
    “He wants to see you.”  She brought a shaking hand to her lips.
    Jakan stroked Megda’s arm as he passed. Her fear and sadness passed through him, compounding his own. He squared his shoulders as he walked through the doorway, praying for the strength to bear what was to come.
    Kattan lay on the bed covered with a thick fur blanket. His breaths came in quick, shallow gasps, but he managed a wan smile as Jakan came in. Jakan lowered himself to sit cross-legged beside the bed and reached out to take his old friend’s hand. It was cold and clammy. In the candlelight, the old man’s face looked grey, almost translucent, and his eyes were clouded.
    As Jakan regarded him, memories of his father’s death rushed like a cold breeze into his mind. He had been only seventeen when they had brought his father home on a makeshift stretcher. He had collapsed, clutching at his chest, while on a hunt.They brought him to Jakan, not because he was Jakan’s father, but because Jakan was Treespeaker. As such, he had the power to heal and he possessed the blue healing stone, which could magnify that power.
    He’d spent the long night willing his father to live, forcing his own energy through the healing stone, to no avail. As the sun rose, his father clasped Jakan’s hand as if trying to pass his life to his son, and breathed his last.
    If not for Kattan then, Jakan’s confidence may never have been regained, for what sort of Treespeaker couldn’t even save the life of his own father? It was Kattan who showed him that being a Treespeaker was not about being able to control life and death, but about being able to help guide his people from one end of life to the other.
    “You can plant a tree, young one,” Kattan had said, “you can tend and water it, trim away branches and stake it against the wind. But you can’t make an elm grow into an oak. And no matter how strong it is, you cannot stop a lightning strike from splitting it in two, or age from making it fall.”
    “Father wasn’t old, yet his heart failed him.”
    Kattan had put his hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eye. “Jakan, you'll soon learn that the gift you received as Treespeaker was more a gift to the people of Arrakesh than a gift to you. Every time you use your healing power, every time you speak with Arrakesh, you lose a little of yourself. Your father hadn't lived many years, that is true, but his body had aged. You, too, will grow old before your time. But what you lose physically, you’ll gain in personal and spiritual strength. That's the way for the Treespeaker.”
    The words both disappointed and angered Jakan at the time. He rebelled, vanishing into the forest for days. That time gave him a chance to grieve, to think, to come to terms with the situation into which he had been thrown. When he returned, Kattan had greeted him without displeasure or rebuke. His days away