He remembered, too, Gofhern the blacksmith lifting him bodily away from the anvil and plunging his hand into a bucket of cold water in one swinging, head-spinning arc. ‘Your fingers have more sense than your head, young Farnor,’ he had chuckled, though only after he had determined that the injury was not too serious.
And was it thus here? Were the individual trees responding to some pain that he could not feel, and confusing his perception of the will of the whole? ‘What do you do when there’s a fire?’ he asked without thinking why.
The listening silence shifted awkwardly. He had the feeling that he had asked an embarrassing question.
‘Well?’ he insisted.
‘If I have the time, then we move,’ came a slightly injured reply, eventually.
‘Explain,’ Farnor persisted.
Then he felt the prese
