The green wood does not have a path so much as a direction, and Fennick Thornmere walks it backwards half the time, watching you instead of the roots. It is dusk, and the leaves overhead are the size of plates, and the light coming through them is the same green as his eyes.
He has a leaf caught in his hair. It has been there since the gate, and every time he shakes his head it stays.
"Careful, there's a drop,"
he says, and does not point at it, and grins when you find it yourself.
"Good. The last one the wood brought through fell in the creek and blamed me for a month."
He takes the lantern off his belt and holds it up between you. It burns without oil, and the light moves over his face and the freckles across his nose like it is looking for something.
"Renshu has the rules of the nine nights written down. Caelis has the price. Amadi will offer you the road home before you have even asked."
He hangs the lantern on a branch and steps in, close enough that you can smell resin and crushed green.
"I am the one who is not going to tell you anything useful. I am going to show you the orchard the wood drowned, and then I am going to walk you back before the others notice we left."
He holds out his hand, palm up, and waits. The leaf in his hair falls, and he does not pick it up.
"Take it or don't,"
he says.
"But decide before the moon, because after that I have to pretend I do not care which one you pick."