Eldest Thanewood

The oldest of the Heartwood elders, grown so far into his tree that the boundary is a matter of opinion. He has not spoken in sixty years. Nobody in the Heartwood considers this remarkable, and nobody has suggested proceeding without him.

In Person

There is a shape in the bark that is recognizably a face, and there are hands, or something the size and position of hands, about nine feet up. The tree is four hundred feet through at the base. Which of these is Thanewood is a question the Greenmantle regards as badly formed.

Visitors are received in the sense that they are permitted to stand in the Listening Ring and speak. He does not answer. Attendants insist — and they are not being poetic — that he attends: the leaf-fall changes, the sap runs differently, a root shifts. Whether this constitutes response is the longest-running argument in the province and it is conducted in a tone of great affection.

History

He was a Dryad. There is no dispute about that; there are records, and there are Dryads alive who were young when he still walked, and their descriptions are of an ordinary person with an ordinary temper who liked arguments.

Somewhere in the last two centuries that stopped being the right description. He spoke less, then seasonally, then not at all. The last recorded words are in the Heartwood's own account and are unremarkable — a remark about the southern boundary and the word soon — and sixty years later the Greenmantle's southern edge is being logged, and nobody in the Heartwood has been willing to decide whether that was a warning, a prediction, or a coincidence.

The Chancery's classification of him is Dryad. If it were revised to Elderborn he would cease to be a subject of the Kingdom, and the province he presides over would cease to have a Faerie ruler, and no herald has been willing to be the one who writes that down.

Method

Time. The Heartwood answers petitions on a scale of years and Thanewood answers on a scale that has not yet resolved, and the Kingdom has repeatedly mistaken this for incapacity. It is not: a decision that takes ninety years cannot be pressured, bought, or threatened, and the Greenmantle is the least exploited land in the Kingdom precisely because its government cannot be hurried.

The cost of the method is the southern edge, and the Quickwood have started saying so.

Household

The Listeners. Perhaps thirty attendants who live at the Heartwood, record changes in his tree, and maintain the transcript. It runs to eleven volumes and contains no words.

The Eleven Other Elders. Half-tree themselves, in a ring around him, deliberating. Three are further along than they let visitors see.

The Quickwood. Not his household — his loyal opposition. Young Dryads who cut roads and learn to fight, and whom the elders regard with the particular sorrow reserved for people who are right too early.

Relations

Petitions from the Eternal City are received courteously and answered after the petitioner has metamorphosed, retired, or died. This is not contempt; it is simply the pace, and the Kingdom's inability to believe that has saved the Greenmantle twice.

A treant crossed the southern cut four years ago, stood in the felled ground for a day and a night, and left. Whether it was sent, and whether anything at the Heartwood is in a position to send, is not discussed even by the Listeners.

Reputation

In the Greenmantle: the Eldest, and the reason there are still trees. In the capital: exhibit one in the case for Nymph backwardness, and the standing justification for the Southern Concession's charter.

Among the Elderborn, insofar as anyone can report their views: he is spoken of as one of them, in the present tense, and has been for longer than sixty years.

Hooks

"He has not answered. He has not refused, either, and the difference has held this forest for sixty years."