Children of the Mind (Ender, Book 4) (Ender Quartet)

possible. It was as if a small star had come down to take residence inside the tree.
    After the dazzle of the light had lost its novelty, though, Olhado noticed something else -- noticed, in fact, what the pequeninos themselves most marveled at. There were blossoms on the tree. And some of the blossoms had already blown, and behind them fruit was already growing, growing visibly.
    "I thought," said Olhado softly, "that the trees could bear no fruit."
    "They couldn't," answered Plower. "The descolada robbed them of that."
    "But what is this?" said Olhado. "Why is there light inside the tree? Why is the fruit growing?"
    "The fathertree Human says that Ender has brought his friend to us. The one called Jane. She's visiting within the mothertrees in every forest. But even he did not tell us of this fruit."
    "It smells so strong," said Olhado. "How can it ripen so fast? It smells so strong and sweet and tangy, I can almost taste it just from breathing the air of the blossoms, the scent of the ripening fruit."
    "I remember this smell," said Plower. "I have never smelled it before in my life because no tree has ever blossomed and no fruit has ever grown, but I know this smell. It smells like life to me. It smells like joy."
    "Then eat it," said Olhado. "Look -- one of them is ripe already, here, within reach." Olhado lifted his hand, but then hesitated. "May I?" he asked. "May I pluck a fruit from the mothertree? Not for me to eat -- for you."
    Plower seemed to nod with his whole body. "Please," he whispered.
    Olhado took hold of the glowing fruit. Did it tremble under his hand? Or was that his own trembling?
    Olhado gripped the fruit, firm but softening, and plucked it gently from the tree. It came away so easily. He bent and gave it to Plower. Plower bowed and took it reverently, lifted it to his lips, licked it, then opened his mouth.
    Opened his mouth and bit into it. The juice of it shone on his lips; he licked them clean; he chewed; he swallowed.
    The other pequeninos watched him. He held out the fruit to them. One at a time they came to him, brothers and wives, came to him and tasted.
    And when that fruit was gone, they began to climb the bright and glowing tree, to take the fruit and share it and eat it until they could eat no more. And then they sang. Olhado and his children stayed the night to hear them sing. The people of Milagre heard the sound of it, and many of them came into the faint light of dusk, following the shining of the tree to find the place where the pequeninos, filled with the fruit that tasted like joy, sang the song of their rejoicing. And the tree in the center of them was part of the song. The aiúa whose force and fire made the tree so much more alive than it had ever been before danced into the tree, along every path of the tree, a thousand times in every second.
    A thousand times in every second she danced this tree, and every other tree on every world where pequenino forests grew, and every mothertree that she visited burst with blossoms and with fruit, and pequeninos ate of it and breathed deep the scent of fruit and blossoms, and they sang. It was an old song whose meaning they had long forgotten but now they knew the meaning of it and they could sing no other. It was a song of the season of bloom and feast. They had gone so long without a harvest that they forgot what harvest was. But now they knew what the descolada had stolen from them long before. What had been lost was found again. And those who had been hungry without knowing the name of their hunger, they were fed.

CHAPTER 10
     
    “THIS HAS ALWAYS BEEN YOUR BODY”

    "Oh, Father! Why did you turn away?
    In the hour when I triumphed over evil,
    why did you recoil from me?"
    from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao
     
     
    Malu sat with Peter, Wang-mu, and Grace beside a bonfire near the beach. The canopy was gone, and so was much of the ceremony. There was kava, but, despite the ritual surrounding it, in Wang-mu's opinion they drank it now as much for the pleasure of it as for its holiness or symbolism.
    At one point Malu laughed long and loud, and Grace laughed too, so it took her a while to interpret. "He says that he cannot decide if the fact that the god was in you, Peter, makes you holy, or the fact that she left proves you to be unholy."
    Peter chuckled -- for courtesy, Wang-mu knew -- while Wang-mu herself did not laugh at all.
    "Oh, too bad," said Grace. "I had hoped you two might have a sense of humor."
    "We do," said