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Prologue

For I shall learn from flower and leaf

That color every drop they hold,

To change the lifeless wine of grief

To living gold

—Sara Teasdale, "Alchemy"

The tree wo Most of her leaves had already fallen, but those re her back She pulled her roots up fro hairy tendrils that flinched in the chill late autumn air

An iron fence had surrounded her trunk for years, the stink of the metal as faed her roots over it She tuhts filling with pain

A huainst the brick wall of a building A taxi screeched to a halt and blared its horn

Long branches tipped over a bottle as the tree woman scralass as it rolled into the street, watching the dregs of bitter poison drip out of the neck, seeing the familiar scrawl on the little strip of paper secured ax The contents of that bottle should have been a tonic, not the instruain

One of the dogs started barking

The tree wo her breath and befuddling her She had been crawling soreen patches, like bruises, bloo her trunk

"Ravus," the tree wo "Ravus"

Chapter 1

Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the saet somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!