Fern Eva wanted only to sink her roots into the ground and grow. She was taller than any man, her skin gray bark, her hair thick with moss. For years she had dreamed of standing in the forest's heart, spreading her limbs until every lost child and cold traveler could shelter beneath her. But she could not root herself. Iron shackles clamped both her wrists, and the metal held her small tendrils tight against her skin. She stood inside the hollow trunk of an ancient oak, the one place the men had never found her. Its bark was scarred and weathered, its opening wide enough to swallow her whole. She pressed her wrists against the inner wall. The shackles scraped. Her roots strained under the iron and could not push past it. The soil lay just beyond the trunk's mouth, dark and waiting. She could not reach it. Fern raised both arms and struck the shackles against the oak's hard wood. The blow rang. Pain shot up her arms. The iron held. She struck again, harder. Chips of bark fell. The old cuts on her wrists opened and wept clear sap. Still the shackles did not break. She stopped and looked at the wounds. Where the sap touched the iron, the metal darkened. She watched a thin thread of root slip from the cut, thin as a hair. It curled around the shackle. It found the worn crack in the lock and pushed inside. Fern held still and let it grow. The root swelled. The iron groaned. The lock split. One shackle dropped and struck the ground. She pulled her freed hand loose and gripped the second cuff. She twisted it against the wood until it cracked and fell beside the first. Both shackles lay in the dirt, dark and useless. Her wrists were bare for the first time she could remember. Fern stepped from the hollow oak into open soil. She spread her toes wide. Roots burst from her feet and drove down through the dark ground. They spread fast, gripping stones, drinking water. She felt the whole forest through them at once. She was rooting at last. But the roots did not stop. They pulled deeper than she meant, past her control, dragging her down. Her legs stiffened into wood. Her feet fused to the earth. She could no longer lift them. The freedom she wanted now bound her in a new way. She was rooting into a place she had not chosen, and she could not move to find the forest's true heart. From the trees came a thin, wooden note. A child's whistle. Then small feet in the leaves, coming toward the sound of the breaking iron. Fern stood fixed to the ground and could not step back to hide. The children were coming, and she could not run.