The heartwood tree was gone, and Thalen Greenleaf stood in the pit where its roots had been. For a thousand years the tree had held his clan's memory in its living wood. Now the ground gaped raw and empty. His people wept behind him. Thalen did not weep. He knelt and pressed his palm to the torn earth, searching for any sign of who had done this. He found none. No tracks. No broken branches. Nothing to chase. The thieves had come in the night and left no trail. Without a trail, Thalen could not follow. Without following, he could not bring the tree home. He circled the pit twice, his forest-green tunic dragging through mud. The soil told him nothing. Whoever took the tree knew how to erase their steps. He returned to his home as dusk fell. His shelter was woven from broad overlapping leaves, and inside hung a lantern wrapped in moss, its light soft and gold. Thalen sat beneath it and stared at his empty hands. His grandmother had planted the heartwood. His grandmother's grandmother had sung to it. He had promised the clan he would find it. He had no way to keep that promise. A sound pulled him up. Something tapped against the leaves of his shelter. He stepped outside. A dragonfly hovered before him, its wings shining with every color at once, red bleeding into violet, its body slick and bright. It darted close, then away, then close again. Thalen had never seen such a creature. It flew as if it wanted him to follow. He reached for it. The dragonfly dropped something into the mud at his feet. Thalen crouched and picked it up. A single splinter of wood, pale and warm in his fingers. He knew that grain. He knew that smell. It was heartwood. The splinter had fallen from something carried past this spot. The thieves had come this way. The dragonfly circled once more and shot toward the dark line of the trees, then paused, waiting. Thalen stood. His hands were no longer empty. He went inside and took the moss-wrapped lantern from its hook. He tucked the splinter into his tunic, against his chest. When he stepped out again, the dragonfly still hovered at the tree line, its colors bright against the dark. It had shown him the direction. Now he had a trail, and a guide who knew where the trail led. "Show me," Thalen said. The dragonfly flew. Thalen followed, the lantern swinging in his fist, the splinter warm over his heart. The chase had begun.

Thalen followed the dragonfly deep into the trees. The lantern swung in his fist, its moss-wrapped light bobbing over roots and stone. The splinter of heartwood lay warm against his chest. For hours the bright wings led him on. Then the ground opened, and the dragonfly stopped. Two trails split before him. Both were bare dirt. Both bent into the dark and vanished. No footprints marked either one. Thalen crouched and held the lantern low. He read the left trail, then the right. The soil told him nothing, the same as the pit where the tree had stood. He knew this trick. The thieves erased their steps. Pick wrong, and he could walk miles the wrong way while the tree slipped further from his clan. The dragonfly hovered between the two paths. It did not choose. It flew a little down the left trail, then darted back. Then down the right, then back. It seemed lost too. Thalen stood still. He would not guess. A guess could cost him everything. He drew the splinter from his tunic and held it in his open palm. The wood was warm. He remembered how heartwood worked. It stored the clan's memory in its living grain. Maybe a piece of it still remembered its own tree. He turned toward the left trail and lifted the splinter. Nothing. He turned toward the right. The splinter grew warmer against his skin. He stepped down the right trail, and the warmth spread. He stepped back, and it cooled. The heartwood pulled toward its parent tree, like a needle toward the north. Thalen laughed once, sharp and surprised. He did not need footprints. He carried the trail in his own hand. But the dragonfly did not follow him down the right path. It hovered over the left trail. Its wings flared brighter, red bleeding into violet, urgent. It flew a body-length down the left, then back to him, then down again. Thalen stopped. The splinter said right. The dragonfly said left. He looked at the guide that had brought him this far, and he looked at the wood over his heart. He trusted the wood. It came from his own tree. He followed the splinter down the right trail. The dragonfly circled his head twice, fast, then shot away down the left and was gone. His guide had left him. The bright wings that led him from his shelter no longer lit the dark. Thalen stood alone with a lantern and a splinter that grew warmer with every step forward. He walked on into the trees, and soon the right trail bent toward a strange light ahead. Between the trunks glowed a cluster of leaves in every color at once, red and gold and blue burning in the dark. The splinter in his hand went hot as a coal.

The colored leaves burned bright ahead, but Thalen's lantern was dying. The moss-wrapped light shrank to a dull coin in his fist. He shook it. The glow flickered and sank lower. Around him the trees swallowed the last of it, and the dark closed in. He drew the splinter and held it out. In the light it had run hot as a coal. Now, with the lantern nearly gone, its warmth thinned to nothing. He turned in a slow circle. Left, right, back. He felt no pull. The dark stole the wood's whisper the same way it stole his sight. Thalen stopped. He remembered his home, the shelter of broad woven leaves where the splinter had first fallen at his feet. He remembered how it glowed there, warm against green shade. The wood wanted light. It answered light. He knelt and cupped his hands around the failing lantern. He pressed the splinter flat against the warm glass. For a breath, nothing. Then a spark caught deep in the grain. The splinter drank the last of the lantern's glow and gave it back, brighter, a clean gold thread running through the wood. The lantern guttered out. The splinter did not. It burned steady in his palm, its own small sun. Thalen turned. The wood pulled him forward, sharp and sure, toward the burning leaves. He walked. The pull grew. He pushed through a wall of glowing branches into a clearing. It stood in the center. A giant of stacked stone, taller than three men, its slabs cracked and green with age. Carved lines ran across its chest and arms. Some of the lines glowed a faint blue, the same cold color that lit its deep-set eyes. It did not move. It had the stillness of a thing that had stood a thousand years. Behind it grew the tree of colored leaves. The splinter in Thalen's hand strained toward it, hot and violent, nearly leaping from his grip. This was no ordinary tree. This was the trail's end. His heartwood was here, or its trace was, and the stone giant stood between. "I've come for what your masters stole," Thalen said. His voice was small in the clearing. The blue eyes brightened. Stone ground against stone. One great arm lifted, and the earth shook when its fist came down where Thalen had stood. He rolled clear across wet roots. The giant turned to face him, slow and certain. Thalen crouched in the dark, the burning splinter his only light. He had found the trail's end. He could not read a path around a thing that guarded it. The wood had led him true. It had led him to a wall of ancient stone that meant to crush him.

Thalen scrambled behind the tree of colored leaves. The stone giant turned to follow, slow but certain. The splinter burned in his fist, straining toward the trunk. He pressed his palm flat against the bark and waited for the wood to answer him. Nothing came. No warmth. No whisper. This was not his heartwood. It was only a tree that glowed. His stomach dropped. He had accused the giant. He had drawn its fists. And he had no proof at all. If he tore this tree down and it was the wrong one, his clan's thousand years would be gone. He needed to know before he acted. He needed the wood to speak. Thalen drew the carved wooden compass his grandmother had left him. Its needle had always pointed the way home. He held it near the splinter. The needle spun, then locked, aimed not at the colored tree but past it, deeper into the dark. His true heartwood lay beyond this clearing. The colored tree was a decoy left to catch fools. The giant's fist swept down. Thalen dove clear. The blow split a root and threw wet earth across his face. He rolled up against a cluster of glowing mushrooms that lit the trunk with soft blue light. He grabbed the splinter and pressed it to the largest cap. The wood drank the glow and flared bright as a torch. Thalen thrust the burning splinter high. The light struck the giant's carved chest. The blue lines there brightened, then flickered, confused. The giant froze mid-step, one arm raised. It had been shaped to guard a heartwood, and the splinter's light spoke the same old language its carvings did. A growl rolled from the trees. Something large moved at the clearing's edge. A dire wolf slid into the light, its coat dark as shadow, its frame broader than any wolf Thalen knew. Its pale eyes fixed on him. It had followed his glow through the dark, drawn like everything else to the burning wood. Thalen's breath caught. He had no weapon but light. He made his choice. He would not fight both. He turned and ran past the frozen giant, deeper into the trees, following the compass needle and the splinter's pull. Branches tore at his tunic. Behind him, stone ground against stone as the giant woke again. The wolf's paws thudded after him, closing fast. Thalen ran with the truth clutched in his fist. The colored tree was a lie. His real heartwood lay ahead, somewhere in the black wood. He had left the clearing's safety for the deeper dark, and now a giant and a wolf both hunted the light he could not put out. He did not stop. He could not. The pull grew stronger with every stride, and so did the sound of the hunt behind him.

The trees closed in ahead. Thalen shoved at a wall of thorned branches, but they held fast. He turned. Behind him, the giant's slow steps ground closer, and the dark wolf slid between trunks, pale eyes locked on his glow. He was pinned. The splinter still burned in his fist, and it pulled hard toward the tangle, straight into wood too thick to pass. He pried at a gap with both hands. A branch snapped back and tore his palm. Blood dripped on the moss. The wolf lowered its head and stalked forward, one paw at a time. Behind it, stone scraped stone. Thalen had no way through and no way back. A small light flared near his shoulder. He flinched. A sprite hovered there, no taller than his hand, her wings ragged at one edge. Green leaves crowned her hair. A dark bruise marked her side, and one wing dragged as she flew. "Stop pulling at it," she said. "You'll never win against thorns." Her voice was thin but sharp. "Who are you?" "I saw them take your tree." Her eyes flicked to the wolf, then back. "I've been hiding in this wood since. Now hush and hold up your light." Thalen lifted the glowing splinter. The sprite pressed her small hands to the thicket. She hummed low, and the branches shivered. Green shoots curled. The thorns did not part for strength. They parted for her. "The wood knows me," she said. "It doesn't know you." A narrow gap opened, just wide enough for a body. The wolf sprang. Thalen threw himself through the gap. Thorns raked his back. Behind him, the branches snapped shut like a fist. The wolf slammed into them and yelped. Its jaws snapped on empty air, walled off by the tangle. Thalen rolled onto packed earth and gasped. The giant's steps faded, blocked by the same wall. The sprite squeezed through the last of the gap and dropped beside him, breathing hard, clutching her hurt side. "That took more than I had left," she said. He sat up and looked around. He stood in a clear path under old trees. Soft light glowed from a mushroom set into a trunk, its cap wide and pale. The splinter tugged ahead, calm now, sure. "You could have let them take me," he said. "I want that tree back too." She wiped dirt from her cheek. "Its memories aren't only your clan's. My kind lived in its roots." Thalen closed his fist around the splinter. The way ahead lay open at last. He owed his life to a sprite he did not know, and she wanted the same thing he did. "Then we go together," he said. She nodded and rose on her torn wings. Thalen followed the pull deeper into the wood, no longer alone, the giant and the wolf sealed behind him.