Stephen Donaldson - The One Tree

Reaching into the stone pot, he stirred the contents with one hand, then brought out a rank brown mass which looked like partially-hardened tar. “Chosen,” he said as he worked the mass with both hands, "I am condignly named Pitchwife. This is my 'pitch,' which few Giants and no others may grasp with impunity, for without Giant-flesh and Giant-craft any hand may be turned to stone. And the task for which I mould such pitch is 'wiving.'

“Witness!” he exclaimed as if his work made him gay. Climbing the ladder, he began to form his pitch like clay into the broken wall at the edge of the roof. Deftly, he shaped the pitch until it filled the breach, matching the lines of the wall exactly. Then he descended, returned to his slab of rock. His mighty fingers snapped a chip the size of his palm off the slab. His eyes gleamed. Chortling cheerfully, he went back to the roof.

With a flourish, as if to entertain a large audience, he embedded his chip in the pitch. At once, he snatched back his hand.

To Linden's amazement, the chip seemed to crystallize the pitch. Almost instantly, the mass was transformed to stone. In the space between two heartbeats, the pitch fused itself into the breach. The wall was restored to wholeness as if it had never been harmed. She could find no mark or flaw to distinguish the new stone from the old.

The expression on her face drew a spout of glee from Pitchwife. “Witness, and be instructed,” he laughed happily. “This bent and misbegotten form is an ill guide to the spirit within.” With precarious bravado, he thrust out his arms. “I am Pitchwife the Valorous!” he shouted. “Gaze upon me and suffer awe!”

His mirth was answered by the Giants nearby. They shared his delight, relished his comic posturing. But then the First's voice carried through the jests and ripostes. “Surely you are valorous,” she said; and for an instant Linden misread her tone. She appeared to be reprimanding Pitchwife's levity. But a quick glance corrected this impression. The First's eyes sparkled with an admixture of fond pleasure and dark memory. “And if you descend not from that perch,” she went on, “you will become Pitchwife the Fallen.”

Another shout of laughter rose from the crew. Feigning imbalance, Pitchwife tottered down the ladder; but his mien shone as if he could hardly refrain from dancing.

Shortly, the Giants returned to their tasks; the First moved away; and Pitchwife contented himself with continuing his work more soberly. He repaired the roof in small sections so that his pitch would not sag before he could set it; and when he finished, the roof was as whole as the wall. Then he turned his attention to the fire-scars along the deck. These he mended by filling them with pitch, smoothing them to match the deck, then setting each with a chip of stone. Though he worked swiftly, he seemed as precise as a surgeon., Sitting against the wall of the housing, Linden watched him. At first, his accomplishments fascinated her; but gradually her mood turned. The Giant was like Covenant-gifted with power; strangely capable of healing. And Covenant was the question to which she had found no answer.

In an almost perverse way, that question appeared to be the same one which so bedevilled her in another form. Why was she here? Why had Gibbon said to her, You are being forged as iron is forged to achieve the ruin of the Earth , and then afflicted her with such torment to convince her that he spoke the truth?

She felt that she had spent her life with that question and still could not reply to it.

“Ah, Chosen.” Pitchwife had finished his work. He stood facing her with arms akimbo and echoes of her uncertainty in his eyes. “Since first I beheld you in the dire mirk of the Sarangrave, I have witnessed no lightening of your spirit. From dark to dark it runs, and no dawn comes. Are you not content with the redemption of Covenant Giantfriend and Mistweave-a saving which none other could have performed?” He shook his head, frowning to himself. Then, abruptly, he moved forward, seated himself against the wall near her. “My people have an apothegm-as who does not in this wise and contemplative world?” He regarded her seriously, though the corners of his mouth quirked. “It is said among us, 'A sealed door admits no light.' Will you not speak to me? No hand may open that door but your own.”

She sighed. His offer touched her; but she was so full of things she did not know how to say that she could hardly choose among them. After a moment, she said, “Tell me there's a reason.”

“A reason?” he asked quietly.

“Sometimes-” She groped for a way to articulate her need. “He's why I'm here. Either I got dragged along behind him by accident. Or I'm supposed to do something to him. For him,” she added, remembering the old man on Haven Farm. “I don't know. It doesn't make sense to me. But sometimes when I'm sitting down there watching him, the chance he might die terrifies me. He's got so many things I need. Without him, I don't have any reasons here. I never knew I would feel”-she passed a hand over her face, then dropped it, deliberately letting Pitchwife see as much of her as he could-"feel so maimed without him.

“But it's more than that.” Her throat closed at what she was thinking. I just don't want him to die! "I don't know how to help him. Not really. He's right about Lord Foul-and the danger to the Land. Somebody has got to do what he's doing. So the whole world won't turn into a playground for Ravers. I understand that. But what can I do about it? I don't know this world the way he does. I've never even seen the things that made him fall in love with the Land in the first place. I've never seen the Land healthy .

“I have tried,” she articulated against the old ache of futility, “to help. God preserve me, I've even tried to accept the things I can see when nobody else sees them and for all I know I'm just going crazy. But I don't know how to share his commitment. I don't have the power to do anything.” Power, yes. All her life, she had wanted power. But her desire for it had been born in darkness-and wedded there more intimately than any marriage of heart and will. “Except try to keep him alive and hope he doesn't get tired of dragging me around after him. I don't think I've ever done anything with my life except deny . I didn't become a doctor because I wanted people to live. I did it because I hate death.”

She might have gone on, then. There in the sunlight, with the stone warm under her, the breeze in her hair, Pitchwife's gentleness at her side, she might have risked her secrets. But when she paused, the Giant spoke into the silence.

“Chosen, I hear you. There is doubt in you, and fear, and also concern. But these things pass as well by another name, which you do not speak,”

He shifted his posture, straightened himself as much as the contortion of his back allowed. “I am a Giant. I desire to tell you a story.”

She did not answer. She was thinking that no one had ever spoken to her with the kind of empathy she heard from Pitchwife.

After a moment, he commenced by saying, “Perchance it has come to your ears that I am husband to the First of the Search, whom I name Gossamer Glowlimn.” Mutely, she nodded. "That is a tale worthy of telling.

“Chosen,” he began, "you must first understand that the Giants are a scant-seeded people. It is rare among us for any family to have as many as three children. Therefore our children are precious to us-aye, a very treasure to all the Giants, even such a one as myself, born sickly and malformed like an augury of Earth-Sight to come. But we are also a long-lived people. Our children are children yet when they have attained such age as yours. Therefore our families may hope for lives together in spans more easily measured by decades than years. Thus the bond between parent and child, generation after generation, is both close and enduring-as vital among us as any marriage.