The Tree of Ecrof

by Kobe Bryant

  He didn’t have to wait long. A large group of girls swarmed the stand and began examining the Gleams. They crowded the stall, passing boxes around as they sought the right sizes and colors. Soon the stand was in chaos with shoes and boxes all over the place. The merchant was flustered, turning around and around to search his inventory for different sizes and styles for his customers.

  This was Rovi’s chance. He knew it. He bolted from the archway, down the line of stalls that led to the rubber merchant’s. There was a hand on his shoulder. He turned and was once again face-to-face with the strange bald man. There was a friendly twinkle in his green eyes. “Rovi,” he said. Or perhaps Rovi had imagined it.

  But Rovi was in the zone now. Nothing was going to distract him from his task, not even a stranger from the mainland who seemed to know his name. This was what Rovi was born to do. He had imagined it so many times, it was as if it had already happened. He could already see himself doing it—see himself taking the shoes, tucking them under his arm. He could see the path that he would take between the stalls. He wouldn’t have to think as he darted between customers and vendors. It would be like a dance. His feet would lead him. They always did.

  Without skipping a beat, he shook off the man’s hand and kept moving toward the rubber merchant. Some of the girls had squatted down on the ground to try on sneakers. Boxes were piled all around them. Others were shouting sizes, styles, and colors at the merchant even as he handed over more and more boxes.

  Rovi took a deep breath. Without looking, he already knew where all the Phoenician guards were stationed. He knew the best escape route—a small gate behind the archway at the northwestern corner of the market that led to a narrow flight of stairs, which would take him to the maze of the Lower City where he could lose himself in the tangled streets. And from there back to the bridge and down to the river where he could finally put on his Grana Gleams.

  Now. Now, Rovi. His inner voice was speaking, telling him the time was right. His inner voice was never wrong. It knew.

  Rovi leaped through the clusters of girls and grabbed the shoebox. “Sorry,” he blurted as he knocked the boxes over and sent the girls tumbling into one another. Then he turned and ran. As he expected, his feet led him, finding the perfect path between two stalls, the best way to jump over a giant basket of melons. Behind him he could hear the Alkebulan merchant ringing his bell, crying, “THIEF! THIEF!”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Rovi could see the guards leaving their posts. Their red turbans always gave them away, allowing Rovi to track them from a distance. Today was no exception. Except that there were more of them—ten as opposed to five turbans closing in on him from different corners of the market. He would need to alter his course.

  So instead of heading straight for the covered walkway, he ran deeper into the market, into the thick, chaotic center where the vendors were jammed together so close it was sometimes impossible to tell one stand from another. Even in the crowd and commotion, Rovi’s feet never faltered, always finding the narrowest passage through which he could move.

  Still, the turbaned guards were closing in. But they didn’t have the skill of a ten-year-old boy for disappearing. He could see one of them ahead of him signaling to one out of sight that they had him cornered. Rovi glanced from side to side. There was a low tent under which a tanned, creased old man from the Rhodan Islands was smoking fish over low coals. In an instant, Rovi was in that tent, trying not to choke on the fishy smoke. He could see the guards’ red boots passing back and forth outside. He couldn’t stay in the tent much longer. Either the guards or the fish vendor would find him.

  So before that happened—he bolted again. Out the back of the tent, away from the center of the market, moving quickly, but more haphazardly than usual, knocking over baskets and barrels as he went, drawing more notice than it would be possible to outrun. Suddenly everyone was on the lookout for Swiftfoot.

  Rovi gripped the shoebox to his side and took a deep breath. He was special. He knew that. He could do this. He wasn’t sure why, but he knew. He just had to make it out of the plaza.

  He could hear merchants calling out to one another to stop him. He could hear his nickname being shouted across the marketplace. Swiftfoot. But somehow he stayed ahead of his pursuers. He could see the archway. He was almost there. Just a few more steps. He was going to do this. He was going to make it.

  He stepped out of the plaza into the archway, kicking a drum that an old Sandlander woman was banging for spare change. He leaped over a snake charmer. He jostled a juggler. Finally! He’d reached the gate to the stairs.

  And there was the bald stranger blocking his path. Rovi skidded to a stop, his heart in his mouth, his stomach sinking to his feet. He was caught. He dropped the shoes.

  The man stooped, picked up the box, and handed it back to Rovi. “Go,” he said. “Quickly. Don’t look back.” The short bald man with the twinkling green eyes opened the gate. And Rovi raced down the stairs, clutching his Grana Gleams, into the maze of the Lower City where no one would ever find him. He didn’t look back.

  3

  PRETIA

  THE BOOK

  Pretia turned over a golden envelope with her name written on it in green lettering. This was easily the thousandth time she’d stared at this piece of paper—her admission to Ecrof Academy, the best sports school in Epoca. It had arrived the day after her birthday, a present even better than her Grana Gleams.

  Admission to Ecrof was a mystery. Each year, the academy’s Trainers opened the school’s ancient scrolls to discover the names of the incoming class of recruits—students who were said to have the most powerful grana in the land. This year there were seventeen names. Pretia’s was one of them. She was the first royal-born child in the land, the heir to both the Dreamers’ and Realists’ houses. Naturally, her name had appeared on the scrolls.

  She knew what her classmates would say, that she was admitted for her heritage and not her talent. But she was accustomed to being treated differently by everyone. Ecrof would be no exception. Except now she had a secret: her bad grana. She wasn’t so sure about Ecrof anymore.

  Pretia looked at the pile of suitcases and duffel bags stacked in her sitting room. Anara had spent the weeks since her birthday in an endless flurry of packing, so much packing that Pretia had begun to worry that Anara had ordered even more clothes for her just to put them in bags. Now had come the time for final preparations.

  “It’s only for nine months,” Pretia moaned as her nurse dug through her wardrobe one last time, adding just one more ceremonial dress, just one more backup pair of sneakers, just one more pair of pajamas.

  “But I won’t even need a ceremonial dress,” Pretia complained, flopping back on the bed.

  “It’s not every day that my favorite person goes off to school,” Anara said, putting a stop to her packing for one moment to kiss Pretia on her head.

  “Yeah,” Pretia said. “I’m going to school, not on an around-the-world voyage.”

  “Pretia—you do know that Ecrof Academy is on an island, right? If you forget something, it will take ages to get it to you.”

  Of course Pretia knew that Ecrof was on an island. There wasn’t a single thing she didn’t know about Ecrof. It was not simply the best school in Epoca, on the most sacred island in Epoca—the former home to the Gods of Granity—but it had produced the highest number of Epic Athletes of any academy in the land. And what’s more, its Head Trainer was Janos Praxis, the most decorated athlete ever to compete in the Epic Games . . . and Pretia’s favorite uncle.

  Ever since Pretia could remember, she’d wanted to go to Ecrof and train on the sacred fields, play on the same courts, and use the same equipment as the most famous Epic Athletes. And tomorrow she was going.

  There was only one problem. Ever since she had lit Hurell’s flame and then accidentally pushed Davos off the cliff, Pretia had been unwilling to use her grana.
She knew it was cursed. It was evil. And she was terrified of what would happen next. There was something dark and uncontrollable in her. She could step outside of herself. Half of her was bad. She was capable of horrible things. What terrible thing would she do next? Whenever she felt a wave of tingling in her limbs or her senses heightened, she remembered Davos disappearing from sight. Why had she lit the flame to the Fallen God? Why?

  She saw the way the castle kids now kept their distance from her, giving her a wide berth every time she passed by. She’d looked for Davos, hoping to apologize again, but every time he saw her, he hightailed it in the other direction, as if she was going to push him again. She knew they wouldn’t dare tell on her directly, but there was always a chance that gossip would spread. What would happen when people learned what Pretia was capable of?

  Whenever she was tempted to put on her golden shoes, she distracted herself with something dreary—a dull book on the history of Epoca or a pamphlet on ceremonial attire for state dinners. Anything that made her forget how badly she wanted to run, play, compete. Anything that made her forget her cursed grana.

  Her parents and Anara thought her moodiness had to do with her missing grana and Pretia didn’t correct them. She could never let them know what she was capable of, what she had done. She couldn’t let them know that Hurell might have granted her wish.

  She would go to Ecrof as planned, as she’d always dreamed. But she wouldn’t use her grana. Not now. Not ever. And she wouldn’t be an Epic Athlete. Deep down she knew that giving up on that goal was a small price to pay for never, ever harming someone again as she had harmed Davos. But still, it hurt.

  Anara zipped up the final bag for the final time. “That should do it,” she said.

  “I hope so,” Pretia said.

  “You’ll thank me when you get there.”

  A bell clanged through the castle corridors. Anara’s eyes widened in alarm. “Pretia, you’re not dressed!”

  “Dressed?” Pretia said. She was dressed, in shorts and a T-shirt.

  “We’ve lost track of time,” Anara said, opening one of the bags and tearing through it. “The Ceremony of the Book.”

  Pretia rolled her eyes. She’d secretly hoped that Anara and everyone else had forgotten. Another ceremony. Another important function at which she was going to be told how important she was to the nation of Epoca. Another lecture on how she was the Child of Hope—the child for the future. Well, Pretia had grown certain over the last few weeks that all of that was nonsense. The Child of Hope did not push other children off cliffs! The Child of Hope did not accidentally pray to Hurell.

  “Can’t they just hand me my book like a normal kid?” Pretia said as Anara began pulling a blue-and-purple ceremonial dress over her head.

  “You are not a normal kid,” Anara said.

  “How did you get your book? Was there a big boring ceremony with all sorts of people staring at you?”

  “My mother gave it to me. And that was that.”

  “See—” Pretia began to object.

  Anara was now tugging at her hair, trying to flatten and braid it. “Pretia—every child in Epoca receives his or her Book of Grana in a personal way unique to them. If yours is meant to be a ceremony with all sorts of people staring at you, then that’s what the gods have willed.”

  “But—” Pretia tried again.

  Another bell rang. If Pretia didn’t hurry, soon she’d hear her father’s voice booming through the phonopipes.

  “Now get going,” Anara said, pulling her toward the door. “It’s one last ceremony, and then tomorrow you’ll go to school. Then you can be a normal kid.”

  One last ceremony—Pretia liked the sound of that. She opened the door and dashed into the hall.

  “Wait,” Anara called, “your shoes.”

  Pretia looked down. She was wearing her Grana Gleams.

  “I can’t hurry if I can’t run,” Pretia said, “and these are my best running shoes.” She smiled over her shoulder at her nurse, then picked up the pace and sprinted through the Hall of the Gods of Granity, which led to the Atrium, where her parents were waiting. This time she held her breath as she passed Hurell’s shrouded statue.

  At the far end, Pretia skidded to a stop. She smoothed her dress and patted her hair so it didn’t look like a rat’s nest. A glance down showed that the laces on her left shoe were untied.

  “Pretia!”

  Her father’s deep, melodious voice echoed from the Atrium below. “How many times have I told you not to run through the Hall of the Gods?”

  There was no time to tie her sneaker. Pretia started down the final flight of stairs. “I wasn’t—” she tried. But she knew it was pointless. She could never lie to her father, and he could never stay mad at her.

  “Sorry,” she said. The room was semicircular with great columns on all sides that let out onto a balcony that overlooked the Campos Field, where the Epic Games ceremony was held.

  King Airos and Queen Helena stood together underneath the high-domed roof. They were dressed, as always, in the colors of their houses—the king in purple and the queen in blue.

  Pretia was always struck by the sight of her parents standing side by side, especially by their height, but also by the fact that she didn’t look much like either of them. Some people acknowledged she bore a slight resemblance to her mother. They had the same black hair and the same green eyes. That’s where the similarities ended. While Helena’s pale skin darkened only after much exposure to Epoca’s constant sunshine, Pretia was naturally tan, the color of the people of the Sandlands.

  Unlike her parents, who were both tall and sturdily built, Pretia was fine-boned and narrow, more like a long-distance runner than a formidable basketball player or soccer star. And she was short, shorter than her only first cousin, Castor, as well as all the castle workers’ children. But she was only ten, her parents told her, and they assured her that height and strength would come.

  The king was large and athletic, with reddish-blond hair that, like his wife’s, was now streaked with silver. His features were round and had grown more so as he aged. Pretia knew the rumor that her father had been one of the most promising athletes in Epoca but had chosen the art of statesmanship over sports when he’d been selected by his father to lead House Somni. So now his stomach was a little larger than it used to be, and his face a little softer. Deep creases ran away from his eyes, the result, Pretia liked to imagine, of years of laughter.

  Pretia understood that her parents had been much older than was considered normal when she was born. She had been born late, after much difficulty and sadness. She didn’t quite understand the nature of this sadness, but she could see it written on her mother’s face in the downward turn of her mouth and the distant look that crept into her eyes from time to time. While the king made his presence known at every moment with his rolling laugh and loud, jovial voice, there were times that Queen Helena seemed to retreat so far into herself that she became nearly invisible.

  Pretia also knew that people, from the cooks to her royal relatives, whispered that her looks were due to the unusual—some would say unnatural—marriage between her parents. Until the king and queen married, there had been no royal union between Dreamers and Realists. The houses kept to themselves and only competed against each other once every four years in the Epic Games for control of Epoca.

  But Pretia’s parents’ marriage had changed everything so that no matter whether the Dreamers or the Realists emerged from the Epic Games victorious, Helena and Airos would still hold power—together. And when it was Pretia’s turn to take control of Epoca, the Epic Games would be even less meaningful, since she would remain in control of the country regardless of the outcome.

  “Are you ready?” King Airos said, looping his arm through Pretia’s.

  Pretia looked into her father’s eyes. Was he crying? “Are you okay?” she asked.
/>   “It’s a big day for you, Pretia, receiving your Grana Book.”

  “Oh, come on, Papa,” Pretia said. “It’s just a book.”

  The king placed his hand on Pretia’s shoulder. “No, Pretia, it’s not just a book. It’s the key to the rest of your life.”

  Grana Books were a tradition unique in Epoca. Every child had one made for them on the hidden island of Docen by the Guardians of the Book. No one had ever visited this island. But once a child’s birth was registered, his or her parents would report the birth to the Guardians and a book would be crafted using craft known only to those on Docen. Some said that the books were inspired by a child’s parental history. Others said their contents were conjured through prophecy. When the books were ready, they were sent to the new parents to be handed down on a child’s tenth birthday. The books were made to guide children through life, to offer answers when parents could not, and then long into adulthood. They were a mixture of nature and nurture—half tailored to the child’s projected personality and half reflecting the parents’ worldview.

  Pretia had heard rumors of outcast or orphaned children unlucky enough not to have Grana Books, who passed through life lost and without guidance. And there were even stories of families who had passed down the wrong Grana Book to a child, which made the child’s work of interpreting the book much more difficult.

  Now the queen looped her arm through Pretia’s free one. “Sweetheart,” she said. “You must never dismiss the importance of your book. Now, let’s go. The Speaker of Grace and the rest of our family are waiting under the Gods’ Eye.” And together, Pretia and her parents proceeded to the very top of Castle Airim.