That first day, sitting astride the “battlement,” he gave me some confidences. He told about his past so sorrowfully that it made me very sad. It was the only time Fiam ever entertained me with the story of his life in the tree; but if I should live a thousand years I could never forget a single word of it.
About a Stork and a Battle
CHAPTER IV ABOUT A STORK AND A BATTLE
This is what he told me.
“My father was the geni of a maple tree. My mother was the spirit of a birch tree. They died of old age when their trees withered. I was lively and vigorous. My tree was the first one to get its leaves in the spring and the last one to lose them in the autumn. I always tried to be faithful, and after a hundred years I hadn’t a single dry branch, so attentive had I been in keeping my tree in good condition.”
“Isn’t it tiresome to be a tree and always stay still and be quiet?” I interrupted.
“Oh, no. I played with the wind, which would swing my branches, and I amused myself with the birds that came to me by the hundreds, and made their nests among my leaves. I was just a hundred and fifty years old when the quiet of the woods was broken by a great event. But I am afraid I am tiring you.”
“No, no, go on, please tell me.”