“Helmsman, rouse the marines!” Hanno ordered.

  He raced up and down the beach, searching in vain for any sign of the triremes. The sand lacked any tracks, and no masts rose upon the waters. Only the untethered anchors remained.

  “Tanit bring your grace!” Aba shouted.

  “Calm your prayers or you’ll have the whole population in riot,” Hanno said. “Swallow your fears and suppress theirs, and take your children with you. Artemisia!”

  Hanno strode over to where the helmsman stood around a gathering group of marines.

  “Where’s my ship?” she demanded.

  “What have the marines found?” Hanno asked.

  “The sentries are gone.”

  “What? Did they fall asleep and let the ships wander off?”

  “My men don’t nap on duty, King. The sentries are gone.”

  “Bostar. Bostar!”

  Hanno dashed into the trees. There he found Liva, who stood beyond the thick wall of trunks.

  “Bostar!” the king shouted.

  “Listen,” Liva whispered.

  “Listen to what? Bostar!”

  “Shh.”

  Hanno gritted his teeth to prepare a curse, but in the furious moment he heard a muffled shout. Artemisia and the marines caught up, and followed when Hanno and Liva raced into the forest.

  The shout led them to a wide, broken branch. Thick limbs like the legs of a centipede held it off the ground, and in their coiling grasp Liva spotted a marine from Hanno’s ship. Palms protruded from his mouth and covered his eyes, suppressing his shouts.

  “Barca, you let a tree fall on you! Where’s Bostar?” Hanno said, recognizing the marine as he tore at the branches.

  Liva and the others helped snap the limbs loose, and Barca fell to the dirt spitting leaves.

  “They took them,” the marine gasped.

  “Who took them? Tree worshippers? I’ll kill them. You hear me, tree-people! You have incited the wrath of Hanno!” the king shouted into the silent forest.

  “Not tree worshippers. The trees!”

  “He’s mad. Been out all night,” Artemisia reasoned. “Get him back to camp.”

  “No. No, I’m not mad. Or… I must be.”

  “What was it then?” Liva asked.

  Barca squeezed his eyes shut, and said, “The trees took me. Covered my mouth and held me with a hundred arms strong as iron. I managed to kick and twist myself enough to break the branch, and just before the leaves covered my eyes, I saw the ships moving across the ground like the rocks were water.”

  “A spell! Did you see any magic in the air?” Liva asked.

  “If it was magic my eyes didn’t see it. All I saw were the trees.”

  “And Bostar? Was Bostar with them?” Hanno asked.

  “Come, Hanno, trees? The tide must have washed them out. It’ll take weeks to build new triremes but at least there’s plenty of wood,” Artemisia said. She examined the forest and pressed her hand against a wide trunk. “We should get started cutting them down so they can be seasoned. No sense whining about—”

  A sudden groan came from the forest, as if it were taking a very deep breath.

  In the silence, Barca whispered, “It was the trees. They took the ships, and the sentries.”

  “Where?” Hanno asked.

  “Into the forest.” Barca pointed the direction.

  “I’ll burn every last tree. I’ll burn this forest! You hear me, evil trees! I shall burn every limb and twig till this becomes a peninsula of ash!”

  “But what about Bostar?” Liva asked.

  Hanno squeezed the hilt of his sword.

  “If they do have the ships, bad idea to burn them. You know, being made of wood and all,” Artemisia noted.

  Hanno roared in fury and swung his sword against the remaining branches. A shriek like wind passing through a hollow came from the forest, and the king growled at it in reply.

  “Artemisia and two others will join me in search of these trees. The rest of you, bring Barca back to camp and keep the people calm. Tell them their king shall retrieve the fleet,” Hanno ordered.

  “I’m coming too,” Liva insisted, but Hanno was already cutting his way through the brush.

  Each time he swung his blade against a high fern or felled a low hanging branch the forest leaves shook as if in a gale, though the wind remained calm.

  “It might be a good idea to pass through without damaging anything,” Liva advised.

  Hanno cut another branch.

  “I’m no forest trekker, Hanno,” Artemisia added.

  “I pay for your sword and your skill, not your tongue, Helmsman,” Hanno chided.

  Two marines followed behind Liva and the Greek. They held their weapons close, and stepped over every twig.

  “Hold on a moment,” Liva said, and tried to grab Hanno’s shoulder.

  He brushed her off and strode forward.

  “Wait!” Liva insisted.

  “Our ships and sentries could be dismantled at any moment,” Hanno said.

  “So why don’t the trees just take us out now?” Artemisia wondered.

  “Because they fear Hanno.”

  “Maybe, but they’re so thick we can’t see where we’re going,” Liva advised. She glanced at a nearby date palm barren of any fruit. “Let me climb up and see if I can spot a clearing.”

  “Didn’t Barca say the trees attacked him? And you want to climb one?” Artemisia asked.

  “It’s either that or get lost in the forest. Look behind you.”

  The path they’d walked looked thicker than it had before.

  “The trees are moving,” Liva noted.

  “Then scout for us. And you will obey her, tree,” the king threatened. “I am King Hanno, and…” Hanno bit his lip. He glared at Liva. “I’m talking to a tree.”

  “Not very well.”

  Hanno grunted and stepped away so Liva could press her palm against the trunk. She closed her eyes and leaned her head on its bark, whispering in some language Hanno didn’t understand, then switching to another.

  Liva finally let out a deep breath. “I don’t think I can understand it,” she concluded.

  “Yeah. It’s a tree,” Artemisia said.

  Liva shook her head. “Exactly. No magic, nothing human here. Otherwise I could understand it. But I hope the tree knows I’m asking its permission to climb it.”

  “You need not ask permission of a tree,” Hanno declared.

  “Never had to before. But I thought it might be necessary, given the circumstances.”

  Liva leapt to the first branch, which accepted her weight without moving. She then proceeded up the trunk, shimmying and climbing until she disappeared above the canopy.

  What she saw made her laugh.

  “If you find humor in this situation, I fail to appreciate it,” Hanno said.

  “You’d laugh too if you saw this,” Liva shouted down.

  “Did you find the ships?” Artemisia asked.

  “I think so.”

  Liva reached the forest floor with a few quick hops. Hanno appreciated the tightening of her muscles, well-used to climbing trees, and had to check his eyes from lingering on hers.

  “What did you see?” the king asked.

  “They’ve planted the ships,” Liva said.

  “What?”

  “The triremes. They’re upright, the bows protruding into the air like the tops of trees.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Artemisia said.

  “Whatever it is, they’re close. Where?” Hanno asked, and readied his blade.

  “In a field up ahead. This way. But I’d put that away if I were you,” Liva advised.

  Hanno said nothing. He kept his sword drawn and marched forward.

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  They soon came to the gap in the trees Liva had spotted. Fresh-tilled dirt filled their noses, and the familiar rustle of wind against sail guided them onward. They followed a narrow stream that ended with a spring-greened field. There they found the ships. Each trireme rested upright in the dirt, the bows looming over the tops of the trees.

  Some of them had their oars spread like roots in the open ground, others with the masts coated in dirt. In the center of the field, the explorers spotted a massive adansonia tree beside Hanno’s own ship. The trireme’s sail had been unfurled, and the tree held the cloth in a pair of branches, stretching it so the sail could reach the sunlight.

  The tree moved slowly, as if in the wind, and titled the sail with what sounded like a sad groan of yawning wood.

  “Hanno!” shouted Bostar.

  The bowman stood beneath the adansonia. Its tall roots caged Bostar and the rest of the sentries beneath its enormous trunk.

  “Bostar!” Hanno called out to his friend, then to the tree, “Release my men and my ships!”

  The tree shook, and threatened to collapse atop its roots.

  “No, wait!” Liva pleaded.

  Hanno growled at the sight of his companions in such a dangerous position.

  “Lower your sword, Hanno. I think you’re right. It’s afraid of you,” Liva instructed.

  “For good reason,” Hanno said.

  The tree quivered.

  Bostar and the sentries struggled against the roots, but couldn’t escape.

  Hanno growled again, and sheathed his sword.

  “Artemisia,” Hanno whispered, “see if the catapult works.”

  The helmsman nodded toward the other marines, and they snuck around the upright vessels.

  “Tell them the king of Carthage demands the trees release my ships and my companions,” Hanno told Liva.

  “We’re sorry we cut down your trees,” Liva began.

  “No we’re not.”

  The tree groaned. It put a branch against the trireme’s mast and tried to get more sunlight into the sail.

  More trees slithered into the field.

  “You showed weakness and now they attack,” Hanno scolded.

  “Wait, look,” Liva said.

  The trees advanced upon the ships, not the crew. They glided across the soil on silent roots, and pushed and tilted the triremes. A sound like wind whistling through a hollowed trunk echoed all over the forest, a moan of wood and earth.

  “They’re trying to save them,” Liva realized.

  “Save Bostar? He’s going to be crushed if they don’t release him,” Hanno said.

  “No. The ships. They planted them. They must think they’re trees.”

  Hanno frowned, but looked upon the field of upright triremes. Several trees embraced them like sick friends while others stood shaking nearby, weeping leaves.

  The adansonia groaned, and gestured a branch toward Hanno.

  “They want our help,” Liva realized.

  “You speak tree?” Hanno asked.

  “I speak what I see. Maybe not the language, but I see what they’re doing. Isn’t it obvious?”

  Hanno ground his teeth. The trees had yet to actually harm any of his men, and indeed looked more skittish than dangerous, despite their size. So the king approached.

  “They’ve been at it all day,” Bostar explained when Hanno drew near. “They stuck the ships into the ground and kept pouring spring water on them.”

  The adansonia groaned once more.

  It pressed a branch against the royal trireme’s hull, and shook its trunk.

  “How do we tell them the boats aren’t alive?” Liva whispered to Hanno.

  “I don’t even know if they have a language we could learn,” Hanno replied.

  “No, I mean, I don’t want to upset them.”

  “They’re trees. How would we upset them?”

  The adansonia lowered a branch to Liva’s back and pushed her against the trireme.

  Hanno drew his sword.

  “Release her!” he demanded.

  The tree positioned its trunk between Hanno and the trireme and shook its leaves at him.

  “It’s alright, Hanno!” Liva cautioned. “I think it just wants me to help save the ship.”

  Artemisia reached the catapult. Though it was on its side, she could angle its arm to target the adansonia. Hanno raised his sword to call the command, but realized the tree might crush Bostar and his ship if it were toppled.

  So he sheathed his blade and picked up a bit of twig that had fallen with the shaking leaves.

  “See this? This is like the boats,” Hanno shared.

  He stabbed the twig upright into the ground. The other trees paused.

  The adansonia leaned down to inspect the twig, then extended its branches toward the ships.

  “Yes, I know you already planted my triremes, but that’s as useless as this stick,” Hanno explained.

  He pointed to the twig again.

  The trees all froze.

  “This is ludicrous,” Hanno mumbled.

  “They’re confused,” Liva noted. “Don’t you see what he’s saying, trees? The boats aren’t alive. They’re like that stick.”

  The trees ignored Liva, though, and watched as Hanno cut strips of cloth from his tunic. He collected another stick and tied it to several more, forming a miniature raft.

  He held up the object to the leaf-shaking astonishment of the trees. They stepped away from Hanno, and wrapped their limbs around their trunks as if worried they’d be added to the tiny craft.

  “It’s just a boat, look,” Hanno said.

  He brought the raft to the nearby spring.

  “Those ships you planted? This is what they’re for,” Hanno said, indicating the upright triremes as he set the raft into the spring.

  The trickling waters flowed just deep enough to support the raft. It drifted around a few rocks, and got stuck in a patch of mud.

  Hanno picked up the raft and stabbed it upright into the soft ground.

  “See? That’s what you’re doing,” Hanno said. “They’re not meant to be in the ground, they’re meant to be in the water.

  The nearest tree made a little jump, nearly knocking Hanno off his feet as it came down on its roots. The tree grabbed one of the triremes and set it right-side up in the shallow spring.

  Liva laughed.

  “Not in the spring, you chestnut, in the ocean,” Hanno said, and pointed the way they’d come.

  Bostar yelped as he and the sentries were forced to run beneath the adansonia as it slid toward Hanno. It picked up the miniature ship and placed it in the now overflowing spring.

  The tree picked up the damming trireme and watched as the raft floated once more. The adansonia held the ship above its canopy, and all the trees rushed forward. Their leaves shook like clattering cymbals.

  “Yes, it’s a very nice ship, thank you, can I have it back?” Hanno asked.

  The adansonia ran a gnarled branch across Hanno’s arm.

  The king stepped back, readying his sword, but stopped when the tree held out a smooth seed pod. It glistened in the sun, and the adansonia repeated the gesture of running its branch across Hanno’s shoulder, then deposited the amber-like seed into his hand.

  It was warm.

  “A gift?” Hanno asked.

  The tree stood upright and proud.

  “The king of Carthage thanks you for this gift,” Hanno said, and offered a slight bow. “But a gift to the king must be reciprocated. My house demands it.”

  The tree mimicked Hanno’s little bow, then raised itself high to widen its roots.

  Bostar and the other marines dashed out from beneath its trunk, and ran to Hanno’s side. The instant they were released, each tree took hold of the upright triremes and unplanted them. They swept the sterns clean of dirt with leafy strokes.

  Artemisia and the marines dashed off the upright royal trireme before it too was unplanted.

  The adansonia itself picked up Hanno’s ship, and after cleaning its timbers, it wrapped its limbs around the mast. It filled in the cracks. It sealed away the tears and set its trunk against the port-side hole. The repaired planks fell away, replaced by the smoothed, treated wood of the adansonia.

  When it was done, the tree caressed the glistening mast and presented it to Hanno.

  The king’s ship looked like it had been repaired with amber.

  “This…” Hanno said. “This is another gift I cannot match.”

  “I think this is your gift,” Liva explained.

  She touched the amber-hulled ship. The adansonia set its branches where her fingers had been.

  “The trees want to become ships? With enough axes we could make that happen,” Artemisia noted.

  “Are you alright, Bostar?” Hanno asked.

  He stretched his arms and shoulders and nodded. “Little sore, but otherwise fine,” he said. “They let us eat some seeds and gave us water.”

  Hanno nodded.

  Liva laughed again. “They never wanted to steal the ships. They just didn’t know what they were,” she said. “They must have thought they were dying.”

  She reached a hand out to the adansonia and it let her stroke its soft leaves.

  Then it stood tall, and hefted the repaired ship. The forest parted before the clearing like a torn curtain. Roots tossed up soil and birds took flight, while a wide path opened between the trees and the sea.

  More trees came, offering their branches to support the polished triremes, until every ship in the fleet had a team of bearers. So supported, the trees glided across the dirt and undergrowth, disturbing not a single blade of grass in their slow progress toward the ocean.

  “Amazing,” Hanno whispered.

  “Took them long enough,” Artemisia spat.

  The other marines stood mesmerized by the sight, until Hanno said, “Well, let’s follow them. Liva, you’re swift on your feet. Run ahead and make sure the rest of the marines don’t shoot them on sight.”

  “I’m leading a parade of trees!” Liva hooted, and dashed to the front of the slow-moving trunks. “Make way, make way for the trees of Solois!”

  “If they’re foolish enough to let us leave, then…” Hanno started to say. He swallowed his insult after glancing at the amber seed. “Everyone is accounted for, right?”

  “These are all the sentries,” Bostar answered.

  Hanno nodded, and stepped into place behind the adansonia.

  They followed the trees out of the wood, and soon heard the silence of the camp. Some twenty thousand colonists stretched across the shore, but all could hear the sound of root against sand, and the splash of the first triremes laid gently upon the waters.

  The trees paused when they deposited the ships into the shallows, and held them still while extending their branches to the beach.

  The adansonia stopped beside Hanno’s ship, and seemed to turn to face him.

  “King Hanno,” Aba gasped, daring to speak when Hanno arrived. “What is going on?”

  “Trees of Solois!” Hanno called out, ignoring Aba. “Your gift has touched the heart of Hanno. Therefore, the king shall forgive the kidnapping of my men.”

  Hanno raised his sheathed sword and made a show of strapping it tight against his belt.

  The trees tilted their trunks sideways.

  A murmur rose up from the crews. They seemed frozen in place, caught between the sea and the nearby forest.

  “Don’t you see what they’re doing?” Liva asked the gathered colonists.

  None replied.

  Liva offered a low bow to the Adansonia, then proceeded across one of the trees’ lowered branches. She stepped as if on a textured gangplank, and safely boarded Hanno’s ship.

  “See?” Liva said.

  “King Hanno?” Bostar asked, waiting for word.

  “Onto the ships,” Hanno commanded.

  “Onto the ships!” Artemisia echoed.

  Bostar led the way, and the rest of the crews followed. Twenty thousand people crossed the lowered branches and boarded the ships. The trees offered further support to those who wavered.

  As the crews readied the oars, the adansonia strode toward the furthest promontory on the peninsula.

  Hanno followed.

  The tree planted a thick branch onto the rocky ground. It rooted through the gaps in the stone and reached the soil, coalescing into a flat, polished block of sail-shaped wood capped with an amber trident. The adansonia released the branch, and stepped back from the shimmering altar.

  Hanno knew not what language the adansonia spoke, but it was clear what had just happened. He drew his sword, cut his hand, and placed his blood atop the altar.

  “To Poseidon, then,” Hanno said.

  The tree bowed.

  “May there be peace between the trees of Solois and the people of Carthage to the end of the ages,” Hanno said, and returned the bow.

  Hanno remained the only man on the shore. The trees shook in the wind as he approached his ship. When the adansonia deposited him beside the rudders, the trees lifted their branches and took hold of each stern.

  “You might want to hold on,” Liva warned.

  The trees stepped into the waves, and when they could no longer withstand the breakers, they pushed the triremes into the open waters.

  Great cheers and pipes rang out from the fleet’s musicians, and those on deck waved at the leaf-shaking trees.

  “Orders, King?” Artemisia asked.

  Hanno could not bring his eyes away from the altar and the waving trees.

  “Orders,” Artemisia repeated.

  “Yes,” Hanno stuttered. “Yes, orders. South. We go beyond the promontory, and continue south.”

  “Sails unfurled!” the helmsman shouted. “Oars to speed!”

  Jabnit played the rhythm, and they began their journey. The trees faded behind them, but Hanno continued to stare, until he thought the forested shore no different than any other Libyan wood.

  While Bostar found a blanket to rest upon, Aba prayed loud thanks to Poseidon, and the others took up their deck-manning tasks with the enthusiasm of those clinging to sanity. Liva stood beside the king.

  “If I found out a species different than mine killed humans and used them to construct a vessel, I would never stop murdering every single one of their kind,” Hanno said.

  “It’s a good thing they actually wanted to become ships then,” Liva replied.

  Hanno nodded. “Why did they want to become ships?”

  “They’ve never seen a ship before.”

  “But they knew the triremes were made of wood.” Hanno tapped his heel against the deck. “Dead wood.”

  “Unliving wood,” Liva corrected.

  “There’s a difference? We ended the lives of the trees that made this ship. And yet the living trees didn’t harm us or accuse us. They reveled in the ships made from the bodies of their own… people.”

  Hanno shook his head.

  “Perhaps for a tree, becoming a ship is akin to the afterlife. You’re dead, but you move on to something greater than you were. And for someone planted in the ground, to sail the seas might seem like flying,” Liva explained.

  “So what does that make us?” Hanno asked.

  Liva shrugged and said, “Keepers of the afterlife.”

  “The trees think us gods?”

  “Heresy!” Aba proclaimed, having eavesdropped on the conversation. “They are nothing more than trees! Ignorant in the ways of Baal Hammon and the pantheon of true gods.”

  The priestess spat over the ship’s stern.

  “You are not a god, Hanno, remember that. You are a king,” Aba warned.

  “A king forced to leave his kingdom,” Hanno said.

  “But still a king.”

  “The trees didn’t seem to understand what a king was. But they came to know Hanno,” Liva said.

  “And do you know Hanno, king, do you know your place?” Aba asked.

  Hanno stared at the distant trees. “I believe, priestess,” Hanno said, “I am beginning to.”

  The king took the seed the adansonia tree had given him and placed it atop the bow horn. It glowed like a torch, and illuminated their journey south.