Referencing trees on boats:

The bark trembled beneath her. Koli felt it. Her guest did not. Twenty-five years as the leader of the Candide, still Jul was insensitive. If he wasn’t such a good navigator, the tribe would have no use for him.

“We need the new boat started,” he said.

No hello, Koli, how are you today, how are the gardens. No thank you for strengthening the decks. No thanks for keeping the hull upright during last night’s storm. Jorn and Ari, her two apprentices, were still below seeing to the saplings.

Koli set a flask of nectar and a wooden mug on the small table in the chamber. Jul poured himself a drink.

“The sapling is ready.” Koli leaned against the wall of the chamber. She was the living oak whose body formed the core of this boat. “Jorn is the best candidate.”

“Out of the question.” He poured another drink.

“Because he’s your son?” She’d lived through four captains, Jul wasn’t the worst. They all wanted to see things from their own perspective.

“We don’t need another womb. Prepare Ari.”

“Jorn will be happy to join. Ari doesn’t know what she wants. With such a joining we may lose both the girl and the tree.” Ari was an adequate gardener, but like Jul, saw things from the human vantage. Jorn, on the other hand, understood trees.

“Jorn is a valuable worker.”

Jul needed boats to house his burgeoning population. Jorn was more valuable to the tribe joined to a tree than in any other function.

The navigator sat on the stool bent from fibers Koli pulled from the wall as he arrive. It was living wood, but he wouldn’t notice.

“Will the damaged boat survive?” he asked.

“Perhaps.” Shari-Oak was one of the tribe’s newer boats. The storm hit her particularly hard, breaking many of her branches, including her main mast. It was Jul’s fault and he knew it. He wanted to make up time lost escorting the Naninko tribe to the eastern islands. The sails had not come down soon enough. If Shari-Oak did survive, she would be handicapped for several years. If Jorn joined with one of the oaks tomorrow, it would still be at least five years before they would grow into a useable boat. The boat that was Shari-Oak could last that long, if only as a towed shell, even if she did not.

“This is my suggestion.” Koli faced Jul. She looked straight into his eyes. She knew how her eyes, yellow and grained like the oak whose life was hers unsettled the man. “Allow Jorn join now. Jorn and Ari are close. If she sees how he adjusts to it, she may be encouraged to join in a year or so. That way we may achieve two new boats.”

“I do not want to lose my son.”

“The way you lost Den to accident or Mik to another tribe? Jorn will be here. He will have a good life. A long one.”

“But no children.”

Ah, so that was it. Jul wanted grandchildren to sing his song into history. “Trees have children.” 

“Not the same.”

No. Some would say, better. Koli counted as her children eighteen boats and innumerable objects crafted from wood of trees who would not grow into boats. Trees made life possible on the ocean. They provided food, wood, clothing, home.

“This is not your choice,” Koli said gently. Old enough to be his great-grandmother, she thought of all her residents as her children. Besides Jul, Jorn and Ari, thirty souls called her their home. She was just coming into the prime of her life and was already the pride of the clan. 

And what a clan they were. In numbers, a small clan, the Candide were the best navigators in the world. They knew more routes, more islands than any other. But they were fewer than three hundred souls. They needed to grow. To do that, they needed more boats. When it came to the clan, both Koli and Jul wanted the same thing. 

What most people would see as an honor, Jul saw as a sacrifice. One he was loathe to make.

She wanted to reach out, to touch him, to make him feel that this was the right choice. What he would see and feel would be a cluster of branches in vaguely human shape. He had no empathy for the boat. 

Jorn, on the other hand, saw a middle-aged woman who reminded him of his mother. Indeed, his mother was a niece of hers, a few generations removed. When he hugged her, he felt the body of a woman, not a tree. That’s how she knew he would be successful in a join. Indeed, he’d already formed a bond with one of the saplings in the nursery. He only waited for his father’s permission.

Another approached the chamber. Koli receded into the wall. Jul scowled. The curtain pushed aside. Jorn entered the room.

“Da, I have been looking for you everywhere.” Jorn pulled a second stool from the wall.

“You found me.” Jul poured himself another drink.

“I’ve been with Shari.”

“Shari?”

“Shari, the boat damaged in the storm. She’s hurt awful bad.”

“But she’ll make it.” Jul picked up the mug.

“I don’t think we can count on that.”

Jul put down his mug.

“Which is why I want to join with a sapling… I need your blessing to enter into this esteemed service of the tribe.”

“Koli put you up to this.” He looked around the chamber. Koli heard the conversation, but she was far below observing Ari now. 

“Koli? No. No. She says I am too young to make a decision like this,” Jorn said. “Which is why I need you to tell her that I am ready.”

Jul stood. He paced the small chamber. “Koli, you manipulating witch,” he shouted. “You set my own son against me.”

“No! Da! We both want the same thing. We want what is best for the tribe.”

“I want a man for a son. Not a tree.”

“I will always be a man. But I will also be more.”

“You are too young to understand.”

“You have lived in Koli’s womb all of your life. How can you not see what an honor it is to be able to join with a tree? To be its companion. To help it survive when humankind destroyed its native home.”

“You believe that.”

“Yes, Da, I do.”

Jul sat. He downed his drink. “You win, Koli. You always do.”