Believing Is Seeing by Diana Wynne Jones Page A

she was very impatient because winter had put a stop to all growth, so that she had to wait for spring to study its nature.
    In the middle of winter her father came home. He had found the perfect husband for Phega and was anxious to tell Phega and her mother all about the man. This man was a younger son of a powerful family, he said, and he had been a soldier for some years, during which time he had distinguished himself considerably and gained a name for sense and steadiness. Now he was looking for a wife to marry and settle down with. Though he was not rich, he was not poor either, and he was on good terms with the wealthier members of his family. It was, said Phega’s father, a most desirable match.
    Phega barely listened to all this. She went away to look at the latest load of logs before her father had finished speaking. He may not ever come here, she said to herself, and if he does, he will see I am not interested and go away again.
    â€œDid I say something wrong?” her father asked her mother. “I had hoped to show her that the man has advantages that far outweigh the fact that he is not in his first youth.”
    â€œNo—it’s just the way she is,” said Phega’s mother. “Have you invited the man here?”
    â€œYes, he is coming in the spring,” her father said. “His name is Evor. Phega will like him.”
    Phega’s mother was not entirely sure of this. She called the servants she had set to follow Phega to her privately and asked them what they had found out. “Nothing,” they said. “We think she has given up turning into a tree. She has never so much as put forth a root while we are watching her.”
    â€œI hope you are right,” said Phega’s mother. “But I want you to go on watching her, even more carefully than before. It is now extremely important that we know how to stop her becoming a tree if she ever threatens to do so.”
    The servants sighed, knowing they were in for another dull and difficult time. And they were not mistaken because, as soon as the first snowdrops appeared, Phega was out in the countryside studying the way things grew. As far as the servants were concerned, she would do nothing but sit or stand for hours watching a bud, or a tree, or a nest of mice or birds. As far as Phega was concerned, it was a long fascination as she divined how cells multiplied again and again and at length discovered that while animals took food from solid things, plants took their main food from the sun himself. “I think that may be the secret at last,” she said.
    This puzzled the servants, but they reported it to Phega’s mother all the same. Her answer was, “I thought so. Be ready to bring her home the instant she shows a root or a shoot.”
    The servants promised to do this, but Phega was not ready yet. She was busy watching the whole course of spring growth transform the forest. So it happened that Evor arrived to meet his prospective bride and Phega was not there. She had not even noticed that everyone in the manor was preparing a feast in Evor’s honor. Her parents sent messengers to the forest to fetch her, while Evor first kicked his heels for several hours in the hall and finally, to their embarrassment, grew impatient and went out into the yard. There he wondered whether to order his horse and leave.
    I conclude from this delay, he said to himself, that the girl is not willing, and one thing I do not want is a wife I have to force. Nevertheless, he did not order his horse. Though Phega’s parents had been at pains to keep from him any suggestion that Phega was not as other girls were, he had been unable to avoid hearing rumors on the way. For by this time Phega’s fame was considerable. The first gossip he heard, when he was farthest away, was that his prospective bride was a witch. This he had taken for envious persons’ way of describing wisdom and pressed on. As he came nearer,