“BUT THE TREE TALKED. IT TALKED, ALISTAIR.” A traveler stops to rest in a small village at the edge of a forest. All through the night, he hears rustling outside the inn, and the sound of mysterious creatures creeping among the trees. The next morning, he asks the innkeeper about what he heard. The other man nods sagely. “Ah yes, the wood is dark and mysterious. The village has many stories, but to find the truth, you’ll have to ask the trees themselves.” So the curious traveler packs some bread from the inn with his belongings and starts off into the forest. The ground slopes down, down, and the underbrush thins out but the canopy gets denser. The darkness is soothing like deep water. Here, there is no rustling–just a heavy silence. The traveler spends the first night nestled in the roots of an enormous oak tree, and when he awakes, an acorn has sprouted into a robust sapling where it fell on his coat. His second night he spends in a ring of...