The dreadman would give Talen homage for the gift, but Talen didn’t want any homage.

He yelled, a long “Nooooooo!”

A stick poked Talen’s eye. Then his ankle caught, and Talen swung into the center of the tree and smacked his head.

Ke grunted. “Grab a branch,” he said.

Talen looked up. It felt like a piece of bark the size of his thumbnail was stuck in his eye; he could barely see, but it was clear that his ankle was caught not in a fork of two branches, but in Ke’s iron grip. Ke bent over a branch holding on to Talen’s ankle, his face set in determination.

“You’re slipping,” he said.

Talen twisted around and finally found a branch. He grasped it with both hands. “I’ve got it. Let go.”

But Ke did not let go. He repositioned his grip and said, “You’ll hang here until you tell us where you’ve hidden our stuff.”

Talen’s eye ran like a river. “What about my trousers?”

“Goh,” said Ke. “If I come across your trousers I’m going to burn them. Then you’ll have something to yell about.”

“Hoy! What’s going on here?” It was Da, standing at the base of the tree.

“They’ve taken my work trousers,” said Talen.

“Is that so?” Da asked Ke.

Talen still hung mostly upside down, the blood rushing to his head.

“It is not,” said Ke.

“You three,” Da said. “Today I come out of the barn to find one of you hanging naked in a tree. What am I going to find tomorrow? Get down. Both of you.”

Ke looked down at Talen. “You’re lucky.” Then he flung Talen’s legs away.

Talen clutched the branch. His body swung around like a festival acrobat’s. His grip on the branch slid. Then he reached out with one foot and caught another branch to stand on.

Talen steadied himself. When he’d finally cleared his eye enough to see, Ke stood next to him. “You should thank me for saving your neck.”

“You’re the one that put me here,” Talen said.

“I’m the one who didn’t murder you,” he said, and then descended to the ground.

Murder indeed. Talen watched Ke go and realized the truth was he had been lucky. Lucky Ke had been that close. Lucky he’d tumbled just the right way for Ke to grab his ankle. And Ke had held him as if he were nothing more than a sack of potatoes. Why couldn’t he have gotten at least half of Ke’s strength?

He sighed. It was going to be annoyingly inconvenient to have to wear his fine pair of pants to work in. And at week’s end, when he cleaned them and hung them out to dry, he’d have to sit around in his underclothes and bat the biting flies away.

Talen climbed out of the tree and stood before Da.

“Did you look for the pants in the barn?” Da asked.

Of course he’d looked in the barn. He’d looked everywhere. “I’m not going to ruin my good pair.”

“Then work in a leaf skirt.