Once when he was younger he had caused a maple tree to go through all four seasons in a single day. He still remembered the look in Gran’s eyes when the tree dropped its fiery leaves with what could only be described as a languid sigh, only to bud moments later, white-pink flowers bursting forth and falling in spirals all around her. She had shed a tear from the sheer beauty of the fragile moment, all of the motions in the life a tree, splayed out like words on a page in a script that only nature could decipher, and yet, somehow her grandson had scrawled a sentence of it perfectly. Even then, Tomm did not fully understand what had happened. Gran explained to him that his Calling was a separate song within him that broke free from time to time and wouldn’t do his bidding until he disciplined his mind with more training. Confused by this, he asked her if he had done poorly. “Oh, no, my little Toad,” she had reassured him. “You have done a splendid thing.”