A sapling had come up on top of the ancestral grave. Bowl-thick at the base, leaves something like a locust, but nobody could name the species.
The clan met and decided it had to go.
They stopped halfway through cutting it. The heartwood was hollow and dry, without a trace of moisture. He looked for growth rings and there were none — the wood was layered, wound, the way rolled paper is wound.
One of the old men said it had not come up from above. It had come up from below.
He dug down half a metre and found the roots. They did not run downward. They ran up — twisted strands climbing, spreading out only when they reached the surface. He filled the hole back in.
The next year it had doubled in height. The year after it fruited: small, green, about the size of a plum. It was the only tree in the village that bore anything that year.
He picked one and cut it open.
There was something in the stone, hard and flat.
A brass button, gone green at the edges. His grandfather had been buried in a Chinese-collar jacket with buttons like that. He had seen the photograph.