The Desert Court

Didier the Grandidier’s baobab — water-storing giant of the Avenue of the Baobabs — holds the largest liquid reserves in the world and lends at rates the whole Dry Lands quotes. His court of survivors: Cinnabar the dragon’s blood tree bleeding red sap on Socotra, Boojum the inverted carrot of Baja, Joshua the Mojave poet, Adenia the desert rose, Dendros the cucumber tree (the only tree that is a cucumber — verified repeatedly, still unexplained), and Noord the halfmens, who bows north to the sun like a petitioner. Banking politics: reserves, droughts, loans against the next rain.

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