Noord

Noord bows, and has never stood straight. The halfmens — "half-human" in Afrikaans — grows leaning permanently north, toward the sun, a whole population of trees caught mid-reverence in the Namib. Travelers ask whom he serves. "The sun," he says. "Only the sun. It has never once failed to rise, which is more than can be said for most things I have bowed to." The Desert Court finds the posture either devout or ridiculous; Noord finds the debate irrelevant, as the sun does. His succulent trunk stores water for the lean years; his crown of small leaves endures the furnace wind. Other trees straighten toward the light. He committed. There is, he insists, a difference between phototropism and devotion, and the difference is that devotion does not straighten up when the season changes.