"If you want an invisible portal poked with a stick every minute or two for possibly days at a stretch, I might have to ask someone for help," he says. "But it's doable."

"I don't know that he'll be staking out the tree. If anyone saw me go through the tear, they won't expect me back, and I don't think he wanted to keep me particularly badly. But if he was it would be important to be able to react quickly."

"Yes," he says. "I see the logic. So, you could try to make the gate to the inside of your tree - would that be a secure enough method that you wouldn't want it poked with a stick at all hours?"

"Yeah. I don't think he's motivated to destroy the tree or anything."

"Then I think that sounds like a workable plan. ...It may also be relevant that I have a job that regularly takes me offplanet for weeks at a time. I'm currently on leave and won't be expected back for another three weeks barring emergencies, but if I do have to leave the planet before you're done here, what do I need to do to provide for you in my absence?"

"...Any mortal food that doesn't come directly out of your hand opens me to other claims."

"Well that's... difficult. There are people I'd trust with the job of feeding you but I don't feel I have the authority to ask you to trust them on my say-so. On the other hand I am also very reluctant to take you along when I go to do my job, which involves extensive contact with other mortals and with secrets I am not authorized to dispense to you. And I could request a longer leave so I could stay here and feed you, but - it's not trivial, my job. There are not that many people with my qualifications, and some people are alive today who wouldn't be if I hadn't got the right thing to the right place at the right time."

"I mean, I can't starve to death, and the gate won't take weeks to settle, anyway."

"So, if I get called away while you are still here and dependent on local food sources, you have the unpleasant choice between risking non-hand-fed mortal food, acquiring another mortal master to hand-feed you, and not eating at all. I am definitely going to try very hard to think of clever fourth options if that comes up."

"Sorcery works here. I can gate back to Fairyland and get food there."

"Unless something goes wrong with that. We still don't know why sorcery works here when your sources believed it wouldn't, so we don't know what effects that might have on the creation of gates. But maybe I'm just being unnecessarily pessimistic."

"Right. I don't know either."

"Then I guess the plan is you trying the gate to your tree and me standing back and hoping nothing goes wrong...? Will you be growing tree number two here, or gating to Fairyland to find somewhere to put it?"

"Here's fine. I can take cuttings from the second tree if I want more in Fairyland."

"Sure," he says. "I'd prefer if you grew it closer to this house than any other house in the vicinity, and in a spot not easily visible from a distance or from above, but there's plenty of locations that meet those criteria and it won't be an enormous problem if your preferred spot doesn't, I'm just trying to minimize the likelihood of local mortals noticing you."

"I don't need it to be anywhere in particular. The main criterion for if I plant another one in Fairyland is that it'd need to be near water; you have a lake."

"I do have a lake. I like my lake."

"It's a nice lake."

"And my tree grows fruit and that's safe for me to eat, even if I don't bring back any other Fairyland plants."

"Convenient for you. All right. Do you want to try that gate to your tree now?"

"Yeah. Where should I put it?"

"I've been thinking about that, and I think a good spot would be in front of the house, a short distance away," he says. "Seems like a reasonable compromise between convenience and defensibility."

Miles comes along to observe the gate-making process from a distance.