The heat came off the flagstones in shimmers. Sera saw them first — thin ghosts of air rising over the courtyard stones, warping the far balustrade, the rosemary hedges gone soft at the edges. Sweat ran between her shoulder blades before she had taken ten steps. The sun lay low and orange across the garden, and everything smelled of baked earth and crushed green.

The chain of her leash ran from Julian's left hand, and when he turned past the fountain it pulled her off her heel. She caught herself against Amara's shoulder — porcelain fingers on deep brown skin, a quick apology in her eyes — and Amara only steadied her with a look and walked on.

Bella walked last. Her leash was shortest, and she had learned to lean into the pull rather than fight it. Four inches of lacquered heel on flagstone was a lesson in balance; every time the leash tugged, her hips swayed out and back like a dancer correcting a turn. Her dark curls stuck to her neck. She did not wipe them away. She kept her chin up and her eyes on the black of Julian's suit ahead, on the machete in his right hand.

The blade was long and clean and it caught the sun with every swing of his arm. Not a garden tool. It had a broad belly and a point like a leaf, and the light ran down its edge as though the edge were wet. He carried it the way another man might carry a walking stick — loose, casual, one finger resting along the spine.

He stopped at the fountain and let them gather. The three leashes hung slack for a moment, and the three of them stood with their heels sinking a half-inch into the hot stone, breathing.

"You are wondering about the machete," he said. His voice was low and measured, the blade of it. "Good. Wonder is useful."

He turned his grey eyes along the line of them — Sera first, then Amara, then Bella — and the look was not appraisal so much as inventory. He knew what he had. He was deciding what to do with it.

"Walk," he said, and walked.

The path bent around the eastern wing of the house, past the herb beds, and the rosemary grew so thick the air turned sharp and resinous. Sera's heels clicked and stuttered. Behind her, Bella stumbled once and made a small sound — not quite a gasp, not quite a curse — and Julian did not turn around, and the leash did not slacken.

At the end of the path the birches stood in a row. Seven of them, white-barked, their leaves a thin green veil against the sky. The ground beneath them was bare and pale and scattered with fallen curls of bark.

Julian stopped and let the leashes fall to the grass. The three of them stood where the leashes left them, close together, breathing hard, their skin going gold in the low light.

"Birch," he said. "The wood is supple and light. It will not break against you. It will bend, and it will find you again. That is the virtue of birch." He turned the machete over in his hand. "Each of you will choose the branch I cut for her own rod. I will judge the choice. Choose well and you will be cut a rod worth the name. Choose poorly and you will earn ten extra stripes to teach you the difference."

Sera's hand found the red leather at her throat. She did not know she had done it.

"Sera," he said. "You are first. Point."

She stepped forward on her heels and the grass gave under them, soft after the stone. She looked into the birch row and the branches lifted and crossed and whispered, and she did not know what a good branch looked like. She only knew she could not bear to earn ten extra stripes. Not in front of Amara. Not in front of Bella.

Her arm came up. She pointed at a branch near the top of the second tree, thin and high and fine as a whipcord.

Julian looked at it for a long moment. Then he looked at her.

"Why that one?"

"It's — slender, Sir." Her voice came out thin. "I thought — a fine rod. A precise one."

"It is a switch," he said. "A switch is for the wrist and the backs of the knees. It is for a girl who has already learned to be still. You have not." He let the arm she had raised fall, and she dropped it. "Ten extra. You have chosen for the girl you wish you were, not the girl you are. That is the most expensive mistake there is."

Sera's face went hot all the way to her ears. She nodded once, hard, and stepped back into the line.

"Amara," Julian said. "Point."

Amara stepped forward and she did not look at the trees at all at first. She looked at the ground, at the pale curls of bark, at the way the light fell through the leaves in slats. Then she lifted her arm and pointed — not high, not low, at a branch in the fourth tree, thick as a thumb at its base and tapering clean, with a good long straight run of it before the first twig.

Julian walked to the tree. He set the blade against the branch and did not cut. He looked back at her.

"Why?"

"It has length enough to be held and used, Sir. It is thick enough not to break. It will bend before it breaks, and it will come back true." Her voice was calm and low, and she had not looked away from him once. "It is a rod that will last the lesson."

Something moved at the corner of Julian's mouth. Not a smile. The place a smile would have been.

"Yes," he said. "It is."

The machete came down. The flat crack of it went through the courtyard like a shot, and the branch came away clean, and a scatter of pale leaves sifted down through the light and settled on Amara's shoulders and in her hair. Julian held the branch up and turned it, and the green wood showed a wet pale heart where the blade had passed.

He stripped the twigs from it with three strokes of the machete, and the leaves fell, and he laid the rod across his palm and weighed it.

"Good," he said. He said it to the rod. Then he looked at Amara. "Good."

Amara bowed her head. Her afro caught the last of the sun. She stepped back into the line and she did not smile, but her shoulders had come down, and Bella, watching her, felt her own stomach tighten with something that was not fear and was not quite envy.

"Bella," Julian said. "Point."

Bella stepped forward. The grass was cool under her heels now, the shadow of the birches reaching across it, and she took her time. She had watched Sera fail and Amara succeed and she understood the game now — it was not about the branch. It was about whether you could see yourself the way he saw you. Sera had chosen a rod for a girl who was already perfect. Amara had chosen a rod for the lesson she was going to have.

Bella looked at the birches. Then she looked at him.

"The fifth tree," she said. "The low branch, on the left. The one that forks."

Julian walked to it. He stood with the machete against the forked branch and waited.

"Why?"

"Because I'm going to fight it," Bella said. "I'm going to fight every stroke and I'm going to be sorry after. The fork will hold the whole length of it. A straight rod will bend away from me. That one will catch, and it will find me twice — here, and here." She touched her thigh, and then the small of her back. "I'd rather be hit by a rod that does what I do."

The courtyard was very quiet. Somewhere a bird called twice and stopped.

Julian looked at her for a long time. Then he set the blade and cut, and the crack of it came, and the forked branch came down into his hand.

"You have chosen a rod that will hurt you," he said.

"Yes, Sir."

"Because you know you will make it hurt you."

"Yes, Sir."

He stripped it and turned it and the light ran down it. He laid it across his palm and then he laid it, light and flat, against the outside of her thigh — not a stroke, a measurement — and Bella's whole body went still.

"Approved," he said.

He gathered the three rods in the crook of his left arm and took up the leashes again, and the three of them stood in the birch shadow with the pale leaves in their hair and the sun going down behind the house.

"Three rods," he said. "Three girls. One apiece." He turned from the trees. "Each of you will embrace a trunk. Arms above your head. You will hold the tree, and the tree will hold you, and you will not let go until I tell you. The bark will bite. Good. Hold it anyway."

He walked back along the row and the leashes drew them after him, and their heels stumbled in the grass, and the rods lay pale in the crook of his arm like something that had been waiting in the wood all along.

"Choose your tree," he said. "And wait."

Sera went first, to the second tree, the one she had failed to judge. She pressed her cheek to the white bark and lifted her arms and wrapped them around the trunk, and the bark was rough and cool against her breasts, and she could feel her own heartbeat against it. Amara went to the fourth and pressed herself to it and her arms went up and her fingers laced over the trunk and she closed her eyes. Bella went to the fifth and laid her cheek against the fork she had chosen, and the bark bit into her thighs and her stomach and her cheek, and she held it, and she did not let go.

Behind them the machete lay in the grass. Julian set the rods down and took the first one up.

"You will count," he said. "You will thank me. And you will not let go of the tree."

The first rod was Sera's. He walked it down the row to her, and the birch was pale in his hand against the dark of his suit, and he let the tip of it trail along the grass so that it whispered. Sera's arms tightened over the trunk. Her shoulder blades stood up like folded wings, and the faint old stripes across her back went tight and pale.

"Ten extra," Julian said. "You will count those first, and then the lesson of the rod itself. Do not lose the count. If you lose the count we will begin again at one."

"Yes, Sir."

He measured the rod across her shoulders first — the same flat measurement he had given Bella's thigh — and Sera's breath went out of her in a rush and did not come back. Then he drew it away and struck.

The sound was small. A switch-crack, clean and dry, and Sera's whole body lifted against the trunk and her heels came up off the bark-scattered ground.

"One," she said. Her voice cracked in the middle of the word. "Thank you, Sir."

He struck again, and this time she was ready and she did not lift so far, and the mark came up on the porcelain of her back in a thin red line that went slowly darker, like something written and then gone over in ink.

"Two. Thank you, Sir."

By the fourth her counting had gone thin and high, and by the sixth she was saying the numbers before the rod landed, flinching into the bark before the stroke came, and Julian let the rod rest against her flank and said nothing at all, and the silence was its own lesson. She had gone too fast. She had counted a stroke before it existed. Sera's cheek ground against the white bark and her fingers worked over the trunk and she made herself wait, made herself still, and when the seventh came she took it without a sound and then said, "Seven. Thank you, Sir," in a voice that had been scraped clean.

Bella watched from her own tree with her cheek laid against the fork. The bark bit her stomach where she leaned, and she could feel her pulse in the place it bit. Ahead of her Amara stood pressed to the fourth trunk, her eyes closed, her breathing slow and deliberate, and the sun had gone down behind the house and left the whole birch row in a blue hush. Somewhere in the far courtyard a gate creaked on its hinge and swung, and swung again, and went quiet.

Sera counted ten. The tenth stroke Julian laid low, across the backs of her thighs where the flesh was soft, and Sera's cry came out of her unbidden and she said "Ten" through it and then "thank you, Sir," and then her forehead went down against the bark and she hung there, breathing, her arms still locked above her head.

"You held the tree," Julian said. He set the tip of the rod against the small of her back and traced the line of her spine upward, slowly, over each of the ten marks, and Sera shuddered at every one. "You counted. You did not lose it. Now you will learn what the rod is for."

He stepped back and struck her again, and this time it was not the same. The rod came down in a long diagonal from her shoulder to her hip, hard, and the crack of it echoed off the house, and Sera's body arched away from the trunk and her mouth opened and no sound came out at all.

"That is a stroke," Julian said. "The ten before were arithmetic. This is the lesson."

He gave her four more, and she counted them all, and the last one she counted with her hand slipped from the trunk — her right hand, come loose, her fingers scraping down the bark — and she caught it again and laced it back over the trunk and said "Thank you, Sir" with her face wet.

Amara had opened her eyes. She watched Sera without turning her head, and her own fingers were laced so tight over her trunk that the knuckles had gone grey, and she did not look away.

Julian came down the row to her, and the rod in his hand was Amara's, the long straight one with the good clean run, and he laid it against the fourth tree's trunk beside her arm and let it lie there.

"You chose well," he said. "You will not be punished for it. You will be given the full count, because a rod that lasts the lesson should be used for the whole lesson."

"Yes, Sir," Amara said. Her voice was steady. Her hands were not.

"Fifteen," Julian said. "Count them."

The first came across her shoulders and Amara said, "One. Thank you, Sir," in the low calm voice she used for everything, and the mark came up on the deep brown of her back like a coal laid on dark wood, glowing and banked and slow to fade. The second she took in silence and then said her number. The third drew a sound out of her — low, from the chest, almost a hum — and she said, "Three. Thank you, Sir," and Bella, watching, understood that Amara had been waiting for this and was taking it the way she took everything, deliberately, with her whole attention, the way another woman might take communion.

By the ninth her calm had begun to fray at the edges. Her breath came loud against the bark. Her heels had come up off the ground and stayed up. Julian gave her the tenth across the backs of her thighs and she said the number and then pressed her forehead to the tree and stayed there a moment too long, and he waited for her, and she lifted her head and said, "Eleven, Sir, when you are ready," and he struck.

Bella's own tree was cool now, the light almost gone. She could feel the fork of it against her cheek and her stomach and her thigh, and she could feel her own cunt wet against the bark where she leaned, and she was ashamed of it and she did not move away. The two of them ahead of her took their strokes and counted and thanked him, and the sound of the rod was different for each of them — thin and sharp for Sera, deeper and slower for Amara — and Bella counted along in her head without meaning to, and lost the count, and started again.

Amara said, "Fifteen. Thank you, Sir," and the row went quiet.

Julian stood with the rod hanging from his hand and looked at the three of them — three girls at three trees, striped and shaking, their heels up off the ground, their arms locked over the pale bark. The last of the light was in the birches and their leaves moved without sound. He turned the rod in his fingers once and let it fall to the grass.

Then he walked to the fifth tree, and Bella felt him come up behind her before she saw him, felt the heat of him at her back and the shadow of him fall over the fork she held, and her hands went white on the trunk.

"Bella," he said, and the rod he carried was hers, the forked one, and it found the outside of her thigh where he had measured it and rested there, light and flat, and did not move.

"You chose a rod that will hurt you," he said.

"Yes, Sir." Her voice came out lower than she expected. Steady. She had not known it would be steady.

"Then we will see how long you can hold a tree."