Page 415 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

Ouanda held back, walked a measured step, and her coldness was not just fear but hostility as well. She did not trust him.
So Ender was not surprised when she stepped behind the large tree that grew nearest the gate and waited for Miro and Ender to follow her. Ender saw how Miro looked annoyed for a moment, then controlled himself. His mask of uninvolvement was as cool as a human being could hope for. Ender found himself comparing Miro to the boys he had known in Battle School, sizing him up as a comrade in arms, and thought Miro might have done well there. Ouanda, too, but for different reasons: She held herself responsible for what was happening, even though Ender was an adult and she was much younger. She did not defer to him at all. Whatever she was afraid of, it was not authority.
"Here?" asked Miro blandly.
"Or not at all." said Ouanda.
Ender folded himself to sit at the base of the tree. "This is Rooter's tree, isn't it?" he asked.
They took it calmly-- of course-- but their momentary pause told him that yes, he had surprised them by knowing something about a past that they surely regarded as their own. I may be a framling here, Ender said silently, but I don't have to be an ignorant one.
"Yes," said Ouanda. "He's the totem they seem to get the most-- direction from. Lately-- the last seven or eight years. They've never let us see the rituals in which they talk to their ancestors, but it seems to involve drumming on the trees with heavy polished sticks. We hear them at night sometimes. "
"Sticks? Made of fallen wood?"
"We assume so. Why?"
"Because they have no stone or metal tools to cut the wood-- isn't that right? Besides, if they worship the trees, they couldn't very well cut them down."
"We don't think they worship the trees. It's totemic. They stand for dead ancestors. They-- plant them. With the bodies."
Ouanda had wanted to stop, to talk or question him, but Ender had no intention of letting her believe she-- or Miro, for that matter-- was in charge of this expedition. Ender intended to talk to the piggies himself. He had never prepared for a Speaking by letting someone else determine his agenda, and he wasn't going to begin now. Besides, he had information they didn't have. He knew Ela's theory.
"And anywhere else?" he asked. "Do they plant trees at any other time?"