Desperate Fans

"Where I'm from, for instance," he says, falling into that lulling, teaching tone that transfixed Hamlet before he became rambunctious and impatient. "The Kingdom of Denmark. A flat place, but here and there you'll find a forest of beech trees, or an old oak growing." He guides Lan Zhan outside, hand in hand, near enough to the forest edge that he can point. "There's a beech, with the blue-grey bark. I rather like learning the names of trees. When you see them in the wild, it's like running into an old friend."