You are listening to a Clarkshold magazine podcast with your host and narrator Kate Baker.

Greetings Clarksville citizens. I hope this podcast finds you extraordinarily well.

This is our third story from the month of October 2023, issue 205. I hope that these stories are

keeping you well. Whether this is on your daily commute, a daily walk, maybe a not so daily walk, maybe doing some dishes or

some gardening or just sitting and relaxing while you're trying to fall asleep.

Thank you for joining us each and every story.

Your support means the world to us,

and it literally means that we can continue

to bring you these magazines each and every month.

So if you were a long- time supporter, thank you from the

bottom of my heart, you make this possible. And if you haven't supported us yet,

please consider doing so. Please go to Patreon.com forward slash Clark's World. And thank you.

Our story is titled Down to the Root and is by Lisa Papa Demitriu.

Lisa Papa Demitru lives in Northampton, Massachusetts and is Papa de

Demetriu. Lisa, Papa Demetri lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, and is the author of over 20 novels for young readers.

So my dear listener, I hope you can sit back, relax, and let me tell you a story.

A.S. Y, Alliance Standard Year 2,

41.

Manwin's heart was in a bag, carefully desiccated. It had been wrapped in a woven sack, which was then placed in a wooden box carved with a life tree pattern. The tree was inlaid beetlewood and gleamed with shifting blue-black

iridescence under the artificial lighting. Luryell's fingertips traced up the trunk, across one of the major branches down a twig to a leaf.

It curled at the tip, reaching toward the sky.

Perhaps this is me, she thought.

...