When the bad thoughts about fire threatened to pop up, she shifted her attention to the pot of stew bubbling over the flames. It was time to dip a wooden ladle into the soupy mixture of mushrooms, greens, and meat and taste-test it. But Kirra made a face after one slurp. She definitely needed to add salt before the others returned.
She stood and ran a finger along the shelf of kitchen goods, then pursed her lips and blew out a frustrated breath. The salt bowl was nearly empty. Again. She was pretty sure it was Luwan’s turn to refill it, but he was out having fun somewhere in the forest. Again.
Kirra sighed. It would take over half an hour to make her way to the salt caverns. Maybe forty-five minutes. Definitely more than an hour round-trip. Dinner would be late.
Hmm. Maybe she could serve the stew as is? She grabbed the ladle, took another tentative sip, and…ugh. No. Salt was a necessity.
Kirra shook her head slowly. Her first instinct was to seek out a neighbor and ask if she could borrow some, bringing along a small gift of thanks in return. That made more sense than trekking all the way to the caverns. In fact, that’s certainly what she would have done back in the old days when—
No, no. Nope. Stop. Anything she would have done in the old days was a Memory Trap, even something as simple as visiting a neighbor. No sense taking even another moment to ponder it.
Besides, that was not how things were done here. Tree families mostly kept to themselves. You were aware of and might become acquainted with the people who lived in the closest surrounding trees, but not in any real or intimate way. You couldn’t even see them most of the time, since the individual homes were so well hidden. There was very little sharing of resources; people were expected to fend for themselves. The community structure did not lend itself to casually dropping by and asking if you could borrow some salt.
Instead, she grabbed the large pouch from the hook, looped it around her shoulders so it rested on her back, and prepared for her journey.
She poured a gourd full of water over the flames and the fire disappeared with an angry hiss and a great poof of steam. It would be a pain to get it going again to reheat the stew, but there were no unattended fires when you lived in the treetops.
Taking a deep breath, she walked out the front door and onto the circular platform that surrounded the hut. Her stomach still flip-flopped whenever she stepped out here. Yes, she dimly remembered that she had once enjoyed running through the trees. But not this high. Up here, when the wind blew, the treetop would actually sway back and forth. A lot. The entire house often slid this way and that, as if in an earthquake. Sometimes at night her hammock would rock, feeling like someone was pushing her. The rest of the family found this quite soothing, like being a baby in a big cradle. But Kirra didn’t think she’d ever get used to it. On particularly blustery nights she would hold the fibers of the hammock in a white-knuckle grip until either the wind died down or she passed out from exhaustion, whichever came first.
The first step off the platform was always the hardest. The family had installed helpers, of course. Small loops of rope dangled from surrounding branches to function as reliable hand- and footholds. Planks had been fixed to nearby tree trunks to serve as ladders to branches that were thicker and easier to walk on. But still. That first step took her from the safety of a solidly constructed home to being far above the ground, without any time to get used to the idea.
Kirra inhaled deeply as she oriented herself. The salt caverns were located to the southeast, and Luwan’s father had carved the corresponding points of the compass around the rim of the hut’s circular roof. Kirra didn’t need them at night—still knew how to navigate by the stars—but it certainly helped during the day.
Checking twice to make sure she was headed in the right direction, she leaned forward slowly, grabbed on to two coils of rope for stability, and stepped out. There was always half a moment that took her breath away, when her foot had left the hut’s platform and was stretched out over the open air. But that feeling dissipated—mostly, anyway—as soon as her foot was firmly on the branch.
When she had first started living with Luwan’s family, she would leave through one of the trapdoors and carefully climb down their home tree all the way to the ground, and then make her way around by walking on the forest floor. But the more she hung out with Luwan, who often went for weeks without ever touching the ground, the more confident she became. And now, even when she was by herself, she saw the value in traveling among the treetops.
Her stomach plunged again when she jumped to the branches of the next tree, her entire body in the air, momentarily unanchored to anything. She always leaped toward the center, the trunk, and kept reminding herself that it wouldn’t be the end of the world if she missed a branch for some reason. Luwan had reassured her that it wasn’t like stepping off a cliff. She wouldn’t plummet straight down two hundred feet to the ground. There were countless branches between her and the forest floor.
“Think of it like this,” he had said. “The tree is your friend, and it has a thousand arms that all want to catch you.” He had spread out his own arms to demonstrate. “I mean, sure, you might smack into a few of them and fall a bit farther than you wanted to”—here he shrugged—“but, eventually, you’ll be able to grab on to one of them and stop yourself from falling. It’s, you know, guaranteed.”
Kirra had winced. “But wouldn’t that hurt?”
“Not as much as hitting the ground—splat!” He had punctuated this sentiment by closing his eyes, letting his tongue loll out the side of his mouth, and making death-rattle noises.
Kirra had lunged to give him a little splat upside the head for that one, but Luwan had just darted out of her reach and cackled his mischievous little laugh.
But his advice calmed her nerves now as she made her way from branch to branch, tree trunk to tree trunk, heading in the direction of the salt caverns. Kirra was especially thankful that it was still the dry season, although she knew the daily rainstorms would be starting up at any time. A dry branch always felt like a much safer option for supporting and balancing her body weight than a stretch of rain-slick wood.
She had been traveling for less than ten minutes when she heard the muted but unmistakable sounds of a pack of Hook Hunters working its way through the area. Kirra immediately found the thickest surrounding branch and took a seat, leaning back against the tree trunk for comfort. It was unwritten Tree Folk protocol to stay as still as possible when Hook Hunters passed by, as they were able to race through the trees faster than anyone else in the community, and running into someone else up here could have disastrous consequences. But Kirra would have taken a break and peered out from behind the leaves anyway. She loved to watch them whenever she had the chance.
First came the Tracker. She came racing by, two trees over and about twenty feet below, giving Kirra a perfect view.
The speed, as always, was breathtaking. The Tracker held a slender stick in each hand, almost like a small spear except each one ended in a hook instead of a sharpened point. A coiled leather strap was fastened to the straight end, and it looped around the Tracker’s wrist to make sure that her hand wouldn’t lose its grip.
As the woman dashed along the branches, she constantly worked the hooks above her head in a steady rhythm of activity. They looped over the limbs, providing a split second of traction and steadiness for the Tracker before they were pulled off and transferred to the next spot. She almost looked like a spider, multiple appendages being used in coordination for mobility and stability. It was like a form of running where the arms were just as important as the legs.
Only it isn’t really running, Kirra thought. More like gliding. For one thing, the Tracker was angling downward and leveraging the pull of gravity, so she was moving faster than Kirra could run at a dead sprint on level ground. And when she needed to reverse course, the Tracker could quickly raise herself several feet in the air by hooking higher and higher branches, pulling herself skyward and running straight up the trunk. S
he was able to leap from tree to tree with such confidence because the hooks were much more reliable than hands for finding purchase. There were no worries about tender palms being stabbed by a sharp offshoot of branch, and on smooth limbs, the hooks slid right across the surface of the wood, giving the Tracker an exhilarating ride.
Kirra assumed she would only get a brief glimpse of the proceedings, but she was in luck. Whatever creature the Tracker was trailing, it was apparently lingering in the area. The Tracker zoomed past Kirra’s perch, but after traversing seven or eight trees in a blur of activity, she slowly started to circle back, creating a loop where Kirra sat on the outer edge.
Tracking prey from this height served the Hook Hunters well. An animal being stalked on the ground could hear a twig snap from a hundred yards away, or catch the tiniest movement out of their peripheral vision, or even smell a hunter if the wind shifted slightly.
But this high up, the animal’s keen senses were taken out of play. The Tracker was like a hawk stealthily pursuing its prey from the safety of the sky.
Kirra leaned forward, steadying herself with a strong grip on two neighboring branches, to see if she could identify what was on the Hunters’ dinner menu tonight. She watched the Tracker out of the corner of her eye as she scanned what little she could see of the ground far below. The woman with the hooks was narrowing her loop, dropping a few branches lower with each pass, so Kirra trained her vision on the center of that imaginary circle.
There! In a clearing through the leaves, Kirra saw a flash of movement. A boar! A mighty big one, too, from what she could make out at this height.
As soon as the animal popped into view, she heard the Tracker’s shrill whistle pierce the forest air. Time for Phase Two.
Kirra watched the surrounding woods, and here came the Spotters—a boy and a girl, not much older than Kirra and so much alike they had to be twins. With their coordinated movements, it seemed as though they’d been born for the job.
The girl popped out of the branches on the eastern side of the Tracker’s tightening circle, while the boy came from the west. They both looked to the Tracker, who was standing on the tip of a branch that was dipping dangerously. She kept one hook around an overhead branch for stability as she leaned out into the open air at an impossible angle. With her other hook, she pointed down at the boar, tracing its movements as it grunted its way through the forest, perhaps trying to hunt down a meal of its own.
The Spotters, taking their cue, started to circle in the air above the animal, nimbly hooking their way from limb to limb, continuing to tighten the loop like a noose. With each pass, they dropped a few branches lower, getting closer and closer to their prey. The Tracker followed suit, staying equidistant between the two Spotters, perfectly triangulating the beast below.
Kirra’s heart sped up and she gripped the branches more tightly in anticipation. Almost time for the Main Event. If she was this nervous just watching, she couldn’t imagine how her body would be reacting if she were the one about to—
The Kill Signal was given. All three Hunters, much closer together now, pulled a string on the end of each of their hooks, unfurling bright red squares of cloth that flapped in the breeze like flags. They waved them overhead three times and then pointed to the same spot on the ground. From her bird’s-eye vantage point above them, the space between their bodies looked like a tunnel leading right to their prey below.
Kirra looked up, and here came the final member of the team. The Pouncer.
If it had looked like the Tracker was gliding, then the Pouncer was flying. He dropped out of the sky like a stone, falling impossible lengths through the open air before hooking a branch or two in order to shift direction or control his speed.
He zoomed past Kirra in a dizzying rush, but completely silent, just like a diving bird of prey.
She watched as he plunged, steering himself in between his team members, and dropped right through their triangle of flags. As he became a tiny doll figure far below, he hooked the lowest level of branches, then let himself fall the rest of the way to the ground. Kirra could just faintly make out the terrified squeal of the boar, which must never have known it was being stalked.
The Tracker and two Spotters tied up their flags and then dropped to the ground themselves, ready to help with the butchering, or to make a travois if they had to drag their prize any distance. Whichever was the case, their families would be eating very well tonight.
Kirra stood and stretched, working the kinks out of her legs. She really shouldn’t have taken the time to watch all of that—dinner was going to be even later—but she just couldn’t resist the show.
She started to make her way southeasterly again, only now, after watching the fluidly coordinated movements of the Hook Hunters, she felt like a clumsy toddler inching her way along.
And the thought of all that boar meat was making her hungry. The soup in the pot back home would be good, she was certain, but it was no substitute for a fresh haunch of wild pig, slow-roasted over an open flame. She could almost smell it.
Kirra was so caught up in her dinner fantasies, she didn’t take careful note of her surroundings. She stepped on a branch that was rigged to work as a trip wire. A great stone dropped from a hidden perch in the tree, pulling a rope that made the net cinch up into a ball. With her inside.
She’d been captured.
KIRRA WAS DANGLING UPSIDE DOWN, her body pressed against the tightly woven net, twigs and leaves mashing into her face. One arm was pinned to her side, but she was able to work her free hand up to clear a space so she could peek through a hole.
A man ascended the trunk, moving with the liquid grace of a jungle cat. His clothing was all dull greens and dirty browns, allowing him to blend in seamlessly with leaf and limb. He was peering up at her through a screen of tightly braided hair, and his scarred hands and feet instinctively found grips for climbing while his eyes never left the net.
When the man reached Kirra’s branch, he nimbly hoisted himself up and withdrew a long, sharp cutting stone from the waistband of his shorts. Kirra was helpless to do anything but watch as he got closer and closer.
“Hey, Mome.”
The man bent over and squinted into the net.
“Oh. Hello, Kirra.” He gave her a little wave. “I was hoping to find the leopard that has been patrolling these parts.”
“So sorry to disappoint you.”
“Oh well. He’ll be back.” Mome shrugged and sat down cross-legged on the wide branch. “And what are you doing on this fine afternoon?”
Kirra shook her head. Or rather, she tried to. Being trussed up like this did not lend itself to much mobility. She settled for an eye roll. “Well, at the moment I seem to be stuck in this tree.”
“My, my. So you do.” Mome’s brow crinkled, matching the deep wrinkles that lined the rest of his face. He gestured at Kirra’s predicament like he had just noticed she was incapacitated. “And why are you like this?”
“You know why.”
Mome raised one eyebrow in a question.
“You did this,” Kirra said. “This is your net. You caught me. In a trap. Like a wild animal.”
“Well…perhaps you should not have wandered so close to my home.” Mome shrugged. “Like a wild animal.”
“That’s hardly fair, Mome. You change the location of your home every month or so. It’s hard to keep up.”
He waggled a finger at her. “One can never be too careful. I’ve seen many things in this life, young lady.” Mome bent down and reached through the holes in the net to clear away some leaves, revealing more of Kirra’s face. He studied her for several moments. “Do you know what I think?”
Kirra tried to blow a stray lock of hair out of her face. “What?”
“I think you have sad eyes. They’ve always told me that you’ve seen some things in this life, as well.” After a long silence he added, “Yes?”
Kirra looked away. “You know I don’t talk about things like that. The past.”
> “But we cannot know the future. So what else is there to talk about except the past?”
“How about we talk about you getting me out of this net in the very near future?”
“Oh, my. So feisty.” He leaned forward and squinted at her, then poked tentatively at an elbow that was sticking out of the net. “Are you sure you’re not a leopard?”
Kirra just rolled her eyes again. Mome chuckled and reached up with his cutting tool, hacked through a section of rope, and the entire net came apart. Kirra was unceremoniously deposited onto the broad branch with a thump.
“Oof.” She clambered to her feet, rubbing her lower back where she had smacked the limb.
“Hmm. Strange. I thought leopards always landed on their paws.”
“I’m not your leopard, Mome.”
He tilted his head this way and that, chin in his hand, studying her. Finally he gave her a dismissive wave. “Oh, I suppose not. But you should come to my humble house anyway and share a drink with me. I’m working on a new concoction with honey and berries. You will love it!” Mome talked with his hands and his eyes went all crinkly when he was excited.
Kirra was still dusting herself off. “I would do that, Mome, really. But I need to get to the salt caverns before dinner. And I’m late already.”
She turned to step away, but Mome took her gently by the shoulders. “We have not chatted in a long time, and I have plenty of salt at the moment. How about this: You take as much as you need, and then spend the time you saved visiting with old Mome.”
Kirra chewed on her lip, weighing the offer. It would be nice not to have to haul herself all the way to the caverns. And Mome always treated her with kindness. But still…talking to him was like walking through a maze where a Memory Trap lurked behind every corner, because he was also—
“It’s called borrowing from a neighbor, Kirra, and in some parts of this wide world, it’s actually quite a common practice.”
She looked down. “I know about borrowing,” she mumbled. “And I know about neighbors.”
If We Were Giants Page 8
