Echoes of Understorey

by Thoraiya Dyer

  The men put their palms together and bowed respectfully. The first one went deeper into the ti-house with the snuffling child.

  The second man said, “Should we sever the bridge? There is nobody left in the paperbark tree.”

  “If you cut my brother’s rope, who will wind up the bridge to protect it from the rain?” asked Youngest-Father, cocking his head. “And how will you go back home? Breeze has no bridges of its own. You will all have to stay here until the rain stops and bridges come from other parts of the village.”

  “The monsoon will end tomorrow or the next day,” the man said, already pulling an axe from the loop at his belt. Imeris felt briefly distracted by his mentioning the end of monsoon. She had a recurring engagement in Canopy at the end of the monsoon, but she couldn’t dwell on that now. “Better a ruined bridge than risk another demon attack.”

  “That chimera will not return,” Imeris said.

  “There are other demons,” the man said. “Embracers. Needleteeth, which you of Loftfol call the spotted swarm. Dayhunters. Fiveways.”

  Imeris smiled, thinking of the demon-depicting tattoos across Middle-Father’s shoulders. Lizard-like dayhunters had long, banded backs and great, curving claws. The spotted swarm were monkey-sized demons with short legs and long snouts, boiling over branches with fangs bared. Each of the five members of a fiveways troupe was monkey-shaped, but bigger. Their thick hides were all but impenetrable, and so rough brushing against them drew blood.

  Then she heard the sound of wet bark pulling away from the tree trunk. She held up her hand for silence.

  Youngest-Father and the man from the paperbark tree stared at her with foreboding.

  Imeris dropped to the floor of the entranceway, onto her hands and toes, stretched out like a salamander, and peered over the edge.

  Below her, at the furthest visible reach of the light from the torch, a man with a full basket of fruit on his back climbed up the lemon ironwood tree. He huffed a little with each sinking of the spines. The basket looked heavy. Ropes fell from the man’s harness into the depths. His bare shoulders were broad, but his rust-coloured hair was grey-streaked.

  His lower back stuck out from the tree the way men’s lower backs did when they had potbellies from drinking too much bia.

  “Who is that?” the man from the paperbark tree wondered aloud, poised with his axe over the banister and Oldest-Father’s best ropes.

  “Cut those,” Youngest-Father instructed. Imeris felt the rush of wind as the severed ropes whipped past and the bridge fell. “It must be Zhamahz.”

  “That it is,” confirmed the voice of the grey-braided matron. Imeris sat up, coming cross-legged at the edge of the entranceway to frown at the ample-bodied, paperbark-wrapped woman. She stood with her arms folded beside the banister and could not possibly see over the edge. “Can you smell what is in the basket?”

  All three of them, Imeris, the axeman, and Youngest-Father, took a deep sniff of the rain-saturated air. Beneath the lemon tang was the hint of tart sweetness that belonged to the windowleaf fruit. Imeris had rarely eaten fruit in her fathers’ home, but one of the teachers at Loftfol came from the Head family of Dul and had a sweet tooth.

  “Just in time for lunch,” Youngest-Father said.

  “You cannot eat them straight after picking,” the woman said. “Unless you wait for their scales to fall off, they will make your mouth bleed.” She turned beady brown eyes on Imeris. “I am Zhamahz’s wife, the seamstress Alenela. You have our gratitude for driving away the chimera.”

  “Accepted,” Imeris answered. “We came to speak with your husband.”

  “Oh, yes,” Alenela said, tossing her braid over her shoulder and glancing at Youngest-Father. “This one paid me a visit not so long ago. You might speak to my husband sooner if you threw him a rope. Also it might be safer for him, since the bridge has split the bark.”

  Imeris looked for Oldest-Father, but he seemed to have retreated into the ti-house. She took one of her own spare coils, secured it to the banister, and allowed it to drop past Zhamahz’s head. The new arrival looked up at them with apparent startlement before hitching it to his harness and allowing Imeris and Youngest-Father to haul him up to the entryway.

  He staggered past them to set the basket of green, patterned, oval-shaped fruit in a niche with a panel that slid back to accommodate provisions. His familiarity with the mechanism spoke of many previous deliveries.

  Then he sat on the edge of the cupboard, rubbed at the seams on his forearms where his spines must have been bearing his weight for hours if not days, and drank from a leather bag brought to him by Alenela.

  They embraced perfunctorily.

  “You are late, my sweet,” she said.

  “The Floorians would not let me climb the tree yesterday,” he said. “Their bone woman said a chimera was nearby. They waited for it to choose another tree.”

  “Did they?” Alenela murmured, waiting for realisation to make his jowly face sag and send his trembling right hand to the place over his heart.

  “Is it … Is the demon in our tree, Alenela? But … the bridge. Did it hold? In the wet?”

  “Everyone is here,” Alenela said, placidly stoppering the leather bottle. “Everyone is safe. You have these strangers to thank for it. I suggest you help them with whatever matter it is that has brought them here to find you.”

  FOUR

  IMERIS EXPLAINED curtly.

  “There is a rogue sorceress. Sometimes called Kirrik. She carries the blue lanterns you have seen. We must know which tree they rested in. Lives depend on it. Can you tell us where it was? Can you explain how we may be sure of recognising it?”

  “How do I know,” Zhamahz asked, as politely as it was possible to ask such a thing, not meeting Imeris’s eyes, “that the woman with the blue lanterns is not an innocent spinewife and you the rogue?”

  “This woman faced a chimera to spare a tree full of strangers, my sweet,” Alenela said, arms folded once again.

  “If I were the rogue,” Imeris said, “I would force you to accompany me. To be sure of finding the right tree. But I do not wish any unprotected persons to be near this sorceress when I strike her down, for she is a body stealer and sends innocent souls into the ether.” She held up her amulet. “I do not have a spare one of these for you to wear. So I ask you again to describe in detail the direction and identifying traits of the tree in which you saw the lanterns.”

  Zhamahz gazed back at her with something like wistful contemplation for a long moment. Imeris had time to note the unusual placement of one implanted spine on the thumb of his huge, callused right hand, presumably for cutting stems. Also, a row of spines along his breastbone, useful for working with both hands free while stationary for long periods, but otherwise a danger, since spines weakened the integrity of the rib cage and made a vulnerable target in hand-to-hand fighting.

  She tucked her amulet away.

  Zhamahz shook his head, rubbing his bald spot with his left hand.

  “The problem is,” he said, “you would not be able to identify it, no matter what description I gave you. I have worked there only in the dark and the pouring rain. I know it by touch and by smell, but unless you had cut windowleaf fruit for forty years, I could not communicate these things to you.”

  “Then you must take us there,” Youngest-Father said, “when the monsoon ends. And then get away as quickly as you can.”

  “There is another possibility,” Alenela said, putting her hand protectively on Zhamahz’s shoulder. They shared a glance, his expression reluctant, hers unreadable. “The Bird-Riders never forget a path once taken.”

  “That is not our bargain,” Zhamahz argued. “Any Treefolk who set foot on the sacred soil must die—that is their law.”

  “They made an exception for you, my sweet. They may make another. You can but ask. It would be better than giving your body up to the use of a sorceress.” Her hand tightened on his shoulder, and she shot a sharp glance at Youngest-Father.


  Zhamahz nodded. He looked at Imeris and Youngest-Father in turn.

  “I will go. I will ask them. That is the best I can do. It will take me the rest of this day and some of the night to drop back down to Floor and then climb here again. I am tired. You will wait?”

  “We will,” Imeris said.

  The fruit cutter opened another hidden storage niche, this one on the other side of the entryway. There, a pulley on the end of a wooden arm swung out over the emptiness where the rope bridge had been. Zhamahz took the ropes hung from his body and threaded them through the mechanism. He emptied the basket he had carried on his back into the first niche, then reattached the empty basket to the ropes.

  “Lend me your strong shoulders, Alenela.”

  Alenela smiled, showing her dimples, and tossed her grey braid over her shoulder. Stacking full water bags on his shoulders and her own, she joined him at the edge of the entryway, putting one arm around his neck and grasping the ropes with the other. Together they stepped onto the empty basket and sank slowly out of sight, as though they and the water bags were the counterweight to some other burden.

  “You have traded with Floorians before, Youngest-Father,” Imeris said, as they waited for that burden to appear. “Can we expect the Bird-Riders to agree?”

  “Bird-Riders are not Fig-Eaters,” Youngest-Father said. “The peoples of Floor are more varied than those of the different villages of Understorey. Might as well ask a Servant of the death god what the birth goddess wants for breakfast.”

  Seven laden baskets of windowleaf fruit, each basket as tall as Oldest-Father, wound their way up the side of the tree. They stopped when the knots holding them to the ropes hit the pulley.

  “Windowleaf fruit,” Imeris said, taking one from the basket and breathing its delicious fragrance in again. “That is what the birth goddess would want for breakfast. I suppose we should secure the baskets and unload these?”

  When they finished, they went to find Oldest-Father. In the chamber where the winds cooled the sweating, still-fearful crowd, he sat with the burnt leaf-wrappings, licking the last of the fish from his fingers.

  “He told you which tree?” he asked. “Is it time to go?”

  “Not exactly,” Youngest-Father said. “Get comfortable.”

  After a while, inspired by Oldest-Father’s example, some of the men went to set up a fishing net in the stream on the northern side of the tree. Children raided the kitchens for cups and drinking water. Families lit fires in the other hearths and sat around them drinking ti, playing sticks, and eating the syrups, gum-lollies, and other sickly sugary sap products that were added to ti for flavouring.

  Imeris slept on the floor with her leathery wings for a blanket. She dreamed of Nirrin. Nirrin, flushed with pleasure at the news she was to be trained as a spinewife. Nirrin, teasing her brother about the relative prestige she would have compared to the village smith. Vesev answering that if she wanted any more metalwork done, she had better get on hands and knees and crawl. Handing her the heavy new brace with its seven curved, keen-edged spines.

  Nirrin turning on him, brace in hand, eyes cold and glittering. And Imeris did nothing.

  She watched and did nothing.

  Youngest-Father woke her before morning. Still befuddled, half in the dream, she grabbed at her amulet. It kept her safe. Kirrik could not steal her body. She was not afraid. She was angry.

  “Zhamahz has returned,” Youngest-Father whispered in her ear.

  Imeris forcibly loosened her fingers around the amulet. She took the time to use the toilet and to drink a cup of sweetened water. To stretch and loosen her muscles and joints, she practiced a quickening series of movements she’d learned at Loftfol, the first of their legendary forms. Then, gathering her wings and tightening her weapons belt and gliding harness over her sleeveless tunic and short wrapped skirt, she followed Youngest-Father to the east-facing entrance.

  All was pitch-black. The noise of the sheeting rain almost made her miss Zhamahz’s urgently whispered words.

  “No light is permitted,” he said. Imeris’s hand met his rough, pudgy fist on the banister. She stood close to the edge. Youngest-Father’s warm shape was between her and the long fall. She heard the pulley rattle; someone was angling the ropes. “That is their first and most urgent condition. They know about the sorceress you are hunting. To protect their bone women, they insist on total darkness. They say a bone woman’s body can only be stolen if her face is seen and known.”

  “No light,” Youngest-Father agreed. He took Imeris’s hand, guiding it to the ropes.

  “Step together onto the basket,” Zhamahz said. “Your journey may be a little alarming. I did not know there were three of you.”

  Not enough fruit as a counterweight, Imeris supposed.

  We are fliers, she thought. We are not afraid to fall.

  She felt Youngest-Father’s weight shifting, and she stepped after him, feeling with her foot for the edge of the basket, taking the rope in her hands.

  “Gods’ bones,” Oldest-Father cursed as they swung out and hurtled down.

  The coolness of the plunge was not unlike the wind in the ti-house. Imeris closed her eyes and tried to enjoy the relief of it, the way that it kept insects away from her, and not think about their landing. She was still tired. She wished she’d eaten some fish before falling asleep. The alertness she’d gotten from the sweetened water was fading.

  Something heavy knocked her hard under the ribs, and only Oldest-Father’s arm around her kept her from falling free of the basket. The shock made her mind flail for enemies—was it the sorceress? Had the Bird-Riders betrayed them?—before she remembered the tart fruit smell that had accompanied the blow. Not a human smell. Choking for breath, she endured Oldest-Father’s grip until her midriff came unparalysed and she could speak.

  “Was that … Was that…”

  “It was the fruit,” Youngest-Father confirmed in her ear. “On the way up. We are halfway down.”

  Imeris tried not to think what would have happened if she’d been carrying her bore-knife a little further towards the front; it might have been driven up into her chest by the fruit basket. She breathed slowly as her pulse settled. Tried not to think of the stories about Floorians being hideous and misshapen, about them mating with the beasts they shared their dirt with, and about their thirst for fresh blood.

  You have traded with Floorians before.

  Trade was not a thing she knew very much about. Oldest-Father prided himself on not needing anyone else. He’d trap a hundred beasts for their bones before he’d send Imeris to Gannak to trade for a single steel blade.

  Middle-Father, when he had lived in Understorey, could not go to Gannak because of crimes he’d committed there before Imeris was born. A hunter is no better than his weapons, he’d told her a hundred times, though, and sent her to the forge for the things he needed, and later, the things she needed. Not just metals but salt, too. Salt is the secret to a warrior’s stamina, Issi.

  Imeris carried salt on her person at all times, in a pouch on her weapons belt.

  Youngest-Father, in contrast, had brought back spoils from his travels among the villages of Understorey to their home in the tallowwood. He and Youngest-Mother had learned new music. Performed old. Instruments were bought and songs sold. The pair of them had used Youngest-Father’s eye for beautiful fabrics and jewels to build a web of connections from Hundar to Lit. Those connections had paid off for him during the hunt for the sorceress. But even he had never sought to forge long-term alliances with Floorians.

  Bird-Riders are not Fig-Eaters.

  What was a Bird-Rider, anyway? What sort of monstrous birds were of a size to be ridden? And if the birds could climb or fly, why hadn’t Imeris ever seen one? Middle-Father had hunted most of the great beasts and demons of the forest, and he had never mentioned any such thing as a bird big enough to ride upon. Imeris imagined enormous grey owls with hooked beaks and eyes like golden moons. Night-parrots the size of giant tapi
rs that drummed together in the dark.

  Floorians do not climb. They say they have a sacred connection to dirt and water.

  The greatest danger from owls was their talons. If Imeris was to fight one, she would try to trap the feathered legs together, to catch them with a rope and throwing stones. That would leave only the beak to worry about. Before she’d learned spine-fighting from Loftfol’s Haakim, she’d learned from the Scentingim to weight ropes, hang from them, throw them, and strangle with them.

  A Floorian might shoot you out of a tree, but she will not follow you into it.

  Parrots had slightly less rotational ability in the neck. Imeris visualised the pertinent anatomy. The knife work she had learned from Middle-Father would be applicable in such a case. A strike from beneath the chest would need to be very deep to reach the heart in its spacious cavern of air-filled sacs; a spine-severing slice from behind the head would be more effective. The beak, though a danger, relied on strength in closing to open nut cases and tree trunks, not strength in opening. Perhaps a noose around the bill would be prudent, as with the owl.

  Imeris felt surreptitiously for the spare ropes that still hung from her harness, half ready to loosen them, to use them, to string them with drilled stones for throwing.

  The basket juddered to a halt. The earth smell was more powerful than Imeris had ever known it, drowning out the lemon ironwood smell. She felt buried in soil and leaves and half submerged in steaming water. The wood smoke clinging to their clothes and hair would make her own party easy enough to detect.

  They could shoot her with arrows or mark her with a javelin, even blind in the black.

  No, she thought. I have not set foot on it. Not yet.

  “Is anyone there?” Youngest-Father called into the hot, heavy unknown. “We pay our respects to the Bird-Riders. I am called Marram. My brother is Esse. The young woman is my daughter, Imerissiremi.”

  There was only the whisper of running water around the roots of the tree and the howl of an unknown animal in the distant dark.

  And then soft laughter. A splashing sound, as if someone had dropped down into knee-deep water. A nearby animal made a sharp kek-kek-kek sound and was soothed by human murmurs.