They set up camp, hunted and ate, and waited for Stone. Moon paced almost continuously, his nerves drawn tighter than ever. They were only two days from Ocean Winter at most. We have to be close. It was hard not to imagine scenarios where Stone discovered a camp with them all alive but the warriors too injured or sick to fly, and Jade guarding them and waiting for help to arrive.
But evening passed into dusk and then night fell, and Stone didn’t arrive.
Everyone except the lookouts huddled in worried groups; no one went to sleep. Floret, Bramble, Merit, and Strike sat at the hearth with Moon, not speaking. It was so late, Moon was starting to wonder desperately what they would do if Stone was lost too. Where is he? If Stone had found Jade and the others, if he had fallen into the same trap, whatever it was … Moon knew vaguely the area where they should search for him, but the suspended forest seemed so unbelievably vast at the moment.
Of everyone here, Moon knew he was the one most used to being miserable for long periods of time, and even he felt like he couldn’t take a moment more of this. He didn’t know how well the others could cope.
Then from the branch above Drift called out excitedly, “I hear him!”
No one needed to ask who he meant. His skin flushed hot with relief, Moon was on his feet in an instant and reached the edge of the platform just as Stone landed. He winced away from the rush of air from Stone’s wings, then Stone shifted down to groundling.
Moon demanded, “Well?”
Stone said, “I couldn’t find a camp.”
Merit had spelled some moss and clumps of flowers to light the camp, but Stone’s expression was hard to read. “What—” This was a setback, but not an insurmountable one. “We’ll just have to help you search tomorrow.”
“Moon.” Stone shook his head, weary, his shoulders hunched as if his back ached. “I couldn’t find a camp, because there isn’t one.”
Moon just stood there. For a long moment, he couldn’t understand what Stone was saying.
Stone stepped forward and put his hands on Moon’s shoulders. “The camp yesterday was the last one.”
Moon pulled away. Now he understood, but he didn’t want to. “But … That camp wasn’t disturbed. There was no sign of anything …”
“Whatever happened to them, it happened sometime after they left there.”
Moon turned away, taking a few steps into the dark at the edge of the platform. He wanted to shift and throw himself into the night; he wanted it so badly his blood burned with the need to change. But he knew if he did it would be a sign of failure and weakness, and he would lose the confidence of the warriors and Arbora. You can’t afford to break down, even for a moment. You need to keep searching. Jade, Chime, Balm, Song, Root, and Coil were depending on him.
He took a deep breath, forced down the sick disappointment. He turned back to Stone.
Stone hadn’t moved, and it occurred to Moon that he must be exhausted. Moon took his wrist and tugged, pulling him over to the hearth. The warriors and Arbora had been staring in dismay; now they moved, the warriors hurrying to bring Stone a portion of the meat left from their last kill, Strike and Plum putting a kettle on for fresh tea.
Stone didn’t groan, but he eased down to sit beside the hearth like he was in pain. Moon sat beside him. Stone put an arm around him, pulled him close, and gently bit his ear. He whispered, “This isn’t over.”
Moon nodded as he sat up, swallowing down the lump in his throat.
They sat there while Stone ate, the warriors and Arbora making occasional quiet comments to each other. No one asked what they were going to do now, a small mercy which Moon would be grateful for forever. When Floret asked Moon to approve her choice of who would stand watch for the rest of the night, Moon saw Venture watching them with a thoughtful expression. He wondered if she still thought they were acting all this out just to fool her. If she did, she must be a complete idiot.
When Stone was drinking tea, Merit cleared his throat.
Moon looked up, and Merit said, “I have an idea. I don’t know that it will work.”
Everyone stared at him and Moon’s heart thumped. He felt a little like a drowning groundling who had been tossed a lifeline. “Tell us.”
Merit took a deep breath and admitted, “I’ve tried scrying on Jade and Balm and Chime, trying to see where they are, and that’s not working. I want to try something else.”
Moon suppressed the urge to panic about the fact that Merit couldn’t see where they were. He managed, “What else is there?”
“I want to try to scry the last camp Stone found. Maybe I can see what they did, what they talked about, to give us some idea of what to do next, where to search.” He spread his hands. “I mean, we assume they just flew on in the direction of Ocean Winter. But if they didn’t, if they went hunting, or if someone was hurt that night at the camp.”
Stone had been listening intently. “Do it,” he told Merit.
Moon couldn’t tell if it sounded like a good idea or it sounded like grasping at the last fast-disappearing hope.
Merit nodded, both relieved and unnerved. “I need something from that camp first. If we can go back there tomorrow morning—”
“Wait.” Moon turned for his pack, and rummaged in it for the beads he had found. “These were near the fire pit, buried in the dirt. I think they came off a shirt or a pack.”
Merit held out his hand. “Is there still dirt on them?”
“A little.” Moon was just glad no one had asked him why he had picked them up.
He handed the beads over and Merit carefully rolled them on his palm. Merit muttered, “I think this will work.” He stumbled to his feet, still engrossed in the beads, and headed off toward the shelters. Plum and Salt got up and followed him without being asked. While Merit was auguring, he had no attention for anything else and needed to be guarded. The rest of the time he was so exhausted from the augury and the travel, he had no attention for anything else, and still needed to be guarded. The other Arbora were taking turns at it.
Moon blinked and rubbed his eyes, realizing he had drifted for a moment. He told Stone, “You need to get some sleep.”
Stone sighed, packed his cup away, and got up. “Come on.”
Moon shook his head. “I’m going to wait and see if Merit gets anything.”
“You don’t know how long it’ll take him.” Stone leaned down, caught Moon’s arm, and hauled him to his feet. “Merit can sleep tomorrow, and you have to be able to fly.”
Moon lay down in the shelter with Stone, not that he expected to sleep much. His thoughts chased in circles, and he slept for only moments at a time, until he woke in the deep gray-green light of early dawn to find Merit crouched just outside the shelter. Merit whispered, “I think I saw something.”
They flew back to the twinned mountain-thorn and reached it in the late afternoon. Moon chose the same landing spot as before, on the large platform where Jade’s deserted campsite lay. Tree frogs, each nearly as large as an Arbora, leapt away at their arrival, a good sign that the platform was still clear of predators. The light was murky, making the spot look subtly different. Somewhere above the mountain-trees’ multi-layered canopies, the sky had gone gray, threatening rain and throwing deep green-gray shadows across the suspended forest.
Despite its size and the complexity of the entwined branches, the mountain-thorn didn’t have nearly as many platforms as a mountain-tree and they were much smaller. Most of them were above this one, dripping curtains of vines and other vegetation. Moon thought their quarry, whatever it was, would be in the branches and the canopy, not on the exposed platforms. He turned to Merit. “Which way?”
Serene had been carrying Merit, who staggered a bit as he recovered from the flight. He yawned, looked up and around at the branches arching over them. “I’m not sure.”
Merit wasn’t exactly sure what he had seen in his vision, either, but his scrying had shown that someone, maybe Chime, had seen something astonishing. Merit had explained, “A
nd I think Jade spoke to someone – something—in the mountain-thorn near their camp. I feel like there’s something there, some clue, and we just didn’t see it because we weren’t looking in the right place.”
Something astonishing. Moon didn’t like the sound of that. Astonishing things hidden in the bowels of mountain-thorns and other cave-like places were more likely to be dangerous than awe-inspiring. Merit had added, “But I don’t see death. I mean …” He ran a hand through his hair. He was hollow-eyed with exhaustion. “I don’t want to give false hope or anything. But I just don’t get any sense of death, or pain, or fear … I get surprise.”
“Surprise?” Stone repeated, his tone making it clear this was not the good news Merit seemed to think it was.
“Yes.” Merit had nodded. “I keep getting the feeling that they saw something that surprised them.”
Moon didn’t like the sound of that, either.
Now Moon told the hunters, “Find a way into the canopy. They would have had some reason to leave camp.” He turned to River. “You stay here with Drift and Briar and Venture.” As River opened his mouth to protest, he added, “If we walk into the same trap the others did, somebody’s got to get us out.”
River’s protest caught in his throat. “All right,” he said instead.
Turning to follow the hunters, Moon wasn’t sure why he had chosen River to guard his back. Maybe because he wasn’t sure what River would do if they didn’t return, whether he would come after them or go back to the court for help, but he knew River would do something. And because River was the one least likely to be influenced by anything Venture said. He had chosen Drift mostly to be company for River, and chosen Briar in case they needed a female warrior to do the thinking.
Venture didn’t protest being left behind. She looked disinterested in the whole process, as if certain now that the whole thing was an elaborate sham for her benefit.
Looking for food was the obvious reason to leave the platform, and the mountain-thorn’s enormous branches held whole forests of other trees, some of which probably bore fruit or berries. This platform was cradled in several branches, but the largest was the easiest and most obvious way into the canopy.
The hunters started up it, climbing to find a path along the branch through the thick clusters of symbiotic trees and plants. Moon, Stone, and the warriors followed, hanging back to give the hunters room to look for tracks.
Moon used his foot claws for purchase on the branch’s uneven surface as it sloped upward. Within moments the relatively open platform turned into a tunnel formed by the thick foliage. The scents grew thick, too, with the mountain-thorn’s own faintly sweet musk heavy in the air. Behind Moon, Stone hissed in annoyance and shifted to his groundling form; the passage was too narrow for his winged shape.
The constant birdsong, hum of insects and lizards, click and clink and call of treelings and frogs and everything else that lived here was louder in the closed-in space. The foliage cut off the breeze, and the humid air clung to Moon’s scales. The branch curved upward and they passed under a thorn vine, the first of the outer layer. This one was as big around as Moon’s wingspan, a good twenty paces, the thorns tall and curving with tips as sharp as his claws. This mountain-thorn had obviously never been tamed by a colony tree seed, and the big thorn vines grew all around the outer layer of the tree’s canopy, making almost impenetrable knots.
Bramble hesitated, then motioned Braid, Plum, and Strike to split off to climb along the thorn vine to the next large branch. “Make sure they didn’t go that way,” she told them.
Salt said, “Why would they go that way?”
“I don’t even know why they’d go this way,” Bramble retorted.
Moon said, “Sage, Sand, Aura, go with them.”
Wings rustled behind him as the three warriors swung up to the thorn vine after the hunters.
Moon and Stone continued down the branch after Bramble and Salt, with Floret, Serene, and Band spreading out behind them. Moon wanted to growl in frustration at their slow pace; Bramble was right, there was no way to tell if they were on the right path. They might have to explore the entire mountain-thorn.
Then Bramble said, “There’s a patch of ground fruit through here. Melons and redflower. If they came this way, they couldn’t have missed it.”
Moon pushed past a bush to catch up with her. She crouched above an area of flowering vines that had taken over a relatively flat part of the branch, and the dirt was lumpy with the belowground fruit. Salt moved through the patch and pulled at the vines, looking for signs that some of the fruit had been collected. Salt muttered, “If they were looking for food, they would have taken some of these and turned back.”
Moon looked around and tasted the air. Salt was right, if Jade’s group had come in this way and found this ground fruit, there would have been no need to go any further into the canopy. But he didn’t see anything that could be interpreted as surprising or astonishing, just multiple levels of tree-lined branches and hanging foliage, and colorful streaks as a swarm of tiny flying lizards fled. Disturbed by Salt’s efforts, a clump of the small creatures that Moon thought of as walking mushrooms pulled their roots from the ground and ambled away. He could hear the other warriors and Arbora searching around the foliage, moving cautiously. Thinking aloud, he said, “But Chime was with them.”
“So?” Stone said.
“So he’d never been on a mountain-thorn before, except for Emerald Twilight. He’s never seen a wild one like this. Maybe he wanted to explore further.”
Merit, who had been sticking close to Stone, said, “There are all kinds of rumors about mountain-thorns. That herbs and other things grow on them that don’t grow on mountain-trees.”
Stone stepped past Moon and motioned the Arbora to keep moving. “We know they left the camp and came in here. The why doesn’t really matter.”
Maybe it doesn’t, Moon thought, following. Maybe he had been infected by Bramble and the other Arbora, trying to create complicated theories about everyone’s behavior.
They pushed on, the two hunters keeping in contact with Plum’s group with clicks and whistles. From what Moon could hear, Plum had followed the thorn vine down to another branch, and they were working their way along it now. Another giant thorn-vine loomed low overhead, then another. For a stretch it was nothing but thorns, and all of them crept carefully, avoiding the sharp points.
Then the branch curved around to run beside a platform, an open flat space in the green cavern. It held a glade of trees, with tall slender green trunks like thick grass stalks stretching up, topped with brushy caps of tiny gray-green leaves.
Salt hesitated. “Go across?” he asked Bramble.
Her eyes narrowed. “Stay on the branch.”
The branch grew narrow, and it was awkward to make their way along it, but Moon could see why Bramble wanted to avoid the platform. The ground was soft and lumpy, covered with a white moss with a texture like bread dough. Six broad pathways formed by branches snaked away from the far end, all weaving away into the canopy in different directions. Moon’s throat went tight. And no way to tell which one they might have taken, if they even came this way at all. They could be searching this mountain-thorn for a long time.
Moon spotted movement on an upper branch that curved around behind the platform, but it was only the second search group. Plum waved. We should have brought more people, Moon thought.
Then Stone hissed at the hunters to stop. They froze, and he said quietly, “You see it?”
Moon didn’t see it, though he could sense faint motion somewhere ahead, a slight displacement of the air. Then his spines rippled. Something had moved.
Thirty or so paces ahead, a tree in the center of the platform shivered and unfolded its trunk.
Moon hissed a warning to the warriors behind him as the creature unfurled itself, tendrils lifted and expanded out as it turned toward them. It was at least fifty paces tall and even now looked like an animate tree, the central trunk supportin
g dozens of branches, all in fluid motion, sprays of tiny gray-green leaves fountaining up like a Raksura’s spines.
One of the warriors growled, and Bramble said, “Moon—”
“Get back,” he told her. Bramble made a sharp gesture to Salt and they both slipped back behind Moon. There wasn’t much room to retreat on the narrow branch and he tried to watch the animate tree while looking for a gap in the thorns behind them.
Then Stone stepped forward. Moon said, “Stone—”
Stone said, “I don’t think it’s a predator.”
Floret eased up beside Moon. “Stone, why do you think that?” she whispered.
Moon tasted the air. “The scent isn’t rank.” All he could smell was plant, that intense mixture of earth and green, the subtle odor that came from broken grass stalks.
Merit peered around Moon’s elbow. “It’s not just a moving plant, it knows we’re here.”
“It can’t talk to us,” Bramble said, her voice a whisper too. “It doesn’t have a mouth.”
“How do plants talk?” Salt wondered.
Stone took another cautious step forward, moving along the branch, closer to the tree. “I don’t know, but all the Arbora need to shut up now.”
Moon stepped with him, ignoring Floret, who was tugging on his spines to pull him back. “Stone—”
Stone kept moving. “If they wanted to kill us, they would have attacked us already.”
A chill shivered straight down Moon’s spine. He motioned the warriors to drop back, ignoring Floret’s hiss of protest. Every slender tree on the platform was one of these creatures, the others just hadn’t shown themselves yet. If Chime or one of the other warriors had walked into this … Except Stone was right, the tree-beings weren’t doing anything except watching and waiting. He said, “This … is different and a little creepy, but it’s not surprising or astonishing.” He didn’t think this was what had sparked Merit’s vision. Plant people just weren’t that odd.
Stories of the Raksura: Volume One: The Falling World & The Tale of Indigo and Cloud Page 6
