by Shannah Jay
They turned to stare. Where the hollow had been was now only solid tree-trunk.
'So,' said Herra, shrugging, 'let us go forward, then.' Without further ado, she ran lightly along the branch.
'It joins another one, just as you thought, Katia,' she said, stepping across on to the next branch.
With a muffled exclamation, Benjan ran along to join her. 'Lady, you shouldn’t walk into danger first! Let others test the path for you. Your life is too precious.'
She gave him one of her glinting smiles. 'Sometimes, Brother, I enjoy taking risks. Don't you?'
A reluctant smile crept across his stone-like features. 'Sometimes.'
'Let’s take this small risk together, then.'
'Very well, Herra.' As always, he knew instinctively when her mood was informal. 'We'll go ahead and explore!' he called over his shoulder. 'Stay where you are. Quinna, keep an eye on things, will you?'
'All right, Ben, baby. Some people get all the fun!' she yelled back. 'Don't be too long!'
But it seemed a long time before the two of them returned to the group waiting in the fork of the forest giant.
'What did you find?' Cheral asked, almost before Herra and Benjan had reached them.
'We found a continuing pathway, but we didn't dare explore too far in case we got lost. I think we must be meant to follow it, for there were no choices of route, no crossroads, just secure connections between one tree branch and the other.'
'Well,' said Cheral, 'let's go, then. It hasn't been easy keeping the children from crying. They'll be better if we're moving.'
'I'm not going anywhere,' said Jonner, who had remained huddled against the tree trunk the whole time.
His face was white and slick with sweat, so great was his fear of the yawning chasm below them.
'Then stay here!' snapped Quinna. 'I'm tired of your whining. Even up here Nim is no trouble to us -
unlike you! And she's a deal braver, too!'
Herra shook her head and made a sign to Quinna to be quiet. ' Follow me, Jonner. You will come to no harm.' She picked up one of the packs and stepped forward along the branch. Like an automaton, he fell into place behind her, moving in response to her Compulsion.
Quinna rolled her eyes at Benjan, but made no further comment. When the Elder Sister had that expression on her face, you didn’t go against her wishes.
What seemed like an hour later, they came to a tree as large as, or perhaps even larger than, the one in which they’d spent the night. There was no connecting branch leading away from it.
Jonner, eyes glazed, came to a halt next to Herra and waited for her to move again. Nim pressed close to Katia, whining in her throat.
Quinna gave little Erlic a smacking kiss on the cheek and passed him back to Cheral. 'Better be ready for trouble, just in case there's any danger,' she said cheerfully, one hand going to her sword. Her face registered shock and then anger. 'Herra! My sword won't come out of its scabbard.' She was tugging so hard that her face was nearly purple. 'Damn me, what other tricks is this place going to throw at us?'
'Calm down, Quin!' called Benjan. 'Nothing's attacked us yet.'
But even as he spoke, the branch on which they were standing began to creak and bend towards the earth.
no one needed telling to straddle the side branches and cling to them as the angle of the slope grew steeper.
Jonner was still under the Compulsion, so he followed the others' example without complaining.
'Creepy, isn't it?' laughed Quinna, who was next to him on the branch. 'I think I prefer him noisy to quiet like this, Elder Sister.'
As before, the giant leaves curled around them protectively and no one felt in any danger from the gentle downwards movement of the branch. Within a few minutes, it was touching the ground and the leaves had uncurled.
'Well, at least the undergrowth isn’t as thick here,' commented Cheral. 'Shall we get off, Elder Sister?'
The branch shivered beneath them.
'I think that's what we're meant to do.' Herra leaped lightly to the ground. 'Stay close together. Jonner, return to yourself.'
He gasped and stared around. 'Did I dream all that, or was I really walking along branches?'
'You were as nimble as our Nim,' said Quinna, chuckling at his shudder.
As soon as the last person had jumped to the ground, the branch began to creak upwards. Quinna was still tugging in vain at her sword and Benjan at his big knife, but there was no need to protect themselves from the vegetation this time, for the undergrowth had begun to roll back away from them of its own accord, a slow tide of fading green and drooping flowers.
'What now?' quavered Jonner. 'Look at that! Just look at it! Who's doing it all? That's what I want to know.'
They were now standing in a clearing, its edges marked by a circle of huge trees, standing like sentinels around the the tallest of the forest giants they’d seen so far. When the circle was clear of greenery, the undergrowth stopped receding and the ground beneath them shivered slightly as the dead plant life sighed softly into dust.
Katia stepped forward, her eyes unfocused. 'I think we should gather here,' she said, and her voice echoed through the clearing in a way that made Herra and Cheral exchange glances.
'Very well.' Herra held Davred back, shaking her head at him.
Before anyone could move to form a circle, Katia spoke again, still in that echoing toneless voice, 'Over here would be a good spot, Elder Sister.' She gestured to the tree. 'In fact, I think it would be best to gather around this venerable tree.'
' Gather around a tree!' snapped Cheral. 'I've never heard of such a thing.'
'Why not?' asked Davred, moving to stand beside his wife, ready to protect her, if necessary. He set Erlic down in a hollow between two of the central tree's large roots and took Alaran out of Katia's arms to settle him in the next hollow. If they weren’t being carried, neither babe would settle quietly without the other nearby. Carryn laid Lerina down next to them, and Nim started prowling around the outside of the group.
The nine of them just managed to form a circle round the great treetrunk, and as they linked hands and sank into the closeness of a Gathering, Katia felt a welling of empathy for the forest giants around her.
Without realising what she was doing, she took the lead, pre-empting Herra's role.
'Let us gather, dear Kindred,' she intoned.
No one allowed this digression from their normal pattern to disturb them and all settled to renew the sharing and communion that threaded through their lives and bound them so closely as a group. They had gathered in the Wildwoods, in the strange disorientation of Dsheresh, and in the bustle of Quedras's camp, but a new dimension was about to be added to their communions, for the tree around which they had formed their circle suddenly surged with life and the Kindred could sense a new presence in their melding.
Only Narla and Quinna, whose concentration wasn’t as well developed as the others', betrayed their surprise by gasping aloud, and even they were too attuned to the group to remain out of harmony for more than a moment. Jonner, who joined in the Gatherings just for the relaxation and companionship, was only vaguely aware of something different, but the others could all sense that the slow throb of life pulsing with them was coming from the massive tree.
Its pseudo-pulse beat out for them a tale of teeming life, from the microbe-laden soil out of which the roots took their share of nourishment, to the tiniest filament of greenery, and even the beetles that crept across its leafy canopy.
The Kindred were lost in that communion, unable to move, unable to do anything but share their understanding of life with the forest giant and its kindred, the other huge trees, which they could sense stretching around them like a web across the land.
The tree sang to them joyfully of the inevitability of death and the multiple manifestations of new life which each death nourished. It sang of the wind among its branches, the holy beauty of springtime blossoms, the juicy promise of autumn fruits and the chill softn
ess of winter snow along its limbs.
And as it sang, Alaran and Erlic stirred between the great arching roots, sat up, stretched and began to grow.
So strange were the light and air around the tree that the group remained transfixed. There was no sense of danger, couldn’t have been in that strange timeless moment, or Katia would have found a way to break the link and go to her sons' aid. Instead, they were all bound tightly to the web of life that surrounded the tree and was now giving joyfully of its energy to support the transformation of the twins and little Lerina.
Alaran stretched languidly and his limbs grew longer. Erlic reached out to touch a giant root and his fingers lost the dimpled chubbiness of babyhood, even as they stretched towards it. The three children underwent a thousand days of growth in a few moments of subjective time.
After a pause, and a strange flickering of lightning that coalesced around the tree and the Kindred in a searing blue halo, another thousand days of growth moulded the children's faces and bodies. The twins were awake throughout the metamorphosis, but little Lerina slept peacefully by their side, her soft breaths lost in the myriad tiny surges of energy that pulsed around her and brought her to girlhood and beyond.
Another thousand days of growth flickered past, then another, and yet another. Finally a wind roared around the tree and carried away the last of the boys' childhood, the last of Lerina's girlish plumpness, in a swirl of shredded dry leaves.
'Done!' sang the tree, like a great golden bell.
'Done!' echoed a humming chorus of insects.
'Done!' whispered the wind as it sighed its way through the undergrowth and left the grove in an unnatural stillness.
'Done!' cried Katia and broke the circle to run to her sons.
Alaran yawned, stretched and stood up. Mutely he held out his arms to his mother, who swept him into a fierce embrace. Erlic followed his brother's example, turning to Davred, his face shadowed in bewilderment.
'Done!' he murmured into his father's shoulder and began to shiver. 'Food!' he managed between great trembling shudders. 'N-need food.'
It was Jonner who was the first to answer that plea, for the others seemed lost in a mist of slow bewilderment, even Herra. He grabbed a hunk of coarse bread and ran back to the tree, breaking it into three pieces and pushing it towards the children.
Three sets of whip-thin hands grasped it and three mouths bit at the bread as ravenously as ever Nim fell upon her prey. By this time, Lerina, who had woken in tears of fright, was cradled in the arms of a mother now smaller than she was, a mother who could move her limbs to comfort her child only with difficulty, due to an overwhelming weariness that dragged at her body.
'We need some of that nutty porridge!' decided Jonner, thinking aloud. 'Is there any wood for a fire?' But no one answered him. The others seemed incapable of thinking clearly or of moving at more than a snail's pace.
A branch broke off one of the trees at the periphery of the clearing, making Jonner jump in shock. It fragmented into kindling and dried into firewood even as it fell. He sucked in a frightened breath and glanced quickly around, but the group was still alone in the clearing. 'Er - thank you, tree,' he quavered, piling the wood up in a hollow and fetching two flat rocks that just happened to have tumbled out of the undergrowth towards him. 'Brother, preserve me!' he exclaimed under his breath as he worked.
When he’d fed the fire into a crackling warmth, he grabbed the packs and tumbled their contents out on to the ground. 'Where's the grain for the porridge?' he asked, fumbling among the packs. Normally, Cheral would have been there, snatching things out of his hands and working more efficiently, but Cheral was sitting huddled in a heap on the ground on the other side of the tree.
When no one moved to help him, Jonner snatched up the biggest cooking pot and sloshed water into it from a carrying skin. One of the rocks adjusted itself beneath the pot, so that it stood more firmly, but Jonner just eased in his breath in a low moan, and muttered 'Thank you' again. He poured in lavish handfuls grain and dried fruits, stirring them with hands that still trembled so much he splashed water over himself. Then he fumbled for the packets of dried nuts and added some of those.
While he worked, a bush began to grow near the tree. Within minutes, it was covered with clusters of small ripe berries.
'Glowberries!' whispered Katia, speaking in a slow, blurred voice. She moved languidly to pick some bunches and offered them to her sons and Lerina.
When the porridge was ready, Jonner bustled from one child to the other in turn, giving them bowls and spoons. They were still shaking, so the nearest adults helped them to spoon the mush into their mouths until every drop was gone. By that time, Jonner had found more bread and broken it into the children's thin, almost transparent hands.
It took all this time for Herra and the rest of the Kindred to regain control of themselves. Those who had been on the far side of the tree stumbled with slow jerky movements around it towards the three youngsters and then stood in a semi-circle, leaning against one another, staring. Erlic and Alaran were now as tall as their mother, and Lerina was nearly a head taller than Carryn.
'Dear Brother, how is this possible?' Herra demanded of the air around her, then sank down to the ground and gave in to the same desperate urge to sleep that had begun to overwhelm everyone except Jonner and Nim.
For once Jonner didn’t grumble. He’d come to the conclusion that the trees meant them no harm, so he sat by the fire as darkness fell once again, feeding it with the rest of the wood and stroking the kit whenever Nim, who spent most of the short night prowling to and fro, came to press herself against him for comfort.
When the wood supply was used up, Jonner cleared his throat and said apologetically, 'We need more wood for the fire,' and another branch snapped off and shivered to the ground, already dry enough to burn.
'Thank you very much,' he said again, not wishing to offend the power that could hold back the forest, make babies grow into youths within minutes and send a glowberry bush pushing up from the ground right at their feet.
As if unable to restrain the impulse, Jonner asked aloud several times, 'But how is it possible?' He wasn’t sure he even wanted an answer, but the question kept burning to be asked. He was grateful for the leaping flames to watch, and the soft fur of Nim beneath his hand. And even more grateful when the darkness began to lighten.
* * *
When the Kindred entered the Tanglewoods, even the faint emissions from their tracers vanished from the monitors in the sky. That caused immediate trouble on the satellite.
'What do you mean, you can't locate them?' Robler demanded of Kerem.
'What I say - I can't find them anywhere. Usually, we can run a check on them when they make those sudden jumps, and find them again within minutes. This time they seem to have completely vanished from the face of the planet.'
'They can't have. Go back and check it again, you fool! There's been some sort of mix-up. They can't have just vanished!'
Kerem folded his arms, his stolid face beginning to show an anger that was rare for him. 'I have checked.
There's no point in me checking again. I don't make mistakes like that.'
Robler took a deep breath. 'Look, I spoke hastily. I'm sorry for doubting you, but you're not a specialist com-technician, so it is just possible that you missed the - '
'I haven't missed anything. I went back through the recordings several times to check things out. The whole group vanished the minute they went into that misty stretch that looks like it has something growing on it. There are no metals there, and no life forms larger than an insect, so we haven't explored it much.'
'Never mind the terrain. What about Davred Hollunby?'
'I've just told you. He vanished with the others. They all vanished at once and there's been no trace of them since. Believe me, they didn't leave the planet. The minisats would have detected any space-going vehicle leaving Sunrise and they'd have sounded a warning. Besides, there are several tracers in the group, no
t just Davred's, and they all went out of contact at once. I wasn't around when it happened, so you can't blame that on me. You can play back the recordings yourself, if you want, to confirm that. We've just been getting general static since then, not even the white noise from a malfunctioning tracer.'
Robler stared at him, a chill creeping up his spine. 'Maybe they left the tracers behind them in the village.'
Kerem spoke slowly, as if to an idiot, 'In that case, they'd still be broadcasting from there. And they're not.'
'Or maybe they destroyed them.'
'You can't destroy a tracer without a surge of energy. It'd have shown up on our instruments. And nothing showed.'
Robler swallowed hard. This damned planet was full of surprises, usually unpleasant ones. Maybe Davred was right. Maybe there was something different about it. Maybe. But even if there was, it was beyond his control. His main task was to keep the team of people on the satellite together until help got through again from the Confederation. If help ever got through again.
The rare com-contacts he’d made with other planets showed that things were going from bad to worse in this sector. It could even be that the Confex observation team would be forced to move down to the planet eventually and settle there, if the Confederation's hold on this sector was destroyed. That was almost unthinkable, but it was necessary to prepare for a worst-case scenario. He had better hurry up with his study of how best to make contact with Those of the Serpent. They seemed to be well and truly in charge down there on Sunrise, now that the Sisterhood had been destroyed. He realised that Kerem had been speaking to him. 'Sorry. What did you say?'
'I asked if you wanted me to leave a listening channel open.' Kerem's normally stolid face was twisted into a scowl and he looked distinctly annoyed.
Robler pulled himself together. 'Yes. Might as well. Sorry if I was a bit sharp. There was some more bad news from Sector HQ yesterday.'
