Crossroads of Canopy

by Thoraiya Dyer

  Frog chortled softly behind her.

  “I am afraid,” Esse said, “that I made it into something else.”

  “What? You had no right! It was mine!”

  “It was necessary. To guarantee your safety. You have monsoon-right, do you not?”

  Frog stopped laughing. Unar marched right up to Esse where he stood by the embroidered hanging, itching to slap his face. Maybe violence against a host violated whatever rights they had granted. Maybe not. Maybe it would be worth the satisfaction. His chin was prickled with regrowth, and his breath smelled like fish.

  “If whatever you made out of my metal really was necessary, you should’ve told me.”

  “You would have stopped working. Lazing in the sun is all you know. Meanwhile my brothers and I work ourselves to the bone. You want to see your precious metal? You want proof that it was needed? I’ll show you.”

  He seized her arm and bundled her towards the corridor that led to the fishing room.

  “Where are we going?”

  “You will see.”

  “Me too,” Frog said, but Esse pushed her out of the way.

  “No. You stay. Only your big sister can come with me.”

  “Big sister?” Frog said. She laughed, a little too loudly.

  Unar turned to stare at her. That was why Frog looked familiar. Unar didn’t see her own face very often, but Frog certainly could have been her little sister.

  Her heart raced. No, it was too much to hope. It was coincidence. Ridiculous. Frog said her mother in Canopy was going blind, and Unar’s mother hadn’t been blind. Before Unar could offer a different name—Isin?—Esse was dragging her away from the fire.

  The fishing room was a horror of blood and stringy multiple stomachs, revealed by the light of a greasy lantern with translucent horn panes. Bernreb knelt on the floor, the broad muscles of his back working, lifting his head with a grunt when the door slammed behind Unar and Esse. There were clots in his beard and the carcass stank of rotten thatch.

  “You are awake,” Bernreb said to Esse. “Where are you going?”

  “Out,” Esse said, and shoved Unar, hard, in the back.

  She went face-first into the river without time to scream. Monsoon-rights or no, Esse was going to kill her. Frog went right out of her head. She should have seen the warning signs. Esse was unstable. She should never have asked for the knife. She should have bided her time and then murdered him in his sleep.

  A wooden railing punched her midriff. She seized it. Her feet fumbled on a platform twice the size and sturdiness of the one she had arrived on. She choked and cursed.

  Esse came out beside her, a more controlled arrival, with a coil of rope over his shoulder that hadn’t been there before. He shook water out of his hair and eyes. His wet sleeves and trouser cuffs were rolled to elbows and knees.

  “The yellowrain tree,” he said, knotting the rope into a harness for himself, “took away the old platform. I built it bigger, as if for young children.”

  “You didn’t need my knife for this,” Unar croaked. Rain melded with river water on her lips and brow. She hugged herself and shivered. Since becoming a Gardener, she’d spent her monsoon seasons dry, indoors, like other reasonably well-off Canopians, but here she was getting used to the cycle of getting drenched by the waterfall and then drying to a toasted crisp in front of the hearth fire. Esse tied the other end of his rope to the wooden railing and clipped his harness onto it with an S-shaped curve of iron.

  “No.” He turned his back to her, crouching down. “Not for the new railing. Put your arms around my neck. Make sure you have a strong grip.”

  Unar blinked, frozen for a moment by the realisation that he intended that she cling to him while he swung down lower into Understorey. He hadn’t made another harness for her, nor offered to rope their bodies together, as he and Bernreb had been roped. No. If she weakened and fell, he wouldn’t be sorry. It would be, as he saw it, her own fault.

  She threw her arms around him and closed her eyes as he kicked back, hard, away from the platform.

  Then they fell.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  IT WASN’T long before Unar opened her eyes again.

  Rain, mist, and falling leaves whirled around her. She sank lower, parallel to the great tallowwood river. Spray from it wet the top of the ropy-barked lateral branch where Esse eventually landed with a lurch.

  Unar’s arms jolted in their sockets. She made herself wait until Esse found his footing before her kicking feet found the branch, too. It was barely wide enough to stand on, and the top of it was neither flat nor smooth. Not like a Canopian road. The wood god, Esh, held no sway down here to form wood into functional structures.

  Fibrous chunks broke away beneath her feet. She raised her arms to keep her balance and opened her mouth to accuse Esse. There were no structures at all here that she could see.

  Then she smelled something awful and familiar. Issi’s solid waste and whey-like sick, mingled with somebody else’s menstrual blood. A smell, she supposed, that was irresistible to dayhunters. Past Esse, she finally saw the hollow in the tree. The smell was coming from there, and she squinted through the gloom, trying to see better.

  Only then did she realise the opening into the hollow was too regular to be natural, and that there actually was some sort of structure built above it. Something weighted with a cross-section of tallowwood trunk, with perhaps a crumpled leather chute and several sharpened stakes. It was disguised by a net of leaves and bark, but it was there.

  “Is it a trap?” she asked Esse, putting her hand out to his arm, half to steady herself and half to get his attention. “A trap to catch the demon?”

  “One of my own invention.” He did not sound proud, or excited, or doubtful. He sounded far away as though envisioning what would happen. “Inside the hollow, the bait is suspended by a rope. When the rope is pulled, the door will close. Can you see?”

  He pulled Unar close and put her on the other side of him, pointing to the mechanism, and Unar could see. She was impressed by it, actually, but wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of saying so.

  “The weights will serve two functions. One, to drive the stakes into the holes I have made for them, deeply so that the demon cannot brush the door aside. It can dig out with its claws, given time, but by then the chute will have diverted the river’s edge, directing the water into the hole. It will fill to the brim in mere seconds and the demon will drown.”

  “I’m glad,” Unar said slowly, “that if we had to fall into one of your traps, it was the net and glue trap, and not this one. You’ve kept your word, to keep us safe.”

  “I am glad,” Esse said, “that you see the necessity now.”

  “Wait. There’s no metal in the trap. Surely you didn’t use my little bore-knife to make that hollow.”

  “No.” Esse unclipped his harness from the rope. He undid the knots and allowed that end to fall. Unar supposed he would haul it back up when they stood again at the railing. The S-shaped piece of metal, he held in front of her face. “Here is your knife. I lost my other piece when we sawed through the yellowrain tree.”

  “I see.”

  He tucked it into his pocket and turned away from her. Then he crouched again, one foot in front of the other on the narrow branch.

  “Hold on to me. We must climb back up.”

  Worried that any sudden moves would send them hurtling to their deaths, Unar slowly eased her weight onto his back. No sooner had her feet left the branch than Esse took a quick skip, hop, and jump to the right hand side of the hollow, away from the river, and there was the soft sound of his forearm spines sliding out of their sheaths.

  Then, the axe-biting sound and shuddering impact of Esse embedding himself in the bark of the tree.

  Unar tucked her face into the back of his neck as splinters flew. Swiftly and steadily, Esse climbed.

  She thought, How those red-and-yellow puffed-up parrots calling themselves soldiers of Odelland would tremble at the sound of a
hundred Understorians climbing their precious king’s blue quandong tree.

  And she stifled a laugh.

  Had she gone crazy? Whose side was she on? The barrier would keep Esse and his ilk from Odelland. From Ehkisland. From Audblayinland. From all of Canopy. It was trespass there that had seen Hasbabsah made a slave, her spines broken.

  Yet the magic bed of the decrepit princess was the neck bone of an Old God, Hasbabsah said. There had to be a way through the barrier.

  Unar became aware of the heat and movement of Esse’s muscles. His arms and legs seeming untiring. Both his thighs together made up the width of one of hers, yet he didn’t labour for breath. When he lifted one knee to stick his shin spines into the tree, she thought again that he had the longest shanks she’d ever seen on a man or woman. Edax had long legs, but not so thin. He hadn’t wanted to remove all his clothing, but Unar had made him when they had been together during their lessons. She’d wanted to see all of the non-owl parts of him as clearly as possible by meagre moon- and starlight. There had been knife-scars on his skin, sparse body hair, and very little padding, but several knotted veins had stood out on his calves, and his no-longer-youthful knees had been cracked and saggy.

  Unlike Aoun’s.

  That led her to remember Bernreb’s offer with a wince. Since he’d made it, she’d followed Oos’s example and bled for several days; it had been horrible, but it was over now, and she knew what to expect next moon. Her soiled bedclothes, taken by Esse, had obviously been used for demon bait instead of left in the river to leach out the dangerous scent.

  Unar looked up and saw the underside of the platform by the side of the river. The rope still dangled down. They were almost back at the hunters’ home. She saw Esse’s upraised forearm, the bone blades gleaming, unblunted by the climb.

  Magic must keep them sharp as well as clean.

  She tried to extend her magical senses to examine them, but it was not even like trying to reach with her hands tied behind her back. It was as if she had no arms. As if she was born a worm or a snake and had never had them, except in her feeble imaginings.

  Unar made a small noise of frustration. Frog must tell her more. No more waiting.

  “Do not let go,” Esse said. “We will go through the river together. I will leave the rope tied to the outside, and secure the other end of it to the inside. It will mean extra chores to keep the water from the fishing room floor, but by next moon, the river will be too strong to pass through at all without the aid of a rope.”

  Unar didn’t answer him. She could guess who would be doing the extra chores. Then they were in the river again, and her arms around his neck were all that held her to the world. The water washing over her while she clung to a near stranger reminded her of the feeling of Audblayin’s power washing over her the morning she had knelt with Oos and Aoun before the night-yew in the Garden.

  There had been six new Gardeners chosen that day. Fledglings, the old Gatekeeper had called them. Not quite Gardeners, but not of the world outside, either.

  She, Oos, Aoun, and the three others had worn their crimson ceremonial Gardener’s garb for the first time. Red leaf-shirts and green trousers beneath hooded crimson robes. Their knees crushed the leaf litter, and the branches of the night-yew spread over their heads. The yew’s tiny white flowers were turned to fruit once yearly by the first rays of the first month of the post-monsoonal sun. They had waited for that dawn to transform them too.

  Oos had whispered, One who walks in the grace of Audblayin can’t wait for her powers to wake!

  I can’t wait to eat the fruit, Aoun had muttered, and his belly had grumbled.

  Unar hadn’t said anything. She’d thought her powers were already awake. How else had she passed the tests they had given her? How else had she watched the work of the Gardeners and felt like she could do it faster and better? They had been in the Garden for weeks already.

  Then the sun had risen over the great forest. It struck the crown of the night-yew first, some thirty paces over their heads. Minutes later, the first minuscule crimson fruit began to fall. The fruit tasted like turpentine—bitter with only a hint of sweetness, exactly the way that the crushed night-yew needles smelled—but Unar had reluctantly eaten a few more of them, anyway. It was part of the ritual. Or it amused the Servants to poison them.

  As the light travelled further down the yew, more and more fruit fell, till it pinged off their heads and shoulders like rain.

  Aoun had said abruptly, I don’t feel well.

  Then the sun had touched them and something had exploded inside Unar’s middle, like another, smaller sun whose rays illuminated the life around her, so that she could feel it without seeing. Not only filling the confines of her body, as before, but sending strings out to tangle with every plant, every creature, and every beating human heart.

  As the sensation had washed over them, Unar found her arms around Aoun’s neck and his arms around hers. They clung to each other, as if to keep from being pulled apart by all the unfurling threads.

  Threads had crossed from each of them into the other, too. For the space between breaths, Unar had felt what Aoun was feeling. So it was no surprise to her when he hunched over and vomited into the dirt between his knees.

  You ate too many, Unar said, rubbing the space between his trembling shoulder blades. You wanted it too much.

  Yet Aoun’s wanting was a drop next to the monsoon of her own desire.

  THIRTY-SIX

  STILL WET from her passage through the vertical river with Esse, Unar plucked Frog by the collar and dragged her from the hearth room into the dark corridor between the fishing room and the rest of the dwelling.

  “Are you my sister?” If she could have used her magic, she would have delved into Frog the way that Oos had delved into the jacaranda seed during her lesson in the Garden. She would have determined at once if Frog was fruit from the same tree as Unar was.

  “You are wet,” Frog said, her small fists striking Unar’s chest. “Get off me!”

  Unar only leaned harder on her, so she couldn’t wriggle away.

  “Are you Isin?”

  Silence.

  “Answer me!” Unar thought of the story about the man and woman fighting over poisoned mushrooms, Frog’s parents, on the other side of the barrier. In Canopy. “They were my parents that you saw. They were starving.”

  Frog’s chin lifted insolently.

  “You can imagine them easily, can you not? Imagine this. Imagine them screamin’ at each other to go to Audblayin’s Temple and collect the silver they were owed for their daughter’s service. Imagine the man ravin’ that the Garden was not a place for men, that it was the woman who would hafta go. I lost sight of them when they went. I could not follow. But from that moment, I knew I had a sister in the Garden.”

  “You knew,” Unar repeated dumbly, hypnotised by the scene that Frog had painted in her mind, “you had a sister in the Garden.”

  “Yes. Of course I am your sister. You are so dank.”

  Unar rallied with the old anger she’d always relied on.

  “And you,” she said, shaking Frog, “are so small. So good at pretending to be weak, but you healed Hasbabsah with magic. Who knows what else you can do? That yellowrain didn’t fall by accident, did it?”

  “No.” Sullenly. “I cut it down.”

  “But the crown was in Canopy. You said that the crown was in Canopy. You know how to pass through the barrier. You can take us home!”

  “No!” Frog gripped Unar’s little fingers and bent them back until pain sent Unar stumbling in retreat. “I sent a bird to Canopy. One of my friends in Canopy lopped the crown for me. It was not a great enough tree to ’ave anybody livin’ in it. It was tall enough, though. I knew it could reach here from the place where I was waitin’.”

  Frog rubbed her shoulders where Unar had pinned her.

  “You sent a bird?” Unar recoiled again, but there wasn’t much room to move in the corridor. The opposite wall was at her back.
“You have friends in Canopy, but not me? Not your own sister? Why didn’t you send a bird to me?”

  Unar realised she was crying. She couldn’t scrub the tears away without Frog seeing. Frog was the child here, not Unar. Frog was the one who couldn’t remember her birth mother, not Unar. Frog should be the one crying.

  “You were a Gardener by the time I found out your name. A keeper of Understorian slaves. ’Ow could I send a bird to you?”

  “Keepers of slaves? Is that why you think Gardeners are enemies, unless they share your blood? That’s why Oos is your enemy, but not me? That’s why you’ll teach me, but not her?”

  “I never said you were not my enemy.” Frog kicked her, hard, in the shin, but the tears that might have come to Unar’s eyes from the pain were already there. “I hadta meet you before I could reveal myself to you. I hadta know. My friends in Canopy know where to get gossip. Erid, Wife-of-Uranun, threw me away because she already had one daughter. She did not need another. She needed sons. What if you were like ’er? What if it was your idea to throw me away?”

  Unar was shocked and repulsed.

  “My idea? My idea? I hated them because they didn’t look for you. Not properly.”

  “Now you know why they did not look. I was too small.” Frog folded her arms. “Small and useless.”

  “Isin.” Unar tried to take Frog’s shoulders again, with gentleness and love this time. “Isin. Isin.”

  “Stop sayin’ that name.” Frog pulled free. Tossed her head. “That is not my name.”

  Unar slid down the wall of the corridor until she was sitting, wet and shivering, in the dark.

  “Not your name?”

  “Come back to the hearth room,” Frog said. “Get dry. Tell me about whatever it was that Esse showed you.”

  “What Esse showed me,” Unar repeated hollowly.

  “Come this way, broken eggs for brains, jumper on dayhunters’ backs. You will feel better in front of the fire.”

  * * *

  UNAR DRIED herself in front of the fire.