by Martha Wells
“The whole court is going to want to hear this,” Heart said. “Chime, give it to me. No, right now. I’ll ask Pearl to call a gathering tonight and we can take turns reading it to everyone.”
“All right, all right.” Chime reluctantly released the book.
They gathered in the greeting hall that evening, and Moon sat with Jade. They were surrounded by a group of her warriors including Balm, Root, and Song. The Arbora were mostly crowded up to the front, though there wasn’t really any part of the hall where it was hard to hear and there was nothing to see as the book had no drawings in it. Chime, Heart, and Blossom would take turns reading.
It was a cool rainy evening, so it was a perfect time for a story. The older fledglings and Arbora children had been allowed to sit up for it but the younger ones who were unlikely to be able to stay still for the whole thing were down in the nurseries. The teachers who were watching them were going to be owed some big favors in trade for their sacrifice later, and had been promised a second private reading as soon as possible. Even Pearl, Ember, and their followers had settled a comfortable distance away. It was hard to tell if Pearl was as happy about the find as everyone else, but she did seem settled in, Ember curled by her side, and ready to stay for the whole story.
Jade, on the other hand, had made it clear she was almost as excited about this as Chime. As Moon leaned comfortably against her, she said, “I’m a little worried about Stone. Do you know if he’s coming?”
Moon glanced around, realizing that Stone wasn’t here. Late arrivals were still hurrying in, but most of the court had settled in and quieted down, ready for the story to start. “I thought he was. But he didn’t say so specifically.” Stone hadn’t reacted much when Heart and Chime had run up to the greeting hall to tell everyone about the book, but then considering Stone, that didn’t mean anything.
Balm leaned past Root to say, “I saw him down near the nurseries. I thought he was coming up here right behind us.”
Jade grimaced. “I wish—Oh wait, there he is.” Stone had just stepped out of the passage under the waterfall. He wound his way through the seated crowd, nudged a warrior aside with a foot and took a place about ten paces away from Moon and Jade. Root whispered loudly, “Stone’s here!” and Balm shushed him, just as Heart started to read.
Moon missed the first bit, still distracted by Stone’s late arrival. Though Jade clearly had, Moon hadn’t thought about the fact that for Stone the figures in this story were all real people that he had memories of, friends and close relations, even though he must have been very young when the events took place. For the others in the court they were distant ancestors, and for Moon they weren’t much different than the made-up characters in groundling tales. Of course Stone had been reluctant to listen to the story, especially with everyone else watching.
There was nothing to be done about it now, and Moon turned his attention to the reading. It was about how Indigo had gone on a trading trip to Emerald Twilight, where she had seen how Cloud was treated by his queen who no longer wanted him, and how he had asked her for help. They had fled Emerald Twilight for Umber Shadow, which was what the Indigo Cloud court had been called at the time. For a Raksuran story, it was almost romantic.
Moon had become acquainted with the idea of romance from hearing so many groundling stories, but it wasn’t something he had encountered much among Raksuran courts. Aside from all the wrangling between queens and consorts about bloodlines and alliances, Raksuran relationships were very direct. If you wanted to have sex with someone, you just asked. It made things a lot less fraught.
But as the story progressed, Moon felt there was a lot left unsaid that had nothing to do with the attraction between Indigo and Cloud. It must have been the diplomatic disaster of a large part of the Reaches, considering all the intertwined alliances implied in the text. He thought the court would have had a hard time navigating that. He knew the current version of Indigo Cloud would have had a miserable time of it, even in this much less crowded and competitive Reaches.
Whether all the details were exactly what had happened or not, it was a very good story. Several of the younger warriors and Arbora got so excited they shifted involuntarily at a few dire moments. And it explained why Sunset Water had been inclined to be generous about the books; the two courts had had no contact until Indigo Cloud had returned to the Reaches, but the Sunset Water mentors must have still been aware of the connection between them. Moon got so caught up in it he forgot to watch Stone for reactions. Not that it would have provided any insight; Stone was excellent at not reacting.
The hall was silent until the end, when most of the court burst into immediate commentary. Heart and Blossom looked delighted by the reaction and Chime was clearly as pleased as if he had made up the story himself instead of just reading it.
Jade said thoughtfully, “I don’t think she did it for him.”
Moon knew she meant the part where Indigo had thrown the fight. It had sounded like common sense to him, but many of the others had reacted with shocked gasps. “Why not?”
Jade uncoiled from Moon so she could sit up and stretch. “The situation was so tense that agreeing to the fight and then losing it as quickly as possible, before any harm could be done, was the only way out.”
“So she did the smartest thing,” Moon said.
Jade eyed him, a little amused. “Some consorts wouldn’t see it that way.”
“Some consorts are idiots.” Moon saw Stone was already on his feet and headed out of the hall. He wasn’t stopping to speak to anyone, which wasn’t necessarily unusual, but … he told Jade, “I’m going to—”
Jade had followed his gaze, frowning worriedly. “Yes, go on.”
Most people were still sitting and talking so it was relatively easy to move quickly through the crowd without stepping on anyone or needing to shift and use his wings. Moon caught up with Stone near the waterfall. Stone threw him an opaque glance but didn’t immediately object to his presence. Moon walked with him until they were past the noise of the rushing water, and into the smaller hall beyond it. “That was a good story,” he said. “Was that how it really was?”
Stone said, “It’s close enough.”
He sounded so normal, he almost had Moon fooled. But there was just something in his voice. Moon stopped and said, “But it isn’t. Stories aren’t enough.” That he knew from personal experience.
Stone kept walking, and for a moment Moon thought he wouldn’t reply. Then he paused, one hand on the vine carving wrapped around the doorframe. “It’s not like what the Fell did to Opal Night, or to Sky Copper. I was with them all a long time, till the end. It wasn’t enough, but it was good.”
Stone slipped through the doorway and Moon didn’t try to follow. He knew from experience that there were just some things you had to go through alone.
THE FOREST BOY
A prequel to The Cloud Roads, set many turns ago when Moon was still a fledgling.
When Tren was younger, he had been afraid of the settlement’s midden. He had imagined every monster from Ari’s stories lurking in the piles of broken pottery and rotten fruit rinds.
Now going there was one of his more interesting chores, especially on a breezy summer day. The big flat leaves of the round-trees, stacked like plates all the way up the tall slim trunks, filtered the hot sun into cool green shade. Tren always went with Lua, his favorite foster sister, and they searched for thrown-away things that were still useful, like broken bits of carved wood and colorful glazed ceramic, and puzzled over strange objects that travelers on the Long Road had cast aside. They wound their way along the grass pathways between the piles of rubbish, and the white birds called and the treelings chirped and played high above them. They didn’t go near the darker deeper forest beyond the fringe, where everyone knew the dangerous predators lurked.
Kaleb, Tren’s foster father, had remarked on the change, noting how Tren now seemed to consider the trip to the midden an outing rather than a chore. “I’m not afrai
d of it anymore,” Tren had told him, reluctantly honest. He hated to admit that he had been afraid in the first place, but he wanted Kaleb to know he was a grown-up of twelve seasonal turns now, past such childish fancies.
Instead of saying that Tren was now assuming his adult responsibilities, like Tren expected, Kaleb said, “You aren’t afraid anymore because you’ve learned there was nothing to fear. Are you still afraid of the forest?” Tren had nodded, and Kaleb had said, “Good. That’s a good fear, to keep you safe.”
This morning Tren and Lua had dumped the basket of household refuse, and moved on to investigate a new pile of rubbish probably left by the trading caravan that had passed down the Long Road yesterday. It was mostly broken glass and looked as if someone had tossed out a whole wagonload. “Why would they leave all this?” Tren wondered, digging past unraveled grass baskets to uncover a store of pieces as blue as the sky at high summer. “Are they crazy?”
Lua held up a shard from another basket, red as blood, curved as if it had been part of a vase or funnel. “Maybe somebody died, and they didn’t want to carry her trade goods anymore.” She was small for a Mirani, a head shorter than Tren, and everyone assumed she was younger. The Mirani all had green-tinged skin and light-colored hair, blond or very light brown, like Tren. Lua had dark hair and her skin was closer to gray-green in winter, pale green in summer. She was a mix of Mirani and something else, and Tren had heard whispers in the settlement that that was why she had been dumped on the Long Road for Kaleb to find. Sometimes Tren thought she was older than him, just shorter than she should be for her age.
Noting that the glass all seemed to be shattered, nothing whole, he said more practically, “Or the baskets fell over and this is everything that broke.” Tren had been with Kaleb and his wife Ari for four of his twelve turns, in their house under the biggest, oldest round-tree at the edge of the Mirani settlement. The house held six children, none of them actually birthed by Ari. The couple took in the unwanted young of this settlement and those further up the Long Road. And children like Tren, whose parents had died and left him with nowhere else to go.
He and Lua half-filled their basket with glass, with no clear idea of what to do with it except that such beauty shouldn’t go to waste. Then something rustled somewhere in the piles about thirty paces away, toward a thicker stand of trees. Tren froze, glancing at Lua to see if she was afraid. Lua just cocked her head, intrigued. “What is it?” she whispered.
“A monster, from the deep forest.” Tren dropped his voice to its lowest register, mocking their younger foster brother Melic, who liked to tell scare-you stories, badly and to excess. The only animals who came to the midden were the fringe scavengers, small flightless birds and harmless treelings.
Lua snorted, standing and shaking bits of glass out of her smock. “Let’s find out.”
They split up, Tren creeping one way, Lua the other. It was very like when they had both been younger, playing hunter by stalking the settlement’s small sumptor herd. The sumptors were big and calm and had mostly eyed them without interest, refusing to cooperate by running and hiding.
The faint noise came from a big pile of old food trash. As Tren eased up on it, he caught a glimpse of Lua’s dark hair as she made her way around the other side. Then Tren heard a metallic crash, and Lua called out, “Here, back here!”
Tren bolted around the pile and heard something flap, like one of the giant deep-forest birds. Only it was frighteningly close rather than high overhead. He slid to a halt, startled, but what he saw was Lua, standing and staring at a boy crouched in the grass.
The boy wasn’t a Mirani. He had brown skin and short dark hair, and under his tattered dirty shirt and pants he looked as skinny as if he had been starved. He was staring back at Lua, dirt smudges on his face, his eyes terrified. At first Tren thought he was awkwardly crouched atop a broken metal plow shaft, and he couldn’t think why anyone would choose such an uncomfortable seat. Then the boy collapsed and slumped forward; Tren saw the blood on his calf below the torn leg of his pants, the serrated metal clamping the bronze skin.
Tren gasped, shocked. The metal shaft wasn’t part of a broken plow, it was the snap-bar of a trap. “Lua, run and get Kaleb!” he shouted, and she ran.
As her steps pounded away down the path, Tren edged a little closer to the unmoving boy, getting a better look at the metal teeth clamped into his leg. The bile rose in his throat; he had seen dead people, and broken limbs and sickness, but nothing like this, never a bloody wound caused by something so cruel. And what was the trap doing here anyway, in the midden where he or Lua might have been caught too? He wanted to do something for the boy, but the teeth of the trap were sunk in so deeply he was afraid to touch it.
Finally Tren heard people running down the grass path. Kaleb arrived in a frantic rush, two more men from the settlement on his heels. Tren pointed mutely at the boy; Kaleb saw the trap and used words Tren had never heard him speak before. He had never seen Kaleb look so furious and so horrified, and it made Tren feel even more sick. Kaleb pushed him toward the path and said, “Go on now, go back home,” and Tren ran, grateful to escape.
He found Lua standing in the sunny patch of bellflowers just past the fringe, where the pathway curved back toward the settlement. He took a big gulp of air, the fresh breeze clearing the stench of blood and rotted food from his lungs. Lua had her arms tightly folded as if she was cold. Breathless, she said, “Did you see?”
Tren nodded. “It was a trap for predators. Who would put it there?”
Lua looked up at him, blinking, as if he wasn’t making sense. “What?” Tren asked her, wondering what he had missed. He had been so shaken by the sight of the injured boy, he hadn’t looked for anything else. “What did you see?”
She shook her head, and didn’t answer. Then Kaleb came out of the midden, carrying the unconscious boy, and Tren forgot that he had ever asked her the question.
The Mirani settlement lay in a big clearing between the curve of the river and the Long Road, among flower-covered hills and scattered round-trees. The houses were wood and stone, built against the hills and dug into them where possible, surrounded by gardens and fruit bushes.
Kaleb carried the boy back to their home, to one of the sleeping rooms that was built half into the hill beside the house, the one that was always cool in the hot season and warm in the cool rains. None of the children were allowed in the room, and for three days there was no sight or sound of the boy.
On the first day the settlement’s healer came and went twice, and Kaleb spoke to him outside. Their voices were low and serious, reminding Tren uncomfortably of the illness that had taken his parents. All the children were subdued, especially Lua, who watched the doorway of the sleeping room as if expecting something startling to come out of it. Ari carried in water and towels and spent most of the day with the boy.
Hearing how terrible the trap was, everyone in the settlement thought the boy would die, and neighbors brought them bread, pottage, and even some spicecakes, as if he had been part of the settlement instead of a stranger. There were angry mutters about the trap, and the stupidity of whoever had left it there. The chief hunter reported to Kaleb that it had probably been thrown away by someone on the Long Road who hadn’t known how to use it, and hadn’t realized it was still set. Tren and Lua and all the other children were forbidden to go back to the midden until it had been thoroughly searched, to make certain the same someone hadn’t dumped anything else dangerous there. But the second day the healer came and went again, and afterward Kaleb, looking relieved, told them, “Not as bad as it looked, not nearly as bad. Fever’s down and he’s much better today.”
“Who is he?” Sarin, the oldest boy in the house, asked what they had all been wondering. “Where did he come from?”
Ari, about to carry another bowl of water into the room, answered, “He won’t tell us his name, poor thing. Kaleb asked if he was looking for food in the midden, and he nodded, but that’s all we know.”
&nb
sp; On the third night, after supper, the boy was so much better Ari could spend more time with them. She felt like telling a story, and they all sat around on the grass mats on the floor of the main room to listen. Ari sat on her carved stool, Kaleb at her feet, and leaned forward, her eyes sparkling. “This is about the Ghobin, and the village of Mirani-Gedin.”
Tren had heard the Ghobin story before, and shivered in anticipation. Ari told the best scare-you stories in the settlement. They all settled in to listen; Lua pulled her blanket around her and leaned against Tren, Melic climbed into Sarin’s lap, and Lys and Klia edged closer together. The Ghobin were a predator species, who lived in burrows in the deep forest far to the west. When they attacked a settlement, they tunneled underground, up under the houses, breaking through the floors to swarm out and kill the inhabitants. They were small, so their preferred prey was children. The first time Ari had told this story, Tren had been afraid to set foot on the dirt floor of the stillroom for six days.
Even with repetition, the story of how the Mirani-Gedin defeated the Ghobin was so absorbing that everyone listened intently. They didn’t notice someone else was listening until Ari paused; she touched Kaleb’s shoulder and nodded toward the back of the room.
Tren twisted to look, dislodging Lua.
The new boy was huddled in the doorway of the sleeping room, watching them. He had crept out so quietly no one had heard a thing. He was as skinny and strange and wide-eyed and long-limbed as Tren remembered, but the blood and dirt had been washed away, and he wore an oversized shirt that belonged to Kaleb. His leg was wrapped in a clean bandage, and he should have looked much better. But his eyes were still afraid. He could have been facing a room full of Ghobin rather than harmless Mirani.