Barra pictured the Elder Council meeting. She envisioned Venress Starch testifying with her mother and the Fenroars, and how strange it would be for them to be on the Dais together. She’d never been to a Council meeting, and thought of the Elders as spectral figures with overgrown claws, and icy, empty eyes. But that was ridiculous. She’d seen Jerrun before. She knew better. Still, she was haunted by the notion.
At last, she spotted her friends walking together. Barra rushed over to them. They were talking about Plicks’ latest attempt to fly by his scruffs—he practiced frequently in an open area of the Coppice. She bounced around impatiently, waiting for them to finish up, and they pretended not to notice her. Finally, she couldn’t hold back any longer. She grabbed them close and whispered, “My mom is going to an Elder Council meeting at the Dais tonight!”
The boys stared back blankly. As they eventually caught up to her words, they exchanged skeptical glances.
“I think she’s got some weeds in her brain,” Plicks whispered to Tory through the corner of his mouth.
Tory put his hand on her forehead for a quick check, and said, “She’s feverish, maybe delusional.”
Barra lowered her head and glared. “Yeah. That’s right. Weeds in my brain. Delusional. Could be. Maybe? Or maybe, my mom is talking to the Elders tonight!” Before either of the boys had a chance for a snarky retort, she added knowingly, “About the Creepervine and the Kudmoths.”
Tory still thought she was a few seedlings shy of a garden. “I’m lost. The Creepervine again? What’s a Kudmoth?”
“I don’t know!” she said, eyes flashing enthusiastically. “But I was chased all the way out of the Middens last night by ‘em!” she spoke in a loud whisper-tone, huddled in tight with her friends.
“You were in the Middens last night?” Plicks asked, taken aback. “I thought your mom banned you for like, well, forever?”
Tory added, “When you left us yesterday, didn’t you tell us you were going home?”
“Aw, come on, Tory. I just didn’t want you to worry. Either of you,” Barra implored. She turned to Plicks hoping he would take her side. “Someone had to see what that stuff was that attacked the Tricopterus. Right?”
“Whoa, don’t bring poor Ari into this,” Plicks didn’t have a lot of practice confronting Barra, but he knew when he was being manipulated, and he didn’t like it.
Tory imposed himself between the two with his hands raised before they could start a real argument, and said, “Let’s just try to figure this out. When you left us yesterday, what happened?”
Barra told the story, ending with how she overheard the message from Jerrun. At the conclusion of her tale there was a lengthy silence. Barra was impatient and prompted her friends, “So what do you think?”
“I think you’re planning to crash the Elder Council tonight, so I’ll save you the trouble of asking me to join you. I’m in,” Tory said, eagerly. Then he asked the nervous Kolalabat, “Plicks?”
Plicks rubbed his face with both of his hands, squeezing and wrinkling the many folds of his skin into strange, inscrutable expressions. When he stopped, he had to blink several times before he could focus again. He was trying to come to terms with his anxiety. “What are the rules regarding the Elder Council?” he asked, hoping for an easy out.
Barra started, “We can just…”
Plicks stopped her short with a look.
Tory answered, “Elder Council is open to everyone.” He stopped to think about it a moment longer, “But that doesn’t mean they want a bunch of bups around either. We could watch from a distance, try not to draw attention.” Shrugging and nodding his head nonchalantly, he added, “No reason not to try.”
Plicks rubbed his face again, and though his voice was muffled, he said, “Fine.”
They spent the rest of the day together. They didn’t have any leaves from the journal to read, like Barra had hoped, but they had plenty to talk about regardless. They worked out the details for getting together later, and went their separate ways.
After dinner, they would meet again in the Reach.
8. Harbingers
The den was cold and unadorned. Jerrun had few friends and no need for creature comforts. Whenever he entertained guests, either from within the Umberwood or abroad, he used the Council’s official meeting chambers. The head of the Council wasn’t in the habit of inviting Arboreals to his personal quarters, so tonight was unusual in that way.
A Rattlebark hunched over by the weight of the many rings he’d lived, Jerrun had huge, protruding eyes, and long flat fingers and toes. His pale, bald skin hung loose on his bones like a wrinkled sheet. A robe woven from blue-grey moss draped from his sagging shoulders, frayed where it dragged on the floor. The robe was a necessary second skin, his own failing to keep what little warmth he generated from escaping.
A gnarled leg of petrified wood served Jerrun as both a staff and a crutch. The wood had turned pale white over the rings, color drained from it like from its owner. On the top was a knot like a clenched fist worn to almost reflective smoothness. Below that was a band equally worn, and together they marked the habitual placement of Jerrun’s clutching hands. The staff was heavy, and most of the time it was unclear who was carrying whom, but he was never seen without it.
Jerrun sat with his knees crossed in the center of his living room, his staff laid before him. The floor grew no moss, no grass, no fern. Petrified, rigid, and cold, it was about as forgiving as he was. His eyes were closed, but fluttered open to the sound of rapping at his door. Rising without surprise to greet the late visitor, he tapped his way to the entrance and whisked aside the doorweave.
A fluttering, jittering countenance appeared there. Jerrun recognized Brace Swiftspur’s Rush immediately. She attracted and employed a quirky, rebellious sort that Jerrun detested. Still, it wasn’t the visitor he’d expected. He looked at the hovering creature disdainfully and waited, wringing his staff.
“Message for you, for Jerrun—excuse me—for the Head of the Council of Elders. Sorry for the disturbance, sorry about that.” Nevel flitted about anxiously.
Jerrun made a dramatic show of his irritation, tensing his grip on his staff and inhaling loudly. He turned and hobbled back into the center of the room. “Well?” he said, waving the messenger to follow, “What is the message?”
Nevel flew into the den and calmed down. He relayed the details of Brace’s request.
“Interesting,” Jerrun said at the conclusion. He pointed to the back of the room, offering some nectar to the lip-licking Rush. They exchanged a wordless tense regard for one another as Nevel drank. When he was done, Nevel returned to the Elder and waited for his response.
“Tell her that the request is denied. The Council will no longer be moved by requests from her family. If she still seeks my counsel she may see me in private. That is all.” Jerrun rapped his way back to the entrance where he ushered the messenger out the door.
The Rush barely nodded farewell before darting away, but his flight was cut short. As Jerrun stood there watching, Nevel was snapped up mid-flight by the gaping mouth of a shrouded figure.
Jerrun raised an eyebrow, “Tell me you didn’t just eat him.” The Elder knew reality couldn’t be undone, even if he demanded it, but he held to hope anyway.
The shrouded figure was virtually invisible in the darkness of the wood, though he stood in the open. He wore a cowl that hung low, obscuring most of his face and covering the rest in shadow. His lips parted in a smile, exposing bright, glistening teeth that seemed to glow by contrast. A feathery tuft stuck out pointedly from his mouth. The interloper strode forward lightly and let himself into the Elder’s den without an invitation. He slid by Jerrun as easily as a shadow sliding on a wall.
Inside, Jerrun asked, “You were listening?” He was uncharacteristically uneasy with the intruder, but doing his best not to show it.
“Yes, I was listening,” he said
. His words were surrounded by soft whispers, echoes before and after like others were in the room advising him what to say and repeating him after he’d said it. Even in the relatively well-lit room the intruder remained cloaked in darkness, the details of his face obscured.
“Then you know also, that I shut down the request. Why kill the messenger?” Jerrun inquired, perturbed.
“Because you will have the meeting. Announce publicly that there is no reason to investigate. Remove curiosity. Nip it in the bud so to speak,” the creature seemed satisfied, and nodded to himself.
Jerrun looked away from the creature as he argued, “You don’t think that’ll incite more interest? Brace is a powerful voice in the community. Compassion for her and her daughter since Gammel’s untimely fall makes her a poor choice for an adversary. She could become a problem.”
The odd Arboreal slowly nodded. “Precisely the point,” he said. “This is an opportunity to defuse her completely. Show her to everyone as the hysterical mother. Give her sympathy, but eliminate her support.”
After some consideration, Jerrun decided the idea had some merit. “And what of the lately dined-on messenger?”
To that, the cowled figure raised his head revealing the mottled, swirling fur on his face. Two bright amber eyes opened, and he said, “Messengers die sometimes.”
So that was it, Jerrun thought. If Nevel was brought up, Jerrun would have to deal with it alone. He couldn’t plead ignorance, because he was going to send his own Rush in reply. But there were lots of lies, small and large, that could explain why he wouldn’t trust Nevel to take his response back to Brace. Not ideal. But really, who would question him? Jerrun stopped considering it with a dismissive shake of his head. “The Kudmoths have been seen in the Middens. Do I have anything to worry about?”
A third eye appeared above and between the other two, and the cloaked Arboreal said, “That’s why I’m here.”
9. The Council’s Reach
The trio met in the canopy of the Great Umberwood, the Reach. Tory was the last to show.
“You weren’t waiting long were you?” Tory asked as he swung up.
“No,” Barra said, “But we have to hurry to get there before the meeting starts.”
From where the bups started the Elder Dais was difficult to see in detail. The large black platform rose from the trunk of the Umberwood like an enormous dark flower blooming into the purple sky. The Dais was created from ornate, complex bindings and was large enough to hold thirty Arboreals standing shoulder-to-shoulder. Polished with sappy varnish to an almost liquid sheen, the surface mirrored the lilies growing along the rim as well as the raised and gnarled Knot at its center.
The three took up positions close enough to the Dais to hear but not necessarily be seen, and waited. Barra noticed several makeshift vacant seats in the treescape. Seemed they were a little early after all.
They stared into the illumined sky where magenta shifted to purple between the bright points of light called the Wanderers. The young tree-dwellers were disoriented by the branchless expanse, by the seemingly unending depth of the sky, but the strength of the Umberwood Tree beneath made them steady.
“It’s peaceful up here,” whispered Plicks with reverence.
Tory said, “Yeah, it’s nice. I used to come up here with my mom. Since she left the trees though… I don’t know. My dad says the Reach is no place for us. He doesn’t like it.”
Barra never felt like she could relate to Tory’s loss directly—he’d known his mother. Still, there was something about the way he talked about his mother that always pulled hard at her chest. Her eyes shimmered. Her mouth opened, but she found no words waiting.
Plicks didn’t know what to say to Tory either. Maybe there was nothing that could be said. He gazed into the distance over the rolling canopy of the Reach, and hoped the undulating leaves said anything that needed to be said, everything that he couldn’t.
There were many flowers lighting the Loft, but few grew in the Reach, and the Wanderers, as bright as they appeared, offered no light to travel by. The canopy itself was radiant but dim, and so the assembling Arboreals saw mainly by the glow of a magenta cloud billowing from the horizon and filling half the sky.
As time wore on, even the spectacular view wasn’t enough to stave off Barra’s impatience. She peered out over the Reach, focused only on the Dais, and waited for any indication that the meeting would begin.
“Is that the Starwood?” Plicks pointed far into the distance where one Great Tree’s canopy shone brighter than the rest. The surrounding Lofts appeared pitch black by contrast.
Tory’s distracted look washed away. “Yeah, that’s the Starwood.” Tory indicated the Loft between. “See there? Those branches pointing up into the sky instead of arching down? That’s the Grove. Beside it—the dense grouping of thin branches and bramble thickets?—that’s the Braidwood. So, yeah, that one? That’s the Starwood.”
There was sudden movement near the Elder Dais, and it stole Plicks’ attention. He said, “They’re here.”
A Bellbottom flew up and around the Dais, and touched down on the far side from the bups. She sat down in one of the lilies on the rim with her tails behind her, up and over her head. One by one, the rest of the Council members arrived and found their respective seats. There were rustlings from the audience gathering beneath the Dais as the Head of the Council arrived.
A wake of quiet and stillness rolled out from him as he climbed onto the platform.
In addition to his usual robe, Jerrun wore the Elder Story loosely thrown around his neck like a scarf. The Elder Story was an intertwined braid of the Threads of the Elders that had passed before him. It was a monumental piece, and heavy with the legacy of the order. His personal Thread was not yet tied to his forebears, but it would be.
Jerrun’s staff was with him, of course, and the rapping sound it made against the Dais was clear and sharp. He made his way to the center, and then stood solemnly near the raised Knot.
A young Rugosic, smaller than Tory, made her way onto the Dais and over to the Knot behind the head of the Council. She placed her hands over the top of the Knot, and flashed her fingers in a well-practiced gesture. Once she felt ready, she placed her fingers comfortably, but purposefully into openings in the Knot. A rainbow of light passed through the openings, and the Rugosic used her hands masterfully to block and release the various colors. The attendant rested her hands a moment, and saw patterns in the spectrum that were caused by another attendant just like her, at another Knot, just like hers, far away on the Dais of another Great Tree.
Though the bups couldn’t see what the Rugosic was doing, it was clear that Jerrun was waiting respectfully for her before continuing. After a moment, she nodded to Jerrun. He nodded back. He laid the staff down and gracefully sat on the floor of the Dais.
Jerrun greeted the Council, his voice rich and thick with age. He announced the members by name, giving each a deep nod and a few words of praise. There were scholars, poets, archivists, and more. Each brought a unique talent into the circle. Once he’d introduced them all, Jerrun addressed the Dais as a whole reciting a traditional segment about Aetherials. He concluded by saying, “May you find your Star.”
The Elders responded together, “May your Star find you.”
After a moment, Jerrun summoned Barra’s mother. “Please welcome, Venress Brace Swiftspur to the Dais.” The Rugosic attending the Knot went to work transcribing Jerrun’s words for the Elder Councils of the other trees.
Barra’s mother ascended one of the lead branches to the Dais, facing Jerrun. She walked into the circle, but remained several paws from the Head of the Council. She nodded to Jerrun and to the other Elders. Some nodded back. Barra noticed most did not. She tried to recall the introductions, to attach the names to the faces—Barra didn’t like anyone who shunned her mother like that and she planned to remember each one of them.
&n
bsp; “And please welcome her witnesses: Venress Vallor Starch, Doctor Yorg Fenroar, and Ven Darby Fenroar,” Jerrun’s thick voice carried clear and true all the way to Barra and her friends. Climbing up to the Dais, the witnesses appeared and then walked to Brace, where they stood slightly behind her.
“Please explain the purpose of your summons,” Jerrun said, addressing Brace directly.
“Thank you, Jerrun.” Brace’s voice was full of respect. She composed herself, and then began, “My family, the legacy of the Swiftspurs, is well known on this hallowed Dais. For generations, we were the protectors of the Umberwood. We fought the drooling Maws during the Rot. We defended the Umberwood against the Barblites during Nihil’s Conquest. We hunted the Lifedrinkers until no more could be found.”
Brace paused dramatically. “It has been many generations since those feats of bravery preserved our way of life. Nevertheless, the Swiftspurs remain fiercely loyal to the growth of the Umberwood. Today, we protect the future by keeping the past close at hand.” Brace looked deeply into the eyes of several Elders before continuing. “We left the Root. We left the Root because we were afraid. Afraid of the malignant growth we created. A growth that threatened to drown us all in darkness if we stayed. We retreated to the Loft. We didn’t fight for the Root, we gave it away.”
Stopping again for her words to carry the full weight of their meaning across the Dais and out into the audience, Barra’s mother stood tall and confident. Barra was overwhelmed with pride as she watched her mother command the attention of her entire world.
“But we were wrong about the appetite of the Creepervine. Not only have we all seen the diminished light, the weakening water, and the softening of the boughs, but we know in our hearts that the Great Trees themselves are faltering. The sickness we left at the Root grows. The Creepervine has breached the Middens!” The attendant at the Knot moved her fingers in sync with Brace’s words.
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