“Many thanks,” the head silga said, inclining his body slightly toward Serani. “You may stay two more nights.” And then they were gone, dissolving among the trees.
Dorin saw Jaele’s frown. “Rude, aren’t they?” he said. She nodded, thinking too how very beautiful they were.
Serani set up her wheel beneath a tree and went off to fetch water to add to the raw clay they had transported in large covered vats. She took water sacks as well as her sifting pails and spades. Dorin and Jaele ate bread and cheese, sitting cross-legged on the platform upon which they had slept. They were silent during the meal, but when they had finished, Dorin sprang to his feet.
“Come,” he said, holding out a hand to pull her up. “I have a place to show you.”
She followed him along a narrow, twisting path, up through the trees. After a time he called back, “We’re leaving the path—take care.”
The trees grew very close together now, and branches and vines slapped at her face. The ground had become springier with moss, softer with dark, damp earth. Dorin led her up and up; at times they scrambled on all fours. Except for their muffled steps and the rustling of branches, there was a deep, deep silence; wind and sunlight were still among these trees.
At last she heard him stop, and she came up behind him a few paces later. “Ready?” he asked. She looked sidelong at him; his face was lost in the tree shadows. She felt him take her hand as they stepped forward between the trunks.
Sunlight struck her eyes; she threw up a hand to shade her face. When the blindness had passed, she said, “Oh!”, low and incredulous.
They were standing at the edge of what was almost a clearing. The trees were spaced farther apart: all were massive, and no branches swept downward. Among them were strung shining threads and cords. They were woven into webs of intricate or simple design. Some stretched away out of sight, some hung tiny and trembling between leaves, others rose above them like glittering domes. “Spiders?” Jaele whispered after a time, remembering the small webs she had seen in spaces between the boards of her hut.
“No,” Dorin answered quietly, pointing up. “Birds.” And there they were: spots of colour—blue, red, green as the water of Jaele’s harbour—their curved beaks flashing silver.
“How?” she asked.
“From their feathers,” he said. “It takes them a very long time.”
He gripped her hand very tightly. As soon as she felt the pressure, it was gone. “This isn’t all,” he said, and walked out into the clearing with Jaele behind him.
They went carefully among the webs. She knocked one with her elbow and halted in fear, but the birds paid her no heed. “I think they know friends from foes,” Dorin said, “and that’s probably why the tree silga don’t live here.”
They stopped at the base of a particularly huge tree. Its trunk was covered in large round growths like wooden knots. Dorin said, “Stay close to me, but not too close,” and put his foot on one of the growths. Jaele watched him begin to climb.
“Dorin. . . .” she said uncertainly.
“Come on!” he called, already a good way up the trunk bottom. “Nothing to be afraid of.”
She grasped a knot and followed him, willing herself not to tremble with the fear that was spreading through her limbs. After a time the climbing took on a rhythm, and she stopped thinking. Dorin began to sing. Jaele could never remember the tune afterward, only phrases like “a chameleon sat on a brocade chair” and “my favourite hat is brimless.” She giggled, clutching the trunk and keeping her gaze on the striped wood in front of her. Just as she was considering wrapping her limbs around the trunk and becoming part of the tree, she felt Dorin’s hands on her wrists. He pulled her up gently to stand on a wide, flat branch. Jaele’s arms and legs quivered violently. He held her, and she listened to his heart thudding beneath her right ear. “Just a little farther,” he said with a smile. She felt the smile—his mouth moving against her hair.
When her legs could support her, they walked along the branch. It was like a road, broad and firm beneath their feet, sloping steeply upward. At the top of the bend it levelled out again. The leaves here were smaller, and light green instead of the dark silver-green they had been lower down. “You can look now,” Dorin said. “Just climb up here.”
Jaele stepped up in front of him. For an instant, sky and forest reeled, and he grasped her shoulders. They were at the very top of the tree, looking out over the mountainside, which fell down and away from them in waves of green and gold and silver. The webs close to the treetops glittered, and the sky was open and vast above them. The webs close to the treetops glittered, and the sky was open and vast above them. Beyond the trees was the plain, and beyond that a shimmering blue which Jaele knew was the desert. She almost expected to see the spires of Luhr, shining like day stars in the distance.
“Breathe in,” Dorin said, and she did. The air was cold and thin, and her head felt weightless. She exhaled slowly. He was smiling at her. The sunlight made his hair white-gold.
“Let’s sit,” he said. “We’ll still be able to see.”
They were silent for a long time. Jaele watched the wind stirring the leaves that rose and fell like water below the sky. “Tell me about the silga,” she said at last, and Dorin sighed.
“You’ve met the tree silga: tall, beautiful, arrogant. But there are others who live in the earth. I haven’t seen them yet, but I know Serani has. They never come out of their tunnels; they spend their lives in the service of the tree silga.” He cupped his hand around the tiny blue of a winged insect. After a moment he let it fly out, sparkling, beyond the leaves. Jaele felt eagerness again—companions, need, the man who was ahead of her.
“So,” she said quickly, “these earth silga are slaves. Then they will be angry. We could help them, and afterward some of them could come with us—with me.”
Dorin turned his head away from her. He traced the veins of a leaf with one finger. “No,” he said, “I do not think so,” and a windy silence fell again between them.
Shadows of the small leaves around them slanted across their laps. Blue deepened slowly to purple. The sun hung huge and round, red above the western mountains, and everything around Dorin and Jaele grew rich and briefly, dazzlingly bright. Horns rang out below them; the sounds rose and drifted out over the trees. It was then that Dorin saw the thread.
A web had been strung from the top branches long ago; now only this one strand remained, stretched between two twigs. He plucked it free and held it in his palm, then handed it to Jaele. It was smooth and strong, water-clear but tinged with green within. She turned it between her fingers.
“Jaele,” Dorin said, “keep it. You could put your shell on it; it’s thin enough.”
She looked at him. His eyes seemed firelit. She drew the shell out of the pouch at her belt and handed it to him with the thread. “Please do it,” she said.
He bent over them, into a patch with no shadows. She saw tiny hairs, touched golden, on the back of his neck and hands; the shape of his fingernails; the curve of his eyelashes. He was biting the inside of his right cheek.
“There,” he said after a few attempts. “Turn away from me—I’ll tie it.” His fingers brushed her neck and she shivered. He laughed and did it again, and she reached back to bat at him. The thread was cool and light against her skin.
“Now turn back.”
Jaele glanced down, just able to see the shell below her chin. When she raised her eyes, Dorin was not looking at the necklace but at her face. He was no longer smiling.
“Tell me about your town,” she said, wanting him to speak. “Or where you went after you left my beach. Tell me anything.”
He shook his head, slowly. “No. No—I can’t.”
“Why not?” She leaned forward to touch his hand, but he drew it back. “What is wrong?” she asked, and he closed his eyes before he answered.
“It is difficult for me sometim
es—being with you. With most people. I have never. . . .” Then, in a different voice, “We should leave.” His eyes open, sliding over the leaves. “It will be dark soon.”
He climbed down and she followed, swallowing around a dryness in her throat. He did not sing, or make any noise at all. “Jump now,” he said when she reached the bottom. She jumped. She did not look at the sundown-burnished webs around them; she saw only his back.
“Hold onto my belt,” he said when they came to the path, which was now in absolute darkness. Jaele did, and they stumbled through the trees and vines. By the time they reached their clearing, there were stars dancing in and out of the branches.
Serani was sitting by a fire; a cauldron was propped above it, and Jaele smelled herb soup. The old woman looked sharply at them, then offered a soup bowl to each. Dorin walked past her to a platform that was far away from Jaele’s. Serani’s black eyes were steady on her, and Jaele drew an uneven breath.
“I don’t know what’s wrong,” she said. “He’s so sad, maybe angry, but I don’t know why. . . .”
After she had eaten as much as she could, she stood at the base of the tree Dorin had chosen. “Dorin,” she called, and cringed at the raggedness of the word. She looked up into the branches but could see nothing. “Dorin, please tell me what’s wrong.”
The silence was so long that she turned to walk away. “I’m sorry,” Dorin said, his voice distant and muffled, “but I can’t explain. Please leave me.”
After a moment she said, “Thank you for showing me the webs and the tree. And thank you for singing—here and in Luhr.” She walked off, climbed up to her platform. His bundle of clothes was still lying there. She put it to her face; it smelled like him. When he held her against him at the top of the tree, she had breathed him in: sun-warmed skin, clay and water, other scents she did not recognize. She clutched the bundle and fell asleep.
She dreamed Dorin’s tree-climbing song: it came to her, asleep, as it never would again, in every note and word. Then it began to fade. She tried to catch at it as she swam toward open spaces. She woke as it died completely, and sat up groggily. Dawn light was filtering through the branches. Dorin’s bundle was gone.
Jaele crept up the steps to his platform and peered over the boards. “Dorin?” she called. “He’s gone running,” she said to herself later, as she walked around and around the clearing. “He’ll be back.” Whingey watched her with sad, wide eyes.
The light changed from grey to gold. Horns sounded. When Serani rose, Jaele was sitting on a root of the tree where Dorin had slept. The old woman put a hand on Jaele’s shoulder. Jaele shook her head from side to side and did not look up. “No,” she said, “no.” A moment later she stood. “Serani. Take me to the earth silga.” Serani gazed at her; Jaele could not see herself in the woman’s black eyes. “Please—show me which tree to go to. I need to meet them. Right away.”
The old potter took one of Jaele’s hands in both of her own. Her fingers were thick-knuckled, with tips dry and cracked as clay left too long in the oven. She held Jaele’s hand for a moment; then led her down the path. They stopped at one of the holes which gaped below twisted and arching roots. Serani pointed down into the darkness.
“Thank you,” Jaele said. Serani squeezed her hand once, tightly, before stepping back.
Jaele had to crawl at first. Once she had ducked into the hole, she saw a tunnel sloping away before her; its walls glowed a light green. After she had crawled a short distance, the tunnel deepened and the ceiling grew higher. She stood up, brushing grit off her hands. She walked for a long time, down and down, until the earthen walls became stone, beaded and glistening with water. The water too shone green, and she heard its steady dripping against the stone. She was trembling and raw.
Soon there were other noises—distant clangings and ringing blows. Jaele walked on until the sounds were nearer and a light began to grow ahead of her, dimly orange and flickering. Against this light appeared a dark, stooped shape. It advanced toward her, casting a distended shadow on the walls. Jaele did not think to be afraid. They are angry—they are slaves, she thought, and her steps quickened.
They stopped a few paces from each other. She gazed at the creature, and he gazed back at her. He was a silga, but his skin was not white, and he did not tower above her. He was dark and gnarled, covered in dirt and hair. His back was bent, coiled like a root. He regarded her with black, orange-dappled eyes.
She waited. After a moment he said in a rough voice, “Murtha,” and pointed to himself.
“Jaele,” she said. Her voice sprang from the rock walls, and she cleared her throat. “Please,” she continued, more quietly, “could you show me your home? I am from far away, and would like to see it.”
Murtha nodded and gestured down the tunnel, toward the light. “Down here is where we live. Follow,” he said, and she did.
After a few moments of silence she asked, “Did you know I was here? Did you hear me coming?”
He looked back at her over his humped shoulder and replied, “We hear, yes. Steps, and changes in the air.”
“Do people like me come here often? Strangers?” She remembered sunlight in Luhr, the dazzle of fishfolk scales. Certainty rising like tears in her throat.
“No,” he said, but he slowed and moved so that she could walk beside him on the path, and she knew he would say more. “Not many, until these latest days. Now you, and that other before you. That one did not speak the Queen’s language, so I fed him berries and he went away. With you I can talk.”
Jaele stopped walking. He took a few steps more, then turned to her. “This other,” she said, “what was he like?”
Murtha held up his hands and spread his fingers, and she felt a chill like fever aching in her flesh. “Fingers with more skin, here. He was tired. Very hungry. He looked long at the water on our walls, but he would not drink when I gave him a cup. You want food? Water?”
“No,” she said, walking again. He was here, she thought, shivering as her feet touched the ground. Here where I am, as in Luhr—I knew. And she too looked at the water, trickling green from mountain stone. “How long ago?” she said, and the earth silga glanced at her.
“Long ago?” he repeated, and she said, “How long ago did that other come here?”
Murtha shrugged. “Eight sleeps, perhaps. Nine. I am sorry to not know.”
Jaele took a deep breath and smiled at him. “No—do not be sorry. Thank you for telling me. Now please—tell me more, tell me about this place.”
He pointed ahead and said, “There is a place of metal where we work. I will show you.”
Moments later the path ended at a rock ledge. Jaele stood with Murtha and looked down on a huge cavern, blazing with fire and heat, and ringing with the sound of hammers on metal. The clanging made her blink; sparks shone red behind her eyelids. Earth silga milled below them, hunched over enormous vats of bubbling green liquid, carrying pots, beating strips of glowing metal.
She did not realize she had become accustomed to the noise until it stopped. Hammers fell silent; the earth silga were suddenly still among the vats and flames. She saw Murtha’s hands clench at his sides, saw a look of waiting in his eyes, which he did not turn to her. She understood a moment later, when her own eyes fell on three tree silga. They were tall and unbowed, pale as moon against the dark earth and stone. Graceful and slow, they walked through the cavern, pausing to examine the liquid and the strips of metal, and turning, sometimes, to speak to each other. They did not speak to the earth silga, Jaele noticed—not even when one of the tree silga grasped some tongs and hurled a rounded bit of metal back into the fire; or when another tipped one of the vats so that the bright molten liquid flowed away down a trough. Although they were not instructed to, the earth silga who had been standing by the vat and holding the discarded metal crept away into corridors at the edge of the cavern, bent low, eyes downcast, shuffling among the other earth silga, who made way wi
thout looking at them.
When they came to the last of the fires, the tree silga slipped away into darkness, their backs curving only briefly beneath the low doorways. The noise and motion resumed almost immediately, and again Jaele flinched and blinked. The earth silga are strong, and they must yearn to leave this place. Her companions, when freed, standing with her in wind and light by the Eastern Sea?
“Murtha!” she cried, and he peered up at her. “Where did those earth silga go?”
He motioned toward the tunnel and they stepped back; the clamour faded as soon as the cavern was out of sight. “Away,” he said. “Not forever.”
She shook her head. “But that is terrible! Why do you allow the tree silga to command you this way?”
He frowned a bit. “Command?” he repeated, then said, “They are apart, from above. We are here.” He regarded her calmly.
“That is . . . that is not. . . .” Jaele began, but fell silent as she looked at him. “Please,” she said after a pause, “could you show me more?”
She followed him into another tunnel, which plunged even further down. New sounds began here: sharp blows, crumbling stone, high singing. She thought she recognized the language of the tree silga but was not sure; there was a difference.
They came to another opening. Smaller tunnels branched around them. Earth silga hacked at the stone walls with picks and hands. Children helped; Jaele saw that their backs too were stooped. She also saw, leaning against the walls, some pottery jugs that were most certainly Serani’s, and she smiled. The earth silga’s voices rose and fell, and did not falter when they looked at her. The green walls glowed; the rocks that were sorted into pushcarts and taken away shone green as well. Murtha picked up a small piece and held it close to his eyes. Then he put it into Jaele’s hand.
“Oh,” she said, hearing her voice crack and leap high. “I thank you.”
He took her to a workroom, where she saw what these silga made with their molten green. There were rows of horns of all sizes, clear but still shadowed with colour. Some were one loop; others were twisted into two or three; still others were straight, flaring slightly at the end. Earth silga examined them, heads bent, fingers running lightly over the metal. Singing quietly.
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