by Robert Reed
“No.”
“I don’t want to hurt you, Diamond.”
Nobody but his parents and the doctor were allowed to touch him. And he never saw the doctor anymore. “I’m fine.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I hope so.” The big laugh returned. “I live just up there, by the way. I live with my mother.” Her arm and a self-assured finger pointed the way. Each landing was a rounded platform supported by timbers. Dozens of landings were hanging beneath the mists. Exactly where she was pointing was a mystery, and then her arm dropped. “You haven’t seen my bracelet, have you?”
“What is a bracelet?”
“It’s copper and round, about this big.” One hand drew a round shape around the other wrist.
“I don’t think so, no.”
“With an Emblem of Luck.”
He shook his head.
“Somebody will find it. Don’t worry.” She kept watching him, laughing. “We moved here eighty days ago.”
He said nothing.
“From the Baffle District. Near Suss-and-Hope.”
He was waiting for words that made sense.
“I heard all about you,” she said. “My first day, when the neighbors brought us gifts, people told us about you and your parents.”
With a quiet, hopeful voice, Diamond asked, “Have you seen my mother?”
“No, she didn’t come to our party.”
He puckered his mouth, frustrated.
“Oh, you mean since then. Yeah, I’ve seen her. A few times, I think. I think.”
That answer wasn’t helpful either.
“How old are you?” Elata asked.
“Nine hundred and eighty-three.”
“You seem older.”
“I’m not.”
“I’m twelve hundred and ninety-five days old.”
He could think of nothing to say.
“I haven’t seen your mother. Not for ten or twenty days.” The broad shoulders went up and down. “Why? Don’t you know where she is?”
He said, “No.”
“She’s not inside your house?”
“No.”
The girl blinked and blinked again. “I don’t understand. She’s always here. She’s the one who takes care of you.”
He dipped his head.
“When did she leave, Diamond?”
“We talked last night, just before I went to sleep.”
“Well, I bet she and my bracelet are lost in the same place.” Elata started to laugh and then thought better of it. “Stay here,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because I’ll get my mother and come back. We’ll figure out what’s going on. Okay, Diamond?”
“Yes,” he agreed.
The dangling rope was close enough to grab. The girl started to climb the magnificent tree, eating the distance with the long arms, vanishing onto one of the higher landings.
Diamond was crying again, just a little. He didn’t know this girl, but now she was gone and he felt more alone than ever. So he looked at the monkey perched on the railing, watching its face grimace as it deftly and with great seriousness pooped into the open air.
Diamond kept forgetting what was happening, what was wrong. Stepping to the end of the landing, taking his first long look at the world, he foolishly began to ask his parents what he was seeing. His mother was beside him. Father was behind them. He couldn’t imagine those people being anywhere else. He wanted someone to answer the questions that kept rolling from his mouth: “What is that? And those? And that?”
But no one was here to explain.
The landing was built from long timbers once painted blue but now returning to bare blonde wood. The railing was head-high and flat, pegged into place on stout posts, dozens of thin vertical boards partway filling the gaps. But if he wasn’t careful, a boy would fall through. Cautiously approaching the edge, Diamond grabbed the railing with both hands, standing on sandals and toes, his stunted chin resting on the weathered wood. Marduk was behind him. Huge expanses of air lay before him, and a bright silvery column full of motion and thunder stood in the distance. The column was water. The busy water had begun its plunge far overhead, from inside the persistent morning mist, and it rumbled and roared as it passed, kicking out breaths of vapor that swirled in the bright warm air while the heart of the column fell on, vanishing inside another band of mist and rain-born clouds.
Insects hung in the air, some alone, others dancing together. The largest swarms moved like great bodies, gathering up close to each other, turning dark before racing off again. A monster insect suddenly dropped from above, wings longer than Diamond’s arms, the narrow body built from spheres and cylinders with the jointed black legs tucked beneath. Humming like a spring-powered toy, the monster used those bumpy bulging eyes to search the world for a feast worthy of its rapacious mouth.
“Hello,” Diamond said softly.
The hunter pivoted and dove from sight.
A flock of usher birds arrived, coming from several directions to form a loud happy flock. Maybe a hundred colorful bodies swirled in a one-minded mass. Diamond watched them, trying to understand the manners of the flock, but just as he seemed to be anticipating what would happen next, the flock dissolved. The ushers flew away on a dozen important courses, leaving single birds and several pairs chattering even louder about some vital, left-behind matter.
“Hello,” he repeated.
Unaccustomed to distances, his eyes were endlessly fooled. But he knew the ushers were tiny, and what flew beside the water and out in the open air had to be much, much larger. Birds were usually brilliantly colored, but the quickest birds were brownish green and difficult to see against the trees. And there were flyers that weren’t birds or insects, their bodies covered with brown or black fur while the wings looked like leather. Every animal had its manner of flight. Some turned long elegant circles while others hovered, and some tucked their wings and dove, and he watched one of the brown-green birds turn tiny before colliding with a smaller flyer that exploded in a spray of golden feathers.
Birds had raucous, important voices, and Diamond understood nothing they said. By contrast, the skin-winged creatures were silent, and one of them was especially large. After a few moments of watching, the boy realized that the giant was gliding in a wide arc that was bringing it in his direction. Chin on the rail, he studied the creature’s narrow face and the huge unblinking eyes. Even in the open air, the giant felt close, its body as big as a room yet tiny between the gigantic wings. But the leather was so thin that light passed through, revealing a lacework of skinny bones and veins like crooked ropes. Diamond had never imagined any creature so large, and being gigantic, that it would be so quiet. A soft swoosh of air was the only sound it made, each of its four black eyes constantly looking ahead, conspicuously ignoring the astonished boy who was cowering behind those little wood slats.
Suddenly a great pink mouth pulled wide, big enough to swallow boys and men, and that sleek long body steered into a cloud of tiny black insects, the entire cloud inhaled and then gone.
A thousand questions bubbled.
And Diamond remembered who wasn’t there, suffering that wrenching loss all over again.
The giant had passed.
Diamond rose up on his toes again, watching.
The world was air, and the air was full of trees. This was something he had always known, something so deeply embedded in his parents’ thinking that they couldn’t keep the eternal forest secret. Diamond had imagined the scene endless times, but nothing from his mind matched what stood before him. The falling water was a marvel. Every sound was complicated and important. He couldn’t count the animals, each intensely busy with its own great life. But even the largest creature was little more than a drop of blood and dab of meat beside the titanic pillars of living wood and pushing sap. How many trees? He called Marduk, “One,” and counted quickly and carefully, turning in a half-circle. Twenty-three mature trees wer
e visible, plus three pole-like saplings, and between any two trunks were other trees standing in the shimmering distance that might never end. This magnificent realm was just a sliver of the world’s endless forest.
Trees made the world, feeding every mouth while supporting everything above and everything below. Four types of trees were closest. Most common were smooth brown cylinders like Marduk. Another variety bristled with stubby limbs tipped with dense clots of emerald-green leaves. A third tree sported tall ribs of bark running up and down the trunk, green growth clinging in the valleys, while the fourth species was deeply black save for half-domes of intense blue-green.
Mother had claimed that their home tree wasn’t exceptionally large. Yet Marduk looked like a great flat wall, part of something too large to measure. The wall reached upwards forever, and the bark that seemed smooth from a distance was pocketed with cavities and odd ridges, and every place that wasn’t perfectly vertical and slick was home to bunches of plants, exposed roots drinking from the air, birds roosting in the foliage, no substantial piece of this perfect tree left barren.
The next closest tree sported the same slick brown bark, and like Marduk, its body was sprinkled with little landings perched before curtained doors. Long walkways and brief walkways clung to the bark. There were hanging ropes like the one that Elata had climbed, while other ropes were moving. Moving ropes came in pairs, one lifting while its neighbor descended. Diamond didn’t see people at first. Again, distance made him into a fool. Then the eyes caught something tiny, like a midge held at arm’s length, except when he looked more carefully the anonymous bug turned into a grown woman.
Hands around his eyes, Diamond saw people walking across their landings, climbing the dangling ropes and sometimes riding the moving ropes up and down. One man came up quickly, and he was straight across from Diamond when he jumped to one side, his journey moving to a suspended walkway that led to the landing where the first woman waited.
The two people clung and kissed.
Diamond dropped his gaze, watching his feet and sandals.
Every time he looked at the world, new details begged to be noticed. He stared at his home with the face on the curtain and the one big window and the long hallway that led to his hidden room. Beside the window, a piece of the railing was missing. Diamond went to the gap, discovering a short rope ladder leading down to a narrow walkway. The walkway passed several more ladders leading up or down, and it ended with empty air and two thick ropes carrying people where they needed to be. Stout wooden platforms were fixed to the ropes, each big enough for two people to stand together, and there was a steady clatter as the ropes and platforms bumped against the tree’s bark, wearing it smooth and pale, and people rode past him and away, and he watched each of them.
This was where his father would appear, coming home.
The monkey squatted nearby, holding the railing with every hand and its eyes closed. It was sleeping, and it was dreaming. Smacking its lips, once again the happy voice said, “Good.”
The boy tried ignoring the animal. What mattered were the people coming into view. Each traveler caused his hope to build before it crashed, again and again, and after a while, when nobody was his father, Diamond began to watch for his mother too.
Where did she go, and why?
A familiar sick feeling took hold, his heart beating faster. He wanted to talk to someone. If he couldn’t find the voices he wanted, he would accept another. That’s why he approached the monkey, asking, “Did you see my mother?”
Lips smacked again.
He reached for the little monster.
“You don’t want to do that,” said a new voice.
The monkey woke with a jerk, growling at something above.
Diamond turned. A strange woman was hanging from the fixed rope. Elata was dangling above her. Despite the difference in ages and size, they looked like one another. That’s what he noticed before anything.
“That critter will bite you,” said the woman.
Diamond nodded, pulling his hand back.
“You’re waiting for your mother?”
He nodded.
The monkey climbed outside the railing, hanging over the open air, a thousand escape routes waiting.
“Do you really live here?” the woman asked skeptically.
“Yes.”
“I told you,” Elata said.
The woman jumped. She wasn’t as graceful as her daughter, but the motion was almost unconscious, bent legs and endless practice breaking her fall. Her daughter landed beside her, and they approached to within an arm’s length. Quietly, the woman said, “You’re not what I imagined.”
Diamond couldn’t think of a response.
“You say your mother left you here, alone?”
“He never, ever goes outside,” said Elata. “You know that.”
“Well, he’s outside now,” the woman said.
They stared at the conundrum while Diamond went back to watching the ropes. Another person was rising into view, and he pulled a new hope close enough to be a comfort. He was ready to be happy, but the person proved to be another stranger, a man who glanced at the odd boy while riding past, one hand lifting as a greeting, neighbor to neighbor.
The woman said, “Diamond.”
He backed away from the railing.
“Before today, have you have ever been outside?”
“No.”
“Never?” she asked.
He turned toward her, shaking his head.
“Oh my goodness goodness goodness.” Perplexed, she frowned hard. Then her mood shifted, and suddenly she was nothing but thrilled. A nervous laugh leaked free, and watching the boy, she asked, “Well, what do you think?”
He didn’t understand the question.
“Isn’t it the world beautiful? Spectacular? Wondrous?” Then giving him an odd wink, she asked, “What are you thinking, Diamond?”
“I want my parents,” he said. “That’s what I’m thinking.”
FOUR
Elata’s mother made a thoughtful face. “Before anything else, we need to search the house.”
“He already looked there,” Elata said.
“Did he check every room? Are you sure?”
Diamond had returned to the railing, watching anonymous figures stroll along a distant walkway.
Touching his shoulder, the woman said, “I don’t know your mother that well. She’s an older woman, isn’t she?”
Diamond looked at the hand until it was pulled back.
“What are you saying?” Elata asked.
“Well, I think she might be lying down somewhere. Maybe she’s asleep or something.”
Elata became angry. “Stop talking that way.”
“What way?”
“Mother!”
Ignoring their argument was hard work.
Elata joined him at the railing. “Maybe your mother is visiting a friend.”
Diamond didn’t think so, but he shook his head agreeably.
“Or maybe she told a friend where she was going.”
That also seemed unlikely, but he didn’t know how to explain his doubts.
The girl offered several strange names.
Her mother drifted over to the curtain. “I should walk through the house, just to be sure.”
Looking at the window, Diamond wished hard that his mother would appear behind the glass.
Elata said, “Rima.”
He stopped her. “I’ve heard that name.”
“You have?”
He nodded.
Elata’s mother pushed at the curtain and watched it fall again. “You kids go to Rima’s. See what she knows, and I’ll be two leaps behind you.”
Then she slipped behind the curtain, vanishing.
Elata smiled at him. For some reason she was suddenly happy, spinning and then climbing down onto the ladder.
Diamond looked at the rungs skeptically.
“You’ve never climbed,” she realized.
“No.�
��
“Well, it’s easy. Do what I do.”
She tried to move slowly, but that wasn’t her natural pace. Partway down the ladder, she stopped to wait. Diamond was examining a round, hand-worn piece of wood sticking out of the railing. Noticing her gaze, he turned and grabbed hold of the handle, dropping one foot over the edge, reaching until he felt the rope rung against his sandal. From below, she said, “Good,” and started down again. From much farther below, she asked, “Do you know what to do if you fall?”
“No.”
“Aim for the tree. With your body and the air, steer your way toward a walkway or one of the landings. And if you can, let your feet lead.”
He imagined all that. With a doubtful tone, he said, “All right.”
“If you fall carelessly, bones get broken. But you’ll survive.”
Diamond said nothing, moving faster now. Then a foot slipped, and he dropped and grabbed the swinging ladder with both hands, dangling in space. His home landing was above him. Every supporting timber wore a tangle of green epiphytes, and nests shaped like baskets were defended by sitting birds, and straddling one of the main timbers, watching him with considerable interest, was the orange-faced monkey.
Diamond started down again.
“Good,” said the monkey, as if encouraging him.
“Are you his?” Elata asked.
“What?”
She was waiting on the walkway. “Orange-heads don’t make good pets. But sometimes, nobody knows why, they’ll adopt one person. They make him into their pet.”
Diamond jumped down the last little ways.
“Did he tell you his name?” she asked.
He looked up at the animal. “ ‘Good’, I think it is.”
Something deserved a long laugh, and she waved. “Come on. Rima and her boys live over there.”
They walked under his landing. Wood slats and heavy rope created the walkway. The ropes were pegged into Marduk’s dense bark. New slats were pale, and fresh ropes were tied into the old fraying pieces. The walkway creaked and sometimes shook underfoot. Diamond let his hand ride along on the rope railing, touching the posts that came every few steps. He watched the air beside him. Elata watched him. He slowed to stare at a cavity inside the bark, a tiny garden growing just out of reach. Plants sported strangely colored leaves, and a pair of tiny blue birds buzzed loudly while hovering overhead.