“Oh!” His blue eyes brightened an impossible amount. “You could hear me? I was thinking about—” His expression fell. “It—”
“Wasn’t your fault,” Aryl finished wryly. Had she ever been this worried about something so trivial as cracking a bowl? Hard to imagine. She gave the thin rope between them a gentle shake. “Pay attention to where we are, little one,” she suggested. “Your parents will not be pleased with me if you—” she caught herself unable to use the everyday Yena expression . . . “drop into the Lay” . . . and substituted “— if you’re lost in the M’hir.”
“Can that happen?” His eyes were wide. “Can the great wind sweep me away?” With the easy balance of the young, he let go of the stalk and stood tiptoe on the narrow frond, flapping his arms like a flitter caught in a gale. “Where would I go? What would I see? How would I get back down again?” this dubiously, with a look past their feet. “Would I fall?”
Falling was a game to Om’ray children, taught to climb as soon as they could crawl. Aryl remembered the willing tumbles, the snatching for holds, the laughter and shrieks, not to forget the ire of any parents who caught them. There would usually be a lecture on how only caution and care would keep them safe. But they played, she remembered that too, because they feared to fall. They felt safer having dared it to happen. Why wait on fate?
Children, she thought, had a special wisdom.
“Save your arms for climbing,” she told him. “Once we’re as high as you can go, I’ve something to show you.”
I can go HIGH! I can go higher than anyone! This sending was accompanied by interwoven images of his age-mates, their faces filled with awe.
She’d never, Aryl decided, been that young. She shook her head and started to climb.
Joyn was a good climber; moreover, as a child he received all the dresel his body needed. Aryl set the pace more to husband her energy than his, though she was careful to choose a route suited to his shorter reach and small hands. All the while, she pointed out signs of danger, whether a weakened strip of bark or lurking stinger, waiting for his nod of understanding each time.
It had become a habit by now to gather what could be eaten. Joyn helped. As they filled a net, she’d leave it hanging to await their descent. They were in the lean season, when white fruits appeared in great numbers from the vines draped everywhere on older rastis, but these were hard and small, too bitter to eat. In the past, the Yena left them alone, knowing by the end of the rains they’d swell and ripen. When that happened, the fruits produced a scent that attracted flitters and climbers in great numbers. That was the harvest the Om’ray wanted, and their nets would fill with meat in short order.
This M’hir, they couldn’t afford to wait a season. The unripe fruits weren’t nutritious but, when added to other food, they improved appetite. It was becoming harder and harder to convince the older Om’ray to eat what they should. Aryl couldn’t remember feeling hungry. What food they had would do no good if they couldn’t bring themselves to eat it.
They were becoming thin, even the harvesters, now given slightly more dresel per day. Last fist, Council had declared all the strong climbers— all those left— to be harvesters. It gave Aryl no joy to be one of them at last, only purpose.
When she thought of her childish outbursts at being passed over last M’hir, of her blind envy, she was ashamed.
“Why are you sad?”
“Don’t sense others,” Aryl snapped, reaching for another hold, then shook her head again. How many times had she been scolded for the same ability? He was younger than she’d been, too young to understand. She glanced down. “Do your best, Joyn,” she said firmly but with sympathy. “I know it’s difficult. I had to practice and sometimes I still sense more than I mean to.”
Easy to sense the child’s state of mind— an interesting blend of unconscious pride and very aware contrition. He hadn’t meant to pry; he did care why she was unhappy. He had, she decided with a rush of affection, a good heart.
Just as well. There was more Power in that tiny frame than in most adults; Aryl tightened her shields. “You’re right,” she admitted freely. “I am sad. It’s all right. It’s not about you, or being here.”
“I understand. Everyone’s sad,” he said matter-of-factly. “And scared.”
Little more than half her age, and growing up too fast. They all were. Maybe, she thought wearily, they had to. Aryl hooked her leg over a branch. At this indication they were to rest, the child did the same. “Do you know what history is, Joyn?” she asked, offering him a drink from her flask.
Neither wore their gauze hoods over their faces, so she could see his freckled nose crinkle with disgust. “The stories grandparents tell you when you’ve been bad. About your parents when they were children. They aren’t,” this with profound feeling, “fun.”
“True,” she chuckled. A flitter— the blue-and-red kind— landed nearby. It bent its head to turn one, then the other of its large green eyes at them, as if gauging how dangerous they were. Apparently satisfied, it began snapping at the cloud of biters that had settled over the branch at the same time as the two Om’ray. A good neighbor. “But I mean stories that are about all the Om’ray in a Clan, not just a family.”
He looked astonished. “Do the Tuana have stories? The Vyna? The—”
Aryl interrupted what was sure to be the full list. “Every Clan has its own. That’s another reason Passage is important. Those who come here tell us their stories and any they’ve heard from other Clans. Those who,” she took a breath, “leave Yena take our stories with them.”
Joyn frowned. “I hope they didn’t take my grandmother’s stories.”
Her lips quirked. “Not that kind. Bigger stories. And those stories are put together into the history of all the Om’ray, of the entire world. We’re in one of those stories, you and I, right now.”
He gave her a suspicious look. “We’re in a rastis.”
Aryl gazed back, nonplussed. “I thought children had great imaginations,” she said finally.
“For playing,” Joyn informed her with great dignity. “We aren’t playing. You,” he clarified, “are too old to pretend.”
“Maybe I am,” Aryl agreed. “But this is a story, Joyn. One that will be retold everywhere there are Om’ray.”
“What’s it about?”
Death and disaster? She shifted the bag at her hip. “It will be about the brave Yena Clan,” she began. “How everyone was a little sad and a little afraid— because we faced a time of danger and trouble, worse than any before it, worse than any to come. Every other Clan will know.”
Joyn grew still. “How does the story end?”
“That’s the good part,” Aryl assured him. “It ends with the best Harvest ever. We’ll have so much fresh dresel cake that everyone could eat themselves sick— but they won’t—” that for his parents, “— and there’ll be a party that lasts until the next rains. Everyone will be happy.”
He smiled, just a bit, then rolled his eyes. “You made that up.”
“I thought you said I was too old,” she responded archly. She shooed away biters. “Time to go.”
They climbed in silence to the next whorl of fronds. As they eased past more thorn-shooters, Joyn spoke again.
“You don’t believe our story will end that way. With everyone happy.”
So much for shields against this one, she told herself ruefully, not that it couldn’t have been simple perception. Somehow, though, she doubted it. Joyn was going to be a force to be reckoned with in future M’hirs. He was now.
“I don’t know,” Aryl said honestly. “No one does. But that’s the ending I want.”
I want everyone happy, too . . . I want everyone happy, too . . . I WANT EVERYONE HAPPY, TOO . . .
She didn’t try to silence him.
She did, however, wince.
* * *
“Fiches,” Joyn repeated, frowning in concentration. He held up two. “And I throw them?” this eagerly.
&nbs
p; “No! Not yet,” Aryl ordered, making sure he obeyed before turning back to her own preparations.
These fiches were a far cry from the first crude versions she’d tossed from Costa’s window. Much of the change lay in their construction. At night and during the rains, she’d taught herself to braid threads teased from old clothing. Sore fingers later, she could reliably produce miniature ropes, strong yet light, that could be tied using a needle.
When dipped in vine sap and hung to dry, the tiny ropes became solid rods— perfect for bracing pieces of dresel wing. The wing itself was her limit. She’d found only one more, almost shredded, and her fiches shrank in size as she was forced to use smaller and smaller sections. Aryl had tried to sew or glue wing material together, but failed.
The rest of the change was in the design. Because of the small pieces of wing, the fiches were made of several supported pieces tied together. Through trial and error, they’d lost their simple triangular shape, becoming bent and angular. From a certain direction, Aryl squinted at one, they could be wastryls. She now had fiches that would soar in a straight line until hitting something— and there was always something. She needed open space to learn how far they really could fly.
As for landing? “Remember you asked me how to come down from the M’hir?” She turned over a fich and showed Joyn the tiny hooks dangling from its underside. “This is how. The hooks will catch on branches and hold.”
“So it won’t fall into the Lay.”
“So it won’t fall into the Lay,” Aryl repeated firmly. It wouldn’t be a soft or safe landing. But the fich wouldn’t vanish beneath the canopy and drop to sure death.
Nor would a rider . . .
She focused on today.
They’d climbed as high as Joyn could. Aryl had watched him slow as his inner sense responded to the contrary tug of his bond to his mother. He didn’t feel it as a leash; it was the awareness of far enough natural to an Om’ray. She imagined the edge of the world, beyond the outer Clans, would feel the same. This was, she thought with satisfaction, far enough for her as well.
This old rastis wove its fronds through the branches of an upstart nekis. The other plant was bare this season, its topheavy burst of leaves shed and new growth swelling in buds at every twig tip. Aryl had marked it before. The upper third away from the rastis was open to the sky.
And thick with twigs. She’d wasted time clearing them from her chosen perch, using her longknife to trim that growth as well as a hearty crop of thorn-ready thickles. Everything loved the sunward side. Joyn had cheerfully joined in, using his small blade to hack at a lump of bark that wasn’t remotely in their way. But it kept him busy. The end result was a natural platform, broad enough for the two of them.
Aryl was satisfied.
From this vantage point, the canopy top flowed down and away like a green-brown sheet tossed over a lumpy mattress. The expanse ended where the Sarc grove rose, its larger, full stalks blocking any view of the lands beyond. Aryl had hoped to show the child the smallness of the world; perhaps, she thought, he didn’t need to know quite yet.
Joyn had been impressed enough, particularly when he spotted flocks of flitters below, wheeling through the air. He’d wanted to send a fich flying after them, unaware how the open air tricked the eye with distance.
Aryl found herself enjoying his enthusiasm. At least, during those brief moments when Joyn kept it inside his own head and not hammering against her shields like the pending afternoon rain.
He was, she sighed, trying his best. She felt an unexpected sympathy for her own mother.
“Now?”
“Let me test the wind.” The M’hir had finished, but there was a perceptible breeze flowing over the canopy. Aryl turned her face until the sweat on her forehead began to cool. “That way,” she pointed, then added quickly, catching at his arm. “When I say and not before.”
The sky wasn’t the brilliant blue of her memories, but a more sullen hue, as if it harbored a grudge against the clouds already building toward Amna Clan. Those were tall and white. Joyn noticed her attention. “Buildings! Sky buildings!”
“Clouds,” she corrected absently. “Where rain comes from.” The child fell outwardly silent. Inwardly, his mind was a frenzy of questions. Who lives there? He also wondered what they ate . . . was it air? . . . how did it TASTE? . . . and how often they went to—
“Joyn,” Aryl interrupted, before too many details developed. “It’s time to launch the first one. Just like we practiced with the twigs.”
They both cocked their arms back, then threw them forward, releasing the little models at the extent of their reach. Aryl’s throw was longer and more powerful, but Joyn’s achieved a better angle as he let go. The two fiches floated off through the air.
“Look!!! Look at them!!!”
Aryl did, her heart in her mouth. The tiny craft caught the breeze and actually rose higher. At the same time, they traveled away, their easy flight mocking the full day’s journey along bridge and branch that lay between them and the Sarc grove—
She shook off the wonder of it and began paying closer attention, noting the tilt and self-correction of Joyn’s fich, how hers, a slightly different design, shuddered as it moved.
If they descended, it was imperceptible at this range. Soon, they were specks, eventually disappearing against the dark green of the grove.
With the power of the M’hir, she thought, they could fly across the world.
Joyn’s small hand slipped into hers and Aryl gazed down at him in surprise. “Can we throw another one?” he pleaded.
She smiled. “That’s why we’re here.”
They went through her bagful of fiches, all but one flight cheered as a resounding success— that one involving a too tight grip by very small fingers. He’d been so painfully sorry to break it SO SORRY, Aryl had to tease the child back to cheer or be unable to think a coherent thought the rest of the day.
She was crouched over her bag, digging out the last— having promised Joyn he could fly it— when she felt his sudden excitement.
“What is it?” Fich in hand, Aryl swiveled on her knees to look.
He pointed to the sky. “My fich! My fich is coming back, Cousin! It’s one of mine. I’m sure it is. Look! I threw it, so it comes back!”
MINE! LOOK! MINE! LOOK!
HUSH! she threw against the joyful babble in her head. Joyn’s mindvoice disappeared; he whimpered. Aryl gestured apology, but didn’t lose her concentration. She tried to make sense of what she saw moving through the air. The child was right, it was coming in their direction. “There are sky hunters,” she began to explain, then paused. “But that’s too fast—”
Light slipped over a curved surface . . .
The fich dropped from her numb fingers. Aryl swept up Joyn and ran the wide branch back to the trunk. The child took hold without question, wrapping his arms and legs around her body to free her hands and arms. She kept moving, jumping to the branch below, then the next, and next, following the natural spiral of the nekis to put the massive trunk between them and what flew as quickly as possible. They crashed through leaves and vines, were whipped by twigs.
Finally, Aryl stopped, her back to the solid comfort of the trunk, and took shallow, silent breaths.
Safe? a whisper in her mind.
No. She stayed waiting and still. Joyn did the same, holding tight. This was the earliest training, to freeze at danger and trust the adult. Aryl brushed greenery from the hair sticking from his hood, wishing she felt like one.
Or was the calm assurance of her elders nothing more than this? she wondered suddenly. An outer shield, as effective as the inner at hiding fear and self-doubt.
Somehow, that wasn’t a comfort.
Biters found them. One of her leaps must have planted her right leg in the midst of a thickle, judging by the needle-stings coursing up and down her calf.
After a few long moments of nothing more threatening, Aryl became restless. And curious. What was it doing?
“Stay here,” she told Joyn, who obediently climbed down and took her place against the trunk. His eyes were dilated but calm. “I won’t leave you,” she added, startled by the intensity of her own promise.
To see it at such distance, she told herself, it must be larger than the device that had exploded during Harvest . . . much larger . . . but that glimpse? She’d swear it was the same design.
After pulling her hood’s gauze over her face, Aryl bent to strip off her boots. They were protection and grip on flat branches, but for this, she needed her strong toes. She pressed her body to the trunk, reaching out to explore the ridged bark, finding and avoiding areas soft with moisture and rot that would crumble under her fingers. Once her hands had found a solid grip, her feet did the same.
Reap the Wild Wind Page 19