Moon crouched on the branch, his foot claws caught in the rough bark. “If you let me go down there and be the bait, we could get this over with.” The warriors were only doing the stalking today because their prey was a creature who had been pursuing the Arbora on their hunts and scaring away the usual game. It was just too big and too fast for the Arbora to deal with on their own, and it had already injured too many of them. The Arbora who had been attacked hadn’t been able to describe the predator well, and the hunter who had seen it best was still in a healing sleep back in the colony tree.
Chime, perched on the branch collar a little further down, said, “Uh, the hunt would be over with, all right. We’d have to spend the rest of the day recovering your body.”
Annoyed, Moon settled his wings. It was raining lightly, which wasn’t helping anyone’s temper. The already muted light falling through the multiple layers of leaves in the mountain-tree canopies was dim and more gray than green. The court had been tense since the shared dream, with everyone braced for it to be repeated, or for the event that it foretold to occur. Neither had happened. Nothing had turned up in the mentors’ augury, despite their best efforts. Jade had sent messages to their two closest allies, Sunset Water and Emerald Twilight, to see if they had had any similar experiences. The answer had been no, and the messages, delivered by warriors, had been too polite to convey what the other courts were actually thinking: that Indigo Cloud had collectively lost its mind.
Below, on a lower branch, one of the warriors startled a nest of flying lizards, sending them fleeing in a small explosion of multicolored squeaking, alerting half the Reaches to his presence. Moon hissed in frustration. He had been hunting for survival since he was a fledgling, while most of these warriors had still been playing in the nurseries. It had taken them three days to follow the signs and traces from the platform where the Arbora hunters had been attacked to here, and now they weren’t even sure where the thing had gone to ground. He told Chime, “I’ve been bait before—”
Chime nodded. “I know, and I find that terrifying.”
“—and I wasn’t talking to you.” He looked up at the smaller branch arching above them.
Jade perched up there, partially concealed from this angle by the drooping fronds of a fern tree that had taken root on the broad branch. She said, “Not every problem can be solved by you trying to get yourself killed.”
“Not every problem,” Moon agreed. He looked down toward the platforms nestled in the branches across from their vantage point. “But this one could be.”
The suspended forest was made up of layers and layers of these platforms, formed when dirt built up in the entwined mountain-tree branches until it had enough depth to grow grass, form ponds and swamps, and support entire forests of smaller trees. The platform their quarry might have gone to ground in was unusual in that another mountain-tree had taken root in it. Usually when this happened, the sapling mountain-tree died off or fell when its weight grew too heavy. This one was apparently intending to survive.
It was already a few hundred paces tall, its smaller canopy mingling with that of the mountain-tree that supported the platform, and its trunk was a good hundred paces around. Its roots had grown through the dirt of the platform and twined around the branches below it, and there was plenty of room to hide in that extensive and complex structure.
Jade said, definitively, “If anyone’s going to be bait, it’s me.”
Moon twitched his spines at her. “That is not fair.”
Jade snorted. “You sound like Frost.”
Moon had been teaching Frost and some of the older fledglings how to hunt, but there was no way he would have let any of them even come along to watch this. He had had to grow up the hard way, and while he was determined to teach all the fledglings how to take care of themselves in an emergency, he meant them to have a more normal Raksuran upbringing, which included comfortable nurseries guarded by determined Arbora and no fights to the death with suspended forest denizens. He pointed out, “Frost hasn’t done this before. I have.”
Jade’s sigh was part hiss of irritation. It didn’t sound like she would change her mind anytime soon.
Chime said, “This thing is too smart to be lured out by a Raksura acting as bait. If it wasn’t, we would have killed it already.” He added, “Maybe we need a mentor.”
He had a point. Moon just wished they could get this over with. He had been restless enough lately, worrying about the dream.
Ferns fluttered on the branch above, and Jade said, “I am not dragging a mentor all the way out here to tell us this damn thing is hiding under that sapling. We already know that.”
Moon had to say, “Probably hiding under the sapling.”
Jade swung down onto the lower branch to stand next to him. Exasperated, she said, “If we still can’t find this thing by twilight, I’ll—”
Then Chime said, “Wait.”
Moon turned. Chime had kept his gaze on the arched roots winding through the platform. He continued, “There was movement. Wait . . . There it is again.”
Jade stepped to Chime’s side and crouched to follow his sightline. She said, “At the base of the root that’s almost at the edge of the platform.”
“Yes.” Chime’s spines flicked in excitement. “I thought I saw the ground ripple. Now there’s a furrow.”
Moon saw it now, a too-perfect circle in the moss-covered dirt, next to one of the sapling’s roots. It shaped the outline of something with a big round body. Too big. But the Arbora had all agreed that the creature had attacked from under the top dirt and moss layer of a platform. Maybe they only saw a small part of it, Moon thought. Maybe the rest of it had been hidden. It would explain the warriors’ difficulty in following its trail.
Jade dove off the branch collar and spread her wings to drop silently. Moon jumped after her, and heard Chime’s claws scrabble on the wood as he scrambled to stay with them.
Jade landed on a branch a hundred or so paces down. It was closer to eye level with the platform that had the sapling, though still far enough away to keep the predator there from sensing their presence. At least, Moon hoped so.
As Moon landed beside Jade and furled his wings, Balm climbed out of concealment behind a big knot of red tree fungus. She said, “You saw something?”
“Chime did.” Jade pointed out the furrow for Balm, then glanced around at the surrounding branches. Another dozen or so warriors were hidden in various spots around them, some well-concealed, others peeking curiously out. “Now we just have to figure out how to do this.”
Balm leaned back to pass the word along to Briar, who was still crouched behind the fungus. Chime said, “Can we just . . . leap on it? All that dirt on top of it should keep it from reacting too quickly.”
Sometimes it was easy to tell that Chime had come late to being a warrior. His knowledge of how to attack things from the air was still sporadic. Keeping his voice low, Moon started to explain, “Digging itself just under the surface like that is probably an attack position—”
The predator burst out of the ground, spraying dirt and moss clumps, with so much force the mountain-tree sapling shook. It leapt forward off the platform, the round armored body blossoming with grasping limbs. Diagonal bands of flesh snapped out from under the upper shell. Moon snarled in astonishment. Chime said, a little unnecessarily, “Wait, it’s got wings!”
Jade launched herself into the air as the predator dove toward them. Moon knew she was going for the eyes or the head, and he leapt off the branch and aimed for the chest.