Now the branches grew too weak and narrow to bear them. With a flying leap, Yattmur threw herself on to a massive outcrop of rock. Poyly and Gren landed beside her. They lay there looking at each other questioningly. Then Yattmur raised a hand.
'Listen! Some jumpvils are coming!' she exclaimed, as a sound came like rain through the forest. 'These are the beasts my tribe catches.'
Below their island of rock stretched the ground. It was not the foul quagmire of decay and death about which Gren and Poyly had so often been warned in their tribal days. It was curiously broken and pitted, like a frozen sea, and coloured red and black. Few plants grew in it. Instead, it seemed to have a frozen life of its own, so indented was it with holes that had stretched themselves into agonized navels, eye sockets, or leering mouths.
'The rocks have evil faces,' Poyly whispered as she gazed down.
'Quiet! They're coming this way,' Yattmur said.
As they looked and listened, a horde of strange creatures poured over the pitted ground, loping from the depths of the forest with a strange gait. They were fibrous creatures, plants that over an immensity of eons had roughly learnt to copy the hare family.
Their running was slow and clumsy by the standards of the animals they superseded. As they moved, their fibrous sinews cracked sharply; they lurched from side to side. Each jumpvil had a head all scoop jaw and enormous ears, while its body was without line and irregularly coloured. The front legs were more like poor stumps, small and clumsy, while the hind pair were much longer and captured at least something of the grace of an animal's leg.
Little of this was apparent to Gren and Poyly. To them, the jumpvils were merely a strange new species of creature with inexplicably ill-shaped legs. To Yattmur they meant something different.
Before they came into sight she pulled a weighted line from round her waist and balanced it between her hands. As the hordes thudded and clacked below the rock, she flung it dexterously. The line extended itself into a sort of elementary net, with the weights swinging at key points.
It tripped three of the queer-limbed creatures. At once Yattmur scrambled down, jumped at the jumpvils before they could right themselves, and secured them to the line.
All the rest of the herd parted, ran on, and disappeared. The three that had been captured stood submissively in vegetable defeat. Yattmur looked challengingly at Gren and Poyly as if relieved to have shown her mettle – but Poyly ignored her, pointing into the clearing ahead of them and shrinking against her companion.
'Gren! Look! A – monster, Gren!' she said in a strangled voice. 'Did I not say this place was evil?'
Against a wide shoulder of rock, and near the path of the fleeing jumpvils, a silvery envelope was inflating. It stretched out into a great globe far higher than any human.
'It's a greenguts! Don't watch it!' Yattmur said. 'It makes a bad thing for humans!'
But they stared, fascinated, for the envelope was now a soggy sphere, and on that sphere grew one eye, a huge jelly-like eye with a green pupil. The eye swivelled until it appeared to be regarding the humans.
A vast gap appeared low down in the envelope. The last few retreating jumpvils saw it, paused, then staggered round on a new course. Six of them jumped through the gap, which at once closed over them like a mouth, while the envelope began to collapse.
'Living shadows!' Gren gasped. 'What is it?'
'It is a greenguts,' Yattmur said. 'Have you never seen one before? Many of them live near here, stuck to the tall rocks. Come, I must take these jumpvils to the tribe.'
The morel thought differently. It twanged in the heads of Gren and Poyly. Reluctantly they moved towards the shoulder of rock.
The greenguts had entirely collapsed. It was drawn in, adhering to the rock like so many folds of wet tissue. A still moving bulge near the ground marked its bag of jumpvils. As they surveyed it in horror, it surveyed them with its one striated green eye. Then the eye closed, and they seemed to be looking only at rock. The camouflage was perfect.
'It cannot hurt us,' twanged the morel. 'It is nothing but a stomach.'
They moved away. Again they followed Yattmur, walking painfully on the broken ground, the three captive creatures humping along at their side as if this was something they did every day.
The ground sloped upwards. In their heads, the morel suggested that this was why the banyan was falling away overhead, and waited to see what they would answer.
Poyly said, 'Perhaps these jumpvils have long back legs to help them get uphill.'
'It must be so,' said the morel.
But that's absurd, thought Gren, for what about when they want to run downhill again? The morel cannot know everything, or it would not agree to Poyly's silly idea.
'You are right that I do not know everything,' twanged the morel, surprising him. 'But I am capable of learning quickly, which you are not – for unlike some past members of your race, you work mainly by instinct.'
'What is instinct?'
'Green thoughts,' said the morel, and would not elaborate.
At length Yattmur halted. Her first sullenness had worn away, as if the journey had made them friends. She was almost gay.
'You are standing in the middle of my tribal area, where you wished to be,' she said.
'Call them, then; tell them that we come with good desires and that I shall speak to them,' Gren said, adding anxiously for the morel's benefit, 'but I don't know what to say to them.'
'I shall tell you,' twanged the morel.
Yattmur raised a clenched hand to her lips and blew a piping note through it. Alertly, Poyly and her mate looked about them... Leaves rustled, and they became surrounded by warriors who seemed to rise up from the ground. Glancing upwards, Poyly saw strange faces there regarding her from the branches overhead.
The three jumpvils shuffled uneasily.
Gren and Poyly stood absolutely still, allowing themselves to be inspected.
Slowly Yattmur's tribe came closer. Most of them, as was customary, were female, with flowers adorning their private parts. All were armed, many were as striking of feature as Yattmur. Several wore round their waists the same weighted trapping lines that Yattmur had carried.
'Herders,' Yattmur said, 'I have brought you two strangers, Poyly and Gren, who wish to join us.'
Prompted by the morel, Poyly said, 'We are wanderers who will do you no harm. Make us welcome if you wish to Go Up in peace. We need rest and shelter now, and later we can show you our skills.'
One of the group, a stocky woman with braided hair in which was inserted a gleaming shell, stood forward. She held out her hand palm upwards.
'Greetings, strangers, I am called Hutweer. I lead these herders. If you join us, you follow me. Do you consent to that?'
If we do not consent, they may kill us, thought Gren.
Right from the first we must show we are leaders, replied the morel.
Their knives point at us, Gren told it.
We must lead from the start or not at all, the morel returned.
As they stood wrapped in conflict, Hutweer clapped her hands impatiently.
'Answer, strangers! Will you follow Hutweer?'
We must agree, morel.
No Gren, we cannot afford to.
But they will kill us!
You must kill her first then, Poyly!
No!
I say yes.
No... No... No...
Their thoughts grew more fierce as a three-cornered argument grew up.
'Herders, alert!' Hutweer called. Dropping her hand to her sword belt, she came a pace nearer, her face stern. Obviously these strangers were not friends.
To the strangers something strange was happening. They began to writhe, as if in an unearthly dance. Poyly's hands twisted up to the darkly glistening ruff about her neck, and then curved away as if dragged by force. Both of them twisted slowly and stamped their feet. Their faces stretched and wrinkled in an unknown pain. From their mouths came foam, and in their extremity they urinated upon the hard ground.