She took Maddy, Lira, Allidi and Haelin first, all four of the girls looking delighted, though three not as thunderstruck as the Earth contingent, since they’d all known about Areziath beforehand, but had politely kept details to themselves.
"We don’t really know if it’s purely decorative, or has some purpose," Mara was saying. "It functions in the same way as the other pattern-roof villages—produces aether each moonfall—but no-one’s been able to rule out the possibility that it’s more than extreme landscape design."
"There are houses out there," Alay added. "Exactly eleven, and much larger and more complex than the simple, repetitive design of these box structures on the hillside. There might be a lot of theories, but the most likely explanation is this was simply a pretty place for an elite to visit."
"I’m going to stick with it being an outpost of Faerie," Sue said, firmly, and began to circle the rim of the amphitheatre, which had clearly been designed for the purpose of looking out rather than in.
Laura followed a step behind, still holding Gidds' hand, and glad when everyone lapsed back into appreciative silence, for this was a dawn for hush and wonder.
She spotted one of the houses, buried beneath overhanging branches on one of the countless islands. A slender curved bridge connected that island to the next, and Laura was able to pick out occasional sections of a whitestone path, patchily visible beneath undisturbed centuries of leaves turned to mulch, encroaching bushes, and a top layer of fallen petals. Birds were everywhere. Elegant herons. Fat ducks. Sleek divers. Flittings in the bushes. And, above, an ever-changing cloud swirling, darting, turning.
Zee returned with the girls, and took Gidds, Laura, Sue and Julian straight up. Laura gulped because thinking flying incredible didn’t stop her stomach from feeling like it dropped to her feet whenever she was being whizzed about. She started to let go of Gidds' hand, but he tightened his grip briefly, and shook his head to show he wasn’t bothered, and she found that having something to hold on to helped convince her innards that she wasn’t freefalling.
They rose to a point where they could take in the whole of the plain—high enough that it almost felt like a later part of the day—and then Zee tilted them gently forward so that they were hovering Superman-style, and could just look.
The river really was a river. Laura could see it stretching from their left to their right: a natural flow that only happened to be interrupted by a vast circle of channels in the shape of a tree, all wide spreading branches and tangled roots picked out in shimmering water.
"There’s only a single route through," Sue said, eventually. "By land, I mean."
Impressed that she’d been able to work this out, Laura tried to track the path.
"From the amphitheatre, you can walk across the whole thing," Zee said. "It loops all the way through the roots and the branches and returns to the central hill."
"Is anyone studying this?" Sue asked. "Documenting it? I suppose they must be, and there’s a million volunteers wanting to help."
"There are multiple studies," Gidds told her. "And opportunities are certainly competitive. However, those vetting the applications may well take your special circumstances into account."
"Cass opens a lot of doors, huh?" Sue said. "Well, I’m not one to stand on principle to the point of idiocy. Nepotism it shall be."
Zee laughed. "Your perspective as a person from an entirely different culture is not so small a factor. And you know we all clamour for copies of the scans you take of the children. I don’t know what it is about them that makes for the one image we want to keep of each occasion."
"Framing, mostly," Sue said with a professional’s abstraction, gazing at the shimmering scene below.
"Eleven was a significant number in old Muinan society," Gidds offered. "Though whether it has been used here for luck or has greater significance we cannot tell, and until a full study has been made, there will be no construction whatsoever on this site—or even outside its bounds. The research teams are based out of Pandora."
Sue’s attention had been stolen by the murmuration, returning from a circuit of the roots of the city. The flight of birds was incredible enough to watch from the ground. Witnessing it from above—and perilously near to within—stunned them to silence until Zee dropped them back to the amphitheatre.
"I think they are starlings," Sue said. "Same as Earth, or very similar. Though I thought murmurations were a dusk behaviour for them, not dawn."
As Zee took Nick, Alyssa, Mara and Alay for their turn, Gidds asked the four girls which direction they’d like to walk. Haelin and Lira immediately said opposite directions, and were each seconded by Allidi and Maddy.
"Which do you prefer, Unna Laura?" Lira asked, but Laura was not going to start the day playing favourites.
"I’d say flip a coin—which is how a decision between two choices is often made on Earth—but I don’t think any of us would have a coin. I wonder if you have an equivalent of rock-paper-scissors?"
After some explanation she learned that Tare had cloth-razor-stone and old Muina had had spider-snake-bird, but Gidds annoyed his daughters by pointing out that this was not a game you wanted to play against Sight Sight talents, and so they created a makeshift coin, and Haelin won the toss.
Lira was not someone who enjoyed losing, but after a moment’s scowl she asked Haelin: "Why do you want to go into the roots instead of the branches?"
"Because that’s where trees start," Haelin said, matter-of-factly. "Going the other way would be starting at the end."
"The light comes in at the leaves," Lira countered, though without real heat.
"How long would it take to walk all about this place?" Maddy asked. "Could we do the whole thing?"
"Quite a few days, I’d say," Sue said. "You could maybe walk the edge in a long day, but that path was twisty. Did you notice that there were distinct regions? Blurred by time, but definitely different original plantings."
Zee returned with her last batch, and Laura saw that even the Setari, who had visited Areziath before, were wide-eyed and awed.
"Let’s walk without talking—at least at the start," Alyssa said. "It’s kind of a place for being quiet."
They started down off the hilclass="underline" a walk that took a half hour in itself, and made for an eerie progress, for the ruins had been left undisturbed by those who studied them, and the empty doors and windows of the houses gave glimpses into an ancient past, where one day every occupant had died all at once. Whatever the city’s purpose in the past, it was a mass grave now.
Yet it was not an oppressive place. Empty, almost lonely, but with no sense of ancient violence. Laura let her breath out in a muted sigh after they had passed the last of the platform-roof houses, and then checked on Lira, who had not precisely lived through that long-ago disaster. The girl’s brow was clear, and when she noticed Laura looking she gave her a reassuring smile. Kids.
Liranadestar: Do you think everyone will like the cookies I made, Unna Laura?
Laura: If they taste half as nice as they smelled baking, I think they’re sure to. Especially after a long walk.
The entrance to the path was through a stone arch, sadly fractured in several places, but still giving the transition an air of formal commencement. They walked into birdsong, a heady scent of blossom, and the chirrup and whine of insects—fortunately kept at bay by simple sonic devices worn clipped to clothing. Crossing to the second of the countless islands, Gidds sent Laura his visual feed, and a whole extra world of small animals was revealed.
The reverent silence did not last, and they began to point out particular features to each other. Small nests built precariously on the ends of reeds. A turquoise flash as a fishing bird dived. Water thickly layered with blue and white petals. Otters.