"He says he’s glad that Irfan guided your steps to this place," Dorna translated, "and he looks forward to seeing you in his classroom one day, right?"
"He’s going to teach us?" Willa blurted.
Dorna laughed and Ched-Hisak hooted. "Sure. Lots of your teachers will be Ched-Balaar. They brought humans into the Dream when Irfan Qasad and her people arrived on Bellerophon-what? — nine hundred years ago, and they’re really good at teaching."
"How will we communicate?" Kendi asked.
"You’ll learn their language, just like they learned ours," Dorna said. "Humans can’t make their speech sounds and they can’t make ours, but you can learn to understand."
Ched-Hisak spoke again.
"Thanks, Father," Dorna said. "We’ll see you around, yeah?"
He trotted away, claws clicking on the hard wood. Kendi watched him go and with a start he realized Dorna had continued on her way again and he had to trot to catch up.
"— use a translator or something?" Jeren was asking.
Dorna shrugged. "It’s partly because translators can fail and partly because we’ve always done it that way, right? You show your respect for the culture by learning their language yourself."
"Wheredtheycomefrom?" Kite said.
"They call their home planet ‘the world,’ " Dorna told him. "You’ll learn more about them in history class, but the short version is that Irfan Qasad, the lady who started the Children, was the captain of a slower-than-light colony ship from Earth in the old days, back before slipships, right? When she and her people arrived at Bellerophon, they found the Ched-Balaar had already got here and claimed the place. Lucky for us humans, the Ched-Balaar were willing to share. No one knows exactly why because most of the records from that period were lost or destroyed. A lot of people think the Ched-Balaar suspected us humans could enter the Dream and they wanted to bring us into it, right? According to legend, they told Irfan that she had to participate in some kind of ceremony. You know-to cement relations between the species? During the ceremony, the Ched-Balaar gave her a drug that allowed her to go into the Dream. She was the first human Silent, but they didn’t call it that yet, yeah?"
"Why do they call us Silent?" Jeren asked.
"No one knows for sure," Dorna said. "Best guess is that it comes from the fact that human children who carry the genes for Silence don’t talk ‘til they’re older and don’t cry much as babies. Silent children, right?"
A roar thundered from below. Another roar answered it, and a second and a third. Jeren leaned over the ivy-covered railing, trying to peer down between the branches. Willa clapped her hands over her ears with a squeak. Kendi joined Jeren, but the branches beneath them were too thick to afford a view, to his disappointment.
"Whazzat?" Kite asked.
"Dinosaur." Dorna also leaned over railing. "A big lizard. That sounds like a pod of mickey spikes. Plant-eaters as big as a truck. Harmless unless you threaten their kids or are standing where they want to step. And they’re the smaller ones."
"Is that why we’re up here?" Kendi said. "Because they’re down there?"
"You got it. The colonists could probably have cleared ‘em out, but no one wanted to mess up Bellerophon like Earth got messed up. So they built up in the trees." She made ook-ook noises. "Like monkeys, right? Me, I like it up here."
"And a good thing, since we’re up here to stay." Everyone turned. Ara, wearing a brown robe of her own, was approaching on the walkway. "Good morning, everyone. I see Dorna got you up and going."
"Good morning, Mother." Dorna pressed fingertips to forehead as she had for Father Ched-Hisak. "You look tired."
Kendi, who was saluting in imitation of Dorna, saw that Ara did indeed look tired. Her eyes were heavy and her face was haggard.
"Trouble sleeping," she said. "But that’s a minor matter." She turned to the little group of ex-slaves. "Did Dorna get you all fed?"
They nodded assent.
"Good." Ara smiled. "I’m a mom as well as a Mother, and I need to know you ate a good breakfast. Next, we’re going shopping."
Jeren groaned. "I knew it. Fucking disaster."
"If you want to wear the same shirt every day, be my guest," Ara said. "Far be it from me to force civilization on you. But the rest of us like a little variety."
In the end, Jeren agreed to come, and Kendi was sure his grumbling was mostly for show. Ara piled them into one of the gondolas, which glided swiftly along its heavy cable. Houses, decks, and walkways coasted by. The monastery was a busy place, and its byways bustled with humans and Ched-Balaar alike as the morning slipped by. A few other aliens also entered the mix. A human child scampered down a rope ladder that hung from a window and was followed by a second child. Peals of laughter faded in and out as the gondola passed.
"Does anyone ever go down to the ground?" Willa asked in her soft voice. She was sitting between Ara and Dorna refusing to look over the side. Kendi, Jeren, and Kite occupied the bench across from them. Ara, however, didn’t seem to hear Willa’s question. She was staring into the distance, a distracted expression on her face. She was obviously thinking about something, though Kendi had no idea what it might be.
"Mother?" Dorna said.
With a start, Ara came to herself. "Sorry. I was wool-gathering. What was the question?"
Willa repeated it.
"People visit the ground lots of times," Ara said. "The spaceport is on the ground, of course, and we also have to pump water up from the lakes and underground reservoirs. We have farming areas, too, but we try to keep that to a minimum. You can turn out a surprisingly large amount of food with some creative genetic engineering and a good greenhouse."
"Who runs everything?" Kendi asked.
"That’s a little complicated, actually," Ara replied. "There’s Treetown-don’t laugh at the name, thank you-and there’s the Blessed and Most Beautiful Monastery of the Children of Irfan, or ‘the monastery,’ as everyone usually calls it. Irfan Qasad founded both of them, though Treetown wasn’t much of a town back then. Later she founded the monastery several kilometers away as a separate entity. In modern times, though, Treetown spread and eventually surrounded us, so we’re a state-within-a-state. The Grandparent Adepts run things here, and the Co-Council runs Treetown, but the two groups are strong allies. We share the spaceport, for example, and the monastery owns a great deal of farmland just outside Treetown’s borders, so everything’s tangled together. There are other city-states on this continent, but Treetown and the monastery are the biggest ones."
"What’s the ring for?" Jeren pointed at the emerald ring on Ara’s hand.
"It indicates rank. Students like yourselves wear a ruby ring. You’ll each get one soon. Topaz indicates someone who has finished studying and is now an apprentice Child. Amber is for full Siblings-Brothers and Sisters. Mothers and Fathers wear jade or emerald. The next rank is Mother or Father Adept. Their rings are blue. Grandparents have fluorite rings-indigo. And a Grandparent Adept-the highest rank-wears a ring of violet amethyst."
Willa clapped her hands. "It goes right up the rainbow!"
"Very good," Ara said. "You’re an observant young woman."
Willa flushed deeply, even disproportionately, and Kendi wondered how often in Willa’s life she had heard praise. He leaned over the side and watched the green growth far below for a moment, then returned his attention to the gondola. He felt comfortable in Ara’s company, even relaxed. In fact, he felt more relaxed than he had in days.
The gondola coasted into a little station that, Ara explained, would send the car on a parallel wire back in the direction they had come. Several people were waiting in line for a ride, most of them dressed in brown, and six of them boarded after Kendi and the others had disembarked with the help of an attendant. The gondola coasted smoothly around a semi-circle and vanished into the branches. Ara took them down a staircase and along another walkway.