For the world of the Om’ray was shaped not by mountain or grove or sky, but by the Om’ray themselves. They felt their place within it from birth. Direction was the first awareness. Newborns would move restlessly in their sleep until facing one or another of the six distant clans, then still, soothed by knowing their place in relation to all others. This late in summer, the sun rose between Clans Amna and Pana. It set in line with Grona. If Aryl put Grona to her right hand, she would face Tuana, with her back to Rayna. Vyna lay directly beyond Rayna.
Distance came next, a sense honed by age and experience. Very young Om’ray couldn’t climb beyond their awareness of their mothers. Too far, and that tight comforting bond began to thin, sending the child back to safety as quickly as it drew the anxious mother. That bond loosened with age, replaced by the deep, constant awareness of those close by, the family and friends of one’s Clan, amid the faint comfort of those more distant. Aryl knew, as all of the Yena Clan, that Rayna and Amna were closest, Vyna farthest.
If she had to, she could find any of her kind.
So it was for all Om’ray. Those above would feel her presence and Costa’s, though not who they were. Om’ray were never lost or truly alone. Clans stayed where they were, defining the world. Only Passage sent an Om’ray from home, to seek and answer the call of another Clan’s Chooser. Such strangers were welcome, though they rarely made it to Yena.
No strangers here. Not now.
Of course there were no strangers. She, of all people, could tell. Aryl shook her head.
More than where, she’d always known who was nearby, “nearby” being a nebulous measure she’d found increased with effort and practice. Costa was right. Oh, how it had bothered her playmates when she would call out their names, sight unseen. She suspected it troubled her elders even more; they buried their thoughts deep behind shields around her. Not that it hid their flavor in her mind, should she reach.
Now, to Aryl, the canopy above glistened with more than sunlight. She felt the seventeen permitted to be there and knew every one.
Including—she bit her lip and climbed faster—Bern Teerac.
It wasn’t Bern’s fault he’d been selected this M’hir and she had not. That they’d trained and climbed together for two seasons preparing for this day, neither besting the other, made no difference to the will of the Council. Afterward, he’d stammered all the things a heart-kin who was as thick as an Oud might say until Aryl had managed to escape.
She hadn’t spoken to him since.
She might not—for a while, at least.
Costa didn’t touch her feelings—she’d have felt it—but he didn’t need to. Her reason for this illicit adventure wasn’t a secret. “Aryl,” he said quietly as they resumed the climb, “being passed over the first time you’re old enough doesn’t mean anything. You’re not like me, too heavy for the ropes, slow as a pregnant aspird.”
Thinking of the fat creature, which hung upside down for most of a season without moving while eggs warmed on her belly, Aryl’s lips twitched. “An aspird’s faster.”
It was true, not everyone could participate in the Harvest.
But Aryl couldn’t fathom why she hadn’t been picked, if Council considered Bern ready. They were reflections of each other. Closer than kin, in many ways. It was only a matter of time. . . .
She felt her cheeks warm and silenced her thoughts. “We’re almost there.”
“How can you—” Costa’s words were swallowed by an undulating moan, so loud it vibrated through the stalk holding them both. It was as if the mountains themselves had cried out. The sound diminished, only to come again.
“The Watchers!” Aryl shouted to be heard. “I told you. The M’hir is coming now! Hurry, Costa!”
She lunged upward. Her brother would have to follow as best he could. Her left hand closed on an irka vine, its edges slicing through the skin, the tiny barbs taking hold on flesh beneath. A trap for smaller prey. Aryl tugged her hand free, leaving a splash of red along the green, and continued upward.
The higher she went, the brighter the world became. Patches of blue blossomed like flowers through the canopy. Sky. She’d seen sky before. A rastis older than memory had fallen last M’hir, tearing a hole to admit the hot blaze of Cersi’s sun. At firstnight, she’d glimpsed tiny lights, as if when it left Yena, the sun pulled a gauze screen over its face against the biters and peered through that mesh. A few fists later? The tumble of cloud, the flash of lightning, the sun and its curtain were hidden again behind the rush of new growth that filled the void. The Adepts claimed the grove kept the Om’ray safe.
Aryl had felt betrayed.
But not now, she told herself fiercely. Nothing was going to keep her from seeing sky again, seeing what lay above this place.
She pulled herself past the final spool of giant fronds only to find herself stopped. Ahead, the single great stem thickened into a bulb: the underside of the rastis’ crown. She couldn’t see past it. Worse, a dense collar of vines feathered downward, some bearing the yellow galls that warned of stingers hiding within, others pale and white with the sap Aryl knew to be glue and poison in one. Even without these hazards, none of the vines could support the weight of an Om’ray child, let alone an adult.
She wedged herself into the topmost spool, leaning back to study the problem. Flitters flew by, their small brightly colored bodies revealed by their clear wings. Her kin hadn’t flown up there. Aryl frowned, eyes searching the vines. There had to be a way.
Suddenly, she sensed her brother had moved above her. “Costa?”
“Here!” His call was triumphant. Aryl pulled herself to a stand to look for him, careful to keep her head well below the reaching tips of the vines.
At first, she didn’t see him, then glimpsed his brown tunic in the midst of the vines and stifled a cry of her own. Remarkably, Costa wasn’t waving off stingers or trapped in sticky vines, despite being halfway around the stalk and three body lengths higher. “How did you get up there?” she demanded.
“Here,” he repeated, this time pointing straight down.
Aryl worked her way around the spool until she was beneath where her brother so mysteriously hung in what should be midair—with vines. She looked up and laughed in surprise.
Mystery solved. Costa stood on a ladder of slats and braided rope. It hung free from the bulb, leading—she tilted her head—past the broadest portion. Any vines that might touch a climber if shifted by a breeze were carefully tied back, not cut. She assumed they’d be released after the Harvest, to hide the way up and protect the rastis’ tender crown.
To any Yena, such a ladder was as easily run as a flat bridge. Aryl’s brother eased to one side to let her rush past, but she stopped beside him to claim a quick one-armed hug. “I knew I brought you for a reason.”
Costa laughed. “Remind me later.”
Later, Aryl didn’t remember climbing the rest of the ladder, or the moments it took to pry open the door leading through the decking above.
For once she did, she was in a world none of the stories or shared images could have prepared her to experience.
The crown of the rastis—this one and those to every side—grew a grove of its own. Tall, slender stems rose upward, uniform and so densely packed Aryl couldn’t have forced her body between them. They sprouted dull-gray and straight, so thin her fingers met around them.
At waist height, they changed.
Aryl followed one of the stems upward with her fingertips, to where it thickened. What looked smooth to the eye felt woven, like cloth. No, not cloth, she decided, but a rope of the most tightly spun thread imaginable. The texture deepened into a spiral that wound up the remainder of the stem, its line traced in crimson that spread wider and wider until, overhead, the stems were vivid red and thick, edged in orange. They appeared taut, as if ready to burst.