The Watchers moaned again, the deep vibration rattling the decking that was as much coaxed from the living rastis as fastened to it. Costa clung to the doorframe as he climbed through to join her, his eyes wide. “Aryl!” he mouthed.
The moan died away; the world steadied. It was temporary, she knew. “Hurry, Costa.”
The decking curled around the flattened top of the bulb for several steps in either direction. It held more than a door. A large sling-and-pulley array was fastened to one side, its precious metal chains padded with cloth to protect the rastis during use. Costa walked over to the other feature, a sturdy plank ladder slanting up and into the stalks, wide enough that three could climb at once.
The stems obscured the top. The ladder was partnered by another set of cloth-covered chains. Aryl put her hand on one and looked up. “This must be how they bring down the ripe dresel.” She put her foot on the first rung.
“No!” Costa grabbed her arm to haul her back. “This is far enough—too far, Aryl. We’d only be in the way.” His free hand waved at the roof of gently swaying stems. There was more blue between them now. “There’s no room. Stay—”
“There’s all the room in the world.” She shook free. “I want to feel the M’hir for myself. I want to touch the sky. Don’t try to stop me, Costa. Wait here if you must.”
He lifted both hands and stepped aside, automatically wary of the deck’s edge. When Aryl felt his weight hit the ladder below her as she climbed, she smiled to herself.
The first twenty rungs plunged them deep within the strange aerial grove of the rastis, until Aryl couldn’t see in any direction but straight ahead to the next slat of wood. The stems brushed against her and one another. They didn’t feel like plants anymore. They moved without wind, as if impatient. With each upward and inward step, she could see the stems swelling, enlarging along their spiral indentation, turning slowly as they did.
There were always scents in the grove—decay from the shadowed water below, blends of musk and sweet and sour from the creatures who moved and climbed. Above all, the rich blend of growing things, the perfumes that changed with the seasons as flowers opened, ripened to fruits, and fell into the water to rot.
Here? Aryl had smelled dresel all her life, but that faint clear spice was nothing to the heady draught now entering her nostrils. She felt as though she climbed through fragrance, warmed and pierced by shafts of brilliant light.
The ladder met two others at a triangular platform, unexpectedly small. As Aryl stepped up to it, her head cleared the top of the rastis stems at last.
The world exploded away on every side, roofed in blue, carpeted in red-orange, punctuated by taller growths with their clusters of green leaves. Nekis? They had to be, though Aryl had trouble connecting these full, lush tops, filled with flitters, to the spare, hard-to-climb trunks that stretched their pale columns from the water below.
The vegetation released her gaze and she moved, mute and staring, to give Costa room beside her. She pointed to the strange harsh line against the sky. “Costa. Do you think those are mountains?”
“I think I’m going to be sick.” He shaded his eyes with one hand. Aryl followed suit. “Yes. They have to be. The world, Aryl. It’s too small.”
“This can’t be all of it,” she reasoned. But the same dismay kept her voice low, too.
The red of the rastis extended only so far. The seemingly vast groves of the Sarcs, the Teeracs, the whole of their Clan—from this new perspective they melded together into a smallish mass, one bounded by wild stone and by a darker, more twisted foliage that itself gave way to an expanse of glittering light. Aryl squinted. “Is that the ocean?”
“It can’t be. The other Clans are between us and the sea. That must be where the Tikitik have their crops. I’ve heard they need water open to the sun. They have ways to control what will grow in a place. An understanding beyond any Om’ray . . .”
Costa sounded wistful. He loved growing things; as far back as she could remember, his room had been crammed with bits and pieces of life collected from the groves, tended with care in an assortment of pots and baskets. He would coat himself in ointments and silks to fend off biters in order to harvest strange wizened seeds from plants no one knew, only to spend futile fists trying to coax them to sprout. Thinking to help, Aryl had once suggested he ask the Tikitik for their secrets. His frustrated anger had startled her, for Costa was the gentlest of their family. She’d understood later. Only the appointed Speaker for the Clan Council spoke to the Tikitik; then, only to answer questions, not ask them. It was the way of the world.
Though Costa went to live with his Chosen as was proper, their mother had left his room as it was. Whether she wanted the plants to stay or roots had made their way into the flooring and she couldn’t be bothered removing them, Aryl didn’t know or care. It brought him home again, regularly, to water and fuss while listening to her latest stories. He stayed part of her life, something Aryl hadn’t known could end when she’d been younger. For Costa might have decided to take Passage, leaving Yena behind to find Choice and a new life within another Clan. For her, it would have been as if he died. Those who left never returned; they were never heard from again.
There was a darker side to Passage, whispered behind hands when eligible unChosen gathered and talk turned to their futures. Some didn’t survive the harsh journey, it was said—perhaps why so few came to Yena. Others failed its purpose. Three M’hirs ago, Oryl Sarc had drawn one such with her Calclass="underline" Kiric Mendolar of the Tuana. Floods had delayed him; he’d arrived to find Oryl already Joined to Ghoch.
Aryl had watched him—from a safe distance, or through the gauze of a window. Strangers weren’t to be trusted, not until Choice made them kin. And this one had moved oddly, always too slow and with a hand to the nearest rail or rope. He preferred to work inside, cleaning dresel with the elderly. Aryl herself couldn’t imagine a worse fate.
She’d decided this Kiric was sick, perhaps dying—a tragic, romantic figure—and had enjoyed her version until Costa had quietly explained that this stranger had come from a place without rastis, where Om’ray lived on flat, dry ground. He’d wanted her to feel compassion for someone so lost and alone. Aryl had thought this a clever new story for Costa to make up for her and repeated it, with suitable embellishment, to her friends at every opportunity.
When no Yena Choosers ripened by the next M’hir, Kiric the Stranger had stepped off a bridge and disappeared into the black waters of the Lay.
Older, wiser, Aryl understood her brother was one of the lucky ones. He might have little time to spare for his young sib, but he’d found his life partner among his own Clan.
Where his sister could still entice him to climb with her.
As well as Costa, Aryl felt the others, knew where they were; with the slightest effort, who they were. Her head turned to seek them. “Costa. Look. There. They’ve strung the lines.”
Her eyes fought the bright sunlight until she could make out what she hadn’t before. The rastis groves were covered in ropes, as if a weaver bigger than any imagined in a nightmare had used the strong nekis trunks to support its looping web.
Figures were moving into the open along that web, bare feet sure despite the rope’s bounce and sway. Arms were extended, for balance and to run fingers along support threads too fine to see from where they stood. Almost flying, she thought with an envy close to pain.