They were becoming thin, even the harvesters, now given slightly more dresel per day. Last fist, Council had declared all the strong climbers—all those left—to be harvesters. It gave Aryl no joy to be one of them at last, only purpose.
When she thought of her childish outbursts at being passed over last M’hir, of her blind envy, she was ashamed.
“Why are you sad?”
“Don’t sense others,” Aryl snapped, reaching for another hold, then shook her head again. How many times had she been scolded for the same ability? He was younger than she’d been, too young to understand. She glanced down. “Do your best, Joyn,” she said firmly but with sympathy. “I know it’s difficult. I had to practice and sometimes I still sense more than I mean to.”
Easy to sense the child’s state of mind—an interesting blend of unconscious pride and very aware contrition. He hadn’t meant to pry; he did care why she was unhappy. He had, she decided with a rush of affection, a good heart.
Just as well. There was more Power in that tiny frame than in most adults; Aryl tightened her shields. “You’re right,” she admitted freely. “I am sad. It’s all right. It’s not about you, or being here.”
“I understand. Everyone’s sad,” he said matter-of-factly. “And scared.”
Little more than half her age, and growing up too fast. They all were. Maybe, she thought wearily, they had to. Aryl hooked her leg over a branch. At this indication they were to rest, the child did the same. “Do you know what history is, Joyn?” she asked, offering him a drink from her flask.
Neither wore their gauze hoods over their faces, so she could see his freckled nose crinkle with disgust. “The stories grandparents tell you when you’ve been bad. About your parents when they were children. They aren’t,” this with profound feeling, “fun.”
“True,” she chuckled. A flitter—the blue-and-red kind—landed nearby. It bent its head to turn one, then the other of its large green eyes at them, as if gauging how dangerous they were. Apparently satisfied, it began snapping at the cloud of biters that had settled over the branch at the same time as the two Om’ray. A good neighbor. “But I mean stories that are about all the Om’ray in a Clan, not just a family.”
He looked astonished. “Do the Tuana have stories? The Vyna? The—”
Aryl interrupted what was sure to be the full list. “Every Clan has its own. That’s another reason Passage is important. Those who come here tell us their stories and any they’ve heard from other Clans. Those who,” she took a breath, “leave Yena take our stories with them.”
Joyn frowned. “I hope they didn’t take my grandmother’s stories.”
Her lips quirked. “Not that kind. Bigger stories. And those stories are put together into the history of all the Om’ray, of the entire world. We’re in one of those stories, you and I, right now.”
He gave her a suspicious look. “We’re in a rastis.”
Aryl gazed back, nonplussed. “I thought children had great imaginations,” she said finally.
“For playing,” Joyn informed her with great dignity. “We aren’t playing. You,” he clarified, “are too old to pretend.”
“Maybe I am,” Aryl agreed. “But this is a story, Joyn. One that will be retold everywhere there are Om’ray.”
“What’s it about?”
Death and disaster? She shifted the bag at her hip. “It will be about the brave Yena Clan,” she began. “How everyone was a little sad and a little afraid—because we faced a time of danger and trouble, worse than any before it, worse than any to come. Every other Clan will know.”
Joyn grew still. “How does the story end?”
“That’s the good part,” Aryl assured him. “It ends with the best Harvest ever. We’ll have so much fresh dresel cake that everyone could eat themselves sick—but they won’t—” that for his parents, “—and there’ll be a party that lasts until the next rains. Everyone will be happy.”
He smiled, just a bit, then rolled his eyes. “You made that up.”
“I thought you said I was too old,” she responded archly. She shooed away biters. “Time to go.”
They climbed in silence to the next whorl of fronds. As they eased past more thorn-shooters, Joyn spoke again.
“You don’t believe our story will end that way. With everyone happy.”
So much for shields against this one, she told herself ruefully, not that it couldn’t have been simple perception. Somehow, though, she doubted it. Joyn was going to be a force to be reckoned with in future M’hirs. He was now.
“I don’t know,” Aryl said honestly. “No one does. But that’s the ending I want.”
I want everyone happy, too . . . I want everyone happy, too . . . I WANT EVERYONE HAPPY, TOO . . .
She didn’t try to silence him.
She did, however, wince.
“Fiches,” Joyn repeated, frowning in concentration. He held up two. “And I throw them?” this eagerly.
“No! Not yet,” Aryl ordered, making sure he obeyed before turning back to her own preparations.
These fiches were a far cry from the first crude versions she’d tossed from Costa’s window. Much of the change lay in their construction. At night and during the rains, she’d taught herself to braid threads teased from old clothing. Sore fingers later, she could reliably produce miniature ropes, strong yet light, that could be tied using a needle.
When dipped in vine sap and hung to dry, the tiny ropes became solid rods—perfect for bracing pieces of dresel wing. The wing itself was her limit. She’d found only one more, almost shredded, and her fiches shrank in size as she was forced to use smaller and smaller sections. Aryl had tried to sew or glue wing material together, but failed.
The rest of the change was in the design. Because of the small pieces of wing, the fiches were made of several supported pieces tied together. Through trial and error, they’d lost their simple triangular shape, becoming bent and angular. From a certain direction, Aryl squinted at one, they could be wastryls. She now had fiches that would soar in a straight line until hitting something—and there was always something. She needed open space to learn how far they really could fly.
As for landing? “Remember you asked me how to come down from the M’hir?” She turned over a fich and showed Joyn the tiny hooks dangling from its underside. “This is how. The hooks will catch on branches and hold.”
“So it won’t fall into the Lay.”
“So it won’t fall into the Lay,” Aryl repeated firmly. It wouldn’t be a soft or safe landing. But the fich wouldn’t vanish beneath the canopy and drop to sure death.
Nor would a rider . . .
She focused on today.
They’d climbed as high as Joyn could. Aryl had watched him slow as his inner sense responded to the contrary tug of his bond to his mother. He didn’t feel it as a leash; it was the awareness of far enough natural to an Om’ray. She imagined the edge of the world, beyond the outer Clans, would feel the same. This was, she thought with satisfaction, far enough for her as well.
This old rastis wove its fronds through the branches of an upstart nekis. The other plant was bare this season, its topheavy burst of leaves shed and new growth swelling in buds at every twig tip. Aryl had marked it before. The upper third away from the rastis was open to the sky.
And thick with twigs. She’d wasted time clearing them from her chosen perch, using her longknife to trim that growth as well as a hearty crop of thorn-ready thickles. Everything loved the sunward side. Joyn had cheerfully joined in, using his small blade to hack at a lump of bark that wasn’t remotely in their way. But it kept him busy. The end result was a natural platform, broad enough for the two of them.
Aryl was satisfied.
From this vantage point, the canopy top flowed down and away like a green-brown sheet tossed over a lumpy mattress. The expanse ended where the Sarc grove rose, its larger, full stalks blocking any view of the lands beyond. Aryl had hoped to show the child the smallness of the world; perhaps, she thought, he didn’t need to know quite yet.