Some pods had other contents. There were a host of tiny riders who schemed to place their offspring with the rastis’ own. Costa collected them in small jars; Aryl avoided those. A very few would contain a more lethal invader, somgelt, its puffy white threads deceptively innocent as they frothed outward from a carelessly opened pod. All, like the Yena Om’ray, timed their lives to take advantage of the dresel’s flight.
For flight it was. Despite the risk, Aryl willingly rose with her brother. They held each other as well as the now gaunt and bare stems, to watch the rastis send forth the next generation and Yena begin the Harvest.
The M’hir was hot, dry, and steady. It was a hand brushing over the world, taking with it whatever chose to go. Aryl watched, amazed, as the red fluttering wings rose higher and higher, only their load of dresel keeping them from the wind-ripped clouds overhead. The pods themselves hardened almost instantly, their brown taking on a dark rich gleam.
Aryl’s cracked lips parted in a surprised smile. The drying pods rattled and clicked against one another, like the clumsy chimes made by children and hung from fronds. As the sky filled, the various rattles and clicks blended into a wave of lighthearted percussion, as if the rastis sang their children to their futures.
It wasn’t an easy or sure one. Some wings were immediately torn by the M’hir, or shredded by collision with the sharp twigs of the nekis. These folded and dropped in great twisting loops of crimson, caught in branches where flitters and climbers quickly claimed their hapless pods. Most wings continued, sailed higher and farther, but they weren’t free yet. There were those waiting to reap the wild wind.
Already, hooks were flashing as Om’ray snagged wing after wing from the air. The goal was to collapse each over the nearest guideline, ideally in neat folds that might still catch the wind, but not be taken by it. Those with a few Harvests behind them took their time, avoiding those wings which were already tangling in the air in favor of sure catches. Aryl frowned as the tiny figure she knew was Bern flailed after everything in reach.
She’d have done better. Though he did calm down and improve.
The growing load of hanging wings and their pods gave stability to the lines. The Om’ray began moving along, chasing streams of red.
They weren’t the only ones.
A shadow whooshed by overhead and Aryl flinched, startled. Another. And another. Costa shouted in her ear, as if too excited to concentrate on a sending. “Wastryls!”
The giant creatures soared in with the M’hir, a confusion of black and white set with bright yellow eyes that caught and flashed the sunlight. Aryl had only seen a dead one before, and that damaged. These, very much alive, plunged at the dresel wings, their great claws out and ready, tentacles poised.
They weren’t a threat to the Om’ray, being unable to maneuver in tight spaces and wary of the lines. They were mountain dwellers, drawn to the canopy by the M’hir. Like that wind, the wastryls passed by, taking what they could grab. Aryl saw how the claws snatched wings from the air, then tentacles plucked free and held the pods. This first flock—there had to be dozens in it—came and went like the brief shadow of a cloud. She watched them tumble and wheel about, turning toward the mountains with their treasure.
Red drifted down below them. It would smother new growth along the grove edge, but there would be no seedlings to take advantage.
A second flock arrived, larger than the first. Aryl laughed when two wastryls clutched the same wing and screamed their outrage at each other. The battling creatures almost fell before letting go. Their loss was another’s gain. A ready Om’ray snared the falling wing, adding it to the growing harvest.
A glint that wasn’t eye or sun caught her attention. Aryl tugged at Costa. “What’s that?” she shouted, risking her hold to point.
He stiffened as he saw it, too. I don’t know.
Whatever it was, it was coming closer. That wasn’t what dried Aryl’s mouth.
It was coming closer against the wind.
Chapter 2
NOT ALIVE.
Aryl nodded at Costa’s mindvoice as she studied the strange object in the sky. The howl of the M’hir, its steady, deadly shove, its choking dust, the now-stripped crown of the rastis—these belonged. She did.
This didn’t.
A device. Tikitik or Oud? she offered, the words colored by the wary distaste they used for whatever involved their neighbors.
The object could have been one of the clear globes Costa used for seedlings. Much larger, Aryl judged, and filled with something that sent out sharper glints, as if its insides turned to present new surfaces to the light. Without wings or other means of moving through the air, it continued to fly toward them. Toward the harvesters. It dipped and rose, out of sequence with the wind or what drifted through it.
Not Oud. An image filled her mind: a large ovoid half buried in a rock slide, its surface gray and edged with black protrusions, most of those broken. Nothing like the dainty thing floating in the wind. The Oud device had two flat arms, long and bent. Wings, she realized. One of their fliers, Costa told her. Probably tried to cross the mountains during a M’hir and crashed. Leri saw it the summer she helped clean the Watchers.
With the ease of practice, Aryl shielded herself from the rush of heat that flowed beneath the name of his Chosen; the recently Joined were indiscreet at best. “Tikitik, then,” she shouted aloud.
“Why?”
Good question, she acknowledged to herself, stretching to keep the object in sight. The Tikitik, cued by the Watchers and the M’hir itself, would be coming for their share of dresel. Why distract the harvesters?
The object, as if oblivious to its surroundings or too curious for sense, dropped lower and lower until it collided with the stream of red filmy wings still being released by the rastis grove. It disappeared and then reappeared as the billowing masses simply slid over its surface. It slowed and seemed, if such a thing were possible, now to be watching the Om’ray.
Had Bern noticed? Aryl sought and found his figure among the rest. His hook was out and working, a small but respectable line of wings and their pods hanging from the nearest web. Their practice together had paid off. Then she scowled, remembered she was angry. It should be me up there, she sent full force, not caring if the oaf heard or not.
The M’hir gave the crown an extra push and Costa’s arm tightened around her waist as the rastis swayed in response. “It’s not bad, being Joined,” he shouted in her ear, half laughing. “You’ll find out when your time comes.”
Aryl felt her face burn under its coat of dust, hoping against hope this was Costa being annoyingly old and not some veiled warning. They’d been careful, she and Bern. They’d made sure to be alone before slipping inside each other’s thoughts to forge their inner connection, delicious and secret. They would be heart-kin forever, able to reach each other’s minds more easily, closer than siblings. It was the bond of the best of friends, but they intended more. They’d touched trembling fingertips, made breathless promises in the dark. When Aryl’s time came, there would be no other, for either of them. Her Choice was made, despite her age.
Even if Bern Teerac was the single most obtuse and irritating—
A shadow swept over them, fast and cold. The next flock of wastryls. Aryl twisted to watch and tensed. These weren’t flying as before, spread apart and claws ready. No, this flock moved as one, claws aimed forward, intent on the gleaming intruder.