On she climbed, up through the branches, arms and legs working, her back soon aching, the breath coming short, her palms scraped by the bark. When she glanced down, the tree trunk seemed to narrow to its roots, far below in the litter of the forest floor.
If her Other had been a squirrel this might have been enjoyable. She took a deep breath and climbed on.
Something moved, above her.
She stopped dead, peering up. A shadow shifted in the dense canopy, something massive, silent save for the faintest rustle of the leaves.
Her spear was useless, for there was no room to wield it here among the branches; she might have been better to leave it on the ground. But she had her blade, which she took from a fold in her tunic and tucked into her mouth, leaving her hands free. If she climbed higher, got a bit closer – she remembered the Root’s instructions about chasing her Leafy Boy to the end of a branch-
She saw the stone out of the corner of her eye, flying up from the ground, a whirling blade. She flinched back, but it caught her on the back of her shin, just above the ankle. Blood flowed, hot, and she cried out, her voice loud in the stillness of the forest.
Her injured leg slipped, slick with blood. She lost her grip and fell, landing heavily on her back on a thick branch. She would have fallen further if she hadn’t grabbed onto branchlets with both hands. The branch creaked and swayed, and her leg ached, but she held on.
It was deliberate! Someone had thrown the blade, and injured her, deliberately. Maybe even tried to kill her.
She tried to sit up, moving one hand at a time. If she could bandage her shin with a bit of tunic it would hold until she got down to the ground and the priest could treat it properly. Even so climbing would be difficult, with one weakened foot, and she had dropped her blade in the fall. She searched for her spare.
And it came down on her from above, a heavy, meaty tangle of thrashing limbs and muscles and teeth, a row of white teeth before her face.
She fell back on her branch, clutching with one hand, and got the other hand around the beast’s throat. She pushed back the face, those teeth. The creature thrashed and twisted and pummelled her with feet and fists and knees. It was so close in the green gloom she could barely make out what it was. A boy! It was a boy, with a scrawny torso and stick-like arms on which muscles bulged, skin stained green with leaf fragments, hair long and filthy, and a bright emptiness in the eyes. He might have been eight, nine, ten years old; he was strong, and wild.
She lost her grip. She fell backwards and crashed through one branch, two, before slamming down on another, winded, still high above the ground.
She backed up against the trunk of the tree, scrambling to find her blade.
But she was too slow. The boy swung down, grabbing onto whippy branchlets with a clean instinct, and he was on her again. All she could do was cling to him, trying to push him away, kicking feebly with her one good foot.
And now there were more of them, a second, a third, a fourth, heavy, lithe shapes crashing down through the foliage and joining the pile on top of her. She couldn’t move, she could barely breathe, as the squirming bodies pinned her and fists and feet slammed into her face, her sides, her belly. She couldn’t even see their faces. She thought of the baby lying helpless inside her.
Now she felt small hands dragging at her tunic, pawing between her thighs, and something pressed against her bare stomach – a penis, hard. All this was wordless, the boys silent save for grunts and snarls.
Something heavy slammed into the pile of boys, with a sound like chopping meat. One of them gurgled and fell away, and she felt the weight lift. It had been a spear; she could see the shaft. The other boys screamed and spat. Another spear flew, missing the boys.
With a final volley of blows and punches they scattered and spread. She could hear them go, crashing through the branches with no regard for the noise they made.
She was a mass of pain. She tried to hang onto the branch under her, but it was slick with blood.
She fell again. Another branch slammed into her back, stunning her, and she dropped towards a distant, leaf-strewn ground.
35
The priest woke her.
She had been dreaming of falling. She grabbed at his arm, the pallet under her body.
‘It’s all right.’ Jurgi’s face was over her in the gloom of the Pretani house, his hands on her shoulders, reassuring. ‘You’re safe. You’re down.’ His smile was dimly lit by firelight.
She remembered the tree, the boys. ‘My leg-’
‘A gash. I cleaned it, stitched it.’
Her hand flew to her stomach.
‘Your baby’s fine too,’ he murmured. ‘I heard its heart beat. He, or she, is going to be a tough fighter.’
‘How…’ Her throat was dry as dust.
‘Drink this.’ He lifted a wooden bowl to her lips and let her take swallows of tepid, strongly flavoured water. ‘Willow bark tea. From Alder. Kills the pain.’
‘What pain?’ She tried to lift her head off the pallet; a pain like a thunderclap echoed through her skull. ‘Ow.’
‘The Root was worried about the damage your head might have done to his tree on the way down. Look, another few days and you’ll be fine. But I had to wake you now.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Shade asked me to. He wants you to see what’s going to happen tonight.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘He’s challenged his father.’
‘Over me?’
He smiled, but it was a bleak expression. ‘Yes, over you. Wherever you go, trouble follows… Come on. If you can stand I’ll get you outside.’
She managed to sit up, and the priest threw a cloak around her shoulders and helped her to her feet. Her leg ached deeply, evidently it had been a bad cut, but with the priest’s help she could hobble. It felt as if her head had been cracked like an egg.
‘So,’ she said. ‘The Leafy Boys. Those things that got me.’
He pulled open the door flap and helped her through. ‘They are boys – human, though they don’t look it.’
Outside the air was fresh, cooler than it had been. Puddles stood on the ground of the clearing, and the sacred posts gleamed, wet. It had been raining, then; the weather had turned while she’d been unconscious. She couldn’t see anybody else.
Jurgi helped her to a log, and she sat, gratefully. He said, ‘I believe it was a Leafy Boy that threw down the branch at you, that time. Remember?’
‘When you saved me.’
‘And almost got killed myself.’ The priest glanced up at the night-black forest canopy. ‘They live in the trees. The canopy is so solid, the Pretani believe, that you could climb a tree and cross this country from north to south, east to west, without ever touching the ground. And there’s food up there, the fruit of the trees, the squirrels and the birds to hunt. And to drink, water that pools in the big leaves and hollows in the trunks. It’s a place to live, if a strange one.’
‘How do they get up there? The boys.’
‘Nobody knows how it started. Maybe a bunch of kids got lost somehow, or they were outcasts… They go naked. They lost the knowledge of speech. They’re more animal than human, I think. It’s a harsh life up there – one slip and you fall. Shade says they rarely breed.’
She grunted. ‘A gang of them tried to breed with me.’
‘Oh, they rape. They rut with each other like dogs. But even if one of them becomes pregnant, how could they handle the birth, look after a baby? It’s thought they keep up their numbers by stealing children from the ground, kids old enough to cling to a branch but too young even to remember their own names – toddlers of two or three.’
‘And the Pretani hunt them. What do they do, eat them?’
‘No, they have taboos about that. They display their skulls in their houses. I’ve seen them. And trade the little finger bones with other folk to make necklaces.’
‘I could have been killed.’
‘You’d have been fine if you hadn’t been hit by that stone. Once you were injured the Leafy Boys were on you in a heartbeat. It was the stone that caused it. Or rather, he who threw the stone. For it was deliberate.’