Cautiously Thorinn put his sword away; this set off another volley of boomings around him, twitterings below. The branches swayed again; now other agile bodies came swarming up the tree. These were children, half the size of the gray men, some pink-skinned and to all appearance human, some twiglike and gray. All of them were chattering, piping, booming at once, those in the tree and those below. Thorinn swung himself down to the next branch, then the next. The children and the twigmen followed him, keeping their distance; below, as the branches thinned, the bright ones drew back. He inspected them from the lowest branch: they were not half flower and half human, as he had thought. The bright, soft parts of them were garments that might have been made from gigantic flower petals, veined, crumpled at the edges, saturated with color. Under these, their bodies were round and plump, and, indeed, he now realized, they must be women. Among them were a few gray and shriveled creatures whom he had hardly noticed before; they were clad like the women, and had bright eyes and wrinkled faces. They all stood in a polite semicircle, waiting for him to descend. Now that he knew they meant him no harm, Thorinn began to feel a new embarrassment. He had never been with strangers before—Goryat and his sons were all he had ever known. How would they expect him to behave?
When he dropped to the ground, another clamor went up; the circle moved inward, while all around him twigmen and children were dropping like overripe fruit. Thorinn was surrounded by smiling pink faces, bright petal-garments of scarlet, deep blue, yellow. When one of the women caught sight of his leg and his wounds, her face changed at once and she began making sounds of distress. In a moment the women were all around him, gently touching his withered leg, his cheek and shoulder, staring up into his face with such dismayed expressions that he could not help laughing. Anxious cries ran back and forth through the crowd; then they were all moving, carrying Thorinn with them.
The bright alien faces bobbed around him, the trees turned skylight into a rich green gloom, the grass was seductively soft underfoot and the slope led him irresistibly downward, so that everything that happened seemed to have become curiously ordinary. They passed through an explosion of bushes, waist high, with thick soft masses of white flowers. From the trees hung green and golden fruits, gourds, seed-pods like twisted ribbons. Fallen trees were everywhere, with vines growing over them. The bushes thinned to isolated clumps, the trees drew back, and now he was at the edge of a clear place, a slope of bright green grass that curved gently down to the marshy bank of a river. Beyond the silver water another green bank arose, another stand of trees; beyond them were mountains that met the sky. The air from the river was cool and fresh; on the near bank, scattered in little groups, the people were sitting, lying; children squatting, leaping up, running. Someone threw a ball of bright orange into the air; a twigman leaped after it, straight up, higher, incredibly rising; he caught it in his mouth and dropped back, to shouts of applause.
Thorinn would willingly have joined them in spite of his shyness, but the crowd urged him to the right, along the edge of the forest. After a few ells the shrubbery drew back into a little bay, in which giant vines hung looping and twisting from a tree, higher than Thorinn's head; from these vines depended soft green pods or shells, curved and fat, two ells long. Some swung lightly and were open to show a tender pink interior, while others were shut tight and hung heavy to the ground. The people urged him toward one of the empty pods, and showed him by gestures that they wanted him to lie down in it. While he stood hesitating, one of the closed pods stirred, split, began to open. A glint of pink showed within. A plump woman emerged, rosy-faced, with dreaming eyes. She was like someone just awakened from a long sweet sleep. With languorous movements she stepped out, picked up her petal garments discarded on the grass, slowly put them on. A faint smile curved her lips. She wandered away across the greensward; behind her, the pod swayed empty.
Not liking the look of this, Thorinn backed away. The women caught at his arms, touched the wounds on his face and shoulder, pointed again to the empty pod. It was as if they were trying to say that the pod would heal him.
Thorinn tried to explain with gestures that he had medicine of his own. But they were slow to understand, and at length he had to get a pinch of sky-stuff out of his wallet and point repeatedly to it, then to his wounds.
This set off a flurry of excited conversation, with much waving of arms and movement back and forth. The people brought forward one of the oldsters, who squinted wisely at Thorinn, stroked his straggly beard, and piped a few words of gibberish. At this, the whole flock of them set off again, down the slope this time, drawing Thorinn along. They led him into a circle of people gathered around a heap of fruits on the grass. Some of the people got up to make room while others sat down, and when the confusion ended Thorinn found himself seated with a plump woman on either side. A child scrambled into the circle, plucked a pale greenish ovoid from the heap and handed it to one of the women, who offered it to Thorinn. He took it dubiously; it was cool in his hands and had a strange fragrance, but he was hungry, and bit into it boldly. It was soft and pungent, the flavor sweet and acid at the same time; the cool juice ran down his chin. The exposed meat was a startling emerald green. Thorinn instinctively spat out what was in his mouth. He was thinking better of it and about to take a second bite, when one of the women took the fruit away from him gently and offered him another sort. This was flattish and pale brown, with a texture almost like bread; inside was something firmer. Thorinn bit through the soft outer layer into a salty, fibrous substance. It was a deep pink in color and tasted almost like cooked flesh of an unfamiliar sort; yet the thing was a fruit, for it had a stem and the remnants of a husk. The people watched him eat, with broad smiles and cries of encouragement. As he was finishing the bread-meat thing, a group of children ran into the circle with curled leaves in their hands. In the leaves was dark sky-stuff which they must have gathered in the forest.
One of the oldsters came forward, inspected the contents of the leaves with great gravity and care, then called for a fruit, which was given to him; it was a smallish, golden-yellow one. He squeezed it in his hand until the clear juice ran into the sky-stuff. He stirred and molded the drenched moss with his knobby fingers, then, apparently satisfied, picked up a mass of the sodden stuff, leaned forward, and began to plaster it carefully over the wound in Thorinn's cheek. After an instinctive start, Thorinn sat still and let him do it. The sticky juice made the sky-stuff cling; it felt agreeably cool on the fevered lips of the wound. When he was done, the old man called for a leaf, which he smeared with sap from a green stalk; then, carefully pinching the lips of the wound together, he spread the leaf over sky-stuff and wound, and pressed it down firmly. When he had done the same for Thorinn's other wounds, he examined the withered leg and wagged his chin sadly. Then he squatted back on his heels and made a sweeping motion over his head, three times, staring intently into Thorinn's eyes. Thorinn, although he had no idea what was meant, made signs of agreement and gratitude, and the old man went back to the other side of the circle. Thinking to repay them for their kindness, Thorinn opened his wallet and brought out a few of his treasures, pebbles of various colors, part of a weasel's skull, a bit of crystal. This last he presented to the old man, while the others crowded around twittering with excitement; then he handed out the rest at random, including a scrap of cloth that had been part of a garment of his own until he outgrew it, afterward a rag used by Goryat and his sons to polish the bosses of their harness; Thorinn had saved a piece because it had bright figures of birds and people woven into it. The people took these gifts with every evidence of pleasure. Some of the women and children offered Thorinn more fruits, each one of a different sort, and he continued to eat with good appetite.