Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(68)

Frog hesitated.

“It comes out in another world. In the place where the Old Gods dreamed while they were sleepin’. Just blow into it.”

Unar blew. It seemed that the whole forest vibrated, yet the long, dark leaves of the greenmango didn’t move. Not a single gemlike bead of water fell that hadn’t been about to fall already. There was no moss on the new branch and no spores had had time to fall, but back at the main tree trunk, life surged, and the sheltered beds that Frog had asked for sprang, smooth, orange and gleaming, into being.

“Come on,” Frog said, leading her by the wrist again. They lay against each other, wet but warm, and waited only a little time for first the urgent, calling voices and then the pale Understorian day to fade completely away.





FORTY-ONE

IT WAS still dark when Unar woke.

She peeled the leeches off her skin and rubbed the sores they left behind. Then she lapped a drink of rainwater from the edge of the enormous bracket fungus that unyieldingly took their weight.

“Are you ready?” Frog asked, proffering the ear bone, which glowed a gentle green. She had a leech sore on her eyelid, barely discernible.

“I’m ready,” Unar said. She breathed in life and breathed out magic. The greenmango stretched a new-grown arm in the direction Frog indicated, and a fig, like the one at the great crossroads on the border of Ehkisland in Canopy, reached its new arm out until the branches crossed. Unar hesitated. This was more a crossroads than the other. If she made this crossing, it was one she could never return from, and she didn’t know whether to feel anticipation or fear.

Then she remembered how she’d jumped off the head of the dayhunter. How she’d left her parents’ home. That seeds were ambitious, desperate, single-minded, and strong.

Audblayin favoured boldness.

She and Frog stepped off the tree behind them just in time for it to slough the dying overextension of itself.

Fig branch met myrtle. Myrtle met sweet-fruit pine. Sweet-fruit pine met false palm. False palm met quandong, complete with ripe blue fruits that they ate for a morning meal.

“If you had been patient,” Frog said reproachfully as she spat a seed into the rain, “and not alerted them until we were ready, we would have supplies with us. Proper food, rope, nets, and knives. Tinder and firestarter and sand.”

“How far are we going?” asked Unar, who had never crossed more than one or two niches, never travelled further than she could walk in a day.

“To the far edge of Canopy. It would take a week in the dry. Maybe five days in the monsoon. To make a new branch, most of all a great tree needs water.”

“You can’t teach me about trees. I’m a Gardener. Teach me something else, sister.” A thrill went through her when she said it. Why should she be afraid? She had done the impossible and helped two slaves to escape certain death at Servant Eilif’s hands, while eluding the punishment of denying her power. Confident in her destiny again, she straightened her back and lifted her chin.

Nothing could deny her. She would be the greatest Bodyguard Audblayin had ever had. When she found him. After all, not even a season had passed in Understorey, and she had already found her sister.

“The Master will decide what you are to be taught,” Frog muttered.

“Who is the Master?” Unar demanded, but Frog didn’t reply, only pointed in the direction they had to go. Quandong crossed branches with metal-stone tree, metal-stone tree with bloodwood, bloodwood with floodgum, and floodgum with ironbark.

“I’m tired,” Unar panted, hours later. Using the song-magic of Understorey didn’t seem to deplete her the same way as using magic in Canopy had; there, she could never have raised so many mighty branches before exhausting herself. Here, the power came from the sounds. A person singing didn’t tire as quickly as a person digging ditches.

Still. A person singing grew hoarse eventually, and concentration faltered.

Frog looked unimpressed.

“So make a bracket fungus and sleep.”

“Now? It’s barely midday.”

“We can travel in the dark if we must. If you are tired, rest. I have no more stolen bones to help you.”

“Stolen?”

Frog’s little mouth tightened again. When Unar lay down on the shelf between orange fungi, feeling her body heat sink into the velvet surface of it and hearing the rain strike the upper bracket softly, Frog stayed crouched on the edge, staring into space between the great trees.

“What’s your earliest memory?” Unar asked. My earliest memory is of you. Do you remember it? Do you remember me? We looked into each other’s eyes.

“My first foster parents fightin’,” Frog said. “My foster father asked for fermented greenmango juice to drink. We call it bia. ‘Gimme some bia, wife,’ ’e said. She said, ‘I given it for taxes.’ You see, the villagers usually pay tax to a Headman. My foster father knocked ’er down and cut ’er in the face with ’is spines. There was blood everywhere.”

It wasn’t funny, but Unar wanted to laugh.

“If you’d stayed in our house,” she said, “it would have been the other way around. Mother hitting Father with a stick, so that his legs looked like striped snakes. I’d run to him and hug his legs, kiss his bruises, and he’d pretend that I hadn’t hurt him.”