The Stars Are Legion(91)

“I need your rope,” I tell Casamir.

She gazes up at the tree. The leaves are starting to unfurl. “I guess it’s worth a try,” she says.

“Our other option is to go farther up into the city,” I say, “but I get the impression we’ll meet more of those monsters on the way, and the positions farther along are less defensible.”

“Up, then,” Casamir says.

I knot Casamir’s rope and mine together. I tie off the first knot when I get about twice my height up. Make the second knot a couple of paces above that. Crawl down and untie the first, make another a few paces above my second, and so on.

Casamir stares at me from below, hands on hips. “This is the first time I’ve seen you climb anything with a care for safety,” she says.

I don’t tell her that the dream makes me think we are closer to our goal now, and to die so close would be a tragedy. I keep on with my tying and untying, up and up and up as the lights flash in the tree branches beneath my palms.

I know, intellectually, that the sky is a long ways off. But I don’t realize just how long until I’ve been climbing for some time and I dare to look down. I can already blot out Casamir’s body if I hold up my palm. I gaze up, shifting the weight of my metal blade to the other shoulder, and wonder at the madness of what I have planned.

No madder than staying below, I guess.

I climb and climb. Leaves begin to break off in my hands. They are growing larger now, fully unfurled. I wonder how much time we have.

The branches become thinner, about half the size of those below, but do not become any thinner than that as I ascend, for which I’m thankful. This high up, I see little skittering creatures with enormous eyes that remind me of Das Muni’s. Their webbed feet cling to the branches. Some munch on the leaves and fling themselves off as I approach, hopping to another branch. I’m fascinated at the ecologies of all of these places, which each hold people and animals that exist nowhere else in the world. What happens when Katazyrna rots away? It will all be lost, leaves shed at the end of the season.

As I come to the top of the tree, I dare not look down. I knot the rope around me to the closest branch, in case I fall, and press my fingers to the ceiling. It’s warm and slick, and I feel the pulsing heartbeat of the world beneath it.

I have the urge to look down, but close my eyes instead. Take a deep breath. I pull the blade from my back, lean back a little until the rope holding me upright is taut, and then shove the blade with all my strength into the ceiling.

The blade encounters no resistance. It cuts clean through. I work it around in the wound a bit and draw it out.

A trickle of bloody gore oozes out as I release my weapon. My blade is covered in black ichor. I’m not sure if it’s really blood or just something like it. I hack again at the ceiling. Again and again, tearing out great hunks of flesh. I work until sweat streams down my face and the bloody ooze spatters my face and chest.

I hack and hack as the leaves shudder around me. The edges of them have turned orange.

I dare to look down now, and immediately regret it. The tree is in full foliage again; it’s a great jeweled yellow cushion, and down and down, so far down I can nearly erase their forms with my thumb, are the people I have traveled with from the belly of the world. They are all down there now—Das Muni and Arankadash, and Casamir, staring up as I stare down.

I’m running out of time. I can feel it. Perhaps they can too. Whatever assaulted this village will come for us soon.

I get back to hacking, though I am out of breath and my arms feel heavy as lead. My muscles are burning hot. The heat from the ceiling is also increasing, which doesn’t help. I’m nearing the core of the artery.

I hack out another slab of flesh and let it tumble down through the branches. It reminds me of the hunk of flesh I sacrificed to Casamir’s people. What are they doing with it right now? What will they do with it if I die here and don’t return?

I slice up into the ceiling again.

The membrane bursts.

Bloody fluid pours over me, hot and sticky. It pushes me off my feet. I fall and almost drop my blade. I swing from the branch as the warm, coppery flood gushes from the wound and pools below.

Arankadash is shouting. Casamir seems to be floating away in the flood.

I wipe the gore from my eyes as the initial tide abates. I grab for the branch and haul myself back up. I peer into the hole I’ve torn into the sky. The bloody stuff is still pumping from it, but only from the bottom now. It trickles over the lip of the hole with every pulse. I reach into the hole and lever myself up to get a good look inside. It’s absolutely dark and stinks of copper and afterbirth.

I try to peer up, but there’s nothing to see but more darkness. The artery is as wide as I am tall but has hard ridges around it. As I sit in the lip of it, I can feel it pulsing, trying to push the trickle of life that’s now burst all over the world below farther up into the far reaches of the world.

“Come up!” I yell. I gaze over the edge and see that the leaves have begun to fall. It’s only then, as I see them all struggling below, that I realize Das Muni is not going to be able to climb the tree by herself.

I hurriedly untie the rope from around my waist and the nearby branches and hurl it down as far as it will go.

“Casamir!” I say. “Help Das Muni up!”

There is movement below. They are all covered in red-black fluid. Casamir is coming up first, and she throws the rope down.