The thing that had once been a woman walked towards the beacon.
Days ago, it had staggered lost through the darkness. Now, new senses guided it through the murk.
Days ago, the chains on its wrists had dragged on the ground. Now, the chains dangled in the air, high above the earth.
Days ago, it had muttered to itself as it walked. The words had helped it push on. Now, it lacked a mouth. And even if it had a mouth, it had lost its words. Words weren’t needed.
Days ago, it had a name. Now, it had only hunger.
The beacon called.Reg whistled as he led the train of goats towards Glenfork. The morning sun hadn’t risen high enough to be blocked by the branches above, and it shone on the dew that glittered on the bushes and flowers sprouting from clefts and furrows in the bark. A solitary oak had found a deeper fissure full of decomposing barkdust, and its branches reached tipwards, towards the light. The branch they walked on was narrow, a mere fifty paces across before its downward curve was too steep to stand on, and it groaned softly as a breeze pushed it back and forth. Birds chirped as they flitted through the air, and the whole Tree felt of summer.
From here, Reg could see nearby branches, their massive boughs cutting across the sky. The forests that grew on the top of those branches looked miniature in comparison to the boughs they grew on. Past those massive branches, between the huge leaves of the Tree, the small patches of sky that Reg could see were clear blue.
As far as Reg was concerned, it was a glorious day.
Martha groaned. “Are all herders so blighted cheerful this early in the morning? Do you need to whistle?” She trudged next to Reg. Her spider-silk leathers—orb-weaver spider silk woven into dense panels stitched together to make a long-sleeved jerkin and breeches—were a little too large for her small frame. Her short red hair was a bright contrast to the dark gray of the leathers, and she kept her head down as she focused on her steps to avoid tripping on ridges in the bark.
“Early?” Reg asked. “We didn’t leave until dawn. Trunk’s truth, it was nice to get a full night’s rest at the ranch. In season, we get up every few hours to patrol the flock. Glad it was my turn for the supply run.”
“Tainted leaves,” Martha cursed under her breath.
“Why did you want to come down here to herd with us?” Reg asked. “Don’t see fancy folk like you on the lowest branches that often. Aren’t you supposed to spend your days listening to music and lazing in the sun?”
“Tend to your own web,” she snapped, sounding frustrated. “I have my reasons.”
Reg let the topic drop and resumed his whistling.
In contrast to Martha’s spider-silk leathers, Reg’s were well-worn, marred by the scuffs and stains of a spring spent out on a wild branch. His short-cropped black hair was a tousled mess. Despite Reg’s carefree whistling, his dark brown eyes remained watchful in his lean face.
In the distance, he could make out the bridge into town, dew glistening on the spider-silk lines that stretched between their branch and the bough that Glenfork nestled on. At this distance, he could barely see the tiny shapes of people bustling about their day and a bit of smoke from morning baking.
He checked on Ankie, asleep in her sling across his chest. He patted her iridescent purple and green carapace as he walked. No better herding spider on the Tree. She didn’t have the endurance for a long trek like this one, so she was curled up, fast asleep, enjoying the heat of Reg’s body.
Next Arrowkiss Day, he’d have eighteen summers and could finally enter the adults’ herding trials with her rather than the children’s trial. Old Barkle had taken the Rowan Bracer the past four years, but Reg was sure that he and Ankie could outdo Barkle and his Migda.
Within a half hour, Reg, Martha, and the train of goats arrived at the bridge down into Glenfork. The bridge was a four-liner: two lines threaded through wooden slats formed steps, and two more lines above served as handholds. The braided spider-silk lines were the width of a thumb, and they had been anchored deep into the branch by a woodshaper.
The bridge wasn’t particularly steep—it was meant to be a safe crossing for those with young children and animals. The gentle morning breeze pushed at the bridge, causing it to arc to the left.
“This is the bridge?” Martha asked, sounding horrified. “You’re joking. This is a stupid herder joke. There has to be a good wooden bridge somewhere else. You can barely even see the lines.”
Reg shook his head. “Not unless you want to spend half a day heading back to the Trunk, taking the staircase up, and then heading back out.”
“I’m fine with that,” Martha responded. She made as if to turn around.
“We’re crossing here,” Reg said. “This is a good bridge. It’s been here for generations. I’ll cross first with half of the goats, and once I’m across, you can follow.”
Reg ignored Martha’s muttered, “Looks like something that’s stood for generations,” and stepped out onto the bridge, leading his train of goats. He heard Martha curse as she saw how the bridge bowed down under Reg and the goats’ weight. Spider-silk lines were strong, but they had a stretchy sort of strength. As Reg and the goats got further along the bridge, it bowed down and bounced with every step.
The goats were surefooted and calm as they crossed. They seemed indifferent to heights. Over the past few grazing seasons, Reg had seen goats climb far down the steep sides of branches to reach tasty bushes or vines. They were fearless.
Halfway across, Reg looked down. Here, suspended between branches, there was a clear view to the darkness of the Mist below. The vast height of the Tree protected everyone who lived on its branches from the Mist, but today, the Mist reached high—maybe one thousand paces down. High enough that the herding crew was likely keeping the goats close in case of a Storm. The Mist looked like it was moving against the wind, and Reg thought he could see shapes forming. What were they? If he just looked closer, maybe he could—he pulled his eyes back up. Looking closely was dangerous. Could twist you, they said.
On the far side of the bridge, Reg looked back and waved Martha across. She shook her head. He waved again, and she took a single step onto the bridge before retreating and bending over, hands on her knees.
Reg frowned. This was a four-line crossing with solid slats that folks went on daily. It wasn’t a two-liner, with one line for feet and one for hands, that you had to shuffle across, like most of the crossings into Glenfork. His little sister Daphne was only eight, and she’d cross a two-liner without hesitation. Apparently, a four-line crossing wasn’t good enough for Miss Upper Branch. Why had his mother agreed to take Martha on? She was sure to be useless with the goats too.
Reg picketed the goats to a nearby aspen. Hildra, the lead goat, bleated angrily at him as he walked back towards the bridge—she objected to being picketed out of range of the patch of dryad’s kiss mushrooms that two of the other goats could reach. “Shush, you,” Reg grumbled. “I’ll be back soon.”
Reg jogged back across the bridge. Martha was sitting down, her head in her hands, legs trembling. She’d at least kept hold of the tether to the goats, so they hadn’t wandered off, and one of the goats was happily eating her vomit. She looked up as Reg got back and met his eyes. “Sorry.” She sounded so miserable that Reg bit back his complaints.
“It’s fine. How about you cross first without the goats, and then I can follow?”
Martha didn’t respond at first. Her legs kept trembling.
Reg tried again. “This is the only crossing like this we need to do. After this, it’s easy walking all the way to the grazing grounds.” He did his best to keep his annoyance out of his voice. “And at the end of the season, we’ll take a different path. Can’t get the whole herd across this bridge.”
There was a long pause before Martha responded. “Okay,” she said, voice small. “Okay.” She rallied a bit. “I can do that.”
She stepped up to the bridge, muttering, “Mist and ash. Mist and ash. Mist and twisted ash,” as if the curses were a prayer. Tendons stood out on the backs of her hands as she grabbed the lines and started across. Her steps were slow, and her gaze was fixed on the slats directly ahead of her, moving one careful limb at a time.
It took Martha long minutes to cross the bridge, but by the end, she was moving a bit more confidently. Once she was fully across, Reg followed with the rest of the goats.
Glenfork felt far emptier than normal. Reg was used to coming into town on market days, when folks from nearby farms and small villages came into Glenfork to sell their crops, buy supplies, and swap gossip. On market days, the path through town was so full of people and small stands that it was hard to move. But market days were only twice a moon, and today the town had only its hundred or so residents.
As they entered town, Reg pulled the goat train aside for Anne O’Carver. The old gray-haired moss farmer led a massive stag beetle that was hauling a travois piled high with night soil. She looked up and did a double take when she saw Reg. “Reg? That you, boy? When did you get so tall? Your da ain’t doing a good enough job feeding you. You’re skinny as a spear.”
Her beetle chuffed softly and clacked its pincers together when Anne stopped to greet Reg. Anne’s back was hunched from age and long days tending to her crops of moss and mushrooms, so her stag beetle was almost twice her height. Anne’s arms were covered in muck, and she had a strong odor of fertilizer and rot about her. Moss farmers normally did.
Reg waved and did his best to subtly move himself upwind. “Hello, Mrs. O’Carver. How are you doing?”
“Oh, well enough, well enough. Times are tough, but we’re tougher, eh? You headed out to join your mum? Must be, must be. You tell her there’s a Storm coming. A big one. Right big. I can feel it in my back, I can. And Dancer,” she said, patting her beetle on the pincer, “she’s been restless. She can sense a Storm, she can. You keep yourselves safe out there.”
“We will, Mrs. O’Carver.” And Reg would be careful. Anne O’Carver had farmed one of the lowest moss farms in the area her whole life. Down low with more rain and moisture, plants grew better, but Mist Storms were a constant danger. If she said one was coming, Reg believed her. But the goats still needed to forage.
“Right,” Anne said, “enough nattering from you, Reg. You’ll blather away the whole day, and there’s work to do. Dancer, git, git!” She thumped her beetle with a goad, and it restarted its slow lumber out of town.
A little further along the road, three young women had set up their looms outside the weaver’s shop to enjoy the morning light while they worked. Samantha Greenstalk was flanked by the O’Dell twins, Edith and Becca. Samantha looked radiant in a fine blue dress with vines embroidered on the skirt.
Reg paused to greet them. “Hi, Samantha. Are you weaving?” What a stupid question, what with her loom sitting right in front of her. He tried to rescue it. “I bet you’re weaving. I like weaving.” It was hard to think with Sam’s bright blue eyes looking up at him. “That’s a loom.”
Samantha giggled. “Hi, Reg. Are you walking through town?” She giggled again. “I bet you’re walking through town, aren’t you?”
Reg stumbled through the rest of the conversation and fled as soon as he could. He wished he had a quicker tongue around Samantha, but his brain always stopped around her. Behind him, he thought he heard Samantha whisper something about “liking men, not boys.” The three women giggled again behind him, and Reg’s back stiffened. Samantha was only a few moons older than him! He heard Martha stifling a giggle as well.
As they walked through town, Reg waved to Mr. O’Dell, who was working alongside a few other men and women to repair one of the town reservoirs. Mr. O’Dell was a slight man, so it was always shocking to see him work, bending wooden planks with his hands the way that another man might bend a leather strap. He was Tree-touched, one of two in town, and he and his construction workers were always out repairing reservoirs, constructing barrels, and fixing buildings. The other Tree-touched woodshaper in town, Mr. Mickelson, focused on tools and finer work: knives, pots, and furniture.
At the center of town, Reg picketed his goats, and he and Martha ducked inside Havelson’s Haversack, the general store. The store was packed full of supplies. Sacks of meal were piled high against the left wall, with dried goat haunches hanging above them. Barrels of mushrooms, moss, beans, and other foodstuffs made a maze of the store. There wasn’t much organization: a barrel of shovels and hoes was topped with straw hats. Next to them, a table was piled high with rolled-up cloaks, travel bags, and two vine trellises. Reg shifted aside a precariously leaning pile of baskets to make it to the counter. Behind the counter, Mr. Havelson kept bone arrowheads, metal knife inserts, and three copper pots. One of these days, Reg promised himself he’d be able to buy one of those pots. Samantha had to respect a man with a pot.
The owner of the shop, Mr. Havelson, was writing in a ledger. He was a tall man with a thick black beard, a bald head, and a large paunch. He looked up from his ledger when Reg approached the counter and stuck out his hand for Reg to shake. “Good to see you, my boy.”
“Good to see you too, sir,” Reg responded. He had fond memories of the general store. Mr. Havelson had always made sure that any child who entered the store left it with a chewy sweet. Reg introduced Martha, and Mr. Havelson shook her hand as well.
“You’re here for the summer supply run, I take it?” Mr. Havelson asked. “Got that list handy?”
Reg handed over the list of supplies, and Mr. Havelson started organizing everything: two bags of beans, four bags of mossmeal, seven bags of spider feed, mushrooms, nuts, spices, tea leaves, four bodkin arrowheads, one knife insert, a large water bladder, and all of the small necessities that made seasons on the wild branches livable.
“Mr. Havelson, is your brother doing okay? I didn’t see him in his normal spot,” Reg asked as Mr. Havelson bustled about the shop, looking for the tea leaves.
“Oh, he’s fine. My sister has him for the week. Some of the Thornguard are in town, and you know how they can be about the twisted.”
Martha gasped when Mr. Havelson said that his brother was twisted, but kept her mouth shut.
Reg nodded. “Right. He ain’t never harmed nobody. Don’t think they’d care about that.”
Mr. Havelson grunted assent. “And we keep an eye on him. He’s always tied up and kept away from anything sharp. He’s no danger.” He lifted up a large tarp. “There’s the black-moss tea! Knew I had it here somewhere. Petyr is with the guards, by the way. Didn’t recognize him at first, all dressed up in those fancy green-and-red uniforms and strutting around like a rooster. Told Mrs. Billups to straighten up, and I thought she’d bite his head off. Were you friends with him?”
Reg shook his head. “He was three years older than me, so I didn’t really know him.”
“Three years older? Thorns! So you’ll still have the draft ahead of you, then?” At Reg’s nod, Mr. Havelson continued, “I’d thought you were old enough to be through it, but that’s just because you’ve been doing a man’s work for a few years now.” He paused thoughtfully. “They say that once someone from a family is chosen, it makes it less likely that their siblings will be. Hope that’s true for you. Especially after your brother. Well, you know.” Mr. Havelson’s voice trailed off.
“Thanks, Mr. Havelson,” Reg said.
There was a minute of quiet in the shop as Mr. Havelson bustled about. After grabbing the beans, Mr. Havelson looked down at the next item on the list: “Two bottles, 3 cups, 2 drams, and ‘not a jot more or less’ of Alfred’s Fabulous Mushroom Whiskey for Barkle? That’s a precise order.”
Reg chuckled. “He’s a stickler about it. Has his two drams a night and doesn’t want to have more about. I’ve never tried Alfred’s. Does it taste as bad as it smells?”
“Worse,” Mr. Havelson said with feeling. “Much worse.”
Mr. Havelson continued organizing the order while Reg and Martha started to load up the goats’ panniers with the supplies. The goats Reg’s family raised were large ones, many with withers taller than Reg’s hips, but Reg and Martha still had to be careful to avoid overloading any of them.
After a few minutes, Reg had to re-picket Hildra further away from the other goats—she kept trying to get into other goats’ panniers to sample their food. Once Reg had picketed her again, he rubbed her ears and dropped her some dried mushrooms to chew on.
It always took more time than Reg expected to find all of the supplies and get them safely loaded into the panniers, but soon enough, Reg and Martha said their farewells to Mr. Havelson and started their trek out of Glenfork.
At the far end of town, Reg paused to picket the goats near the schoolhouse.
“Another stop?” Martha asked. “Do you have to greet everyone we pass in this twiggy village?”
“Just this last stop,” Reg said. “It’ll only take a few minutes.”
Outside the schoolhouse, young children scrambled all over a large wooden play structure that arched gracefully out of the branch. Spider-silk lines dangled from points on the structure, and two boys were squabbling over who got to swing down on one of the lines next.
In a nearby open area, where the bark had been smoothed, six of the older children were playing three-a-side throwball, the flaming wicker ball zipping and curving around the field with unnatural speed and leaving behind an emerald afterimage.
Mrs. Moonleaf sat on a rocking chair on the schoolhouse porch and oversaw the chaos. She was one of the only elves in town and had been the schoolmistress for generations. Folks said that elves didn’t show any signs of age until they were truly old, and by that reckoning, Mrs. Moonleaf must have been ancient, maybe even closing in on two centuries. She had thinning white hair pulled tight into a bun, and her age-spotted skin was wrinkled, particularly around her violet eyes. Despite her age, she hopped out of her rocking chair as soon as she spotted Reg and hurried over to greet him, only leaning slightly on her walking cane as she covered the gnarled bark.
She greeted Reg with a strong hug. “Reg, I was so sorry to hear about Vince. Your brother was a good man. His bones to branches, his heart to seed, his soul to the wind.”
“His soul to the wind.” Reg gave the traditional response. “Thanks, Mrs. Moonleaf. It’s good to see you.”
“It’s good to see you too, Reg. My goodness, when did you get so tall? Who’s your friend?”
“This is Martha. She’ll be herding the summer and fall with us. Martha, this is my old teacher, Mrs. Moonleaf.”
“Nice to meet you,” Martha said. She was about to say more when she was interrupted by the happy shrieks of three eight-year-old girls sprinting in their direction, braids flying.
“Oh, that’s darling,” Mrs. Moonleaf said. She looked at the girl who’d arrived first. “Daphne, it’s so nice that you wanted to come see your brother.”
“Eww, I don’t want to see Reg. He’s the worst!” Daphne said, shaking her head with feeling and sending her braid whipping through the air. “I wanna see Ankie!”
Daphne’s excited voice had roused Ankie, and the herding spider wriggled her way out of her sling on Reg’s chest and up towards his shoulder. Reg picked her up and placed her on the ground where she skittered over to Daphne to get the carapace rub that was her due.
Daphne’s two friends hung back a bit. Herding spiders weren’t rare, but not everyone grew up around herders and their spiders. Ankie was on the smaller side for a herding spider, only the weight of a ninety-day-old goat kid, but once she scrambled out from her sling, her long legs made her look much larger than she was. And the way she waved her pedipalps in excitement to see Daphne could look intimidating if you weren’t used to interpreting spider expressions.
With some trepidation, one of Daphne’s two friends darted forward to pat Ankie on the back before darting away again with a giggle.
“Oh, she’s a beauty, isn’t she?” Mrs. Moonleaf said. “Such vibrant colors.”
“Best spider on the Tree, aren’t you, girl?” Reg said with pride. He pulled out a small piece of goat jerky to give to Daphne’s other friend, who was still lurking back. “Go on, just hold your hand flat with this on it. She’ll take it with her pedipalps.”
The three girls played with Ankie while Reg and Martha chatted with Mrs. Moonleaf, with occasional interruptions as Mrs. Moonleaf corralled her young charges.
After a short time, recess ended, and Mrs. Moonleaf summoned students back into the one-room schoolhouse with promises of story time.
Ankie was too worked up from playing with Daphne to settle back into her sling, so she scampered alongside Reg, exploring crevices and fissures with her pedipalps as they left town.
Soon, they’d reach the Great Staircase and head downtrunk.From Glenfork, it was a two-hour hike for Reg, Martha, Ankie, and the goat train to reach the Great Staircase, which they would use to descend to the verdant low branches where herds of goats could find good grazing.
After the first twenty minutes of excited scampering, Ankie was exhausted. The small herding spider had explored every bark crevice they passed, hissed at the goats to move faster, cajoled Reg to play ‘hide the ball,’ and scrambled up every tree they’d seen. Reg estimated she’d probably covered about five times as much bark as the rest of them as she ranged to and fro. She begged Reg to be picked up, rearing up on her four back legs and pedipalping plaintively, but Reg was steadfast in his refusal to do so. “Come on, girl, you’re too heavy for me to be carrying you all the time. I’ll carry you once we get to the Staircase.”
Four minutes later, as they passed one of the Bloomingflor farms, Ankie was happily ensconced in her sling on Reg’s chest. Reg waved at Adam Bloomingflor as they passed; the farmer was on his knees as he inspected a fungal mound to ensure it was free from blight.
This close to Glenfork, they passed moss farms regularly. Crops grew behind burls or in fissures in the branch where enough decomposing barkdust had accumulated for plants to grow. A moss farmer could farm a fissure for three years or thereabouts before needing to move on to the next location to let the soil recover. Most burls and fissures were small, so farmers maintained five to ten locations at a time, rotating between them over the course of a week.
The path trunkward wasn’t empty of travelers. They passed a merchant leading three stag beetles towards Glenfork to pick up loads of mushrooms, moss, and fungus to take back to Ithilia, and from there, to ship to the upper branches. The path was narrow enough that Reg and Martha led the goats off it to let the beetles pass.
Two gnomes, standing tall on the stilts most gnomes wore for travel, loped past. By the bows and traps they carried, Reg wagered they were heading to the lower branches to hunt: dangerous work, but profitable. If you survived.
There wasn’t any rush to get back to the herd, so Reg kept them at a relaxed pace to the Great Staircase. As morning wore on and they moved trunkward, the light dimmed substantially. The sun was overhead, and near to the Trunk, it was almost fully blocked by massive primary boughs above. Despite being close to midday, the light made it feel like evening when they reached the Great Staircase.
The dim light limited visibility, causing the massive wall of the Trunk to extend into darkness above and below. Next to the Trunk, nothing grew; no leaves or shrubbery blocked the view of the long drop to the hungry dark below.
The Great Staircase reached from the Roots of the Tree to its tip, winding widdershins up the Trunk. The Conclave maintained it, sending generation after generation of Tree-touched woodshapers to repair it for those who needed to travel between strata. The path was wide enough for a hauler stag beetle and a man to pass one another, but only just, and there was no outer rail. Perhaps there had once been one, but no longer.
Trunk-side, a gutter channeled water from rain and snowmelt into reservoirs up and down the Tree. Even with that, only the foolhardy or desperate traveled the staircase when the sky looked like rain; water could rush down in a torrent, pushing travelers off to fall to the Mist.
Before stepping onto the staircase, Reg pulled a light-rod from his pack and tossed it to Martha. “You can use one of these things, right?”
“Of course,” she said, nodding.
It was the first thing either had said in an hour.
Martha concentrated on the light-rod, a rowan one with a lopsided mage-grown crystal on one end, and it started to glow with a dim blue light after a few seconds. Some facets of the light-rod glowed more strongly than others, so the light was uneven as it played over the bark, but it was enough to illuminate the path.
Reg took out a torch and, after a minute with a sparker, had a fiery light in his own hand. Martha started to ask, “Why not use a—” but didn’t finish the question.
Reg shrugged, a little uncomfortable, and answered anyway. “Can’t use a light-rod. Never figured out the knack. Dunno why. But my uncle Al never could channel anything either.”
“By the Heart, that must be annoying!” Martha sounded sympathetic.
“It’s not bad. Might be different up there, but down here, it’s just light-rods and Embers.”
“And throwball?”
Reg frowned. “And throwball.” He didn’t say more, but in the flickering light of the torch, his face looked pained. “Come on, let’s get moving.”
The light-rod and torch made a small bubble of illumination in the twilight world of the staircase. The path wove in and out as it followed the uneven curves of the bark to their right.
At one point, the path cut inwards where the bark had peeled off the Trunk in a huge swath, leaving a deep fissure in the side of the Tree. They had to chivvy the goats to get them to move past the patch of missing bark.
Nothing lived in the darkness this close to the Trunk, and for the whole descent, they didn’t see another soul. Even the goats didn’t bleat, so the only sounds were the scuffs of boot and hoof on the path and the soft whoosh of torch-flame.
They passed bough after bough until they finally spotted the etched glyph that marked the bough that Reg’s crew was herding on. The thirty minutes it had taken to descend the Great Staircase had felt much longer.
After ten minutes of hiking tipward on the bough, the world started to lighten, and after twenty, they started to hear birdsong and the rustlings of squirrels and insects. Only then did they stop to take a quick drink and check to make sure no panniers had shifted in a way that would rub the goats uncomfortably.
The air on this lower branch felt damp, and as they walked further tipward, the wider bark fissures started to fill with fir, aspen, and pine. Yellow, red, and violet flowers sprouted from small nooks, fungi covered bark ridges, and many trees were draped in vines and wispy dwarf-beard moss. The bough was wide enough that its curve was hard to see, and the edges were often blocked from view by stands of plants.
Here and there, Reg spotted the signs of old farms—a cracked reservoir, collapsed planks that might have once been a hut or shed leaning against a large burl, old walls meant to contain barkdust and mulch—but nobody farmed this branch anymore. It was too low, there were too many storms, and the towns were long gone. Herders, hunters, and madmen were the only ones who spent any time this low.
Reg was watchful as they traveled, regularly turning around and walking backwards to make sure nothing was following them. Once they’d reached the bough, he’d set Ankie down from her sling, and in contrast to her earlier exuberance, she was quiet and careful as she patrolled in front of them, ranging a bit ahead before circling back.
Reg would occasionally pause to harvest plants that grew near the path: orange gnome-saddle mushrooms growing on an oak, a handful of small apples, a large swath of firemoss that draped the branches of a young aspen. But even while foraging, his eyes were alert.
Martha was on her guard too, but she wasn’t used to the sights and sounds of the wilds. She’d jump when a squirrel chittered or a bird called.
An hour after midday, Martha stopped suddenly. “Reg, do you hear that? Someone is in trouble.” Her voice was high and panicked. “It almost sounds like Killian. But why would he—” she trailed off. “What do we do? He’s crying for help.”
Reg paused to listen for a second. “What does your friend’s voice sound like?” He was totally calm.
“Why does that Misting matter?” Martha asked. “He’s in trouble. Someone’s in trouble.” When Reg didn’t respond, she finally answered, “Fine. He’s a tenor. He talks a bit like you, all staccato and quick. He grew up low.”
Reg nodded. “What does the voice that’s crying for help sound like?”
Martha cocked her head, listening. “High-pitched and screechy,” she continued, confused. “Kind of rasping? Almost sounds like ‘kra-kow, kra-kow, kra-kow.’ Branch and bone, that doesn’t sound like a person at all.”
“Siren bird,” Reg said. “It attracts prey by sounding like a member of the herd that’s in trouble. Trick is to think about the sounds of what you’re hearing, not just what it feels like. I should have mentioned it—you get used to tuning ’em out. They mostly go for foxes, phase antelope, and birds, but they’ll go for a goat if they get the chance.”
Martha shivered. “Gives me the creeps.”
“You should hear ’em in spring when they’re calling for a mate. It’s something.”
“Ugh.” Martha shivered again. “So, what other horrors are out here? You’ve been looking every which way, but I don’t even know what I’m trying to spot.”
“Out here? Screech-eagles, invisisnakes, chimera-cats. Wild spiders, of course. Bark-lizards are deadly, but only if you step on one. Drakes, especially before they get to their full growth and still have their wings and fangs.” Reg paused, thinking. “Stag beetles, but only during their mating season. Wisps. Armored gecko-bears. Thorned constrictors.”
Martha’s face paled more with every animal Reg named, so he quickly added, “But most predators are only interested in snagging a goat that strays from the flock. They don’t hunt people.” In his head, Reg added, “Normally. Not unless they’ve been twisted.” And then he added out loud, “And most of them will stay far away from Ankie.”
“From Ankie? But she’s even smaller than the goats.” Martha sounded far from convinced that the spider that had been begging for carapace pets was going to protect them.
“Most predators won’t tangle with a spider, which is why we have them to guard the flock. And especially not one like Ankie. She’s a spider-hunting spider. Jumper breed. She might be small, but her venom can take down even a chimera-cat in a few minutes, and she’s a deadly hunter. If something sees one of her webs, it’ll stay away.”
“What about twists?” Martha asked. “I know the Inner Wall is below the Mist-line, and I don’t think the Thornguard patrol out this way.”
“Most twists won’t go above the Mist-line,” Reg answered, “so you’ll only see ’em if there’s a Storm. And the Inner Wall keeps the most dangerous twists away. We’ll probably see a twisted beast or two, but something like a twisted squirrel isn’t as dangerous as the monsters you hear about in the stories.”
As they continued on, Reg started describing more of what they passed. He remembered his parents pointing out creatures and plants on walks when he was young. When he was on his first trips out to the wild branches, Vince had been next to Reg the entire time, describing everything… albeit with some creative older brotherly additions about how chimera-cats craved the taste of eleven-year-old boys above all else. Vince had made sure to point out every shadow that could have held an invisisnake or a bark-lizard.
“You see that patch of vines that the breeze doesn’t touch? Vine snakes. They only eat small birds, but they’re startling if you walk underneath them and aren’t expecting them to move.”
“See that red-green bush? That’s a bloodbush. Its thorns are deadly sharp.”
“There’s a small pond in the fork up ahead. We’re going to veer far around it. An oasis? What kind of moss-brained books do you read up there? There’s always something dangerous lurking around ponds. Stay far away unless you’re with the full crew. Leading the goats to water is one of the most dangerous things we do.”
“Those red berries? Don’t touch them. Those are scarlet thicketberries. They’ll give you energy, but they’re addictive. They’ll make your gums bleed, and you’ll remember ’em when you’re making mulch.”
“That chugga-chugga sound? That’s a chimera-cat. Keep the goats close.”
“Those webs? See how taut and regular they are? Almost certainly an orb-weaver. It’s why you always travel with a light-rod at night, even if the moon is bright.”
“Hold the goats tight. You see those mushrooms? Those are dream-buttons. The goats love them, especially Hildra. But wrangling hallucinating goats is even less fun than it sounds.”
Three hours of hiking later, broken only by a break for lunch, they arrived where the grazing grounds should have been, but the crew and the goats weren’t here. The crew moved the herd every few days to fresh foraging locations, so Reg only knew roughly where the camp should be, but he heard no bleating from goats arguing over bushes and no loud “Hup! Hup!” from Barkle wrangling an ornery buck.
It was the right part of the branch. Much of the moss, vines, and leaves on the trees was nibbled to the point that a goat, standing on its hind legs, could reach, but some still remained. Berry bushes were well picked over, and most shrubs had been eaten. In another day or two, the crew would have moved the flock on, but there was still plenty of grazing. Here and there, Reg could see the webs that the herding spiders had woven to warn predators away.
Reg had a sick feeling in his stomach. He pulled his bow out of a pannier and strung it. He was a passable shot, and while one of his bone-tipped arrows was mostly useful for hunting hare or antelope, it could still annoy a larger predator. He had Martha grab a staff and take the goats’ lead. She was breathing hard and fast.
Reg did his best to keep his voice reassuring, but he wasn’t able to keep worry totally out of it. “It’s probably nothing. There are plenty of reasons they might have moved the herd.” There were some innocuous reasons that the crew would have headed out early, but Reg was worried. Things could go wrong, and sometimes an experienced crew just disappeared.
Reg whistled commands to Ankie, and they prowled forward, looking for signs of what happened to the herding crew. Every few minutes, Ankie would scramble into a tree, crouch down with her legs pulled in close to her body, and then spend a minute scanning the environment. Her large principal eyes would slowly roam over the branch ahead of them, while her six anterior eyes were alert to movement in her immediate surroundings. While Ankie peered ahead, Reg paused the goat train and stayed on guard for nearby dangers.
At the fourth tree that Ankie had paused in, she spotted something. She tapped the branch she crouched on twice. Potential danger. Reg peered in the same direction, but the vines, shrubs, and dwarf-beard moss blocked his vision of whatever Ankie had seen.
If Martha had been more experienced, Reg would have left her with the goat train and crept forward by himself, but her fast breaths and white-knuckled grip on the spear made him worry she’d panic if left alone. They picketed the goats, and he gestured for her to follow as he headed towards whatever Ankie had spotted, moving silently and angling themselves to stay upwind.
When they got a bit closer, he heard caws and the flap of wings. Another minute later, he saw what it was: a group of a dozen bone vultures perched over piles of bones.
The vultures were in the middle of a copse of aspens. As Reg and Martha watched, one of the vultures used its powerful beak to break a rib in two with a sharp crack. Two of the vultures had been twisted by the Mist. One’s feathers were totally black, and they dripped tar as the vulture waddled forward to grab some gore that had been splashed into a thorn bush. The other had horns growing out of its skull and spikes growing down its back. Twisted animals were rare, even this low, but vultures were an exception: there was always a twist or three in a volt.
A masked nightfox darted in to get a bite of viscera, and the vultures ignored it. Most were solely interested in the bones.
Blood didn’t show up against the dark gray of the bark unless there was a lot of it. There was. The bark had turned scarlet-tinted black in large swathes. Viscera and remains had been flung into trees and bushes. On the far side of the clearing, two young aspen trees had been knocked over, and bushes and underbrush around the clearing had been trampled.
Reg heard Martha gagging quietly beside him, but she kept silent and didn’t look away.
They’d found the reason the herders weren’t here.From where Reg crouched, the bones all looked like goat bones. That was a relief. It wasn’t a guarantee that everyone was safe, but as Reg stared at the scene, he could start to see the story of what had happened here. A large predator had ambushed a herd of goats that was passing through the clearing. Some of the goats had fled, leaving behind trampled undergrowth. The two collapsed aspen trees had either come from the predator’s initial attack or from its pursuit of the fleeing goats. It had been big, whatever it was.
If there had been a large predator in the area, the crew would have moved the herd earlier than planned, and they would have tried to cover more distance. Many predators tended to stay in their ranges, hunting the herds of phase antelope and stag beetles as they passed through. It wouldn’t follow the herd that far.
Reg explained everything to Martha in a whisper while heading away from the volt of vultures that was consuming the remains. Vultures weren’t normally dangerous, but the two twisted ones in the volt might be, and other more dangerous predators might be attracted to the area. Reg and Martha needed to find where the crew had camped.
Reg tracked the path of the goats, looking for tufts of wool left on bushes and trampled flowers and grasses. Occasionally, he would pause to let Ankie find the direction before rewarding the spider with a small piece of goat jerky when she chose the right way.
Once Reg saw signs that they were close to where the camp had been, they started to move faster. All of the edible undergrowth had been picked clean, and the outer surface of the bark was weathered along the paths the goats had taken into and out of the camp. The camp had a firepit set up in the lee of a burl, and two fissures that had been cleared of plant life still had the large branches that would have been used to hold up the canvas tarps resting overhead.
But Reg was most interested in the marker that the crew had left behind: a large spider web with two vines stuck to it that formed an arrow pointing to an aspen. Despite their quick departure, the crew had taken the time to leave a clear message. The aspen had a series of numbers carved into its bright white bark:
Reg sighed with relief. Thank the Heart—they’d have written if someone had been hurt or killed. Everyone was safe. Only goats had been killed.
Reg gave Martha a smile. “Based on the map, we should be able to make it before dinner if we hurry.”
“What map?” Martha asked.
“The branch map on the aspen.” At Martha’s uncomprehending stare, Reg asked, “You don’t use maps up in the canopy?”
“Of course, we use maps! And they make a good deal more sense than numbers carved on a tree. You can see where you are, where you’re going, elevators, and bridges. Real bridges, mind. I don’t know how they’d mark your kind.”
“We have bird maps too,” Red said. “My mum probably used one to decide the best foraging spot to head to next. But folks use branch maps to say how to get to a place. It’s always tipwards to start. Numbers tell you the distance to the next fork, and the number of dashes tells you which branch to take from the left. This one says they headed tipward one herder’s mile to the next fork, took the second branch from the left, went on four miles before taking the first branch from the left, then went one more mile.”
As the hours of hiking wore on, Reg started to worry; his estimates of their hiking pace had been far too optimistic. They should have been able to cover at least two herder’s miles an hour—twice as fast as a crew with a full herd—but while Martha had kept up so far, she was flagging. She had started to limp, and she kept dropping behind the back of the goat train, and then breaking into an awkward jog to catch back up. Reg slowed their pace as much as he dared, but the sun was starting to dip low in the sky, and he worried about spending the coming night away from the safety of the herding crew.
To Martha’s credit, she didn’t complain about the pace. She’d stopped looking around for danger, and instead had her eyes fixed on her feet as she pushed onward. She didn’t even react to the sound of a siren bird’s distant “kra-kow, kra-kow.”
At the second fork, Reg jogged through the trees, shrubs, and greenery that blocked the view of the Mist down below. He didn’t say anything to Martha when he got back, but he increased their pace more. The Mist was close. A Storm was coming.
Near the fork, they startled a herd of phase antelope. A few of the antelope stotted as they fled, jumping high with all four legs straight before shimmering out of existence and then reappearing nearby in an emerald flash. Martha was tired enough that she barely glanced at them. Barkle always said that their leaps were to show any nearby predators that the antelope was more trouble than it was worth, but Reg figured they were just showing off for one another.
They covered the last two miles in the bright yellow and red light of sundown. Nocturnal creatures had started to stir: chimera-cats screamed their “chugga-chuggas” to the night, warning other predators away; masked nightfoxes called to one another with whistles and snarls; and nightingales started to sing.
When Reg saw the massive web covering two thorn bushes, he felt a huge amount of relief. He pointed it out to Martha. “We’re close.”
When a herding crew paused in an area, the spiders would spin large webs around the range. Those webs warned predators away. Few predators would tangle with a clutter of spiders unless they were desperate. The first web they saw was rough and uneven, probably spun by one of the wolf spiders.
They started to see more webs and goat-sign—well-nibbled bushes, trees clear of moss, and patches of fur caught on bark—as they neared the camp. When Reg caught the distinctive scent of bucks on the breeze, he fully relaxed. It was a foul scent, but it meant safety and home to him. Reg chuckled at Martha when she caught the scent and gagged. They only had does and wethers in their goat train, so she hadn’t experienced the aroma of a large number of bucks and a herd’s worth of night-manure.
“Ho, the camp!” Reg shouted. “We’re here.”
“Ho, Reg!” Barkle shouted back from behind a copse of trees.
When they walked over, the old herder was sitting on a stump smoking his pipe while a low fire smoldered in front of him. He had a thick beard with more white in it than black, and his face was craggy with wrinkles. His dark gray leathers were covered in muck, barkdust, and some dried blood, but he seemed hale. He raised a hand in greeting to Reg and Martha, but kept his seat—his leg must have been hurting.
Migda, his main herding spider, rested close to the fire with her legs curled up tight to her body. She was a large beast, almost three times Ankie’s size, with brindled brown and black coloring that was fading as she aged. Her eyes reflected reds and oranges from the fire when she looked their way. She hissed at Ankie to let the smaller spider know she was being watched, turned herself slightly and edged closer to the fire, and went back to sleep.
Based on the state of the goat remains Reg and Martha had seen, the crew would have only arrived at this location yesterday afternoon, but the camp was already well established. A leather tarp had been strung up at an angle over the camp kitchen to protect it from rain, and stumps and logs had been dragged over to make seating. Nearby, leather tarps were stretched over bark fissures to make shelter.
“You must be Martha. Jemma said you’d be out with us for a bit. I’m Barkle,” Barkle said when they got close. “Reg, your mum is doing a circuit with Bel. Adrian has first watch.”
Martha grunted something that approximated a greeting at Barkle before slumping down on the ground and staring at the fire. Reg thought briefly about asking her for help with unloading the panniers, but decided to let her rest. It didn’t seem like she’d be of much use anyway. He dropped a waterskin next to her and started to unload the packs.
While hefting the first bag of mossmeal into the cache—a shallow cleared out bark fissure covered with a roof of leather tarp stretched over sticks—Reg asked Barkle, “What attacked the goats at the last site? Looked big.”
“Devil-turtle,” Barkle answered. “Blighted thing got nine goats and almost got Adrian to boot. A real widowmaker of a beast.”
“A devil-turtle?” Martha asked, rousing slightly. “Reg, you didn’t say anything about turtles.”
“They’re rare. Not something I thought we’d see this trip out,” Reg said with a grunt as he lifted a bag of spider feed out of the panniers. He gave both Ankie and Migda handfuls before putting it into the cache.
“Last one I saw was probably five seasons ago,” Barkle added after taking a puff on his pipe. “Looked like a burl had up and decided to walk. They get big. They sit around looking like part of the Tree, waiting for something tasty to stroll by. Not a bad life, eh?”
“Sitting around doing nothing, eh?” Reg asked. “Looks like you’re well on your way. Want to help me with these packs?”
Barkle laughed and stretched his legs out. “A bit of work is good for you, especially after your little vacation.”
Martha groaned and started to stand up. Barkle eyed her. “Girl, sit yourself down. You look like you spent a Storm wrestling chimera-cats. Get your boots off. Reg, grab me my pot—I’ll brew up some mash.”
Martha slumped back down, mumbled, “I’m not a little girl,” and started to pull her boots off. It was a slow process that was accompanied by curses and small noises of pain.
Reg grabbed Barkle’s prized pot from where it hung next to the barrel of water. It was beautiful. It had a large curved copper bottom that had been carefully hammered thin. Two patches of the pot were a slightly brighter shade of copper where it had needed repairs, and the whole of it shone in the firelight, the small dimples from hammer blows making it glimmer almost like crystal. A pot like this could be used to stir fry mushrooms, render goat fat, boil water for mossmeal, and more. It was a marvelous tool. He handed it to Barkle, who started to build up the fire again.
It wasn’t long before Reg had their supplies squared away and was leading his train of goats back to the flock. Spider-line fencing with thorns woven into it kept the flock penned in a large clearing. The fencing wasn’t goat-proof—nothing on the Tree could stand up to a motivated goat—but it was enough to keep them from wandering away at night.
Adrian, a surly herder who was on his first season with the crew, was on watch. He greeted Reg with “You’re back, boy. You’d better have remembered my pipe-moss or there’ll be trouble.”
“I got it,” Reg answered. He wanted to snipe back at Adrian, but it wasn’t worth it in season. You bit your tongue and kept the peace.
When Reg made it back to the camp kitchen, Reg’s mom Jemma and Aunt Bel had returned and were fussing over Martha. Bel had her pack open and was lancing some painful-looking blisters on Martha’s feet. Jemma was brewing willow-bark tea and asking her about the hike out while making sympathetic sounds.
“Heya, Mum. Hey, Auntie,” Reg greeted both of them.
“Kiddo!” Auntie Bel greeted him enthusiastically. “Glad you made it tonight. We were starting to worry you might have to overnight it.”
Auntie Bel was a middle-aged gnome with laugh lines around her eyes, pixie-cut black hair, and a broad face. She was short, even for a gnome—her head wasn’t much higher than most goats’ withers—but was similarly wiry and strong. She wasn’t Reg’s aunt by blood, but she’d been a friend of the family since before Reg was born. She’d given Reg his first sling when he was five and taught him how to use it. She was much more of an aunt to him than anyone on his father’s side of the family; he’d barely met them twice on his few trips into Ithilia. He’d at least met that side of the family, though. His mom’s siblings lived canopy-side, and he didn’t even know their names.
Jemma came over and gave him a quick hug. “I’m glad you’re safe.”
Reg hugged her back tightly. Once he’d seen the marker, he’d been sure that everyone was okay, but it was a different matter altogether to see them in the flesh.
Jemma Burlbush was tall, and Reg got his height from her side of the family. Unlike Bel, she kept her black hair long but wore it in a tight braid. The purple tint to her blue eyes spoke to at least a smidge of elven heritage somewhere in the family tree. She was spider-cord lean and hard from long seasons on wild branches while Reg’s father stayed home to take care of the ranch and raise the children.
Jemma and Bel pumped Reg for news of home. Reg’s sister Nadia had stopped by the ranch during the day he’d spent at home, and her son Kalen had just started to toddle around. He’d spent the time chasing Ankie, who had been delighted to have a new playmate.
Reg’s father, Delan, had passed on gossip. The Glendoors were talking of moving uptrunk after one fissure-farm too many had failed, even if it meant indenturing themselves. They had a large family, and Edgar Glendoor liked the drink a bit too much.
There were rumors that Lord Adhana was going to increase this year’s levy—Barkle spat at this. “Blighted lords could suck sap from a staff”—but it was still only gossip, nothing trunk-solid. Reg saw worry on his mother’s face at the rumor; the levy was already high.
As Reg and Martha dug into their bowls of mossmeal, the wind started to rise. This branch, a few forks out, was thin enough that the swaying from a strong wind was noticeable. Occasional creaks and groans from the Tree complemented the sound of wind through the leaves and shrubbery. Night had fully fallen, and the only lights came from the fire and from the few stars that were visible through gaps in the boughs and leaves.
“I don’t like the feel of this night,” Jemma said. “Mist is close, the wind is high, and you know how the animals can get. I figure we should double up on watches.”
“You ain’t wrong,” Barkle responded. He used his staff to lever himself up from his stump with a groan. “I’ve got next watch, so I’ll reckon I’ll join Adrian. C’mon, Migda. There’s a good gal.”
“What’s a Storm like?” Martha asked. Her voice was small.
There was silence. Eventually, Jemma spoke. “It’s like—” She paused, searching for the right words. “There aren’t normally twists, if that’s what you’re asking. The wall and the guard keep them down where they belong. Some animals panic, others hide, and a few attack.”
“It’s pressure,” Auntie Bel added. “When the Mist is here, it wants to change you. Make you its own. Twist you.”
“You hear things that aren’t there,” Reg said after another pause. “See things that aren’t real. Remember things that aren’t real. It stays with you.”
Silence fell again, broken only by the sounds of Martha trying to control her breathing. Just a week ago, she’d been safe and sound on the upper branches. Today, she’d seen the Mist, the remnants of a devil-turtle attack, and was starting to grasp what it meant to be a herder on the lower branches. What would possess a person to come out here?
Auntie Bel nudged Jemma and put some levity in her voice as she asked, “Do you remember little Reggy’s first storm out here?”
Jemma started; she’d been lost in thought. She caught on to Bel’s tone. “Reg’s first storm? Bark and bramble, I hadn’t thought of that in a while.” She chuckled, and when Martha’s head came up, she began the story: “The Storm came all of a sudden. The Mist rose a few hundred paces within minutes. We were scrambling, trying to get the goats penned. It was madness.”
“Crazy as it ever gets,” Auntie Bel added with a laugh. “You were trying to get a buckling out of a bush and hollering for Reg.”
“I was worried! It was his first Storm. But you know what he’d done? He’d stripped naked as the day he was born and was relaxing in a cozy spot on the bark. Ankie was still a wee spiderling, and she was curled up on his chest, calm as could be, while the rest of us handled all of the goats and everything else.”
“Don’t skip the best part!” Bel said. “He’d covered himself in flowers. Like some kind of fancy high-branch artist’s model. Artful he was. Like a painting. Reg, do you remember what kinds of flowers you used?”
Reg groaned. “I do. All of the flowers that the goats hadn’t already eaten: dryad’s bells, thorned hyacinth, and scarlet thicketberry blossoms.” At Martha’s look, Reg explained, “Dryad’s bells and thorned hyacinth are poisonous enough that the goats don’t touch ’em. If you’re fool enough to lay ’em all over your body, you’ll have an itch that won’t stop for almost a moon. And scarlet thicketberry blossoms aren’t nearly as potent as the berries, but you still get some through the skin. I don’t recommend it.”
Bel was laughing uproariously, and it was easy to join in. Martha was looking calmer and laughing along. Bel started another story about the year when Barkle had caught fright of doors. The mood had shifted away from worries about Mist Storms, twists, and madness. You had to laugh at the Mist, or you’d cry.
But Reg remembered that first Storm out here too. It was the first Storm when he’d truly been in the Mist, not safe inside at the ranch or in Glenfork. He remembered why he’d gathered flowers and laid himself down on the bark.
He’d known he was dead. Known it as surely as he knew his name. He was dead. He shouldn’t be walking around or talking like a person. Corpses didn’t do that.
He’d known he was dead, so he put himself to rest. He’d gathered flowers for a pall and found a spot where he could decompose and give his body back to the Tree—his bones to branches, his heart to seed, his soul to the wind. The traditional lower-branch burial.
He’d known he was dead. And yet his mum walked past, yelling at him to get up and help. Uncaring that her son wasn’t alive anymore, not shedding any tears at his graveside. Auntie Bel, Barkle, Vince—they’d all walked by too, but his mother not caring had cut the deepest. The dead shouldn’t be able to feel, but he had.
Like a dream that didn’t fully lose its hold when he woke, he remembered the hurt. He knew, at a deep level that he couldn’t shake, that he’d once died and nobody had mourned him. At low moments, he remembered that day, and he struggled to believe that it had only been a fancy of the Mist. Not real.
Barkle’s limp was another reminder. That same Storm, Barkle had been wounded fending off a twisted boar. During the whole frantic trip to get Barkle to a healer, Reg had wondered whether Barkle would have been hurt at all if he’d been able to hold himself together. Reg could have helped.
The whole memory of that Storm was a scar.
Reg forced himself to rejoin the conversation. You had to laugh at the Mist. Or how would you stay out here?