He had thought they were his friends, and they had lied to him. Lua had been his friend first, and now she loved Moon better, enough to lie for him. Tren scrambled to his feet, furious. “I’ll tell! I’ll tell Kaleb, I’ll tell everyone!”
“No, you can’t!” Lua shook her head, appalled. “They won’t understand! We were going to tell you, that’s why we came here—”
Moon stared at him, stricken. “Don’t.”
Their reaction, the obvious accord between them, just made him angrier. “I will, you’re from the forest, you’re dangerous!” If he had had time to think he would have known he was being stupid, threatening this strange creature.
Except that Moon didn’t look like a strange creature, he looked like the frightened hurt boy they had found in the trap. “I just want a place to live—”
Lua yelled, “You can’t tell!”
Tren ran, pounding away down the path.
He didn’t run home, he ran to one of the fruit gardens near the fringe, and hid in the damp tall grass near the rain cistern. Then he cried until his nose ran and his head ached and he couldn’t cry anymore.
That was when he realized he wasn’t really afraid of Moon. He sat alone near the fringe, the birds singing overhead, and he wasn’t afraid Moon would come after him. He was afraid of the Tath, even though it was dead, and mad at Lua, mad at Moon for not telling him that he could fly, and angry at himself for crying. Kaleb’s words came back to him: You’re not afraid… because you know there’s nothing to fear.
Moon had slept in their house for days and days, eaten meals with them, played with them. There were no stories where forest-monsters did things like that. They were like the Tath and Ghobin, killing everything for food. There were no stories about monsters who could make themselves look like ordinary people. And he saved you, Tren thought.
The image of the Tath’s face filled his vision, and his skin burned like its hands were still on him. He leapt to his feet and ran toward home.
Lua was there, but it was evident from Ari’s calm demeanor and the unconcern of the other children that she hadn’t said anything about what had happened. She was hiding in her corner by the hearth, scratching on her slate, and didn’t look at Tren when he came in. That suited Tren, who didn’t want to look at anyone either. He stamped back to the main sleeping room, rolled up in his blanket, and went to sleep.
He slept through the rest of the afternoon, waking only briefly when Ari came to feel his forehead, suspicious that he had taken sick. He woke for real at dusk, and stumbled out into the main room. Ari was carrying a pot in from the cistern, and the other children were gathering for supper. Guilty and self-conscious, Tren looked for Moon, expecting to see him with Lua in the corner.
Moon wasn’t there.
Kaleb walked in from the stillroom, wiping his hands on a towel. He glanced around at them all, doing a quick head-count, and said, “Where’s Moon?”
Lua looked up. Her eyes were red, but she wasn’t crying. She said, “He’s gone.” That was when Tren saw she had her doll back. Tattered and dirty, it lay beside her on the hearth stone.
“Gone?” Kaleb glanced at her. “Gone where?”
“Gone away.” Lua’s voice was tight and sullen. “Down the Long Road.”
Kaleb stared, and Ari stepped forward, frowning. “You mean, he’s left the valley?”
Lua nodded. Kaleb and Ari exchanged a look, their faces puzzled, distressed. Ari said, “Whyever for?”
Lua looked down, pressed her lips together, and wouldn’t answer.
Kaleb and Ari couldn’t leave it at that. Kaleb took a lamp and rousted the neighbors and went out to search the settlement. Tren knew Kaleb was hoping that Moon had gone off to hide and sulk, like the other children did occasionally.
Everyone went outside, watching the neighbors walk around with lamps, as Kaleb gathered a group to go and search the fringe. Tren found Lua sitting on the stone of the garden boundary, out of earshot of the others. He eased up beside her and whispered, “Why did he go?” He knew exactly why Moon had left, the knowledge ate at him like a … like a monster, but he was hoping against hope there had been another reason.
Lua turned to him and even in the dark he knew what her expression was like. Her voice was bitter. “You said you’d tell. If people find out what he is, they’ll try to kill him. He said that’s what always happened before, when people see him.”
Tren slumped in misery. “I didn’t mean it.”
“You sounded like you did!” Lua slapped him with the doll, with a fury that suggested that she would rather be slapping him with a rock. “You were jealous.”
Tren looked away. There was no point in denying it. But the jealousy had fled, leaving him cold, empty, and guilty.
Lua said, “He was jealous of you.” Tren stared at her, uncomprehending, and she continued, “He told me. He didn’t come to the midden to look for food, he came to watch us. He came here a month before we found him, and he stayed to watch us, from high in the trees where no one could see him. He was jealous of the way Kaleb talked to you, and showed you how to do things. He was jealous because he thought I was your little sister, like the one he used to have. He was watching us play in the midden and he was so jealous he didn’t see the trap.”
“I’m sorry,” Tren said, miserably, inadequately. Lua shoved to her feet and ran away, pelting down the hill back toward the house.
They didn’t find Moon, and Kaleb and Ari worried about him for months, hoping he would come back. Lua didn’t speak to Tren for ten days, but when she did she admitted that Moon had said the Tath had probably tracked him to the settlement. That he had killed some of its pack a few valleys away, and it might have been waiting near the midden, having scented Moon’s blood at the spot where the trap had been. That Moon had thought it was all his fault.
That didn’t make Tren feel any better. But Lua also said, “He said he wanted to fly so much, but it was too dangerous to do it here, there were too many people who might see him. He said he couldn’t live without flying, so he couldn’t live here for long.”
Tren hoped it was true, and not just Moon trying to make Lua feel better. Lua eventually forgave Tren, but he never forgot what had happened. And he never looked at the forest the same way again.
ADAPTATION
This is another prequel to The Cloud Roads, set in the Indigo Cloud court at the eastern colony.
Chime woke to dim dawn light falling through the air shaft high above his bower. He wanted to sleep more, but his curved basket bed was too hot and crowded. Rill was cuddled against his chest, and she had been here when he went to sleep. But he didn’t remember inviting the third occupant. Squinting back over his shoulder, he identified Braid. Grumpy and still half-asleep, Chime nudged the hunter with an elbow. “What are you doing here?”
Braid yawned. “Oh, is this your bed?” he said. “I thought it was Blossom’s.”
That was annoying. If someone was going to invade Chime’s bower, it could at least be for sex with him. He elbowed Braid again. “Get out.”
Rill poked him in the chest. “If you’re getting up, tell Petal I’m working in the gardens today.”
“I’m not—all right, all right.” Giving up, Chime pushed himself up and clambered over Rill to drop down out of the basket bed.
He pulled on his clothes, then picked his way through the stray belongings littering the floor to the doorway. His bower was at the top of the long open hall of the teachers’ level of the colony. A faint breeze came down the air shafts, carrying the green scents of the jungle and the cool damp of the shallow river beyond the heavy stone walls. The groundlings who had originally built this structure turns and turns ago might have meant it to be a palace or temple, but it made a fine Raksuran colony, with lots of long passages and plenty of nooks and crannies for bowers. This hall had many tall doorways, opening to narrow stairways and bowers curtained off with long drapes of fabric, and there was a shallow pool of water down the center for drinking a
nd washing.
Chime splashed water on his face to wake himself up, and made his way out of the hall and through the passages to the center well. It was a big airy chamber with a shaft open to the floors above and below, dawn light falling down it from openings in the upper part of the structure. Hanging beds with fruit vines hung down from the three levels above, their sweet scent lacing the cool morning air.
Chime was about to shift and climb down to the work areas below, when six warriors dropped down the shaft, their wings partially spread, spines flared, tails whipping around. Chime stumbled back as they flashed by, their bright scales blending into a rainbow of colors. “Watch it!” he shouted. This was just more confirmation for his private theory that wings made people stupid.
The only response was a laugh, echoing up from below.
Raksura were divided into winged Aeriat and wingless Arbora, and sometimes they were divided in more ways than that one. The four Arbora castes of teachers, hunters, soldiers, and mentors cared for the colony and took care of its children, and produced everything it needed. The Aeriat, warriors and the queens and consorts, protected and guided the court. Or that was the idea, anyway. In Indigo Cloud, the queens did the protecting and guiding and the warriors, especially the young male ones, mostly caused trouble.
“Stupid warriors,” he muttered. “Oh, sorry, Balm.” She was just climbing down from the open platform on the level above and dropped to land on the floor beside him. Balm was a warrior too, but a cut above the others; she was clutchmate to Jade, the court’s daughter queen.
She waved away the comment with a distracted expression, and shifted to her groundling form. Like all the warriors she was tall and slim, with sharp features. She had the dark bronze-brown skin common to the main Indigo Cloud bloodline, but her curly hair was a lighter color, reminiscent of the gold scales she wore in her other body. “They’re just excited. Jade suggested to Pearl that we send a group to visit Mist Silver, and they all want to go.”
Visiting other courts for trade and to exchange news was part of the warriors’ duties, though they hadn’t done much of it lately. In fact, Chime couldn’t remember the last time Indigo Cloud had sent an embassy to one of their allies, and he knew no one had visited them for a couple of turns except Sky Copper, their nearest neighbor. Arbora were sometimes taken on these trading visits too, and Chime had a moment of excitement himself, knowing that as a mentor he had an advantage in trying to wangle a spot on the trip. “You think Pearl will let them go? I’d think she’d send you and Vine, not any of those idiots.”
Balm shrugged, her mouth set in an ironic line. “I don’t think she’ll send anybody.”
Chime, in the middle of convincing himself that he actually wanted to leave the safety of the colony and visit another court, frowned. “Why not?”
“Because it was Jade’s idea.” Balm shook her head, frustrated. “We need allies, but Pearl just doesn’t seem to care anymore.”
It had been obvious for a while that Pearl, the reigning queen, hadn’t been as attentive to the court’s needs as she should have been, and that she also seemed to be resisting Jade’s natural transition from daughter queen to sister queen. Everyone knew it, but no one talked about it. Chime found himself hesitant to talk about it with Balm, though she had brought it up. But he took the chance and asked the question that many of the younger Arbora had been whispering to each other when they thought the elders weren’t listening. “If we don’t start visiting other courts again, where is Jade going to get a consort?”
“Good question,” Balm said, her expression somewhere between rueful and grim.
Jade couldn’t take her place as sister queen without a consort. Chime didn’t understand why Pearl was so set against it, if she was tired of ruling the court herself. “But—”
“I’d better go.” Balm gave him a regretful smile. “We’ll talk later.”
Meaning Balm didn’t want anyone to hear her criticize Pearl. Glumly, Chime watched her climb down the inner wall. For the first time that morning, he shifted to his scaled form.
And everything went dark.
He woke lying on his back, blinking up at the worried faces that hovered over him. Braid was here now, and Rill, and Petal, as well as Balm. But the person crouched next to him was Jade, the young daughter queen, the soft blue of her scales vivid against the gray walls. He stared at her, startled. She watched him with worry and some other emotion he couldn’t quite place. Fear? What’s she afraid of?
“What happened? Did I fall?” he tried to ask, but his voice was a strangled croak. He had shifted and he could feel the gritty stone floor under his scales. He started to lift a hand to his head.
“Just lie still.” Petal caught his hand. She was leader of the teachers’ caste, and she and Chime had been friends since the nurseries. He had never seen her look this disturbed. Her voice tight and tense, she said, “Flower’s coming.”
Chime stared at her. He cleared his throat. “Am I hurt?” He didn’t feel hurt; stunned, maybe, and a little sore in the back. Nobody answered, they just looked at each other, like … like he didn’t know what. Fear made his heart pound. “What is it? Tell me!”
They all looked at Jade. Jade took a sharp breath, as if about to plunge into something unpleasant. “Chime, something happened when you shifted. You don’t look like yourself. I mean, we can still tell it’s you, but it’s you … if you were a warrior.”
He stared up at her, incredulous. “That’s not funny,” he said weakly, but no one was laughing. “That can’t … what? That’s not …” He pulled his hand from Petal’s grasp, stared at it. The scales of his shifted form should be gold-brown, a common color for Arbora in his line. But the light fell on dark blue scales, catching a gold undersheen. The blue was close to Jade’s shade. There were blue Arbora, but it wasn’t as common … “Oh, this can’t be happening.” Chime pushed away from them, shoved himself to his feet. He staggered; his balance was off, his body oddly light.
Someone must have carried him out of the central well; they were in one of the smaller side rooms, the one with a fountain pool fed by a channel in the wall. Chime stumbled to the pool and almost swayed over backwards. Catching himself on the rim, he stared down at his reflection.
He was looking at a Raksuran warrior, tall, lean, with blue scales. Horrified and fascinated, he raised his spines to see if they were longer, and something else extended out behind him. It took him a moment to realize he was looking at the edges of his wings as they unfolded from his back. “Oh, no.”
Jade said sharply, “Chime, don’t.” She stepped up behind him to press on a spot between his shoulder blades. Some reflex he didn’t understand made the wings fold back in at the pressure. “There’s no room in here. If you extend your wings, you’ll hurt yourself.”
Your wings. That was why his back felt heavy, why his balance was gone, why his body felt light. Warriors had lighter bones than Arbora. He turned to Jade, saying helplessly, “What happened?”
She spread her hands. “I wish I knew.”
“What’s this?”
Chime turned to see Flower stood in the archway, Balm behind her. Flower was in her groundling form, a small woman with ragged white hair, dressed in a loose smock. She was thin for an Arbora, with the paling skin and white hair that signaled advanced age. She planted her hands on her hips, annoyed. “Balm said Chime was hurt and I don’t even see …” She met his gaze, and blinked. “Chime,” she finished. “Oh. Oh, my.”
“It just happened,” he blurted. Flower had been Chime’s teacher since he had been a child, since they had first told him he was going to be a mentor. Back then, he had thought she could do anything. He still thought so. “Can you fix it?”
“Ah …” Her expression of growing consternation was not encouraging. “Give me some time.”
Braid said, “Maybe he should try shifting again. That’s how it happened.”
Chime leapt on the idea. “Yes! Yes, I’ll try—” Ignoring Jade, Flower, Petal,
and Balm’s chorus of “Wait!” Chime shifted.
The startling thing was that the change felt the same as it always had, no pain, no odd sensation of the world twisting around him. He whipped around to stare down into the pool, overbalanced and nearly pitched in headfirst. He caught himself and grimaced, waiting impatiently for the water to still again.
“I don’t think it worked,” Braid offered helpfully.
Chime groaned. As the ripples faded, he saw the groundling form of a warrior, tall, thin. He still felt too light, but not as if he was about to float off the floor. It was recognizably him—same eyes, same nose, same mouth, just arranged on a longer face. His skin was the same even bronze, his hair the same light brown. His pants and shirt were the same ones he had put on that morning, but now they were too short for his height and too wide or too tight in all the wrong places. He slumped on the fountain rim, miserable. “How could this happen?”
Jade looked at Flower, the scales on her brow furrowed. “It’s a good question. How could this happen?”
Balm added quietly, “And is it going to happen to anyone else?”
In the ensuing worried silence, Braid said, “Are we all going to switch, Arbora into Aeriat and Aeriat into Arbora? Because that would be horrible.”
Chime glared up at him, fury temporarily overcoming the humiliation. “Yes, that would be horrible! How could anybody possibly live like that?”
“Chime!” Flower’s sharp voice didn’t quell his hysteria, but it did make him shut up.
Flower sat on the rim beside him. She said, quietly, “Chime, hold still, and look at me.”
His throat went dry. Powerful mentors like Flower could look into your mind, see sicknesses, other things that weren’t supposed to be there. Chime was nearly as strong as Flower, but he had only done it once, to a younger mentor named Merit. He had had other mentors do it to him for practice, but this was different. He took a deep breath, and looked into Flower’s eyes.