16: Dangers of the Sky

First —- Previous —- Glossary —- Archive —- Next

“We’ll come with you,” San tells Tyk as the family head out of their residential chamber that morning.

“Aren’t you needed in the tunnels?” Tyk asks. “The collapse – ”

“It’s mostly handled. And I’m sure that the rest of the girls can handle the dirt without me for one day.”

“A whole day?”

“The guards at the egg will want replacing,” Kesan points out. “Pol and Kepol are still out there, aren’t they? Kepol will bite my legs off if I don’t tell him about the pollen storm as soon as I get the chance. And they’ll want to come back and check that their loved ones are all safe.”

That is a good point. There’s a chance that Smon’s already told them, but Tyk doubts it – the pair would’ve rushed back if that were the case, or at the very least one of them would have. So she confirms that the pollen storm patients have recovered (they mostly have, although a few are still a bit drowsy) and leads her parents out to Smon’s little sky boat.

It hasn’t changed all that much from yesterday. The sturdy vehicle sits on the grass, water tank bolted to one side, long tent covering the mouth and extending several times the length of the boat. Tyk still isn’t entirely sure what the tent part is for – maybe Smon just wants the extra space. Or a little distance from her dead companions, who Tyk is pretty sure are stashed somewhere in there – if Smon’s buried them like Tyk’s people would, then Tyk hasn’t seen where.

Kesan goes to tell Pol and Kepol about everything that’s happened, and Tyk, with San behind her, heads for the tent.

“Tyk?”

It’s Smon’s voice, close by, although Tyk can’t see her. She glances about and quickly finds the source – an echo stone stuck to the tent itself, next to the door.

“Hello, Smon,” Tyk says, hoping she can be heard. “Are you well?”

“Yes,” the echo stone says. “Redstone River Hive not well. Go, Tyk. Big go forever.”

Go? What? Tyk makes for the door.

“Stop!”

Tyk stops, more out of puzzlement than anything. Can Smon see her as well as hear her? Is there no end to the powers of her stones? “Smon?”

“Danger! Go, Tyk. Smon is danger. Hurt.”

“You’re hurt?”

“No! Men hurt! Smon… poison.”

So she’s upset about the pollen storm, and it sounds like the sky people are the cause. Good; she has information. Tyk turns San. “This’ll probably go faster if I can talk to her alone. She gets a bit edgy when she’s crowded.”

“I am not leaving you here. She just told you to leave! She said you’re in danger!”

With far more authority than she’d ever before dared show her mother, Tyk says, “do you think that the hive is in more or less danger if we don’t get this information?”

San shifts her weight off her front two feet uneasily. “You shouldn’t have to – ”

“You’re probably right. But I do have to. She knows me the best; I know how to talk to her the best. Please, Mum.”

With a delicate mandible touch and some barely-audible discontented clicking, San retreats. Tyk waits until she’s out of earshot before asking, “Smon, what’s wrong?”

“Go now, Tyk.”

“No.”

“Danger – ”

“The sooner you talk to me, the sooner I go.”

“Smon people bring poison.”

“You mean the pollen storm?”

“What?”

Of course, she doesn’t know the words for ‘pollen storm’. “The thing that made the men sick.”

“Yes. Bring in egg… small life. Everywhere small life, many many small, not see, so many small. On you, on grass, on dirt. Different small life on Smon, in egg, small life from Smon Earth. I think not dangerous because different small-sunlight-shape. Cannot eat Tyk life, many different. But I was wrong. Small life are… small life do many things. Now men sick. Probably die. Go, or Tyk die. Smon is… Smon want… Tyk, I…”

Smon doesn’t have the words to apologise. But Tyk knows what she means.

She also knows that it was a god idea to send her mother away, because if San had heard any of this, she’d be panicking. But Tyk is familiar enough with the way Smon speaks to immediately pick up something very important: Smon’s wrong.

Smon thinks that some sort of contamination she brought from her sky boat did this, like some idiot going for a swim and then wandering the moss farms without drying off in direct sunlight first, introducing rot to the delicate crops. She hasn’t mentioned the pollen storm at all.

“You didn’t hurt them,” Tyk says. “The men are not sick. They’re well again.”

“Well? All men?”

A few are still a bit drowsy, but close enough. “Yes. They were sick from a pollen storm. Pollen is from plants, it makes new plants. For some very very high plants, it goes in the wingsong stream to spread very very far. Breathing it makes people a little bit sick. There was lots of pollen last day. Men didn’t know it would be there. They breathed it in. They are well now. No poison from you hurt them. Pollen hurt them.”

“You know? You big know?”

Was she sure? Yes. She’d seen the pollen herself, and there are a few members of the hive who’d experienced the phenomenon before, elsewhere. There could be no doubt. “Yes. We big know.”

The echo stone doesn’t say anything. After a short wait, the tent opens, and Smon peeks out.

She looks horrible.

Tyk is no expert on sky people faces, but the flesh of Smon’s is definitely swollen. Her eyes, usually gelatinous blobs of white with a dark spot in each to indicate where she’s looking, are networked with lines of red, the colour of Smon’s blood. They are copiously leaking some kind of transparent fluid, like phlegm being expelled from an infected lung. Smon’s face looks disconcerting at the best of times, but at the moment, it resembles nothing so much as an open, infected wound.

“Smon! You’re hurt!”

“What? No. Not hurt.” She wipes some fluid out of her eyes (so she’s aware that it’s there, at least), and makes that hacking sound that Tyk has come to learn indicates joy. Then she wraps her arms around Tyk’s torso and squeezes, like she’s trying to throw Tyk to the ground and pin her. She doesn’t try to do that, though. She just stays where she is, arms wrapped around Tyk, while her joyous hitching turns into something else, some similar kind of breath-hitching sound that Tyk has never heard before.

Terrified of accidentally hurting her much softer friend, Tyk holds still until Smon lets her go.

“You are hurt,” Tyk says patiently, indicating Smon’s face.

“Not hurt,” Smon insists.

Well, she would know, Tyk supposes. Difficult as that is to believe. Tyk’s mostly just happy that they got through that entire interaction without San and Kesan deciding she was being attacked and leaping to her rescue.

Where are they, anyway?

She glances about and spies her parents and half-parents some distance away, keeping a general protective eye on the proceedings. Half paying attention to Tyk and Smon, and half to each other. There’s a certain level of flirtatiousness in Pol’s stance.

Ugh. Of course.

This sort of thing is always a danger when people are as attached to each other as Kesan and Kepol. They won’t be seriously courting, Tyk’s pretty sure of that – it’s very much frowned upon to go seeking more eggs when you’re still raising a daughter at home. Neither Tyk nor her half-sister have even laid their truebrothers yet, so courtship is off the table for quite some time, which for most girls would mean being spared this sort of thing. But Kesan and Kepol only have eyes for each other, so unless San or Pol find themselves interested in somebody outside their little group (highly unlikely), their next courtship is a foregone conclusion, and the only matter is time. Tyk’s never asked her parents, of course (gross), but she half-suspects that they’ve never courted anybody but Pol and Kepol. They’re certainly unlikely to do so in the future.

Which means that she has to sit through this not-courting-yet-but-won’t-it-be-fun-someday nonsense any time the four get together. Ew.

“Farm is good,” Smon says.

“You can make food?”

“Yes! Well… works. Found way to grow right things, but slow. Must make faster.”

“You can just make it bigger, right?”

“Yes, if need. But big not good for going place. Will try small. Do more work.”

“You sorted that out quickly.”

Smon rolls her shoulders. “When Smon people fall down know, need make food. Smon people know how make before fall, bring things need to make food.”

“You don’t know anything about the pollen storm?”

She rocks her head. Then thinks a bit. “This happen many time before Smon?”

“Sometimes. But it’s very very rare. Not often, not expected.” Smon probably doesn’t know enough words to make sense of that. Tyk tries again. “This not happen to Redstone River Hive before Smon. We think not happen, then happen fast, now.”

“Wingsong stream is up high.”

“Very high, yes.”

“Maybe Smon people fall and do this. Hot things in high air? Yes, maybe.”

“You didn’t expect this?”

Smon rolls her shoulders again. “On Smon Earth, high up air not… we not make from. Smon not know high up air.”

Smon’s people don’t use a wingsong stream, which Tyk could’ve guessed from how much the concept seems to confuse her. So Smon doesn’t know anything about the stream, or how falling stars could affect it.

So they have no information. Great.

The other sky people might know, once the stream settles down and communication is re-established. But if that happens, then that probably means the danger’s passed and it won’t matter. The distant hives… oh, that’s right!

“Smon, they’ve found more living sky people. Nineteen now.”

“Nineteen? Eighteen plus Smon?”

“Yes.”

“Good! Many good!”

Many good indeed. “We need to explain what you are to the hive. Everyone will be able to plan better once we’re on the same page.”

“Yes.”

She and Smon head back toward the hive, Pol and Kepol coming to join them. Tyk wishes that Smon had fallen just a little bit closer to the hive. They’ll wear a road into the ground at this rate, with all the back and forth walking they seem to be doing.

Smon and Pol have an animated discussion on the way back. About farming and ecology, of all things, despite their limited pool of shared words. One echo stone is still attached to Smon’s tent, meaning that she owns at least two… how many does she have? Can she make them? Would she be open, perhaps, to trading them? She had been pretty interested in the concept of trade, back when she’d first come to the hive.

She hadn’t been holding the one on the tent, meaning that the echo stones can be used at a distance. Could they be used to communicate from different tunnels? From the top of the tower to the ground, without somebody having to fly down? From hive to hive, with the wingsong stream in its current state? (Probably not that last one, or the star people would already be communicating with each other.)

Interesting to ponder. Once they’ve gotten all the sky people together and safe, there could be a whole new world of possibilities out there for the hives.

First —- Previous —- Glossary —- Archive —- Next