25: Red Water Rush

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Three days after Smon starts riding in the cart, Bette’s old legs begin to fail her, and she caves to her childrens’ fussing and gets in a cart herself. Having two of their group riding slows them down significantly; not only is the weight significant and means that some of the goods previously in those carts need to be redistributed to others, making every cart heavier, but Smon and Bette’s path-clearing and foraging efforts had been doing a lot to ease their journey. Mir reflects that it’s going to become more difficult as they get close to the Green Hills Hive and the forage becomes more sparse – the track between hives is a forager’s paradise, being too far from a hive to be regularly picked clean by random workers and having been maintained by generations of travellers who bury their leftover tubers and seeds and plant the roots of grub-attracting plants near the path of travel. When they get into the regular travel range of Green Hills, they can expect the land to be about as sparse as that around Redstone River; not impossible to forage on, but unlikely to feed the whole caravan.

Of course, when they’re that close to the Green Hills Hive, it shouldn’t matter. The forage range should start about a day’s flight from the hive and won’t be severely picked over until they’re within a day’s (cart-free) walk for the women, and somewhere between those two points, the hive should become aware of them and send people out to help.

Smon keeps practising with her talking instrument, and it does not magically become any better at talking. Kesan becomes particularly interested in it, settling on her shoulder to listen and give advice, and for a little while Tyk wonders if it’s any better at imitating a man, but no; it doesn’t sound any more like Kesan than it does like Tyk.

It’s a few days later when Tyk learns just how little time they have to carry their message.

Every few days, Smon likes to change out her silks for others among her personal effects, and clean her body and the old silks in the river. (This is her people’s version of grooming.) The fact that each washing makes the silks appear dirtier doesn’t seem to bother her; Tyk asks her about it and she shrugs. “Clean water is better,” she says, “but this is okay. Dirt not matter like smell and body things. And even with dirt, river water is… small things in river not hurt.”

“Crabs and bugs? I’m pretty sure they could bite you if they wanted.”

“No, small small things, sick causing things. In your world, they eat different small sun shape, so they not eat my small sun shapes. This water is okay, dirt does not matter.”

“You could still clean it. Don’t you have a filter for this?”

“For drinking water, and water for my farm, yes. But it only makes a small amount of clean water.”

Tyk looks at the water. Is it redder than the water at home? It might be her imagination, or it might simply be that Smon has stirred up the dirt. Or it might be…

She walks into the river and slips under the surface. Onshore, she can see clear across the river, with the opposite shore just visible in the distance; underneath, she can’t see nearly that far. But that’s expected, in the murky water of the river.

She swims a little way out into the water. It’s different than the river near the Redstone River Hive; tall fronds of something sharp, fragile and alive grow up in thin spikes from the bottom of the river up to nearly the surface. They don’t grow straight, but are angled with the current, so that one could pass harmlessly over them moving downriver but get stabbed moving upriver. Between the spikes drift something blobby and soft-looking that Tyk has never seen before, uncarapaced like a baby, or like Smon. Round beasts with huge, bulbous eyes and long flexible arms that pull them from sharp stalk to sharp stalk. They retreat into the fronds at her approach and stare at her silently.

It’s clear they’re not going to attack her, so Tyk ignores them and their strange forest and swims down to the bottom of the river, as far inward as she can get without having to push too far into the forest of dangerous stalks. The water runs faster at the bottom of the river, and the warning of the wet season always starts there. It’s too dark for her to see the water so deep, do instead she gulps a mouthful of it and can already taste her answer. She swims to shore and spits it up, a tangy, deep red fluid, onto the sand.

The water is starting to swell. If any of the sky people are planning to cross while they still can, they’ll do so very soon.

Their messenger party is running out of time.

She rushes back to the burrow to inform the others. After a couple of the women check to confirm her findings, the men fly up to check their position, and the group decide that they’re close enough to the Green Hills Hive that it should be safe to send a couple of the men on ahead. They still have a fair journey ahead on the ground pulling carts, but the strongest, swiftest men should be able to fly to the hive in about four days. With neither the cart supplies nor taking the time to forage, it’ll be a strenuous journey for the men, and San’s against it, but Kesan calms her down.

“A few days without food won’t kill us,” he says. “We can eat and rest and wait for you when we get to the hive. Anyway, if it does become too much partway through the journey, we can take a day to forage and rest, and still reach the hive far ahead of you.”

So Kesan and Kemir are sent on ahead, slowing the caravan further; but so long as the fliers reach the hive quickly, the caravan’s speed no longer matters. Still, Tyk pushes forward as quickly as she can, wanting to meet back up with her father as soon as possible. What if he gets hurt out here, far from their hive and in unfamiliar territory, where nobody would look for him for days? What if he needs help, and has no way to get it? What if he dies?

San and Mir seem to be in a hurry, too, as does Bette; while she spends a lot of their journey resting on one of the carts, she forages with ruthless efficiency every time they stop for the night and get to work prepping the carts for travel at sunrise every morning, hoping to get moving again as quickly as possible. The terrain gets notably hillier as they travel and the track wavier, weaving between small high hills and over large shallow ones. Until, one afternoon, they spot someone in the sky.

The scout descends, and Tyk is disappointed to see that it’s not Kesan. It’s a stranger, who hovers above them and hums in a Green Hills accent. “Welcome! Hello, Bette!”

“Kerun? You’ve grown up!”

“And you’ve gotten old!”

“Still young enough to give your sister a nip, you brat!”

Kerun lands on her back and gives her a quick look-over before addressing the group again. “The hive have been notified of your arrival. We’re ready for you. Are you in critical need of anything?”

“No,” Ohta says. “How are our messengers?”

“Kemir and Kesan are both fine and awaiting your arrival.” The whole party relaxes a little at hearing that. Without approaching her, Kerun turns his attention to Smon. “And you are the outsider named Smon.”

“Yes. I am pleased to meet you, Kerun.” Smon makes a quick, halfhearted greeting gesture before getting to the root of the matter: “How are Haidn and Myn? Are any others waiting to cross the river?”

There’s some uneasiness in Kerun’s response. “Haidn and Myn should be fine, so far as I know. Currently, there are no outsiders at the Green Hills Hive. But we recall hosting Haidn and Myn; we know how to look after you.”

“Not there?” The fear and confusion is evident in Smon’s body language, at least it is to Tyk, although her echo stone’s words cannot convey it. “Where did they go?”

“They decided to cross the river some time ago.”

“That not the plan! Why?”

“It’s probably better if the hiveheart explain it,” Kerun says. “I don’t really understand much of their plans. But they certainly seemed to know what they’re doing, and I’m sure they’re fine.”

“Why?” Smon presses. “They leave before or after the wingsong stream changed?”

“After. The hiveheart can explain. I will tell your men that you’re alright and on track.” He takes to the sky again, and the party continue their journey with renewed enthusiasm. They’re close now, within easy flight distance of the hive, and Kesan and Kemir have delivered their message (a little late for Haidn and Myn, but they can only do so much) and are safe and waiting for them. There is no rush but the faster they move, the sooner they’ll be able to rest inside a hive again.

Tyk isn’t on a pulling shift, and slows down enough to let the carts pass her until she can walk beside Smon. Smon has been periodically walking short distances, helping to clear the path ahead, and resting on the back cart. Right now, she’s resting on the back cart.

“Are you alright?” Tyk asks.

“Me? Yes. Why?”

“Myn and Haidn.”

“Yes, that is confusing. They must have good reason. I look forward to hearing why. They were supposed to wait.”

“And it’s also odd that no other sky people are there, isn’t it?”

“Is it? Maybe all the hives thought the same as Redstone River. Maybe everyone decided not to go to Starspire.”

“Yes, but they would’ve also sent messengers, wouldn’t they? Like we did? Even if other sky people have come and left again, surely Kerun would have mentioned them.”

“Maybe the other hives sent messengers and didn’t bring the sky people with them. Maybe they sent fast messengers, not a whole trade caravan, and left their sky people safe at their hives.”

“… Yeah. Maybe.” Tyk had been looking forward to seeing other sky people, too. Probably not as much as Smon had been, but it would definitely be interesting to see how they related to each other, and see what parts of Smon were common to her people and what parts were uniquely her.

There are obvious signs – the sparse foraging, the foliage with signs of previous years’ pruning and harvest, the cleaner tracks – as they get very close to the hive. The lack of bamboo this far North puts Tyk on edge a little, and the tall, thick-stemmed, bright green grasses that take its place seem flimsy and useless in comparison, although the spiders that shelter in them are tasty.

On their last night before reaching the hive, the scouts return to guide their final leg of the journey, and everyone stays up far too late catching up even though the scouts don’t actually know all that much. Apparently, other messengers have come to the hive from other nearby hives and left before the Redstone River caravan’s approach was known. None of them brought sky people with them, but those whose hives had sky people all seemed to be in agreement about not moving them over any dangerous terrain until communication via the wingsong stream was up again. (This apparently universal assumption that the wingsong stream will recover cheers Tyk, given how uncertain and evasive the Redstone River singers had seemed over the issue. Better measurements and better predictions must have been made while their caravan was travelling.)

They don’t have any information for Smon about the pair of sky people who went North, either. “We don’t really understand it,” Kesan says. “I think the hiveheart want to talk to everyone all at once about it. We’ve delivered all of our information, so by the time we all get there tomorrow, they should have discussed anything relevant already and should be able to give us good answers and make quick decisions.”

“No hiveheart ever makes quick decisions,” Bette says.

“Ours made a pretty quick decision to put this caravan together and send it.”

“Yeah, because they had an old lady like me to nip their shells.”

“Well, I’m sure the Green Hills Hive also have plenty of restless old ladies.”

Secure in the last improvised burrow they’ll have to dig before their home journey, her mother’s mass on one side and her father’s buzzing in her ears, Tyk drifts off to sleep.

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