46: On the Road Again

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Despite Smon’s rush to contact the Northern sky people as quickly as possible and Tyk’s eagerness to get Ketyk to a hive as quickly as possible, their remaining days at the little burrow seem to pass in no time at all. By the end of it, Smon looks thicker in body, with less tears in her skin, and has a slightly improved farm and new undamaged foot coverings courtesy of the other sky people. Tyk, too, feels stronger, and certainly more capable of fending for herself and Ketyk. Ketyk can’t fly yet but is very adventurous for his age, constantly darting about to investigate things and ask Tyk what they are before darting back to the safety of her horns.

The sky people have also made two sets of wheels for the farm out of their sturdy materials; one set that gets installed right away, and one set that goes with Smon’s personal effects. “Samet will ruin that set,” Yotoru says. “You’ll need to replace them when you part ways.”

“I’ll be careful!” Samet protests.

“No, you won’t.”

Aside from Smon’s farm, the neima don’t travel with carts. The women carry supplies on their backs in grass rope harnesses, which Sakeya and Tama and the men show Tyk how to wear.

“I hate these things,” Tama grumbles as Kekeya helps her to tie hers on. “They’re so cumbersome.”

“You’re welcome to come pull this instead,” Samet calls from the farm yoke she’s slipping into.

“You know we can’t dry and store the food in this weather,” Sakeya lectures Tama while she and Kebin try to secure Tyk’s harness around Ketyk, who is darting about Tyk’s back inspecting random knots and packages curiously. “We carry it and eat it, or it rots, and we can’t overharvest near the trade road unless you want to discourage the trade migration by starving the traders, and then where will we be? Quit grumbling and load up.”

Before they leave, Smon wraps her arms tightly around each of the sky people and speaks briefly and quietly to them in their language. She seems reluctant to leave them, though as Samet puts her weight to the yoke and pulls the farm forward with far more ease and speed than Tyk and Smon had managed, Tyk notices Smon frowning unhappily in the direction of the reservoir.

The neima seem happy to give Tyk, Ketyk and Smon their space and let them linger a little behind as they all travel in the direction of the road, so it’s not too difficult for Tyk to sidle up to Smon and ask, “Is the reservoir really that dangerous?”

“I think so,” she says. “They don’t. There’s nothing to be done about it either way; I’d assumed that people would think the same as me, but clearly not, meaning that there’s probably a whole lot of little sky people groups dotted about with reservoirs. The only thing to do is get the Rayjo Tau up and try to find some life lorekeepers for advice.”

Tyk looks at Samet pushing on ahead of them without any apparent difficulty. “Well, at this rate, we should be at Glittergem Hive in no time.” The pair pick up their pace to keep up, and Ketyk grips Tyk’s horns harder as they speed up.

“Are you worried about Glittergem?” Tyk asks as they walk.

“In case they try to kill me, like Green Hills?”

“Yeah.”

She shrugs. “There is not much I can do about it except present my case and hope that they are sympathetic.” She glances sidelong at Tyk. “You must make me a promise.”

“About what?”

“That you will look after yourself. If they want to kill me, I will try to change their minds, or leave, if I must. But I might fail. You must promise me that you will not put yourself in danger to protect me.”

“I’m not just going to let them kill you! I – ”

“If you die to protect me, what will happen to Ketyk?”

“… That’s low.”

“No. Practical. Even if I am in danger – ”

“I need to be there for Kytyk,” Tyk grumbles. “I’m not going to abandon you, but I won’t put myself at risk.”

Smon nods. “Good.”

“But if you get yourself killed after all the effort I’ve put into keeping you alive, I’m going to be really, really annoyed.”

Smon laughs. “I will try very hard not to.”

Tama has been slowing down to trail behind the adults, and soon Tyk and Smon catch up to her; she matches pace with them. “So, are you guys excited?”

“I’m excited to hear from home,” Tyk says, “assuming that the wingsong stream is back to normal.”

“I’m excited to hear if the wingsong stream is back to normal,” Smon says. “We meant no harm. We had no idea what a wingsong stream was, or that that would happen.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Tyk says, but Smon has that worried look that she gets when she worries about the effect that her people are having on the hives. (Well, on Tyk’s people as a whole, probably. Tyk supposes that she worries about the Hiveless, too.)

“Well, we don’t have the singsong stream and we do fine,” Tama says. “I’m sure you guys will, too.”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that when you’re dealing with really really big populations that can’t move,” Tyk says. “Without the wingsong stream, we can’t hear from other hives about approaching dangers. We can’t tell them what we need or help them when they need something. And if something goes wrong in a hive, we can’t just all pick up and move like you can. We fix it or we die.”

“Sounds scary and dangerous.”

“W-well, no, because things are less likely to go wrong. It’s actually a lot safer than out here. There’s more food and more shelter and more silk and more people to help do things. It’s just, if something does go wrong, there’s a lot more people that can be affected. Don’t you ever wish that there was more people around to help you?”

“I wish there were more people around to talk to,” Tama says. “You’re the youngest person I’ve seen since we crossed paths with the neyut last year. That was nice.”

“In a hive, there’s so many children that sometimes they all get put together in big groups during the day to be taught things. I learned the basics of tunnelling and bamboo harvesting with nineteen other girls.”

“Wow! That must have been so fun!”

“It… can be. It has its downsides.” Not getting along with somebody as charismatic as Ayan can have bad effects in a group situation.

The neima move far, far more swiftly than Tyk and Smon alone; much faster even than the caravan that they’d taken up to the Green Hills Hive. They take advantage of a relatively dry morning to reach the trade road before a rainstorm turns the ground to mud, and with so many people to help move the farm, are able to push on through heavier rains than Smon and Tyk did. The men scout ahead when the rain is light or absent, and cling to the harnesses under their truesisters’ bellies for shelter then it becomes too heavy to fly in. (Tyk’s a little nervous when Ketyk crawls underneath her – what if she moves wrong, and a rope slips and crushes him? – but he, true to form, isn’t worried.) Smon sticks close to the farm when the weather gets rough, partly to help guide the wheels and partly to use it as shelter against the rain and wind, detaching one end of the waterproof covering and sheltering under it as she walks when necessary.

When the weather allows for it, most of the neima peel away from the road back into their territory to forage, Sakeya scolding and coaxing Tama (who wants to spend all her time with Tyk). Tyk would go with them, except she doesn’t want to leave Smon, in case there’s trouble. And Smon doesn’t want to leave the farm, for the same reason. So the two of them and Ketyk help Samet guide the cart on the road, Kemet hovering high above, where he can keep an eye out for danger and see the foragers’ lookout so the two groups can alert each other of potential trouble. Their foraging arc allows Samet to drag the farm at a slower, sustainable pace, and Smon to walk and rest at a pace that won’t injure her feet, so it’s only really Tyk trying to hide her impatience, wising they could travel faster.

Not that there would be any point in moving any faster. They’re travelling fast enough to reach the trader burrows each night; why move past the burrows and have to dig their own? Tyk reminds herself that they’re still moving much, much faster than they would without the neima’s help, and tells herself not to be a brat.

But it’s hard. She misses the dark of deep tunnels, and the taste of sweetroot, and her family. She misses being able to know what’s going on in the rest of the civilised continent by simply asking the men for news from the wingsong stream. She misses working with real silk instead of these rough imitations woven from grass.

She misses being somewhere that she knows, and knowing exactly where she is at all times.

On their fourth day on the road, Saima abruptly announces that there will be no foraging today, and everyone should focus on helping to move the cart so they can make good time. This makes no sense to Tyk, since their travel distance per day is determined by the distance to water and trader burrows, but nobody protests the declaration. Tyk’s happy to move faster, but as she expects, when they reach the next trader burrow Saima calls a halt and they all climb in to shelter from the rain.

“What’s wrong?” Tama asks as they settle in for the night well before sunset.

“Everything’s fine, don’t worry about it,” Sabin says in that tone that adults always use when everything isn’t fine and it’s time to worry about it. “We’ve all been working very hard, including you. You deserve a rest day.”

Tama does not seem to consider this to be sufficient explanation, but doesn’t press the matter. Tyk doesn’t think it’s sufficient either, but it seems rude to bring it up again, so she keeps Ketyk and Smon close to her and watches the neima carefully. They seem a little tense, but not scared or alarmed. She can’t help but notice that Sakeya, claiming she “hasn’t been getting enough air recently”, elects to sleep outside with the farm. But whatever they’re dealing with doesn’t seem all that worrying, because her truebrother stays inside.

It’s not until halfway through the next day that Tyk gets an explanation of what’s going on. They’re making their way down the road in only light rain when Kemet drops out of the sky to land on the farm. “They’re ahead,” is all he says.

“Nedorm?” Saima asks, exasperated.

“Yes.”

“I knew it!” Sakeya says. “I said, didn’t I, that the grazing area looked too recently harvested? They’re supposed to be halfway across their territory by now!”

“Our neighbours,” Tama explains to Tyk when she sees how confused she is. “They’re not meant to be here this time of year. It seems they’ve stayed a little late to steal our harvests.”

“Is that dangerous?” Tyk asks.

“Yeah, for them!” Sakeya snips at the air with her claw. “They’re asking for some mandibles pulled if they’re going to disrespect us like – ”

“We’re not going to war over some stolen grass,” Saima says wearily.

“Well, I wasn’t suggesting war. Just, you know. Reminding them of the rules a bit. If we can catch up with them, we – ”

“We are going to slow down,” Saima says, “and let them escape us. And we can discuss this at the next scheduled crossing.”

“Next year?” Kekeya asks. “Surely we don’t need to let this kind of thing go on that long.”

“I’m afraid we do. Unless the two of you have forgotten that we’re on a different mission right now? ”With a toss of her horns, she indicates Smon. “I don’t know if the nedorm know about the star sailors, or if they do, what their opinion of them is. Unless we can be sure that Smon will be safe, not to mention the three we’ve left completely unguarded at their reservoir, I’d say we should avoid contact for as long as we reasonably can.”

“That’s not going to be possible,” Kemet says. “They were already aware of us when I spotted them. They’re coming this way.”

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