Sunborn Rising (23 page)

25. Surfacing

The Roedtaw accelerated toward the Root. The great distance of the trip would take time despite their monumental speed. The Roedtaw’s plates retracted and the space around the bups shrank. They chatted for a while, but Barra was in and out of sleep, leaving Tory and Plicks to get to know their Nebule friends better.

Blue slid over to nuzzle Barra, and then Tory, but soon returned to Plicks where he folded around the Kolalabat like a hug. Red was sleeping beside Barra, tentacles haphazard all around her. Barra brushed them away from her face several times. Half-awake, she yelled at Red, “Leave me alone!” Red crawled away, tucking herself into a corner, making herself as small as possible.

Plicks defended her, and said, “She just wants to be close to you.”

“Well, she should keep her tentacles out of my face,” Barra said, and then dozed back off again.

Char was playing with Tory, and both were ignoring Barra. The Nebule was almost exactly the same size as the pit stones the bups used in school, and Tory worked out a game, mimicking playing catch. Tory pretended that Char was incredibly heavy or light, and they performed tricks together. The motions looked natural at times, but then magical at others. “Plicks. Plicks! Watch this!” Tory exclaimed. He tossed Char between his feet and hands, which looked rubbery and silly. When Plicks looked, Char—sneaky as he apparently was—changed up the rules of the game. He stuck to Tory’s hands like glue, and the two of them became an entangled mess.

Plicks laughed so hard that his scruffs popped out wild from his body. He tried to regather his scruffs, but he couldn’t and he tumbled over into a giggling mess.

Char eventually stopped being difficult, and Tory said, “Thanks.” His sarcasm palpable. The Nebule moved away and bobbed happily, proud of himself.

Tory noticed Barra’s eyes were open, but glassed over. “Is she okay?” he asked.

Plicks leaned in close. “Barra?” She appeared catatonic, not speaking or moving a muscle. He pushed her. No response. He yelled in her face, and she snapped to attention.

“Hey!” she yelled back at him, “I’m trying to sleep!”

Plicks caught a whiff of the sour smell wafting from Barra. “What’s wrong with you?”

“I’m fine!” Barra rejected Plicks’ inspection, testily. “I just need some uninterrupted sleep.” She dismissed his concerns with her bad arm.

“But you’re burning…” Plicks trailed off, as he saw the cut. “What is that?!” he gasped, as Barra tried to hide her arm.

Tory interjected, “I thought you said it was only a scratch?” Barra tried to turn away, but there was no room in the cramped pocket. “Let me see,” he demanded. He reached toward her, and since there was nowhere to go, she glared and hissed at him. Tory would not be intimidated. After a moment, Barra held out her arm.

Plicks wrinkled up his nose as Tory examined the gaping wound. Covered with a moist film, the cut sweat yellow fluids but no blood. Plicks was right. There was an awful smell effusing from it. What was worse, Tory thought he recognized the scent. It smelled like the eyeless thing’s rotting puppets. “How long’s it been like this?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Barra lied, not knowing why. Shaking her head, she added, “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

Plicks remembered seeing the cut when it happened. It didn’t seem possible that small wound had become the festering mess on Barra’s arm. He thought about it, and made the easy leap relating her cut to the one described in her father’s journal. The cut they all believed killed her father. “Is that from the Creepervine?”

Barra tried to be strong, but she had to admit to herself that she was afraid. “It’s not the same as my dad’s. It can’t be.” Red slid in beside her and delicately threaded a tentacle into the gash. White suds foamed over the area as the Nebule siphoned off part of the infection. The wound bled sick-brown and green into Red’s body. The poisonous taint lingered as wispy threads worming through her sanguine color. Tory and Plicks were too focused on Barra to notice.

“See?” Barra said, delirious, “Kissed. All better…” and then her eyes rolled to the back of her head, and she passed out.

“Barra?” Plicks shook her gently. When she didn’t respond he shook her and yelled, “Barra!?”

Tory intervened, holding Plicks back. He checked her breathing with a trembling hand. “She’s breathing,” he said through quivering lips.

Red touched Tory’s shoulder, asking him to move aside. The Roedtaw’s plates lowered again, and as Tory tried to reposition himself in the shrinking space he bumped his head hard. He got his wits back, and watched Red go to work.

The Nebule looped her tentacles around Barra’s forearm and absorbed even more of the sickness. Having done as much as she could, Red curled up against Barra’s side and rested.

“What’re we gonna do?” Plicks whispered.

“I don’t know,” Tory answered gravely.

“But there wasn’t anything… I mean, the journal. The way it ended? Remember how it ended?” Plicks said.

Tory remembered, and he didn’t want to think about it. The plates continued to close, but he seemed almost not to notice. He said with firm belief, “Doctor Fenroar will know something. Someone must have treated Ven Swiftspur. We just have to stick to the plan and get home.”

Plicks said, “We better get there soon. What if she doesn’t wake up?!”

“I don’t know,” Tory said. “She has to wake up.”

Moving in closer again, Plicks checked on Red. “What’s happening to her?”

Tory shook his head. “I don’t know. She’s helping, I think.”

The Roedtaw eased out a set of low tones, and the pocket shrank yet again. Taut fear stretched a look between the boys. The shallow depressions they’d been sleeping in suddenly seemed crucial; the only safe spaces if the plate kept closing. There was only room enough for one of them in any of the depressions. The Roedtaw projected a cyclical sound, a whooping, warning sound.

Plicks was shaking, and Tory assured him, “She’ll be okay. Don’t worry. Red will stay with her.” He bundled Barra and Red into one of the depressions, and did his best to make them comfortable. “Come on, Plicks. We have to lie down or we’re gonna get crushed.” He didn’t think the Roedtaw would hurt them, but he didn’t feel like testing the theory.

They slid into the depressions and the Nebules joined them. The plate overhead had corresponding depressions so that if it closed completely neat oblong spaces would remain. Plicks was pretty sure he’d fit. “I’m scared, Tory!” Plicks yelled over the whooping Roedtaw.

“I know! Me too!” Tory hollered back. He looked at Barra one last time to make sure she was secure and then he lay down. “At least she’s not awake for this!” he called out. Plicks didn’t hear him. The plate closed and the Roedtaw increased his volume. Plicks held Blue like a rolled up sheaf in his arms, and shut his eyes.

“What’s happening?” Tory screamed over the wailing Roedtaw.

The violent sound of snapping wood answered his question; they collided with the Root. There was a thunderclap, an immense bough splintering as they breached. The Roedtaw came to rest half out of the ocean, leaning over the hole in the Root he’d just created.

Barra woke up, disoriented and shaky. She called out to her friends, but they didn’t answer back. The Roedtaw bobbed slightly, and Barra’s stomach floated and waffled, and she thought she’d be sick, but she managed to hold on. The tight space was bathed in sanguine light from the glowing Red, and Barra felt a regular, rhythmic pulse in the body of the Roedtaw, so she knew she wasn’t alone.

The plate peeped open and a rush of new air flooded in.

“Tory!? Plicks!?” Barra yelled out.

“Here!”

“Barra!”

“What’s going on?” Barra asked.

“Hold on!”

The plate opened farther, and upside down as they were, the bups had to scramble to keep from falling. But the angle was too severe, and the bone hooks were out of reach, and plunk, plunk, plunk, one after another they fell.

26. Conflicted

What was that?” Brace was haggard. She’d barely slept in buckles. Looking around the makeshift camp comprising slimy roots and mudmeal from sodden and rotting wood, it wasn’t hard to believe that her sleep was disturbed. More than any other reason though, Brace hadn’t slept well because the expedition still hadn’t found her daughter.

The initial boom that disturbed Brace became a continuous rumbling rising up her limbs from the Root. She peered into the wood and tried to imagine the source. Splintering, breaking, quaking. A crash of boughs. And then silence.

It was an echo of the sound her heart had made when she’d discovered her daughter was gone. In the eerie silence, she recalled that moment and that feeling. She remembered her reaction when she’d first heard the news: she was alone. She couldn’t have been more wrong. Word had travelled fast, and Arboreals from the Umberwood and all the neighboring Great Trees arrived to help.

Plicks’ family and extended family had amassed at the Swiftspur den, and Brace welcomed them with open arms. There hadn’t been room to accommodate them all, but Tory’s father arrived with a binding force of his peers. It was a company of Rugosics, Nectarbadgers, and Haggidons. They opened up the Swiftspur den to make room for every Arboreal offering aid. Satchels of food had arrived, too. Bellbottoms, Listlespurs, and Rattlebarks had harvested and shuttled the packages to her place. The entire Umberwood had mobilized in spontaneous support of the Swiftspur, Mafic, and Battidash families.

The search parties that formed had been thorough and fast. Vallor was there too, and she led the trackers through the Middens, marking out the bups’ route in great detail. They stumbled into the Creepervine, and Kudmoths too. They revealed these discoveries to the others, and though they’d continued searching for the bups, a new investigation was launched into the source of the creeping death.

Gammel’s study had been laid open. His journal was read among numerous other sheaves, and his maps were gathered, reviewed, and revised. The encroaching fungus was dangerous and broadly distributed. Jerrun was there when they’d learned about his dealings with Gammel, and his lies. The Arboreals didn’t trust the withered Rattlebark after that, but they didn’t shun him either. Jerrun became a shadow at the back of the crowd, known to everyone, but standing without their regard.

The trackers reported that the bups’ trail ended at the Fall, and the families leaned on each other and held their heads. The Kudmoths and the Creepervine had taken their bups from them.

The dangers of descending through the Fall were discussed, alternatives negotiated. The myths and legends told them the Fall was the end of all things, but the Great Trees grew up from somewhere, out of something. There were sheaves, too, weathered leaves in the archives that described the Root in detail. Even if generations of Arboreals had forgotten, the sheaves had not. They had started to believe they could travel to the Root and return.

The archivists had pulled tomes from the disused corners of the reliquary, and they read, and they learned. A joining of passion and knowledge, a plan to find the lost bups had been born. Growing and maturing through discussions both heated and calculating, they figured a way to safely travel to the Root. With taboos and rules set aside, parachuting had suddenly become an obvious, deceptively simple, solution. Unspoken then, most of the gathered Arboreals had hoped the bups had figured the same.

An expedition was formed comprising thirty-one Arboreals of various species, and twenty-three Kolalabats—most, Plicks’ blood relations—to glide them down. Among the thirty-one were Tory’s father and his closest friends, Binders all. Vallor Starch was there too, and even Jerrun. No one relished having the decrepit Elder along, but the silver-tongued Head of the Council had a unique knowledge of the archives, and so, he could not be reasonably denied.

As prepared as they could be, the expedition had launched from the last branch touched by the bups.

The plan worked.

They found the bups’ trail at the Root. The relief was unanimous, palpable. They followed the tracks, made camp, and followed the tracks again. And the tracks led them to the fungal-puppets.

And they fought.

The monstrosities wouldn’t stop them. Skirmishes became frequent, but the resolve of the expedition never faltered. They discovered evidence again and again, that the bups were alive.

So of course Brace wasn’t sleeping when she heard the Root crack. She ran into Jerrun who was standing with Vallor on the periphery of camp trying to wrestle answers out of the darkness with his weak, cloudy eyes. She asked, “What was that? What could make a sound like that?”

“I don’t know.” Jerrun leaned hard on his staff, wringing it with both hands. The bottom of the staff had been sharpened to pierce the slime-coated Root.

Vallor spoke up, “We have to tread carefully. The fungal-puppets may have caused it, or if they didn’t, they’ll think we did. We should expect some opposition.”

Mutterings spread through the Arboreals like a contagion. Three trackers were already dispatched to scout out the source of the disturbance. The rest were sharpening claws, teeth, and tails. A few Kolalabats were floating in with reports, but they were returning from unrelated tasks and gave no insight into the crash.

A Listlespur emerged from the fog as though she was fading into reality out of a dream. She was first to find the creature that had broken through the Root. Jaeden concluded her report to Brace, “No way of knowing how big it is. If you want to go, we should go now.”

Brace hadn’t known Jaeden long, but she trusted her. There was something in her eyes, an unwavering clarity of perspective—confidence, or perhaps stubbornness—and it reminded Brace of Gammel, and she needed that memory close, more now than ever before.

Brace locked eyes with Vallor, an urgent question on her face. Vallor said, “You don’t even have to ask.” The Haggidon’s twin-toothed tails were restless behind her, and a mischievous smile played at her lips. Vallor seemed to thrive on the unknown. Brace nodded her thanks.

“Let’s go,” Vallor said, and they left Jerrun there without another word. The reporting Listlespur and a few other Arboreals rushed up to join them, and together they trekked to the site.

It wasn’t long before they approached the site of the crash. The creature that broke through the Root ended unseen in the branches over their heads. It was lit ominously from beneath, the exposed portion already larger than any living creature Brace had ever known except for the Great Trees themselves. The plates that lined the beast started to open, bending or breaking any branches that were in the way.

There were voices. Brace heard them briefly, but they were clear enough. “Barra!”

Jaeden’s arm flashed. She grabbed Brace by the wrist, and urged her to keep her voice under control.

One after another, three blurs fell out of the beast, and plopped into the water. Brace ripped free of Jaeden and dashed toward the broken Root. The others followed.

Three separate, brightly colored creatures followed the bups, and not knowing if they were a threat, Brace ran even faster. At the water, Brace stared through the pain of her vision adjusting to the light. Blurry shadows rose toward her, but couldn’t make any sense of them. Whatever they were, they were coming up fast.

Brace jerked her head back to avoid being hit, and fell over as her daughter and her friends breached the surface and floated into the air.

Brace couldn’t tell if the creatures were helping or harming at first, especially in the after-light blindness of the Root. The rippling, flying creatures were holding the bups by loops of tendrils and masks of flesh, and they came to hover beside Brace. She was rigid and ready to fight.

“Mom!” Barra yelled as Red peeled back from her mouth. The young Listlespur hit the Root with claws extended and ran for her mother. She pulled away from Red, and pounced onto her mother in an embrace that sent them both tumbling, end over end.