Reap the Wild Wind

Chapter 1

OLD, THESE MOUNTAINS. Old and beaten and scoured, until they were more a tangle of sharp ridges than peaks. The ridges plunged like greedy fingers into the swamplands owned by the Tikitik. Those swamplands, themselves an immense grove braided with open water and reedbed, extended from the mountains to the horizon; beyond, should any care, lay the sere plains and parallel mounds of the Oud. For Cersi was a world meticulously divided and ruled.

As it had always been. This was one of three points on which all who dwelled here agreed.

Next was Passage. The Om’ray, third of the races of Cersi, owned no part of this world. Once a lifetime, an Om’ray was entitled to trespass wherever he must over the lands of the others, to reach a mate or die in the attempt. It was an accommodation of instinct which pleased no one, beyond continuing the world as it was.

For that was the final point of agreement: what was and had been must stay the same. Cersi was in balance and at peace. Change was forbidden, for all sakes.

Old, these mountains.

And every summer here ended with the M’hir.

Aryl Sarc stared at the hand near her face. It was hers, the knuckles white with strain beneath smudges of dirt. She eased her grip slightly, looked ahead for the next. She’d never been this high before. Didn’t matter. Couldn’t matter. She took a deep breath.

“I’m going to fall, you know.”

Exhaling the breath in a snort, Aryl twisted to scowl at her brother. Costa Sarc, or rather Costa sud Teerac, might be bigger, stronger, and Joined—thus officially adult and her senior—but he clutched the stalk below her as if to embed himself in its bark. “I’ll fall,” he gasped. “Any—Oh, no! I’m slipping!” This a howl, as one arm thrashed wildly through the air.

Real fear? He was close enough. She lifted one brow and let her awareness of him become focused, easily breaching the barrier between the acceptable here-I-am of Costa and the private how-I-feel. It was rude and childish.

So, it turned out, was her brother. “Not funny, Costa,” she snapped, pulling free of his delighted amusement.

The flash of a wide, unrepentant grin. “Sure it was. Ease up, Aryl. I thought this was to be fun.”

“Only if you don’t get us caught,” she scolded. A full tenth of the day climbing and they were just at the third spool—the height of five clansmen, short ones at that—from the wide bridge suspended below. Below that support, it was a drop of twenty or more to the dark water glinting its menace between root buttresses and trunks. Young Om’ray were encouraged to drop scraps from such safe heights. The resulting boil of activity made this a good object lesson, for the Lay Swamp was home to many things; what didn’t have leaves, had teeth. Om’ray learned not to fall.

Rarely, anyway. Aryl pointed down. “Next time you feel the need to slip, dear brother, aim for the bridge. I’m sure Leri would love to help heal a broken leg for her beloved Chosen.” She lowered her voice to a fair imitation of Haxel Vendan, Yena’s First Scout. “ ‘Mark my words, young Om’ray. If you miss,’ ” she growled menacingly, “ ‘you’ll be eaten before you drown.’ ”

Costa chuckled. “Leaving you to explain to the family.”

“I’ll do anything if it makes you hurry, Costa! We don’t have time to waste. The M’hir’s coming.”

At this, his grin faded. He stared up at her, beginning to frown. “You keep saying that as if it’s true, Aryl. The Watchers haven’t called. You’re no—”

“They will soon,” she interrupted, unwilling to discuss the source of her impatience. Costa’s strange little sister kept such feelings to herself. This inner anticipation—half excitement, half dread—was never easy to interpret when it arrived. But she’d learned it meant change.

Change, today, could only be the M’hir.

“When the Watchers call,” she continued, “we’ll already be in place. No one will have time or breath to argue.” Aryl tucked her toes between the long, sturdy fronds and pushed higher. Until now, the passage had been easy. No need to use the ladder scars coaxed from the straight stalk. Besides, she thought, running her fingers through the soft gray down that coated the underside of the nearest frond, no one knew the lower reaches of this great old rastis as she did, her favorite of all those that towered in the Sarc grove.

Each of the great families of the Yena Clan had a rastis grove to hold its name and the essence of those who passed beyond flesh. So the Adepts taught, though Aryl couldn’t see how this possibly applied to lowland Om’ray, who certainly had names but would have to trek for a full fist of days to reach the nearest vegetation taller than their heads and had no swamp to take their smelly dead anyway. She didn’t raise the question aloud. If she did, she’d probably keep going. Several teachings of the Adepts failed to match Aryl’s observations. Not that she worried about the discrepancies; there were many truths clutched by the old the young could ignore.

Like who could climb to the top of the rastis to meet the M’hir. She was as good a climber as any; better than some. Aryl slipped between fronds and reached for the next spool, pulling herself up. “Hurry—” She closed her mouth over the words, tilting her head back as she tried to see through the latticework of fronds and leaves and branches.

They weren’t the only ones who’d guessed the wind.

“Oh, no,” she grumbled. “Ghoch’s here.”

“Where else would he be?” Costa puffed noisily, as if to prove he was doing his best.

“I mean right here. Above us in the grove.” She pursed her lips and blew a curious, bright-winged brofer away before it landed on her nose. Most of the smaller life high in the rastis took cover before the M’hir. It was one of the signs the wind was due—as well as the only time to climb without wearing every possible protection. A rastis had its earnest defenders and Om’ray flesh suited that vast array of biters just fine.

Costa pulled himself to where she could see his sweating face. And broad grin. “Naughty Aryl. This would be why no one plays climb and seek with you, little sister.”

Aryl grimaced. “I’m not a child.”

“You know what I mean. Who else can name anyone from a distance? Hmm?”

He sounded proud. She shot him a disturbed look from under her eyelashes. “Hush, Costa.” Their mother constantly warned her to be discreet; here was her brother, babbling at the top of his lungs.

She didn’t want attention. Any new Talent had to be examined by the Adepts—which could take years; only after agonizing debate would their findings be voted upon by Council; and only then, she fumed to herself, would that Talent be declared either so subtle and innocuous as to be unlikely to upset the Agreement and allowed—or, much more likely, Forbidden, just in case.

However harmless or convenient or hard not to use that Talent might be.

What they didn’t know she could do, Aryl told herself, they couldn’t forbid. She liked knowing who was who.

Costa leaned back to swing from one arm. “You started it.”

“So I’m stopping it. I’ve no desire to be sent to the Adepts.”

His big hand wrapped around her ankle, squeezed once, and let go. “There’s no need to fear your gifts,” he said mildly. “This one could be allowed.”

“Or Forbidden,” Aryl dared say. “I’m happy to be unnoticed, thank you.”

Her brother coughed. It sounded suspiciously like a stifled laugh. “This would be why you talked me into spying on the Harvest,” he pointed out. “Good thing I’ve you to blame for the trouble we’ll be in by supper.”

“We’ll only be in trouble if we’re caught at it. Hush!” she urged again, then tilted her head to look up, eyes narrowing as she tried to see through patches of overlapping green, yellow, and brown. There might be no sign of anyone else in the giant rastis or its neighbors, but she knew better. Ghoch and the rest were not far above now. She felt them, as surely as she felt the great plant between her hands, as surely as she knew the direction and distance to her home, or to the Cloisters where the Adepts dwelled, or to the very edges of the world.

For the world of the Om’ray was shaped not by mountain or grove or sky, but by the Om’ray themselves. They felt their place within it from birth. Direction was the first awareness. Newborns would move restlessly in their sleep until facing one or another of the six distant clans, then still, soothed by knowing their place in relation to all others. This late in summer, the sun rose between Clans Amna and Pana. It set in line with Grona. If Aryl put Grona to her right hand, she would face Tuana, with her back to Rayna. Vyna lay directly beyond Rayna.

Distance came next, a sense honed by age and experience. Very young Om’ray couldn’t climb beyond their awareness of their mothers. Too far, and that tight comforting bond began to thin, sending the child back to safety as quickly as it drew the anxious mother. That bond loosened with age, replaced by the deep, constant awareness of those close by, the family and friends of one’s Clan, amid the faint comfort of those more distant. Aryl knew, as all of the Yena Clan, that Rayna and Amna were closest, Vyna farthest.

If she had to, she could find any of her kind.

So it was for all Om’ray. Those above would feel her presence and Costa’s, though not who they were. Om’ray were never lost or truly alone. Clans stayed where they were, defining the world. Only Passage sent an Om’ray from home, to seek and answer the call of another Clan’s Chooser. Such strangers were welcome, though they rarely made it to Yena.

No strangers here. Not now.

Of course there were no strangers. She, of all people, could tell. Aryl shook her head.

More than where, she’d always known who was nearby, “nearby” being a nebulous measure she’d found increased with effort and practice. Costa was right. Oh, how it had bothered her playmates when she would call out their names, sight unseen. She suspected it troubled her elders even more; they buried their thoughts deep behind shields around her. Not that it hid their flavor in her mind, should she reach.

Now, to Aryl, the canopy above glistened with more than sunlight. She felt the seventeen permitted to be there and knew every one.

Including—she bit her lip and climbed faster—Bern Teerac.

It wasn’t Bern’s fault he’d been selected this M’hir and she had not. That they’d trained and climbed together for two seasons preparing for this day, neither besting the other, made no difference to the will of the Council. Afterward, he’d stammered all the things a heart-kin who was as thick as an Oud might say until Aryl had managed to escape.

She hadn’t spoken to him since.

She might not—for a while, at least.

Costa didn’t touch her feelings—she’d have felt it—but he didn’t need to. Her reason for this illicit adventure wasn’t a secret. “Aryl,” he said quietly as they resumed the climb, “being passed over the first time you’re old enough doesn’t mean anything. You’re not like me, too heavy for the ropes, slow as a pregnant aspird.”

Thinking of the fat creature, which hung upside down for most of a season without moving while eggs warmed on her belly, Aryl’s lips twitched. “An aspird’s faster.”

It was true, not everyone could participate in the Harvest.

But Aryl couldn’t fathom why she hadn’t been picked, if Council considered Bern ready. They were reflections of each other. Closer than kin, in many ways. It was only a matter of time. . . .

She felt her cheeks warm and silenced her thoughts. “We’re almost there.”

“How can you—” Costa’s words were swallowed by an undulating moan, so loud it vibrated through the stalk holding them both. It was as if the mountains themselves had cried out. The sound diminished, only to come again.

“The Watchers!” Aryl shouted to be heard. “I told you. The M’hir is coming now! Hurry, Costa!”

She lunged upward. Her brother would have to follow as best he could. Her left hand closed on an irka vine, its edges slicing through the skin, the tiny barbs taking hold on flesh beneath. A trap for smaller prey. Aryl tugged her hand free, leaving a splash of red along the green, and continued upward.

The higher she went, the brighter the world became. Patches of blue blossomed like flowers through the canopy. Sky. She’d seen sky before. A rastis older than memory had fallen last M’hir, tearing a hole to admit the hot blaze of Cersi’s sun. At firstnight, she’d glimpsed tiny lights, as if when it left Yena, the sun pulled a gauze screen over its face against the biters and peered through that mesh. A few fists later? The tumble of cloud, the flash of lightning, the sun and its curtain were hidden again behind the rush of new growth that filled the void. The Adepts claimed the grove kept the Om’ray safe.

Aryl had felt betrayed.

But not now, she told herself fiercely. Nothing was going to keep her from seeing sky again, seeing what lay above this place.

She pulled herself past the final spool of giant fronds only to find herself stopped. Ahead, the single great stem thickened into a bulb: the underside of the rastis’ crown. She couldn’t see past it. Worse, a dense collar of vines feathered downward, some bearing the yellow galls that warned of stingers hiding within, others pale and white with the sap Aryl knew to be glue and poison in one. Even without these hazards, none of the vines could support the weight of an Om’ray child, let alone an adult.

She wedged herself into the topmost spool, leaning back to study the problem. Flitters flew by, their small brightly colored bodies revealed by their clear wings. Her kin hadn’t flown up there. Aryl frowned, eyes searching the vines. There had to be a way.

Suddenly, she sensed her brother had moved above her. “Costa?”

“Here!” His call was triumphant. Aryl pulled herself to a stand to look for him, careful to keep her head well below the reaching tips of the vines.

At first, she didn’t see him, then glimpsed his brown tunic in the midst of the vines and stifled a cry of her own. Remarkably, Costa wasn’t waving off stingers or trapped in sticky vines, despite being halfway around the stalk and three body lengths higher. “How did you get up there?” she demanded.

“Here,” he repeated, this time pointing straight down.

Aryl worked her way around the spool until she was beneath where her brother so mysteriously hung in what should be midair—with vines. She looked up and laughed in surprise.

Mystery solved. Costa stood on a ladder of slats and braided rope. It hung free from the bulb, leading—she tilted her head—past the broadest portion. Any vines that might touch a climber if shifted by a breeze were carefully tied back, not cut. She assumed they’d be released after the Harvest, to hide the way up and protect the rastis’ tender crown.

To any Yena, such a ladder was as easily run as a flat bridge. Aryl’s brother eased to one side to let her rush past, but she stopped beside him to claim a quick one-armed hug. “I knew I brought you for a reason.”

Costa laughed. “Remind me later.”

Later, Aryl didn’t remember climbing the rest of the ladder, or the moments it took to pry open the door leading through the decking above.

For once she did, she was in a world none of the stories or shared images could have prepared her to experience.

The crown of the rastis—this one and those to every side—grew a grove of its own. Tall, slender stems rose upward, uniform and so densely packed Aryl couldn’t have forced her body between them. They sprouted dull-gray and straight, so thin her fingers met around them.

At waist height, they changed.

Aryl followed one of the stems upward with her fingertips, to where it thickened. What looked smooth to the eye felt woven, like cloth. No, not cloth, she decided, but a rope of the most tightly spun thread imaginable. The texture deepened into a spiral that wound up the remainder of the stem, its line traced in crimson that spread wider and wider until, overhead, the stems were vivid red and thick, edged in orange. They appeared taut, as if ready to burst.

The Watchers moaned again, the deep vibration rattling the decking that was as much coaxed from the living rastis as fastened to it. Costa clung to the doorframe as he climbed through to join her, his eyes wide. “Aryl!” he mouthed.

The moan died away; the world steadied. It was temporary, she knew. “Hurry, Costa.”

The decking curled around the flattened top of the bulb for several steps in either direction. It held more than a door. A large sling-and-pulley array was fastened to one side, its precious metal chains padded with cloth to protect the rastis during use. Costa walked over to the other feature, a sturdy plank ladder slanting up and into the stalks, wide enough that three could climb at once.

The stems obscured the top. The ladder was partnered by another set of cloth-covered chains. Aryl put her hand on one and looked up. “This must be how they bring down the ripe dresel.” She put her foot on the first rung.

“No!” Costa grabbed her arm to haul her back. “This is far enough—too far, Aryl. We’d only be in the way.” His free hand waved at the roof of gently swaying stems. There was more blue between them now. “There’s no room. Stay—”

“There’s all the room in the world.” She shook free. “I want to feel the M’hir for myself. I want to touch the sky. Don’t try to stop me, Costa. Wait here if you must.”

He lifted both hands and stepped aside, automatically wary of the deck’s edge. When Aryl felt his weight hit the ladder below her as she climbed, she smiled to herself.

The first twenty rungs plunged them deep within the strange aerial grove of the rastis, until Aryl couldn’t see in any direction but straight ahead to the next slat of wood. The stems brushed against her and one another. They didn’t feel like plants anymore. They moved without wind, as if impatient. With each upward and inward step, she could see the stems swelling, enlarging along their spiral indentation, turning slowly as they did.

There were always scents in the grove—decay from the shadowed water below, blends of musk and sweet and sour from the creatures who moved and climbed. Above all, the rich blend of growing things, the perfumes that changed with the seasons as flowers opened, ripened to fruits, and fell into the water to rot.

Here? Aryl had smelled dresel all her life, but that faint clear spice was nothing to the heady draught now entering her nostrils. She felt as though she climbed through fragrance, warmed and pierced by shafts of brilliant light.

The ladder met two others at a triangular platform, unexpectedly small. As Aryl stepped up to it, her head cleared the top of the rastis stems at last.

The world exploded away on every side, roofed in blue, carpeted in red-orange, punctuated by taller growths with their clusters of green leaves. Nekis? They had to be, though Aryl had trouble connecting these full, lush tops, filled with flitters, to the spare, hard-to-climb trunks that stretched their pale columns from the water below.

The vegetation released her gaze and she moved, mute and staring, to give Costa room beside her. She pointed to the strange harsh line against the sky. “Costa. Do you think those are mountains?”

“I think I’m going to be sick.” He shaded his eyes with one hand. Aryl followed suit. “Yes. They have to be. The world, Aryl. It’s too small.”

“This can’t be all of it,” she reasoned. But the same dismay kept her voice low, too.

The red of the rastis extended only so far. The seemingly vast groves of the Sarcs, the Teeracs, the whole of their Clan—from this new perspective they melded together into a smallish mass, one bounded by wild stone and by a darker, more twisted foliage that itself gave way to an expanse of glittering light. Aryl squinted. “Is that the ocean?”

“It can’t be. The other Clans are between us and the sea. That must be where the Tikitik have their crops. I’ve heard they need water open to the sun. They have ways to control what will grow in a place. An understanding beyond any Om’ray . . .”

Costa sounded wistful. He loved growing things; as far back as she could remember, his room had been crammed with bits and pieces of life collected from the groves, tended with care in an assortment of pots and baskets. He would coat himself in ointments and silks to fend off biters in order to harvest strange wizened seeds from plants no one knew, only to spend futile fists trying to coax them to sprout. Thinking to help, Aryl had once suggested he ask the Tikitik for their secrets. His frustrated anger had startled her, for Costa was the gentlest of their family. She’d understood later. Only the appointed Speaker for the Clan Council spoke to the Tikitik; then, only to answer questions, not ask them. It was the way of the world.

Though Costa went to live with his Chosen as was proper, their mother had left his room as it was. Whether she wanted the plants to stay or roots had made their way into the flooring and she couldn’t be bothered removing them, Aryl didn’t know or care. It brought him home again, regularly, to water and fuss while listening to her latest stories. He stayed part of her life, something Aryl hadn’t known could end when she’d been younger. For Costa might have decided to take Passage, leaving Yena behind to find Choice and a new life within another Clan. For her, it would have been as if he died. Those who left never returned; they were never heard from again.

There was a darker side to Passage, whispered behind hands when eligible unChosen gathered and talk turned to their futures. Some didn’t survive the harsh journey, it was said—perhaps why so few came to Yena. Others failed its purpose. Three M’hirs ago, Oryl Sarc had drawn one such with her Call: Kiric Mendolar of the Tuana. Floods had delayed him; he’d arrived to find Oryl already Joined to Ghoch.

Aryl had watched him—from a safe distance, or through the gauze of a window. Strangers weren’t to be trusted, not until Choice made them kin. And this one had moved oddly, always too slow and with a hand to the nearest rail or rope. He preferred to work inside, cleaning dresel with the elderly. Aryl herself couldn’t imagine a worse fate.

She’d decided this Kiric was sick, perhaps dying—a tragic, romantic figure—and had enjoyed her version until Costa had quietly explained that this stranger had come from a place without rastis, where Om’ray lived on flat, dry ground. He’d wanted her to feel compassion for someone so lost and alone. Aryl had thought this a clever new story for Costa to make up for her and repeated it, with suitable embellishment, to her friends at every opportunity.

When no Yena Choosers ripened by the next M’hir, Kiric the Stranger had stepped off a bridge and disappeared into the black waters of the Lay.

Older, wiser, Aryl understood her brother was one of the lucky ones. He might have little time to spare for his young sib, but he’d found his life partner among his own Clan.

Where his sister could still entice him to climb with her.

As well as Costa, Aryl felt the others, knew where they were; with the slightest effort, who they were. Her head turned to seek them. “Costa. Look. There. They’ve strung the lines.”

Her eyes fought the bright sunlight until she could make out what she hadn’t before. The rastis groves were covered in ropes, as if a weaver bigger than any imagined in a nightmare had used the strong nekis trunks to support its looping web.

Figures were moving into the open along that web, bare feet sure despite the rope’s bounce and sway. Arms were extended, for balance and to run fingers along support threads too fine to see from where they stood. Almost flying, she thought with an envy close to pain.

That could have been her. Should have been her.

Aryl could see the pattern they made as it took shape, here and in the distance. Each Om’ray was running to his or her place along a curved line beyond the rastis groves, downwind.

Flitters launched into the air, as if disturbed. Instead of wheeling and crying in protest, they plunged without sound into the canopy, disappearing from sight.

They fled the coming M’hir. She knew it. Could almost taste it.

The Om’ray had found their places and stopped, waiting. Aryl saw flashes as hooks were freed from their belts and held ready.

Watchers moaned again. This time Aryl could tell their sound came from the mountains. As would the M’hir.

Costa’s fingers locked around hers as the world seemed to take and hold an endless breath. He pulled, urgently, and Aryl obeyed, dropping to lie beside him on the small platform. His arm went over her. Hold on! she heard, not words but mindspeech.

As she grabbed for her own hold on the platform, she twisted her neck to see.

The crimson stems nearest her face trembled in the silence. Trembled . . . then bent ever-so-slightly. No, they weren’t bending. Aryl’s eyes widened as the stems began to twist open.

Costa stiffened beside her, lifted up as if compelled to look closer. No! she sent, reinforcing the warning with a grab at his hand, determined to hold him safe.

Then there was no need for warnings.

The M’hir struck.

It was like the opening of an oven. The next breath she took was searing hot, dry, and full of a chokingly fine, acrid dust. Aryl coughed and quickly closed her mouth, but the air stole the moisture from her eyes and nostrils, took the sweat from her skin until perversely she shivered.

The first fingers of wind tore her hair free of its braided net, whipping the strands against her cheeks. The stems clattered against one another as if excited.

The wind’s force continued to build, steady and irresistible. Below, far below, Aryl had experienced the annual M’hir as little more than a rustling overhead that warned of bundles of dresel to be opened and stored. The rastis supporting their homes might lean slightly, disrupting dishes left on tables. Torn leaves and shredded bark would whisper and float its way into branch and crevice, making piles and obstructions to be pulled from ladders. Fine powders would rain down as well, reds and yellows and orange streaking the walkways and clogging screens. Another glamorous chore for the youngest and those not in the Harvest, sweeping and sweeping and sweeping until the black water below grew a skin of rare color.

Up here? The M’hir moved everything.

Including the crown of the rastis beneath them. As it began to shudder and shift, Costa tightened his grip until Aryl could barely breathe. The great plant groaned, a deep, tormented creaking. She waited for it to snap, her heart in her throat. Instead, it bent, crown bowing to the M’hir.

The platform went over with it, tipping to one side. Costa shuddered with strain but held on. Aryl’s own hands were clenched on the thick edge. Her toes found a gap in the planks and she forced them in . . . if they tipped much farther they’d be shaken off . . . they’d fall . . .

The rastis stopped bending, though the M’hir now howled and gibbered on all sides. The platform rocked back and settled, no longer level, but safe enough.

They might be safe . . . what of the others? Aryl raised her head, fighting to see through the wind-whipped stems.

The webbing strung between the stiffer nekis trees held, though along its strands the Om’ray danced in the wind like leaves trapped against a billowing curtain. Each leaned forward, body and face wrapped and obscure, hand gripping a guide rope, hook ready.

Aryl sorted through their tastes to find Bern. There. She could just make out his wildly swaying figure.

“Bern!” she shouted. The M’hir ripped away her voice. She concentrated, trying to reach him with her thoughts. Child’s play when touching, a minor skill at arm’s length, demanding more and more Power with distance until impossible. She’d never reached as far as this—he was barely discernible, a toy in the wind—but she fought to connect, to send his name—

Hush. Don’t distract him. Costa’s mindspeech filled her thoughts, calm and sure, though she could feel his excitement. He has to prove himself.

I should be there! she sent back, frustrated beyond reason. That’s where I’d be, Costa. I’m unChosen, too! It’s my right.

It’s too dangerous.

I’m unChosen.

Everyone knew the unChosen were the expendable members of any clan, not yet Joined to a life partner, not yet mature. Free of expectations or even a sure future.

There are Chosen up there. A flash of fear. Only the best of them dare. That should tell you the risk.

Aryl hid her pity from Costa, burdened with the responsibilities of another life. He’d worry and play it safe for the rest of his days, for Leri’s sake. She’d take freedom while she had it. Freedom like those Om’ray tethered in the face of that raging wind. To be part of the sky, part of something larger than life itself. To fly . . .

Aryl dug her elbow into her brother’s conveniently broad ribs. Don’t tell me you’re sorry you came.

Ask me if we get down again.

The bent stems had continued to twist. Suddenly, they snapped open along their length, releasing clouds of red to the M’hir.

The odor of ripe dresel intensified until Aryl found the only way to breathe was to keep her bent arm in front of her nose, her lips close to the skin. She’d taste it forever. She’d probably smell of it just as long.

Light-touched red surrounded them. It filled the sky, each separate piece growing wider and wider until the whole overlapped like the glistening scales of a flitter.

And like a flitter, the red took flight.

She’d learned this. She’d never imagined the reality of it. The red—Yena called it the dresel’s wing. Now each piece continued to expand as the wind tugged it free of its tight wrapping. She could see through it, as if it were the finest window gauze, immense and growing, billowing and snapping in the wind. On the ground, flattened, it would smother other growth in favor of the rastis’ own. In the hands of skilled Om’ray, the material could be soaked and teased apart, its component threads rewoven into any thickness. The clothing she wore, the ropes they’d climbed, the gauze of their windows, all came from this source.

She dared let go with one hand to touch the nearest wing, but its softness eluded her. It came free of its stem, pulling with it real treasure—moist chains of dresel, the length of her arm.

Having cleaned her share, Aryl knew most of the light fragrant pods contained already sprouting seeds, as well as dresel itself, the soft purple flesh that would nourish the seed’s first explosive growth. All three—pod, flesh, and seed—had value. The waterproof pods covered Yena roofs and graced their tables as elegantly carved dishes. The dresel was a staple on those dishes, delicious fresh and easily dried for later use. A small portion of a harvest would fill Yena pantries until the next M’hir, and well it did. Though they gathered other foods, an Om’ray could exist on dresel alone.

Yena Om’ray could not exist without it. Unlike other clans, with the luxury of growing all their bodies required in the ground—something Aryl couldn’t imagine—the Yena lived where no other food could fill their needs.

The rest of the dresel, and the sprouts from each pod, were bundled for the Tikitik. Whether their neighbors couldn’t climb the rastis, or collect enough intact pods from the grove edge for their needs, whatever those were, Om’ray didn’t ask. They simply took the power cells, glows, and other items the Tikitik provided in return.

Some pods had other contents. There were a host of tiny riders who schemed to place their offspring with the rastis’ own. Costa collected them in small jars; Aryl avoided those. A very few would contain a more lethal invader, somgelt, its puffy white threads deceptively innocent as they frothed outward from a carelessly opened pod. All, like the Yena Om’ray, timed their lives to take advantage of the dresel’s flight.

For flight it was. Despite the risk, Aryl willingly rose with her brother. They held each other as well as the now gaunt and bare stems, to watch the rastis send forth the next generation and Yena begin the Harvest.

The M’hir was hot, dry, and steady. It was a hand brushing over the world, taking with it whatever chose to go. Aryl watched, amazed, as the red fluttering wings rose higher and higher, only their load of dresel keeping them from the wind-ripped clouds overhead. The pods themselves hardened almost instantly, their brown taking on a dark rich gleam.

Aryl’s cracked lips parted in a surprised smile. The drying pods rattled and clicked against one another, like the clumsy chimes made by children and hung from fronds. As the sky filled, the various rattles and clicks blended into a wave of lighthearted percussion, as if the rastis sang their children to their futures.

It wasn’t an easy or sure one. Some wings were immediately torn by the M’hir, or shredded by collision with the sharp twigs of the nekis. These folded and dropped in great twisting loops of crimson, caught in branches where flitters and climbers quickly claimed their hapless pods. Most wings continued, sailed higher and farther, but they weren’t free yet. There were those waiting to reap the wild wind.

Already, hooks were flashing as Om’ray snagged wing after wing from the air. The goal was to collapse each over the nearest guideline, ideally in neat folds that might still catch the wind, but not be taken by it. Those with a few Harvests behind them took their time, avoiding those wings which were already tangling in the air in favor of sure catches. Aryl frowned as the tiny figure she knew was Bern flailed after everything in reach.

She’d have done better. Though he did calm down and improve.

The growing load of hanging wings and their pods gave stability to the lines. The Om’ray began moving along, chasing streams of red.

They weren’t the only ones.

A shadow whooshed by overhead and Aryl flinched, startled. Another. And another. Costa shouted in her ear, as if too excited to concentrate on a sending. “Wastryls!”

The giant creatures soared in with the M’hir, a confusion of black and white set with bright yellow eyes that caught and flashed the sunlight. Aryl had only seen a dead one before, and that damaged. These, very much alive, plunged at the dresel wings, their great claws out and ready, tentacles poised.

They weren’t a threat to the Om’ray, being unable to maneuver in tight spaces and wary of the lines. They were mountain dwellers, drawn to the canopy by the M’hir. Like that wind, the wastryls passed by, taking what they could grab. Aryl saw how the claws snatched wings from the air, then tentacles plucked free and held the pods. This first flock—there had to be dozens in it—came and went like the brief shadow of a cloud. She watched them tumble and wheel about, turning toward the mountains with their treasure.

Red drifted down below them. It would smother new growth along the grove edge, but there would be no seedlings to take advantage.

A second flock arrived, larger than the first. Aryl laughed when two wastryls clutched the same wing and screamed their outrage at each other. The battling creatures almost fell before letting go. Their loss was another’s gain. A ready Om’ray snared the falling wing, adding it to the growing harvest.

A glint that wasn’t eye or sun caught her attention. Aryl tugged at Costa. “What’s that?” she shouted, risking her hold to point.

He stiffened as he saw it, too. I don’t know.

Whatever it was, it was coming closer. That wasn’t what dried Aryl’s mouth.

It was coming closer against the wind.