The Color of Distance

Chapter 9

It’s crazy,” Anito told Ukatonen as they watched the new creature making noises at a box built into the base of the strange tree made of silvery death-colored stone. “When it found out that its people went away, it went crazy.”

“But where did Eerin’s people go?” Ukatonen asked Anito, referring to the new creature by the name he had given it.

Anito disliked the name. She didn’t believe the new creature was intelligent enough to deserve a name. The enkar had even started calling the creature by the same pronoun used for a female Tendu. It made the creature more like a real person. As far as she was concerned, the new creature barely qualified as an animal, and should be referred to as such.

“I don’t know,” Anito said. “They’re gone. Isn’t that enough?”

A ripple of exasperation passed over Ukatonen’s body. “You’re an elder now. It’s time to start thinking like one. You must think past today. What if the new creatures come back and destroy more forest? What if they’ve gone somewhere else and are destroying the forest there? Remember, these creatures are your atwa. Whatever they do, you are responsible for it.”

Anito looked away, angered by the unfairness of it all. She had only taken on the new creature to humor Ilto. Now she was responsible for things that had happened far from her village.

Ukatonen touched her gently on the shoulder. Anito looked around. “Someone must find out what happened here and how to stop it from happening again. Someone must be responsible. But this isn’t a load that you can carry alone. We’ll do it together.”

Anito looked away again, fighting back a dark red wave of anger and frustration. She looked out over the black ashes of the destroyed forest. She had never seen anything like this. Lightning would sometimes take out three or four trees, or a mud slide would clear out a patch of hillside, but never had she contemplated such an expanse of devastation. It still felt like an impossibility, even as she looked at it. She thought about this happening somewhere else, to some other village, to her own village, and the venom sacs on her back tightened in anger and fear.

Ukatonen was right, something had to be done. She looked at the enkar. He was watching her, ears spread expectantly.

“What do you want me to do?” Anito asked.

“Stay here. Look after Eerin. Find out where her people might have gone. I’ll go to Lyanan and see what can be done about this.” Ukatonen gestured at the blackened devastation before them. His skin turned grey with grief at the destruction.

Agreement and sympathy passed over Anito’s body. Ukatonen touched her on the shoulder and disappeared into the forest.

Anito walked across the blackened remains of the forest, feeling exposed and vulnerable. The new creature was silent, its skin grey with sadness. It looked up as Anito approached, but otherwise remained motionless.

The new creature’s left foot was bleeding. Anito squatted down and examined the foot more closely. The sole was cut from running across the sharp rock of the cliffs. If the cuts weren’t treated, the creature would get sick.

The creature was too stupid to take care of itself, Anito thought with a sudden burst of irritation, and it wouldn’t allow her to link with it even for healing. Anito synthesized something to speed healing and keep the creature from getting sick.

“Bad feet, you,” she told the new creature in simplified speech. “Not good. Get sick.”

“Where people?” she asked as she rubbed the healing substance into the creature’s feet.

The creature shook its head. Its grey color deepened.

“Gone?” Anito asked.

The new creature’s shoulders moved up and down. It shook its head, pointed at the sun, then swung an arm in a wide arc until it was pointing directly east. Then it pointed at itself and patted the ground.

Anito pondered the creature’s gesture. It wanted to stay here. Anito nodded to let it know that she understood. She told the creature that she would go find food and come back. The creature nodded its head and leaned back against the silver tree, closing its eyes.

Anito walked back across the horrible expanse of burnt forest. A lavender ripple of relief flowed across her body as she felt the dim, cool safety of the forest enfold her. Fortunately the burnt patch of the forest was on the edge of Lyanan’s territory. She could hunt in the wild lands without worrying about disrupting the balance of the village’s atwas. They had been disrupted enough by the new creatures. She swung up into a red-barked tavirra tree, and headed into the wild lands to hunt.

Game was sparser than she had expected. The village had probably shifted its hunting pattern to make up for the loss of their forest. Anito set out some snares, picked some ripe red yarra berries, and gathered a variety of greens. Her snajes yielded a pair of ground-dwelling leang. She surveyed the birds with a critical eye. They were small, but they would do. Night had fallen by the time she returned to the clearing with food.

The new creature refused to leave the deathstone tree to eat. It felt wrong to eat in the middle of such devastation. Just thinking about it made Anito’s throat dry and tight. She set the food down and walked back into the forest.

Anito settled herself in the crotch of a half-charred tree to eat and keep watch over the new creature. She had been watching for a while when she heard a sound from the deathstone tree. She slid farther out on the branch. The new creature sat up excitedly and did something to the sharp-cornered box at the base of the tree.

Anito swung down out of her tree, and moved quietly toward the deathstone tree. A murmuring sound, like water gurgling, was coming from the box. It was like the sounds the new creature made, only deeper in pitch. The new creature listened, then made noises back to the box.

Anito watched and listened intently. What was the new creature doing? Was this some kind of mating ritual? Why would it try to mate with a box? That made no sense at all.

The new creature was always making noise. It made a lot of noises to the strange, half-alive speaking stone that it carried, and the stone responded. It made noises at the stone and the stone then spoke to Anito and Ukatonen in skin speech. They spoke skin speech to the new creature, and the box made noises. Was this some form of communication? If so, it was very inefficient. It would scare away any animals that you were stalking, and tell every predator in hearing range exactly where you were.

Anito returned to the familiar refuge of the forest to think over this strange new idea. She lay along a branch watching the new creature. Something very odd was going on here. How could a dead object like a box talk? It wasn’t even half-alive, like the speaking stone. Was there something in the box, some kind of animal? She had never heard an animal that sounded like that. Had the new creature captured a spirit, as in the old stories?

Like a shadow, Ukatonen appeared on a nearby branch.

“How is Eerin?” he asked, his words enlarged to be visible through the thick fog and the pre-dawn gloom.

“The new creature is fine.”

The enkar swung over and joined Anito on her branch. “Have you found out where her people are?”

“No, but I think that those noises it’s making are like skin speech. It ulks’ to the box, and the box talks back. How could a dead thing like a rox talk, en?”

“I don’t know,” Ukatonen said in mauve hues of puzzlement. He sat silent, eyes hooded, lost in thought.

At last, unable to contain herself, Anito touched his shoulder. “What is it, en?” she asked him. “What’s going on? Is it spirits, like in the stories?”

“I don’t know, kene,” he told her. “I have lived a long time and I have never seen a spirit. Spirits live here,” he said, touching her forehead. “Not out here among us.”

“Then what is the new creature doing?”

“Perhaps Eerin really is talking to her people.”

Anito turned a doubtful shade of puce. “How could it do that? It says ihat its people are far away.”

“I don’t know,” Ukatonen admitted, “but you’ve seen that strange talking stone that she’s always playing with. I don’t know how it works, but » talks, both in Eerin’s language and ours. I spoke to the villagers last night. They said that the new creatures have many dead-but-alive objects, Ike that box, that do many strange things. These new creatures are very odd.”

There was a noise from the deathstone tree. Anito and Ukatonen leaned forward, straining to see through the thick morning fog. The two of them swung silently down to the ground and crept closer, skins the mournful color of the fog around them. The new creature was completely absorbed in the strange noises from the box. They could walk right up to it, Anito thought scornfully, and the new creature wouldn’t notice until riiey touched it. The box talked for a long time. The fog began to thin. Ukatonen touched Anito’s shoulder and motioned with his head, and the two of them slipped back into the forest, silently as the fog itself. The creature never even looked up.

Ukatonen acted strangely subdued when they reached the trees. He sat hunched in thought, his eyes locked on the figure under the strange deathstone tree. At last he blinked, shook himself, and looked at Anito.

“I had a hard time believing some of the villagers’ stories, but now—” He paused. His skin flickered several times as though he was about to say something.

“I don’t know what to think,” he said at last. “It’s very strange.” His skin had a faint tinge of orange fear to it. Anito felt the venom sacs in the red lines on her back tighten.

Ukatonen held up a gathering sack. “I brought you some food. Keep an eye on Eerin. Bring the creature back to the village tonight. I want the elders to get a good look at her.”

Anito flickered agreement and settled back into the crotch of the tree to watch the new creature. It remained sitting under the strange death-colored stone tree, heedless of the burning sun and its exposed position. Anito found herself scanning the sky, looking for the black shadow of a koirah. They usually hunted in the mornings, before the clouds gathered. The new creature was protected by the strange death-colored stone tree that it sat under, but Anito still felt anxious. The sky remained a blank blue slate, so bright it made her eyes ache. As the morning progressed, heat began to rise off the scorched plain. The air danced in bright waves over the ashes. Anito’s skin was dry and her throat ached with thirst. Duty held her to this hot, dry spot, though she longed to retreat to the coolness of the inner forest. She shifted uncomfortably on the branch. How could the creature stand the heat and the terrible glare?

At long last the new creature got up and headed for the forest. Anito glanced anxiously at the pale bright sky, but there was no sign of a koirah. That didn’t make it safe. Koirah sometimes came diving down out of a seemingly empty sky. Fortunately, the big flying reptiles were rare, and they preferred to pick their prey out of the top branches of the canopy.

The new creature reached the forest safely. It was sitting unhappily on a branch, scratching itself, when Anito swung up beside it.

“People come?” Anito asked.

The new creature nodded.

“When people come?”

The creature shook its head and gestured wildly.

“Don’t you know?” Anito asked. “You’ve been talking to them for a long time.”

The creature shook its head again. It couldn’t understand her, Anito realized. It was too busy scratching to follow a conversation. Anito examined the creature’s skin. It had the dry, dull look of a serious sunburn.

“Skin bad. Don’t go out until it starts raining.”

The creature shook its head once more.

A trickle of yellow irritation forked down Anito’s back. If the new creature’s skin was too badly damaged, the creature would be vulnerable to the things that made it sick. She synthesized a sunburn cure in her allu-a and squirted it on the troublesome new animal’s back. Then she gave it food and persuaded it to stay in the cool gloom of the forest until it started raining.

When the rains came, the new creature returned to the silvery death-stone tree. It stayed there, talking and listening to the box at the base of the tree until it was dark. Anito met it at the forest’s edge, and followed the scent trail Ukatonen laid down to guide them to the village of Lyanan.

Anito could feel the hostility of the village as soon as they reached the tree. Tilan bees hovered around them, unwilling to trust their unfamiliar scent. The village elders’ greeting was terse and rudely informal. Nevertheless, Anito greeted them with all the politeness due their station, not one feather’s-weight more or less. It was what Ilto would have done. Glancing over, Anito saw a tiny ripple of approval trickle down Ukato-nen’s arm.

The enkar stepped forward and fanned his ears wide, commanding the attention of the entire village with this one small gesture. “I am assisting Anito in the matter of the new creatures, and I appreciate the kind welcome you have given us.”

A faint brown stain of embarrassment passed over the villagers. Ukatonen had neatly and gently shamed them for their rudeness. The subtlety of the maneuver impressed Anito.

Ukatonen went on with his speech. “Although Anito is young, she was well-raised by one of the finest inkata I have known, the chief elder of Narmolom. He judged Anito to be capable of accepting this challenging and difficult atwa. I have traveled with her and the new creature for almost a month and I agree with his judgment of this fine young elder.”

Anito raised her ears in surprise at Ukatonen’s words.

The enkar turned and gestured at her to come forward. “Please, kene-sa, tell her all of the stories that you have told me. Tell her everything that you have observed about the new creatures. This is her atwa, and she needs our help to bring it into harmony with the rest of the world.”

Ukatonen stepped back, leaving Anito alone in the speaker’s position. The elders looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to speak. She felt suddenly very small and frightened. The weight of the elders’ gaze fell upon her like the coils of a huge matrem snake. She needed to act before it crushed her.

“Kene-sa,” she said, using the collective, formal title of the elders, “I am eager to hear what you know about the new creatures. I need to understand these creatures before I can work with them. Please give me your help.” She stepped back beside Ukatonen, out of the speaker’s position, wishing that she had delivered a more impressive speech.

Ukatonen’s knuckles brushed her shoulder; out of the corner of her eye she caught a flicker of reassurance and approval.

Lalito, the chief elder, stepped up to the speaker’s position. “We will try to help you. Please, be welcome and eat.” She picked up a basket full of neatly folded packets of yarram and held it out to the two of them. Ukatonen took a packet, then Anito stepped forward and took two packets, one for herself, and one for the new creature. A ripple of surprise fluttered over the assembled villagers at this gesture. Ukatonen thanked Lalito calmly, as though Anito had done nothing unusual.

The ceremony over, everyone sat down and began eating. Ripples of laughter and flickers of conversation passed across the villagers’ bodies. Anito felt suddenly homesick for Narmolom. She was a stranger here. She wanted to be home again, learning to be an elder in her own village, with an atwa she understood. She longed to be a part of things instead of an outsider.

Ukatonen brushed her shoulder. “You did well,” he told her. “The villagers are on your side now.”

Anito looked away, embarrassed by his praise. “It was your doing.”

“I merely said good things about you. You proved them to be true.”

“How did I do that?”

“By not being angered when they were rude. By not trying to be more than you are. You showed them a courageous young elder, coping well under enormously difficult circumstances. They sympathize with you now. They want to help.”

“But I only did what was polite. Any well-raised Tendu would do the same in a similar situation.”

“Exactly,” Ukatonen said. “You proved that you were smart and well-raised.”

“What should we do about the new creatures?”

“For now? Keep this one healthy; watch, and learn as much as we can. The more we know, the better we will be at dealing with them if they return.”

After dinner the villagers crowded around the new creature and began examining it. They were much less gentle than Anito’s people had been. In Narmolom it had the sponsorship of a revered chief elder. Here it was one of the creatures who had willfully destroyed part of their home. It would take more than a lifetime before the destroyed forest was back in harmony with its surroundings. The entire village would have to work to restore it, neglecting other important work. It was little wonder that the Tendu of Lyanan were angry.

Anito watched the new creature anxiously, but it bore the villagers’ mistreatment bravely and without apparent anger. Anito was impressed with its patience and forbearance. At last the creature looked at Ukatonen and her. Anito knew the creature well enough to recognize that look. It was tired and wanted this to stop.

Ukatonen brushed Lalito’s shoulder. “The new creature is tired, kene,” he said politely. “She needs sleep. May I please take Eerin upstairs and let her sleep?”

Lalito flickered scquiescence. There was no polite way to refuse a request from an enkar, not without losing face in front of the entire village.

“I’ll take the new creature up to our guest quarters, en,” Anito offered. She felt uncomfortable in the presence of all these hostile strangers, and wanted a chance to be alone.

Ukatonen flickered acknowledgment, and Anito beckoned to the creature. She led it up to the guest quarters at the top of the tree, just below the rooms where the tinka slept. The creature crawled into the nearest bed and fell asleep almost immediately.

Anito squatted against the wall and watched it sleep. Its deep, regular breathing sounded loud in the quiet room. It was noisy even when it was asleep. She should never have agreed to take this creature as her atwa. It brought nothing but trouble. Anito shook her head. It was a gesture she had picked up from the new creature, she realized, flushing beige with disgust.

It was more than half a month since they had left Narmolom. Watching the villagers talk, she found herself longing for home. She was tired of coping with strange creatures and strange Tendu.

Ukatonen came in. “I was wondering why you didn’t come back down,” he said.

“I wanted to be alone for a while.”

“You miss your village, don’t you?” Ukatonen said. “I’m never lonely until I’m among people. I can spend months alone in the forest and never notice, but if I spend the night at a village, I suddenly feel alone.” Grey sadness clouded his skin briefly. “It’s watching them all together, gossiping and telling stories. They share something that I don’t. It can be hard, not having any place you belong.”

“Don’t you ever feel at home anywhere?” Anito asked him.

“Sometimes,” he said. “In the wild lands, there are moments when everything is in harmony. I feel at home then. When I spend time with the other enkar, we share something. It’s not like a village, but…” A ripple of blue-grey longing crossed his skin. “It’s been a while since I’ve spent time with the other enkar. I’ve been living like a trader, traveling from village to village.”

Anito felt honored by the brief glimpse he had given her of what it was like to be an enkar. She brushed his shoulder with her knuckles. “I’m sorry, en. Would you like to link with me? Would that make you feel better?”

Ukatonen touched her shoulder with a ripple of regret. “Thank you, Anito,” he said, “but you need to listen to the villagers tell about the new creatures. Perhaps later.”

They rejoined the village elders, who were sitting around the edge of the pool talking. A few were linked in allu-a over in the shadows. Conversation ceased as Ukatonen and Anito joined the group.

“Please tell us about the new creatures,” Ukatonen asked.

A rainbow of responses erupted, mostly in shades of anger and fear. Ukatonen held up his hands, and the flickering colors dimmed.

“You, Korto,” he said, pointing at one of the elders. “You and your bami were the first to see them. Tell me what happened.”

Korto moved forward into the speaker’s position. She ducked her head shyly at the enkar. “The afternoon rains had started to fall. My bami and I were on our way to South Point beach to gather yarram and lyarrin, when we heard a strange sound. We looked out at the ocean, and a large white thing floated out there, making a growling noise. At first I thought it was one of those giant teatari that the lyali-Tendu tell of, but it didn’t have long arms. It came right up onto the beach. It opened up a hole in its belly and some new creatures came out, five of them, I think. They were all white, like they were sick. They walked up and down the beach, and climbed up onto the cliff. Then they went back and climbed into the big thing’s belly. After a while the growly creature began moving up the path to the cliff. It didn’t have legs; it moved on silver strips of stone that rolled along the ground. It was very heavy and left deep tracks in the beach sand. I sent my bami to the village to tell them what was going on.

“Once the big white thing was up on the cliff face, other creatures got out. They made holes in the rock, and filled them with something. Then there was a loud noise. It shook the ground and the trees, scaring all the animals. I—” Korto flushed deep brown. “1 ran away, en. The noise frightened me. That was all I saw.”

“Thank you, kene, you did well,” Ukatonen told her, deep blue with approval. His praise only deepened her embarrassment, but Anito saw an azure circle of pride flare on her back as the young elder returned to her seat.

“Who saw the creatures next?”

Flickers of conversation passed across the assembled elders like wind through the trees. Two elders stepped forward. One of them said:

“Lalito sent us to see what Korto had found. We went to the cliff. They were making the deathstone tree that they left behind. Other new creatures burned away all of the plants on the cliffs. Then they put a thick sheet of something that was clear like water, only harder, down on the ground. It began to swell, until it looked like a bubble, only much bigger. It was at least eight yai across, en, and as tall as the canopy. The end of the bubble was connected to the big white growly thing. They began pulling things out of the thing’s belly, and making big boxes inside the bubble. There were at least a dozen of the creatures, en. They took off their white coverings when they were inside, and we could see that they had brown skin and fur on the tops of their heads, like an ika flower. They wore coverings under the white coverings. They were very strange, en. They would capture and kill things, but not eat them. They took them apart, en, but they didn’t eat them.”

“What else did they do?” Ukatonen asked.

Lalito stepped forward into the speaker’s position.

“They flew through the air in noisy creatures made of stone,” the chief elder said. “They gathered all kinds of plants and insects. They wrapped whole trees in that clear stuff, and then poisoned everything inside. Then they cut the trees down and picked all of the dead things out of them. After they caught and killed a couple of tinka, we moved to a tree on the far side of our territory. There wasn’t enough food. Several elders chose to die or leave so that the rest would have enough to eat. We have moved back to this side of the territory, but they burned some of our best forest. We lost five young na trees, and many of our most productive fruit trees.

“We cannot afford to have a village as large as we had before. Our bami are going to have to wait for years before they can become elders. There is no place for them to fill. It will be many years before we are back in balance. Never have I seen such a terrible calamity, en! I don’t know what to do!”

Ukatonen ducked his chin, and sat, staring off into space for a long moment.

“Your troubles are not new,” he said at last. He held up his hands to dim the ripple of disbelief that ran across the villagers. “While the new creatures are something we have never seen before, other villages have lost large portions of forest, sometimes larger than what you have lost. Their forests were destroyed by fire, storms, floods, mud slides, or earthquakes. Those villages have come back, and so will yours. The enkar know of your trouble. They have sent me to help you. Others will come. We will show you how to restore your ruined forest. In a few seasons you will have more food than before. I will speak to the sea people on behalf of the enkar, and ask them to provide you with more food until then. The sea people owe the enkar many debts. They will provide the food. Send some of your people to the mountain tribes, and trade dried yarram for food. I grant you permission to hunt the wild lands as though they were your own lands for nine seasons. After that, you will not need them.”

“But, en,” said Lalito, “we will owe the enkar a great debt. How shall we repay you?”

“By sending your elders to become enkar, instead of letting them die, or by sending us some of your young and gifted bami.”

Lalito turned a dull orange. “What you ask is a great sacrifice, en. You want us to send our tired old elders to you. They will die alone and friendless. You ask for our bami, our future. You ask us to send them out into a strange, harsh world, away from the village that raised them. How can we do this?”

“My life,” Ukatonen said gently, “is not empty. I have lived long and well. If sometimes I am alone, far from people who know me, then I also enjoy my friends more when I see them. And I have friends in many places. Every village welcomes me. It is not a bad life. It is full of interesting things.” He paused. “If you do not wish my help, or the help of the plants and animals that I carry, then I will go, and you may solve your problems by yourself.” He got up to leave, ignoring the protests and pleas of the villagers.

Lalito caught at his elbow. “Please, en. We meant no offense to you or the other enkar. It’s just that we will miss our people when they go to you.”

“Your elders would be dead, and there are always tinka eager to become bami,” Ukatonen said. “But I thank you for accepting my offer. Those you send to us will not regret it. Tomorrow, I will begin helping you rebuild your village. I must go and rest now.” He turned and left the pool.

Anito, not wanting to face the villagers alone, followed him. He seemed preoccupied and angry.

When they reached their room, Anito touched him gently on the shoulder. He turned and looked at her, the red glow of his anger fading.

“What’s the matter, en?” she asked.

“Nothing that I can change,” he said, a mist of regret clouding his words. “It is hard, sometimes, talking to people in the villages. They see things so differently.”

Anito remembered his earlier words. He was tired and lonely. It must be very hard to be an enkar. They spent so much time alone. She was glad that she had her village to return to, where she would be among her own people. She missed them so much. “Would you like to link with me, en?” she offered, holding out her arms.

Ukatonen turned an affectionate sea-green. “Yes I would. Thank you.”

They entered the link, their presences swirling around each other. Anito allowed herself to feel all the loneliness bottled up inside her. She felt Ukatonen do the same. The bitter tide of loneliness that filled them drained away as they basked in each other’s presence. Ukatonen’s power and skill and Anito’s youth and energy flowed together until they were in harmony. At last they broke the link. They sat for a moment, savoring the well-being and closeness they felt and then got up and went to bed.

When Anito woke the next morning, she thought that she was back at Narmolom. Then she sat up, and realized that home was still far away. A wave of sadness clouded her skin. It was the sense of balance and harmony left over from last night that had fooled her into thinking that she was home. Ukatonen was up, probably talking to the villagers. She rose and went out to the wild lands to gather breakfast for the three of them. She caught a fine big ponderi in a nearby stream. It would make an excellent breakfast, and she could save a fillet to give as a guest gift to Lalito. She watched the shifting patches of brown, green, and black fading as the fish died, hoping she could read the future in its skin, as the enkar were said to do. She saw nothing but a dying fish.

The new creature was sitting on the edge of the sleeping ledge when Anito arrived back at the room.

She held out the leaf cone full of fish. “Hungry?” she asked.

“Thank you, Anito,” the creature replied in clear, understandable skin speech, as it reached out to take some fish.

Anito almost dropped the leaf cone. She looked questioningly at the new creature.

“Ukatonen,” the creature said, holding out its arms as though requesting a link.

Ukatonen had linked with the new creature, and given it the ability to speak. It was deep work, and he had done it without a monitor, on a creature that had already killed two highly skilled elders.

“Not good,” Anito told the new creature. “Ukatonen get sick. I fix.”

When Ukatonen returned a few minutes later, Anito seized his arm. “Linking with the new creature is dangerous! You should have let me monitor you! Do you want to die like Kirito and Ilto?”

Ukatonen drew himself up and turned red. “I am an enkar! I don’t need a monitor!”

“And I know that creature better than anyone living. I watched Kirito die. I tasted the taint that killed Ilto. The new creature is my atwa! If you die, it is my responsibility. How could I repay the enkar for your death? My village would have to spend several generations working off that debt! I refuse to carry that burden.”

“Anito,” Ukatonen said gently, “Eerin asked me for allu-a. I chose to do it. Even if I died, it would not be your fault. The enkar carry the burden of responsibility for the decisions they make. Your village would owe us nothing.”

“But I would blame myself. Before he died, Ilto taught me how to find and clear out the new creature’s taint without hurting myself. Let me check and see if you are clean. If you died because of my inaction, I would feel indebted, and my village would carry that debt,” Anito said. “Please, en, let me try. I don’t want you to be sick because of my atwa. You are too important to me. If I am wrong, then I am the one who looks silly. If I am right, then you would be spared sickness and death.”

Ukatonen looked at her, his skin a muddy blur of conflicting emotions. At last he held out his arms, asking for allu-a. “Thank you, kene.”

The two of them settled themselves in a corner. Anito linked with him. She searched through his body, and found nothing. Apparently Ilto had successfully blocked the new creature from tainting others.

“The new creature didn’t make you sick, en. Please forgive me for doubting your abilities.” Anito looked down, embarrassed.

Ukatonen touched her shoulder. “It’s all right, Anito. Thank you for being concerned. I will ask you before I link with Eerin again. Where is she, anyway?”

Anito looked around. The new creature was gone, along with a gathering bag and its talking stone. Anito rippled puzzlement and irritation. “I’d better go and find it.”

“I’ll come with you.”

It was raining hard by the time they reached the coast. The new creature was huddled under the deathstone tree, talking in its noisy language to its invisible new creatures. Several deep cuts ran across one shoulder, red and angry underneath a strange, translucent foam. Those wounds needed to be taken care of, or the creature would get sick. Anito felt a flicker of irritation at its carelessness.

She beckoned the new creature into the forest and, after considerable argument, persuaded the new creature to allow her and Ukatonen to heal the cuts. When they were done, they went back out to the deathstone tree. Ukatonen questioned the creature. “What is this?” he asked, pointing to the talking box.

The creature’s face tightened in thought. “I talk to my people. My people very far. This box sends talk.”

“I show,” it said. It began making noises at the box.

Ukatonen watched intently, ears wide, then asked if he could talk to its people. The new creature fiddled with its talking stone and then guided the enkar so that he stood in front of the talking stone. Then she nodded.

Ukatonen introduced himself, and explained that the village was angry at the new creatures for burning down their forest, and asked them how they were going-to bring everything back into harmony.

The creature looked uncomfortable and unhappy. She glanced from the forest to Ukatonen and back to the box that talked to the other new creatures. Then it sat down in front of the box, and began making noises. Anito listened carefully, but nothing in the stream of guttural sounds made any sense at all.

The creature finished the message. Anito and Ukatonen watched the box intently for a reply.

The creature touched Ukatonen on the shoulder. “My people are far,” it said, gesturing skyward, as though its people lived in the clouds. “They not speak—” The creature paused, searching for words. “It be night when they speak back to us.”

“Where are your people?” Ukatonen asked. “How do they hear you?”

The creature thought for a while, as though searching for words. Finally it set a large round pebble on the ground, touched it, then pointed at the sky. “Rock is,” it said, pointing again at the sky.

“Rock is clouds?” Ukatonen suggested.

The new creature shook its head, and tried again. At last Ukatonen understood. “Rock is sun,” he said, and taught the creature how to form the word. The creature picked up a second rock. After more discussion, it declared that rock to be the ground they sat on. Another stone became the place where its people were.

Anito shook her head. What the creature was saying made no sense. It was saying that its people lived in the sky like birds. But the new creature couldn’t fly. It was even afraid to climb trees. How could her people live in the sky?

“Not can be,” Anito said, mirroring Ukatonen’s words.

The discussion got even crazier after that. Not only did the new creature claim that its people lived in the sky, it also claimed that they traveled from star to star. It told them that the stars were like the sun, which made no sense at all. They were smaller and you could only see them at night.

Not that Anito was crazy enough to stick her head out of the canopy at night, where a bael could hear her with its keen night-ears, and catch her. The creature claimed that its people were on their way to another star, and that they couldn’t turn around and come back. They would return a long time from now. It wasn’t clear whether Eerin was talking months, seasons, or years, but it was a long time. By the time the sun came up tomorrow, her people would be too far away to hear her words.

The creature’s story was impossible, and yet Anito had heard it talking to the box and heard the box talk back. She had heard equally impossible stories about the new creatures from the villagers. If it really was from another star, then that would explain why its body was so strange. What if the stories were true? What if the new creature’s people really could travel between the stars?

The venom lines tightened along Anito’s back, but she didn’t let her fear color her skin. She got up and walked into the forest, leaving Ukato-nen to talk to the new creature. She needed to feel the forest around her, feel the reassurance of familiar things, while she thought this out.

Anito climbed high into the branches of the biggest tree in the area. She settled herself in a crotch and thought of nothing at all, letting the gentle sway of the branches soothe her. At last she was calm. What kind of atwa had she taken on? If Eerin’s people really could travel between the stars, what did that mean for the Tendu? Could they come back and burn down the rest of the forest? What could her people do to stop them? Suddenly, the harmony of Anito’s world seemed very vulnerable. Even this great tree with its broad branches and massive roots seemed as fragile and easily destroyed as a bird’s egg.

A rustle in the branches made Anito look around. It was Ukatonen. He settled himself next to Anito.

“Your sitik died too soon,” he said after a long moment of silence. “Things are becoming very interesting. Your atwa is going to be very important to all of us, Anito.”

“I am not worthy of it, en,” Anito said. “Please, find someone else who knows more than I do, someone who can do a better job.”

“There is no one, kene. You know more about the new creature than anyone else.”

“But I know so little about anything else,” Anito said, bright orange with fear. “I’m just out of werrun.”

“Then you must learn, kene,” Ukatonen told her. “You must learn.” He swung off the branch and was soon lost in the canopy, leaving Anito alone.