The Color of Distance

Chapter 21

Juna peered at the flickering display on her computer. It was low on power. She was going to have to leave it out in the sun to recharge tomorrow. As soon as Anito agreed to stay, Juna had set to work, quizzing Anito and Ninto about atwas in general and Johito’s atwa in particular. They were asleep now, and she was reviewing what she knew.

An atwa, to the best of her knowledge, was a clan affiliation responsible for the management of a portion of the ecosystem for the benefit of the village. Most atwas were based on location. There were clearly defined layers of the jungle: ground-based; mid-trunk level; lower, middle, and upper canopies, as well as rivers, streams, ponds, and marshlands. Other atwas were based on important food or shelter commodities: tree ferns, pollinators and pollen sources, game animals, the na tree and its dependents, and different kinds of fruit trees. Generally the species-specific atwas were coordinated by the location-based atwas. When there was a conflict between two atwas, the village elder resolved things, usually with the help of the village council.

Juna smiled. She had already been through such a conflict resolution. Her admiration for Miato, the current chief elder, had increased. It wasn’t an easy job. She hoped that most of the differences that arose were easier to resolve than hers was.

Johito was responsible for eight different varieties of fruit trees. This meant that she also monitored the animals that pollinated them, as well as the animals that fed and nested in them. Since these fruit trees fed a number of important game animals, those animals also fell under her atwa, though they overlapped into several others as well. After that, An-ito’s explanations had gotten too complicated to follow.

The ooloo, it transpired, were an important distributor of the seeds of several different kinds of fruit trees, and a pollinator of another. Their population had fallen off due to excessive predation. Until their numbers rose to an acceptable level, hunting them was prohibited. Juna had killed a young female, just about to begin her breeding cycle. This was worse than killing a male, but not as serious as killing a pregnant female, or a mother with young.

Juna rubbed her tired eyes. Her notes on the plant and animal species in Johito’s atwa were very sketchy. She could identify most of the fruit trees involved, but she knew absolutely nothing about the insects, birds, lizards, and other-plants that interacted with them. She scanned through her meager notes one last time, and shut the computer down. She rested her head against the wall, and closed her eyes. Here she was, humanity’s sole representative on the planet, in danger of being kicked out of the village for killing a lizard. If the implications of it weren’t so serious, it would be funny.

The tree creaked faintly as it swayed in the breeze, the only sound in the late-night silence. She should get some sleep. Tomorrow was going to be difficult.

Anito woke her and Moki early. After a hurried breakfast, they met Johito at the top of the tree. Johito led them through the forest to a tree covered with ripe fruit, and alive with feeding birds and lizards. The feeding animals scattered at their approach. Johito pointed to a wide branch in the midst of the tree.

“This is a gauware tree. Sit there. Be still. Watch. I will return for you later,” she told them and left.

Juna stared after her, ears wide. Then she looked at Anito, her skin purple with puzzlement.

Anito flared red. “She’s not going to teach you anything!” Her patterns were jagged with anger.

Juna rippled a shrug. “It’s only the first day. Let’s do what she says. There’s a lot that can be learned just watching.”

“I’ll watch with you. Maybe I can help,” Anito said.

Juna hung her computer up in the sunshine at the top of the tree to recharge. Then they settled themselves in the gauware tree and waited. Soon the birds and lizards returned and began to feed. Juna watched with a trained biologist’s eye, noting which species were feeding, and how they interacted. Occasionally, when something startled the feeding animals, and they fled, she turned and asked Anito for the names and habits of the animals she didn’t know. By mid-morning, when the animals faded into the brush, Juna had identified twenty-five species. Some had only stopped to perch for a moment in the tree or to display and court in the top branches. Some had come to feed, and others to prey on them.

Juna fetched her computer from the treetop. She and Moki set to work cataloguing all they had observed. She had Moki depict the animals on his skin so that she had a visual record of what they looked like. The pictures were recognizable, though lacking in fine detail. Still, they would do for a beginning. She had a feeling that she would have lots of chances to get pictures of the actual animals over the next month. The cataloguing took until well past noon. Anito went and gathered lunch for them.

After lunch, they climbed down to the forest floor and observed what came by to feed on the fallen fruit. This time of day it was mostly insects. Now that her computer was recharged, Juna could catalogue directly as she watched, with the computer in helmet configuration, subvocalizing into a throat mike. She recorded almost forty species of insects, everything from fruit flies to a large, many-legged arthropod with claws that clearly filled much the same ecological niche as a land crab. There were half a dozen different butterflies feeding on rotting fruit.

Several amphibians came by, including a tiny jewel-like frog that sat in a shaft of sunlight, bobbing up and down, flickering through a range of brilliant colors. Juna watched, intrigued, as a larger, red frog responded to the other frog’s courtship ritual. The tiny frog clasped the larger female and they scuttled off into the leaves to mate. Juna smiled. If she hadn’t seen them pairing off, she would have catalogued the two as completely different species.

As the sun began to sink toward the horizon, the larger animals came out into the treetops to feed. Juna and her two assistants climbed back up to watch them.

It was almost sunset when Johito returned. She led them back to her room, where her bami had laid out a good-sized meal.

“What did you learn today?” Johito asked Juna when they were seated.

As she ate, Juna reeled off a list of the animals that had visited the gauware tree and what they had done there. She speculated on how their visits affected the tree, identifying possible seed dispersers, and noting animals that she knew were desirable game. She worked from memory as much as possible, consulting Moki or Anito only when she was uncertain about something. She wanted Johito to know that she had a good memory for the kinds of details that might be useful for learning an atwa. If Johito was impressed by how much she could learn on her own, she might be more willing to teach her. Juna knew that there was no way that she could master such a complex ecosystem by herself in less than a month. Unless she understood how the Tendu used the atwas to guide their interactions with the forest, all of the natural history in the world wouldn’t help. For that she needed Johito’s cooperation.

Johito watched her recital of the day’s events impassively. Her skin remained neutral, with no hint of emotion. At last Juna ran out of things to say. There was a long moment of stillness. Johito sat as though she were carved from a huge block of pale green jade, her chin tucked in thought.

“I want you to go back to the same tree and watch again tomorrow,” Johito said, breaking her stillness at last. She looked away. They were clearly dismissed.

Juna’s shoulders slumped. She followed Anito and Moki out the door, feeling defeated.

Anito touched her on the shoulder when they reached their room. “You did well today. Don’t let Johito bother you. You were up late last night. Get some sleep.”

Juna nodded.

Moki touched her arm. “We learned a lot today. We’ll leam more tomorrow. Good night, siti.”

“Sleep well, bai,” Juna said, giving her bami a quick hug. They hadn’t linked today. She missed the closeness they shared through linking.

She held out her arms, suppressing a jaw-cracking yawn. Just a quick link, to quiet her conscience, then off to bed.

Moki linked with her, and they shared the familiar closeness and peace. It felt so good, like a warm bath or a hug from her mother. Drowsily she broke the link and burrowed into her warm, moist, leafy bed. She felt rosy and peaceful and connected with Moki, and through Moki, with all of the Tendu. She yawned, covering her mouth with her hand to keep the leaves out. She wondered now at her previous fear of allu-a. She would surely have gone mad from sheer loneliness without it. Sleep claimed her, as deep and profound as the dark, eternal forest around them.

The next few days were much like the first. She watched the tree, noting everything that interacted with it—animal, insect, or plant. Every night Johito listened to her describe what happened in the gauware tree, and then sent her back to watch some more. By the end of the seventh day she felt that she had learned everything there was to know about the tree. When Johito sent her back for an eighth day of tree-watching, she began to protest. Anito touched her arm. A small, private glyph of negation flickered on the back of her hand. Juna stilled her skin speech with an effort.

“Yes, kene, I will go back to the tree tomorrow,” she said after Anito apologized for her. “Only please tell me what I am supposed to be looking for that I have not yet noticed.”

Johito said nothing for a long time. Juna sat perfectly still, determined not to move until Johito said something helpful.

“You have more to learn. Look more carefully,” Johito said at last. Then she got up and crawled into bed, as though they had already left the room.

Juna turned bright red with anger. Anito plucked nervously at her arm.

Juna took a deep breath. Anger would do nothing to help her. Johito was trying to see how far-she could be pushed. If she lost her temper, she would lose everything.

“I’m all right,” she told Anito. “Let’s go.”

Juna lay awake, shifting uncomfortably in her bed. Was she missing something, or was Johito being difficult? Tomorrow she would go over every inch of the tree. If she didn’t turn up something new, then she would tell Anito that she was giving up.

The next morning Juna arose early. She woke Moki and they slipped out of the tree while the forest was still dim and thick with mist. The first shafts of light were gilding the treetops when they reached the gauware tree. Juna stationed herself on the branch of a nearby tree, and considered her next move.

Everything depended on whether Johito was playing fair with her. After seven days spent cataloguing everything that happened on that damned tree, Juna was sure that Johito wanted her to fail.

So, how would Johito try to keep her from succeeding? Johito had to play fair according to Tendu custom. To do otherwise would make her lose face if it was discovered. Johito was testing her. If she passed the test, then she was worthy to take on as a student. There was still some hidden fact about this tree that Juna needed to discover, something that was the key to the gauware tree’s survival.

Whatever it was that Juna needed to find out, it was not something that Moki, Anito, or Ninto knew about the tree. They had given her what information they had. The rest she had to figure out for herself.

She turned to her bami. “Moki, go ask Anito and Ninto if they know of any other gauware trees nearby.”

Moki nodded and swung off through the trees. Juna climbed down to the ground, and began examining the tree minutely, starting at the wide buttress roots. She knocked on the roots. They resonated like a drum. Were they hollow? She climbed, pausing from time to time to knock on the trunk. It too resonated. It was hollow. About mid-morning Juna pushed aside a bromeliad and found what she was looking for, a hole in the crotch of the tree, twice the size of her fist.

So, the tree was hollow. What lived inside? She could format her computer as a camera and drop it through the hole on a rope, but she didn’t want to risk losing it. Better to wait and see what Moki could find out.

She swung through the trees to a nearby stream, and washed off the accumulated grime of her morning exertions. It was amazing how dirty she got, just climbing a tree. She plunged into the stream, whooping at the feel of the cold water on her skin. She emerged shining and clean to find Anito and Moki waiting for her.

“There are several gauware trees nearby,” Anito informed her. “Let’s eat and then go look at them.”

The second tree they looked at had a large gaping hole in its trunk, big enough for Juna to climb into. She sent Moki for a long coil of rope and a large fresh chunk of glow-fungus.

“You’re going to climb down inside that gauware tree?” Anito asked, ochre flickers of concern highlighting her words.

Juna nodded.

“Be careful. You don’t know what lives inside that hole. It might be dangerous.”

“Yes, but I have to know what’s down there.”

Anito flickered resigned agreement. “You’re probably right. Johito won’t be satisfied until you tell her about the inside of the tree, but if you die in the process, she won’t mourn. For all we know, there could be something dangerous in there. Be very careful.”

It was early afternoon when Moki returned with the necessary climbing equipment. They lowered the glow-fungus down, but aside from a flock of sleepy, wide-mouthed araus, birds that looked like a cross between an archaeopteryx and a whippoorwill, they saw nothing except vague, shiny, writhing shapes in the dimness. Those shapes could have been anything from a giant snake to a colony of harmless beetles.

Moki looped one end of the rope around a branch and tied it securely. Anito tied a series of loops in the other end. “For footholds,” she explained, and then braced the rope behind her back. Moki paid out a body length of rope into the hole. Juna checked her gear, and swung herself into the hole. She stuck her feet through the bottom loops in the rope and then nodded to Anito, who began lowering her into the dark cavern of the hollow tree. As soon as Juna was far enough down, she hooked the glow-fungus onto a loop above her head. It cast a pallid blue light on the rough interior of the tree. A warm current of air blew past her, carrying the stench of death and decay. She swallowed against her gag reflex and wished she was enclosed in an environment suit.

Two and a half meters down, a wide shelflike projection partially blocked the hollow. It was covered with dark brown beetle-like insects feeding on decayed leaf litter. These bugs were what she had seen moving in the light from the glow-fungus. As Juna carefully eased her way past the obstruction, a bright yellow snake with vivid red bands bordered by thin green stripes lifted its head out of the leaf litter and regarded her alertly. Juna froze. It was a tiakan. Its bite was extremely poisonous. The Tendu could counteract the poison, but it took months for all of the effects to wear off. She watched it watch her for a very long time. At last the snake lowered its head and crept off, backwards. The motion was odd and very unsnakelike. Gingerly she unhooked the light from the rope and held it closer. She let out the breath that she had been holding, and laughed. It was a harmless giant millipede, its tail colored to resemble a tiakan’s head. Using a long bamboo probe, Juna stirred the leaf litter around the anthropod. It lifted its tail again, mimicking the poisonous snake. The illusion was almost perfect.

She gave the rope two tugs, the signal to lower her farther into the darkness. For a moment, the light from the glow-fungus was cut off by the projection. Her pupils widened, but the darkness was nearly absolute. Something wet and slimy fluttered past her, chirring and squeaking. She screamed. The sound was swallowed by the soft, rotting wood on the inside of the tree. Then the glow-fungus slid past the projection, and Juna saw that she had disturbed a colony of frog-bats. They were ugly but harmless. Conditions inside the tree were perfect for them. They needed a very hot, humid environment. The temperature had to be almost 35 degrees Celsius, and the air was saturated with moisture.

As she continued her descent, she had time to survey the inner surface of the tree. It was covered with a variety of different kinds of fungi. Clouds of tiny insects swarmed around her light. The walls opened out as she continued descending. It was like being in a cave. Great plates of multicolored fungi hung down like stalactites. Several different species of frog-bats made the tree their home. They clung between the fungal stalactites, chittering uneasily at her invasion. Their guano rained down on her head. She wiped it off with a sweaty palm and continued her descent. This reeking wooden cavern was a far cry from Narmolom’s comfortable, well-lit village tree.

At last the bottom of the cavity came into sight. Something fled squeaking at her approach. She jerked the rope three times, the signal to stop, and hung a couple of feet above the guano-covered floor. The fleeing animal paused at the edge of a dark hole. It was the size and shape of a large hairless rat, white with blotchy yellow patches. It was a gootara, an amphibian like the batlike creatures she had startled in her descent. The female laid its eggs in a pouch on the male’s abdomen, where he fertilized them. The eggs hatched and the young lived in the male’s pouch until they finished developing and were old enough to survive on their own. She pushed off from a projecting rib and grasped a woody knob on the other side of the tree to look more closely at the gootara, but the creature fled down the passageway.

Juna reached down with a bamboo probe and stirred the guano, disturbing a seething sea, of insects and worms that burrowed frantically into the detritus. There was plenty of food for the gootara down here. She dug further, trying to see how deep the layer of guano was, and whether there was wood or earth underneath. She struck earth about fifteen centimeters down, densely packed with roots. The guano was evidently a major source of nutrients for the gauware tree. Sequestered inside the tree like this, it was held for the exclusive use of the gauware tree. Perhaps this was what Johito had wanted her to find.

Juna unhooked the glow-fungus and shone it down the passageway formed by the hollow root of the tree. Several other hollow roots radiated out of the central cavern. She wondered what other creatures used these underground passageways through the jungle. She put the glow-fungus back in its case of nutrient solution, and hung there in the dark, listening. There were crisp rustling and popping sounds around and below her. The hole at the top of the tree was only a dim, distant circle of light. The outside world seemed very far away from this dark, stinking, bug-infested hell.

At last her eyes grew used to the darkness and she could make out, faintly, the bulges and irregularities on the inside of the tree trunk. Something rustled behind her. The rope swayed as she turned her head to look. Peering through the darkness, she could make out only a vague shape. She pulled out the glow-fungus.

Fresh from its bath in the nutrient solution, the fungus glowed brightly, revealing a huge lobsterlike creature, twice as long as her hand. Its eyes reflected the light as it backed into a crevice, its long feelers waving. Several other land lobsters were peering out from a root cavity. Instead of claws, the lobsters had immensely long, powerful mantislike arms. She jumped like a startled mouse as one of the creatures snatched a many-legged white beetle the size of her palm from the litter on the floor, and carried it to its jaws. She heard the rustle of chitin and wings as the big beetle struggled to escape, then the implacable crunching noise as the land lobster mechanically dispatched its prey, its eyes never leaving her.

Juna shuddered. She hated bugs, and there were too many of them in this awful hole. A sudden surge of claustrophobia gripped her. It was time to go. Hopefully Johito would be satisfied by her investigation of the hidden world of the tree.

To her surprise, the sun was touching the treetops when she emerged from the tree. She felt the cool breeze on her skin and took a deep breath. Never had fresh air smelled and tasted so good. Moki embraced her with his free hand, and Anito brushed her shoulder, relief evident on her skin. Moki coiled the rope and.slung it over his shoulder.

“Let’s go,” Juna said. “I want to find a stream and wash off.” She was black with filth, relieved only by splotches and streaks of brown guano from the frog-bats.

They headed for a nearby waterfall. Juna stood underneath it in the last golden rays of the sun, feeling the cool water blast away the accumulation of grime on her skin. She dove into the pool below the falls and emerged, clean and dripping. Looking up, she noticed that night birds and bats were already beginning to flicker through the trees overhead. Johito would be waiting for them at the other tree.

Suddenly she was struck by an idea. Juna laughed. Let Johito wait. She had just thought of another portion of the ecosystem that she needed to observe.

“Anito, can we build a nest in the hollow gauware tree tonight? I want to see what happens to the tree at night.”

Anito flickered agreement. “We’d better hurry, though. It’s getting dark.”

They built a nest in the gauware tree she had climbed inside of. They took turns watching through the night, waiting for a rustling nearby, then uncapping the glow-fungus to see what was there. Often they were rewarded by a glimpse of some visiting creature. They catalogued five species of larger animals new to the tree, as well as numerous insects, drawn by the light of the glow-fungus.

Johito met them as they returned to the village, tired but happy.

“Where were you last night?” Johito asked them, ochre concern warring with yellow irritation on her skin.

“We were out studying your atwa,” Anito said.

“We’ve learned a great deal,” Juna added. “May we tell you now, or would you rather wait until tonight?” She hefted a full gathering bag, bulging with fruit and game. “We’ve brought breakfast. It isn’t much, but—”

“Thank you,” Johito said. “I can listen now.”

They followed Johito down to her room and sat down. Moki and Johito’s bami set about preparing breakfast.

“So, what did you learn about the tree?” Johito asked, ignoring the usual polite preliminaries.

Juna told Johito about her trip into the hollow gauware tree, and their night watch. She listed the species they’d found and speculated on the nutrients the tree got from the guano of the animals dwelling inside it, She ignored the breakfast set before them, though her stomach was hollow with hunger.

At last she was through. Johito regarded them for a very long moment.

“Well,” she said at last. “Eat a big breakfast. Today will be long. You have a lot to learn.”

Juna looked at Anito, who nodded at her. She had won the first battle. Johito was going to teach Juna about her atwa.

She ate hugely, savoring her victory. When she was finished, Johito took her out and showed her everything she had missed about the gauware tree.

To Juna’s satisfaction, most of what Johito had to show her were things she couldn’t have observed. Because the gauware tree was not in bloom this time of year, the network of pollinators, pollen thieves, and their predators and parasites was not there to be discovered. Also the large breeding colonies of darru beetles that filled the inside of the hollow trees wouldn’t congregate until a month before the next flood season.

Still there were surprises, such as a complex symbiotic relationship between the nocturnal araus and the brilliant ngulla birds. The ngulla birds fed on a species of flying insect that laid its eggs on the arau chicks, weakening and killing them. In return, the arau provided warning of nocturnal predators to the sleeping ngulla. That relationship would have taken months of study to discover.

They spent the whole day in the gauware tree, stopping only for a brief, light lunch of fruit, greens, and honey. Juna’s brain was whirling by the time the sun touched the treetops. Johito looked like she was ready to go on all night, but Anito intervened, pleading exhaustion.

“We were up all night, kene,” she said. “I don’t think that two nights in a row would be wise.”

“Tomorrow then,” Johito said. “We will meet in my room for breakfast. Moki and Eerin will tell me what they have learned today. If it is satisfactory, then the lessons will continue.”

Juna was glad that she’d had the presence of mind to record Johito’s lessons. She and Moki managed to review them briefly that night, before exhaustion claimed them both.

The review the following morning was grueling and minute. Juna remembered her harrowing Ph.D. defense. Compared to Johito, her professors had been vague and undemanding. Her stomach was in knots by the time Johito finished her interrogation.

It never got any easier. Several times, Johito suspended lessons abruptly, claiming to have lost patience with them, sending them back to review what they had already learned. Always there was some simple fact that they had failed to take into consideration. Johito’s skin remained expressionless. Her words were simple black patterns on neutral green skin. It was impossible to tell how they were doing until she either passed or failed them. By the end of the month their nerves were shot. They flared angrily at each other at the slightest provocation. Even linking failed to ease the tension.

Ukatonen showed up four days before Johito was due to pass judgment. He took one look at them and pulled rank, claiming he needed them for some work he was doing in the wild lands. He took them to a lovely spot in the middle of the wild lands and demanded the whole story.

“No wonder you’re so tired. Rest, eat, relax, link. You need it, all of you.”

“But Johito—” Juna began.

“Johito can wait until you’re back in harmony. I’m sorry I wasn’t here to help.”

“We did all right,” Anito said. “Eerin and Moki have both learned an enormous amount about Johito’s atwa.”

“I’m sure they have, but perhaps I could have done something…”

“This was the best bargain we could get. At least I’ve had another month here in Narmolom.”

“Johito hasn’t exiled us from the village yet,” Juna said. “We don’t know what she’s thinking. She may let us stay.”

“The whole village is talking about how hard you’ve been working,” Ukatonen said. “Johito will lose face if she can’t prove that you don’t know her atwa.”

Anito brightened considerably at that thought. “Do you think we’ll get to stay?”

“Perhaps. Everything depends on Johito, and no one knows what she thinks. However, you need to be relaxed and calm when you go in for judgment. Stay here and enjoy yourselves. We’ll go back tomorrow and I’ll see what I can do behind the scenes.”

They returned to the village feeling rested, calmer, and more even-tempered. Johito greeted them as though they had never left. They spent the afternoon with her learning about several parasitic plants that lived on the kandar tree, another species that was part of her atwa. Several of these plants produced food; others provided crucial food sources for animals in other atwas. Ukatonen came with them, but the presence of the enkar appeared to make no difference to Johito. She continued to lecture them in the same impassive patterns she’d used all month. At sunset they returned to the village, where they ate and reviewed their lessons. The next day Ukatonen stayed behind to learn more about the situation from the other villagers.

He had dinner waiting for them when they returned.

“There’s nothing I can do. Miato has told me that this is an internal matter, to be decided by the village.”

Anito’s ears lifted at this.

“Miato’s right,” Ukatonen continued. “Unless someone asks me for a judgment, I can only offer suggestions, and I have asked too much of this village already.”

“I could—” Anito began, but Ukatonen rippled negation.

“Don’t ask for judgment. I would refuse.” He darkened with shame. “I am too close to you to be impartial. Even if I felt I could be fair, the judgment would be contested.”

Juna touched Anito on the shoulder. “Ukatonen’s right. Let me win this on my own. It will mean more to the villagers and to me if I can.”

Anito looked at her for a long moment, then rippled the Tendu equivalent of a shrug. “All right.”

Juna and Moki studied far into the night, going to bed only after Anito threatened to take the computer away from them. Anito linked with them, pushing them into a deep dreamless sleep.

The next morning Johito summoned them to the bottom of the tree. A group of elders were waiting with Johito. Juna recognized them. They either shared Johito’s atwa or worked in closely related atwas.

“Tell us about my atwa,” Johito directed.

For the rest of the day, Juna, and to a lesser extent, Moki, were questioned about Johito’s atwa. Lunch and dinner were brought down, but the interrogation was ceaseless. Juna was tired and her skin felt sore and tight from all the talking she’d done. At last the questions came to a halt. Johito and the others huddled to confer. Juna leaned back against the side of the tree, too tired to care that the aliens could see her exhaustion. She was almost too tired to care about what Johito decided. Anito squatted beside her, and held out a piece of honeycomb. By the time the elders’ conference was over, she was feeling better.

The elders sat back down, except for Johito, who moved forward. “Eerin has learned enough to please me,” she announced. “Moki must learn more, but he is young. Eerin may stay.”

Juna embraced Moki, weak with relief and exhaustion. They clung together for a moment; then Juna rose to speak.

“Thank you, kene. You have taught me well,” she said. It was truth of a sort. Once Johito had decided that Juna was worthy of her teaching, she was a painstaking and thorough teacher, even though she had never spared either of them a word of encouragement.

Johito flickered pleased acknowledgment at the compliment. Juna swallowed her anger. She would only lose the respect that she’d worked so hard to gain.

“We must go now, kene. We are very tired.” Juna motioned to Moki and the two of them climbed slowly up to their room, leaving Anito behind to make whatever polite excuses were needed. Juna was sick of excuses and politeness and face and all of these alien rituals. She wanted to sleep for a week, longer if they would let her, and wake up somewhere familiar and undemanding.

She slept until late the next afternoon, and rose to find a substantial meal laid out for her. Her skin still ached. It hurt to talk. She ate, washed, and stretched, then sat around for a while, enjoying the solitude. She thought about listening to some music or reading a book, but she’d spent so much time working with the computer lately that she didn’t have the energy to turn it on. At last, she crawled back into bed and fell asleep.

She slept through the night. Anito woke her for breakfast. It was a relief to linger over breakfast without worrying over the day’s lesson.

“What shall we do today?” she asked Anito.

“Ukatonen invited us to go hunting with him.”

They met the enkar in the bowl of the tree’s crotch, and swung off through the canopy together. They found a plump, unwary muwa hanging in a patch of sunlight, clinging to a branch with its head buried in the feathers between its forelegs. Juna dispatched it just as it woke. She and Moki settled into the wide crotch of a tree to butcher it. Ukatonen and Anito soon returned with a brace of large birds, which they gutted and hung in the shade to bleed dry. They sat in the tree, eating lunch, while the blood from their kills pattered onto the forest floor below.

“It’s about time that we returned to Lyanan,” Ukatonen told them.

“So soon?” Anito said.

“It’s almost the end of the dry season. I don’t want to wait much longer.”

Anito clouded over with regret. “You’re right, but I have so little time left in Narmolom.”

“Why don’t you stay here?” Juna suggested. “Ukatonen can look after us well enough. You deserve some time off.”

Anito glanced at the enkar, ears lifted, pink with surprise.

“Why not? You’ve been working very hard. A rest would be good for you,” he said.

“But Eerin is my atwa,” Anito protested.

“And she will continue to be your atwa for many years to come. As you said, you have very little time left. Enjoy it.”

They set off five days later. Anito accompanied them as far as the beginning of the wild lands. They bid her an affectionate farewell, and headed off for the coast.