The pup was squirming, the fire and warmth giving him new energy, and so Vidarian set him down to amble around the camp. As he looked around, he realized for the first time that one of their recent number was missing.
“Where is Calphille?” he asked.
He found her sitting alone in the forest at the feet of a great spruce. Her eyes were distant, and she spoke as soon as she heard his footsteps, without turning.
“I do not know why I was awakened even as my kin slumber,” she said quietly. “I fear they may never wake.” She placed a hand on one of the spruce's massive roots. “This is my father.”
Vidarian had never been introduced to a tree, but tried to put that aside. He bowed, and Calphille smiled. “I can see the resemblance,” he said. And indeed he could. With her moss-green hair, skin like chocolate, and eyes rich and golden as fresh pine sap, Calphille could have belonged in no other forest—and yet the thought of leaving her here unsettled him. Before he had quite thought it through, he said, “You should come with us.”
* What? * Ruby said, with the echoey tone that meant she spoke to him alone.
To his momentary relief, Calphille's smile widened, warmed.
There's no reason for her to stay here, Vidarian thought at Ruby. These trees aren't waking up with her.
* Well, aren't you just a collector of oddities. *
He forced his eyes steady against an instinct to glare. You have no idea. I have this talking rock, you see…
“Your presence awakened me,” Calphille said, and Vidarian found himself obscurely grateful for his practice at carrying on parallel conversations with the Starhunter. “I thought I should stay with you, but would not have imposed.”
There, you see? Vidarian thought.
* She's clingy. *
“It's no imposition at all,” he said, rather than answering Ruby, “I must admit to a great deal of curiosity about your people.”
At this her aspect darkened glumly again, and he wished he could recall his words. “When last I slept,” she said, looking out into the forest—tracing, he knew, lines of greenery that had grown up during her slumber, “the human cities knew this forest, knew of my father and his domain. We were allies.” She turned back to him, dread in her eyes, and he wondered again how she could be so trusting, so transparent. Then he thought himself cynical, and wondered again what he was becoming. “You said that your encampment is the only habitation here for many miles? There are no human cities?”
“Not living ones, I'm afraid,” he said, unhappy to distress her again but unable to lie. “There are ruins—the people are gone, moved on long ago…”
* …Or worse, more like. *
Ruby spoke only to him, but Calphille heard his implication. Her eyes filled with tears and she looked away, up into the branches of the tree that she called her father. She blinked, then visibly hardened herself. “How…” she began, then cleared her throat. “How shall we travel…to your camp?”
Relieved, he turned and pointed back the way he'd come. “I have a ship that can take us—if you'll follow me.”
* You'd better hurry, * Ruby said. * That wolf is surely running amok. Either it's eaten Isri or Altair's eaten it. My bet and hopes are on the latter. *
He forced himself to smile reassuringly at Calphille, while what he thought back at Ruby was not nearly so charitable.
When she stood, Calphille bowed low to the spruce, resting her hands against its trunk as if in supplication. She murmured words Vidarian couldn't understand, but, moved by her devotion—and obvious sadness at parting from her family—Vidarian bowed to the tree as well. When he straightened, he lifted his hand and pressed it to the rough bark. To his surprise, it was warm, though no sunlight could possibly reach it down here. He looked up into the vaulting branches, overcome at the thought of the tree's age, and how it housed another creature like Calphille. He wondered what the forest king would look like, in human form. “Sleep well, sir,” he said, then turned to lead Calphille back to the camp.
Contrary to Ruby's dire warnings, the camp and wolf pup were both fine, though Altair did look as if he would rather clean his beak with the small creature's pelt than tolerate its curious sniffing about the camp. With the resilience of all young things, the wolf seemed to have adapted to his