watched the Discontinued file into the forest. Once a little distance had been established, we trailed behind them, pushing our way into the shadows and past the spiny roots. Moisture dripped onto us and I passed my robes to Clarissa that she might be better protected. The atmosphere was thick and humid, the late afternoon of the Heart of Blood stifling and oppressive. There was a heavy scent in the air, spicy and not altogether pleasant.
We hiked beside the river until, finally, the Discontinued moved away from its bank and headed for a clearing, which was perhaps a couple of miles to the west of the one in which Clarissa and I had arrived and where, later, I’d met Gallokomas. We stopped at its perimeter and, concealed by foliage, observed the group.
“I say, I feel I’m committing a terrible act of desecration,” Colonel Spearjab whispered.
The Discontinued climbed into trees on the opposite side of the clearing, dragged themselves out onto branches, then lowered themselves until they were each dangling by a single tentacle.
“What are they doing?” Clarissa murmured.
“Exactly what I expected,” I replied. “Watch.”
Slowly, beads of viscous liquid swelled from the creatures’ skin. The droplets ran together until the Mi’aata were completely coated in a thick clear slime. They became utterly still. Gradually, they darkened.
“The fruits!” Clarissa exclaimed. “They were—are—they are pupae!”
I nodded. “The Yatsill metamorphose into Mi’aata, which, in turn, transform into Zull.”
“Zull!” my two friends cried out.
“What! What!” Spearjab added.
“Each phase of life loses its memory of the one that went before,” I continued, “and each is conducted entirely separately from the others.”
“This is incredible!” Clarissa whispered.
“But all going terribly wrong,” I observed. “You asked why the ritual of Immersion is failing. Because Pretty Wahine’s arrival was calamitous! She cut into a chrysalis thinking it was a fruit and drank the placental fluid, which later came to be known as Dar’sayn. When she encouraged its collection by the Yatsill, they were unaware that in milking the fruits they were actually killing the descendants of their own kind—and the consequences extended even farther than that, for when we were at the Shrouded Mountains, Kata told me the Zull go there to die. I think, when they do, a part of them enters the water in the form of parasites.”
Clarissa’s eyes widened. “Great heavens! The parasites hijack the Yatsill, the Yatsill change into Mi’aata, the Mi’aata become Zull, and, in their death throes, the Zull deposit the parasites. Full circle!”
“Precisely. An astonishingly complex life cycle, and one that has been thrown into chaos not by Yissil Froon, but by an innocent and well-intentioned woman from Earth.”
“Hallo? Hallo? What?” Spearjab said. “Who is this individual you keep referring to?”
“She was known to you as the Saviour, Colonel.”
The irony of that title escaped none of us.
10. THOOMRA
As we left the clearing, the new pupae began to emit the soft and incomprehensible sounds that gave the forest its name.
“Perhaps they’re dreaming of what they’ll become,” Clarissa suggested.
We returned to the bank of the river where we collected a number of bamboo-like reeds. Following Colonel Spearjab’s directions, we pounded some of them with stones until they split, then extracted long fibrous strands, which we used to bind large thorns—broken from the roots of the Ptoollan trees—to the ends of the others. Thus, in addition to the pikestaff, we were now armed with makeshift spears.
We pushed on eastward, following the watercourse upstream. I told my companions about Gallokomas and his generosity. “If he’s at all typical of his race, then perhaps we can persuade the Zull to help us.”
“You intend us to trek all the way to their eyries?” Clarissa asked.
“I think they’ll be watching out for us. I hope so.” I looked back at the Heart of Blood. “It’ll take too long to get there on foot.”
After much walking, we climbed out of the valley and traipsed onward, eventually traversing an area of thinning forest until we finally emerged onto rolling savannah.
I swatted away a cloud of tiny globe-shaped creatures that had decided to swarm around my face and said, “If we keep the sun at our backs, we’ll be going in the right direction.”
“I say! The river flows from the Shrouded Mountains,” Colonel Spearjab put in. “I’d prefer to stay close to it, if you don’t mind. Humph! I have to moisten my skin from time to time. Moisten, I say! Ha ha!”
The colonel’s welfare was important to me, so I acceded to his request.
I noticed that Clarissa was gazing back the way