there was much hope that the Kek had taken the seed. If the Kek knew a lot about colony trees and depended on their roots as a place to live, they would know better than to do anything that might hurt one. He couldn’t see these delicate creatures breaking bins and jars searching for treasure, or knocking inlay out of carvings. They didn’t even wear wooden beads; everything they had was made from plants, with flowers or snail and insect shells for ornaments.
And when Stone asked about strange groundlings coming here recently, Kof shook his staff in assent.
It had been when the warm rain season ended and the cool rain season started with the second growth of the moss-flowers, which Stone identified as being a little more than a turn ago. When he asked if the groundlings had come on foot, Kof had waved vaguely.
“They must have come on foot. They couldn’t get a wagon through here,” Moon put in.
“They might have had a flying boat, like the Islanders,” Jade said. “That would have been more of a clue to where they came from.”
Stone coaxed out more information. Apparently Kof hadn’t seen them himself. The Kek who had approached them to talk had been attacked, and three killed. The village had feared they were being invaded, and all had fled to a safer position on the far side of the tree. But the scouts who had stayed behind had seen the groundlings enter through one of the doorways in the roots.
“How did they open it?” Jade asked, overriding several people trying to ask the same question, including Moon and Chime. Some of the Kek jerked back in alarm.
Stone paused to hiss for quiet. Kof lifted his hands. “Do not know. Door opened.”
“What then?” Stone asked.
After a time, the scouts had seen the strange groundlings leave through the same door. Not long after that the groundlings had left the area, a process which Kof described with vague waving motions. When the Kek had ventured to investigate, they had found the door closed again.
“That doesn’t tell us much more than we already knew,” Jade said, tapping her claws impatiently. “What did the groundlings look like? Did they have skin or fur?”
Stone translated the question, but Kof scratched his chin tendrils thoughtfully, not seeming to understand. Moon shifted to groundling, which caused a stir among the Kek. Apparently it had been a long time since they had seen a Raksura shift. He leaned forward beside Stone, and pushed his sleeve up and held out his arm. “Skin like this, like we have, or something else?” Stone held out his arm too, dull gray next to Moon’s dark bronze.
Kof reached out and touched Stone’s arm, then Moon’s; it was like being gently brushed with sticks. Kof turned and spent a few moments consulting the other Kek, some of whom had presumably seen the groundlings. Then he spoke to Stone again, who translated, “At least some of them had bare skin like our groundling forms. They didn’t see many of them closely, so the others might have been different.” He added to Kof, “But your scouts didn’t kill any? Up in the root passage near the doorway?”
Kof replied with an emphatic negative. The strange groundlings were strong, and had metal weapons, and the Kek knew they couldn’t survive a battle. They had hoped only for the strangers to leave, and once the strangers had, they hoped they never came back.
“Tell him they won’t come back,” Jade said, propping her chin on her hand, disappointed. “They got what they wanted.”
They left the Kek, who were happy to have the colony tree inhabited again, even though Stone had told them it might not be permanent. When they got back to the greeting hall, Stone went up to lie on the floor of the queens’ level and growl at anyone who came near him. Pearl disappeared, probably to barricade herself in a bower with River and her other favorites. Bone went down to report the conversation to Flower and the other mentors, who were trying to find information about the seed in the court’s library.
Moon ended up standing in the teachers’ hall with Jade, Chime, and a dispirited collection of Aeriat and Arbora. “What do we do?” Bell asked, glancing uncertainly at Rill. “We were going to clean out the rest of the bowers on this level, and start working on the gardens, but…”
“The flying boats need repairs before we send them back,” Blossom added, then made an