and Moon found Niran unexpectedly sympathetic. “It’s similar to the loss of a ship’s sustainer,” he said, leaning on the railing. “The rock that forms flying islands is hard to obtain for those who have no means to reach it. Instead of trying to purchase it, some try to steal it.” He shook his head. “But we know where to get more, and we don’t live in our ships.”
Blossom leaned on the railing beside him, her spines and frills drooping with depression. “I don’t know what we’re going to do. We were all counting on living here.”
“Can’t you find another place to live in this forest?” Niran asked. It was something Moon had been wondering himself. “Are there other deserted colonies?”
Blossom’s expression was bleak. “There must be, but all of them would be claimed by their original courts. Just like this tree still belonged to us, even though we hadn’t been back here in generations. If we take someone else’s colony and territory, even if it’s unused, it leaves us vulnerable to challenges by other courts. We’d have to leave the Reaches completely. That’s a long trip, when we don’t know where we’re going.”
Moon had no answers. There were more than enough Arbora working and he didn’t want to just stand here and watch. He jumped over the side, flew back up to the knothole entrance, and took the winding passage into the greeting hall. Several soldiers were still there on guard, a considerably more glum group than they had been that morning. One looked up, a dark green Arbora with a heavy build, and Moon recognized him. It was Grain, one of the soldiers who had ordered Moon out of the old colony on his first day there.
If Grain remembered the incident, Moon couldn’t tell; he looked just as depressed as Blossom. He told Moon, “They’re all down in the big room below the teachers’ level, reading.”
Moon twitched his tail in acknowledgement and headed for the stairs. “Big room below the teachers’ level” actually took in a lot of territory, but he found them in the room they had been using to sort the unloaded supplies from the ships. It was round, with several passages leading away or up into the bowers, and the domed ceiling was a carving of the sky, with the sun’s rays stretching out to give way to stars, then the half-moon. Light-shells ringed the room, set just below the rim of the carving.
All the mentors and several teachers sat around on the floor, reading from loosely bound books or piles of loose parchment. Jade sat near Flower and Merit and Chime, paging through a thick book.
Moon shifted to groundling, because everybody else was, and Jade was in her Arbora form. He went to sit next to her, and she put an arm around his waist to tug him against her side. He leaned against her, and rubbed his cheek against hers. She said, “Was it a good hunt?”
“It was great,” he said absently, distracted by the book. The paper was a thick, soft parchment, the binding a silvery cord as thin as wire, the covers a soft blue reptile hide. The writing was absolutely incomprehensible. It looked like a solid block of serpentine scrawl, ornamented in places with colored inks. He hoped he was looking at some sort of decorative embellishment, until Jade turned the page and hope sank. He snuck a look at the books and papers that Flower and Chime and the others were examining. No, this was actually the writing.
He could read Altanic and Kedaic well, and pick out words in several other common groundling languages, but this was a complete mystery. He assumed this was written Raksuran, but he couldn’t even tell where one character ended and another began. He had had the vague idea that there might be a book about consorts, something that would give him some idea of how to behave, what was expected of him, or at least a better frame of reference. That was out; there probably was something like that, but it wasn’t going to be written in Altanic.
He hesitated, but asked, “Did you find anything yet?” If they asked him to help, he wasn’t sure what he was going to say. He would have to admit it eventually and ask someone to teach him, but he would rather not do it just yet. He didn’t want to give River and his cronies anymore ammunition to use against him just now, not with the