reds and yellows left to fall.
I marvelled at this. What could kill a tree? Trees lived for ever, to my thinking, which was one reason why they was free to spread theirselves over the whole wide world while we had got to live behind a fence and burn out the seeds whenever they come.
So I had got to ask, even with Cup’s spear at my back, even with most of my breath spent on hopping and bouncing along with my bound leg, that was aching something sore now. “Sky, how did the trees come to be dead?”
“They ain’t,” Sky grunted. “They’re still dying. We mixed up a strong poison and dumped it in among the roots years back. The roots sucked it up like they’ll suck up anything. Like they’d suck up your blood if you was to die here. And when the poison took, the trees commenced to die. But it’s a long work to kill one of these bastards. Come Spring there’ll be a few new leaves still, and some sap in the trunk if you tap it. Though if you drink the sap, you’ll die.”
“But how did—?”
“Be quiet now, runt. We don’t talk when we’re traversing. Cup, you give him a whack with the blunt end of that spear if he speaks up again.”
“I will, Sky,” says Cup from behind me, and she poked me in the side to show she meant it.
But they couldn’t make Monono be quiet. “I’m keeping count, Koli,” she said. “Anyone who’s mean to my dopey boy is going to get a reckoning on their big fat backside. In the meantime, I’ve made up a heavy metal mix based on your giant-robot-death-monster walk, which is kind of adorable.”
She gun to play me music, and I got to say it helped. It was stuff with a big, insistent rhythm to it, and by matching my pace to it I managed not to slow down the march too much. Mole was still not happy though. He complained oftentimes about the time we was making, and by and by Sky called a stop.
“Is that really the best you can do?” she asks me.
I give her a nod, not having no breath left to answer her. It was not just the walking that was tiring me out; it was the pain too. My leg was throbbing from toe to hip like it meant to burst. That made the walking harder, for the leg was heavier to lift and jolted when it come down. I was sweating bad, and they had took my waterskin from me so I hadn’t had nothing to drink since we walked out of Ludden.
“Let’s take a rest,” Sky said.
Mole throwed up his hands, pointing at the trees all around. “What?” he says. “Here?”
“No, numbskull. The next way-space.”
We walked on for a long while. The music was less of a help now, for I was so tired I couldn’t keep to the beat, and the being behind it all the time kept making me stumble. I was near to falling down and lying where I fell when of a sudden the trail opened up into a clearing. It was not much of a clearing, being just big enough for the four of us to sit down in it without the nearest brambles spiking our shoulders. Narrow as it was though, I seen right away it was a made thing. Made, and kept up, most likely by Sky’s and Mole’s and Cup’s people, whoever they was. Them curved knives was perfect for cutting back the weeds and making some room in among the green, if you was brave enough to do it.
That thought brung some other thoughts. These three was not just faceless people, like me. They had a village near at hand, and kin that lived there. They had a Rampart, kind of, whose name was Senlas, and rules they cleaved to, and their own ways of living. I had been looking for a way to slip off into the woods and escape, but maybe it would be better to stay and see if I could join with them, at least for a time.
Maybe not, though. At Ludden, Sky had talked about people being hung up and bled out. They was a fierce folk, judging by that custom. I might not be happy among them.
The three of them et and drunk in silence pretty much, though Sky said some words over the dried meat before she shared it out between the three of