A Plague of Giants (Seven Kennings #1) - Kevin Hearne Page 0,21

close ties to Pak or else he would not have made the trip. Well, good for the young man: I hoped he would serve the Canopy well.

I was fortunate not to be spotted by the Black Jaguars during our repast, but once Pen and I departed and made our way to the Seeking ground, we could not avoid Pak Sey ben Kor’s notice. Especially since he was the personal escort for his clan’s Seeker and joined us underneath the First Tree’s canopy. There were sixteen Seekers all told, each from a different clan and escorted by a greensleeve. To the Gray Squirrel record keeper I introduced Pen as my cousin and offered her as a Seeker to the First Tree on behalf of the White Gossamers, and it was thanks to a similar introduction that I learned that the Black Jaguar Seeker was Pak Sey ben Kor’s nephew. He looked confident about his Seeking, though whether he truly was or was merely pretending to be I could not tell. Most of the others, including Pen, had a very sensible sequence of expressions cycling on their faces, from excitement to uncertainty to dread and back again.

Rich and loamy soil squished pleasantly between our toes. The Seekers all disrobed and stood waiting in a cluster an arm’s length away from one another on all sides. When the Gray Squirrel attendant nodded to us, we greensleeves each extended our shoots into the earth and spoke to the roots of the First Tree, introducing our Seekers again and sharing our love and pride and hope.

The earth rumbled and croaked beneath us as the roots of the First Tree stirred. Pen looked down at her feet, where the soil churned, and then up at me, tears shining in her eyes and a curious half smile on her face. I remembered that feeling. Being taken by the tree is a wondrous admixture of the sun and all the horrors of night, for you are struck by the immense power it represents and how very small you are in comparison, feeling all the hope for a blessed life along with the terror of dying in darkness.

Brown roots spiraled out of the soil and twined around the Seekers as they stood still. And then, when they were all wrapped up and began to descend into the earth, drawn down to be blessed or devoured, there were some last looks at their clansmen and then up at the Canopy and what little sunlight filtered through the leaves. For approximately half of them, it would be their final chance to see the sun.

By long-standing tradition we greensleeves withdrew our shoots as soon as the Seekers disappeared beneath the surface and ascended to the lowest branch above, there to wait out the time until we reunited with our clansmen or carried sorrowful news back home.

It was a tense and fearful time made longer by uncertainty. They were all down there long enough to suffocate. Except that the blessed would be brought into symbiosis with the Canopy and sustained during the process. So our clansmen might already be dead after a few spare minutes or else going through the racking pain of mutation. We would not know until they rose from the earth or did not. It was the lot of birds to chirp and chase one another, the lot of others to smile and eat and sleep and fight and lie with one another, but it was ours to worry and hope.

An hour passed, and the Red Horses were blessed with a new grassglider, a grinning young woman who waved at us as soon as she emerged. The Yellow Bats got a new culturist blessed with the ability to husband teas, an economic boon for sure. The Blue Moths sprouted a new thornhand. And the blessed were slowly returned, one by one, until seven greensleeves had departed with their newly blessed and nine of us remained on the branch. It would not be unheard of for nine of sixteen to be taken by the roots. It would be almost common. But there might yet be a new greensleeve to arise from the earth, or a thornhand. We had not passed the time of no return: the Gray Squirrel record keeper would tell us when we could extinguish our hope. So I continued to wait…and hope. And so did Pak Sey ben Kor.

We nine stared at the earth, willing it to bubble and shoot forth hands and then the heads and bodies