The birdsong had stopped during their shouting and in the ensuing calm, tentative whistles and tweets queried whether the danger was past. Rustling began again in the canopy above the human heads.
‘Will you show me the Forest?’ he asked her. He was wearing his leatherette jerkin and britches, swordbelt, his knight’s clothes. He must have abandoned his mage’s robe as she had her lady’s gown.
‘I’ve only been here twice,’ she said. As a human. Her bees thrummed their disquiet, before falling silent. ‘But we could explore together. As quietly as you can.’ She eyed his clanking apparel with disapproval but he just shrugged and put his hand on his sword pommel.
‘It’s like your bow. I need it with me. And you didn’t notice me following you.’
‘Fat lot of use a sword will be in the Forest!’ She told him, ‘Follow me, then, seeing as you’re so good at it.’ She shut her eyes, focused her bee senses and found the Forest mapped as she remembered, between the drinking-water of the stream and the beehive that was home. She recognised other landmarks: rock formations, trees and flowers, sources of nectar and pollen. There was one place she definitely did not want to visit, with or without Jannlou. Even as a human, she felt queasy at the thought of the drones gathering.
‘What are you doing?’ he whispered. ‘It looks like you’re consulting with the walls.’
‘Hush,’ she told him. ‘Follow me and keep your eyes open.’ Which was funny, given how well she could see with her eyes closed. Guided by the bees, she weaved in between trees, through pools of light and shade. She made a game of trapping the sun behind branches in the canopy, so that its rays were concentrated into sharp spikes, spearing one rock or one tree with light. Then she’d move and unleash the sun’s full brightness in a blur.
She stopped by one tree and pointed, waited for Jannlou to see and understand. Bright green leaf-shadows stood starkly outlined on the grizzled trunk.
‘How can shadows be green?’ he asked.
Like their archery teacher, she led him to see. ‘What are they shadows of?’
She watched him see what she had seen, the leaves that made the shadows, with sunlight filtering through them, catching the green colour in its joyous rays and painting leaf-shapes on the bark.
Jannlou touched the shadows, watched them change. He caught green leaf-shadows on his own broad fingers.
Verdigris on bronze. His brown skin shimmered green and Mielitta wanted to reach out, touch it. Instead, she stroked the tree bark, feeling its unique whorls and lifelines, like those on Jannlou’s hands. She breathed in bitterness of bark and brown sweat, catching the acrid scents at the back of her throat, relishing them.
Time moved as slowly as a finger along a tree-trunk and Jannlou seemed no more rushed than she was. They watched a procession of ants at their feet, each carrying ten times its weight in seeds.
Work.
‘Look,’ she told Jannlou. In the direction of the ants’ march was a whitish tower, a strange stone pillar. Ants’ nest.
‘That’s their Citadel,’ she explained. The pleasure of sharing the Forest with someone whose face expressed the same wonder she felt made her forget her mistrust.
Jannlou asked her, ‘How do you know all this?’
‘It’s as if I was born with all this knowledge in my deep thinking.’ Damn. Now she’d have to explain that.
But he’d been taught by Tannlei too and he just nodded, so she continued. ‘I used to clean the library, when I was a servant, and I’d skim the books. Words sort of stick in my head. Then when I see something, the words that go with it come to me and I just know what it is. It’s as if my experience is catching up with my deep thinking.’ She flushed. ‘That must sound stupid.’
‘No, I know what you mean. I–’ Whatever he was going to say next was interrupted by an anxious fluttering of birds, all rising from trees an arrow’s flight away from the humans. There was a stillness in the air and Mielitta remembered the deer, frozen in fear. Some danger approached. They had been so loud in their fighting and talk. Every creature in the Forest knew they were here.
She put a finger to her mouth and nocked an arrow, faced the direction of the disturbance and braced herself. Now she was concentrating, she could hear it, as she’d heard the snap underfoot when Jannlou tracked her. But whatever was tracking her this time was much better at it. Four-legged and huge. And made the Forest hold its breath, each creature praying Not me, not me. Praying for invisibility. Mielitta remembered the feeling well but there were no walls here to hide her or give her strength.
You could run crazy with the fear or you could track it back to its source, waiting with a nocked arrow. Jannlou had unsheathed his sword, was shifting his balance in a warrior’s stance. There was nobody she’d rather have at her side in a fight.
Their senses as tightly strung as Mielitta’s bow, they couldn’t have been more prepared but they saw nothing. Just stripes of trees and grass, sunlight and shadow. Stripes. The silence gathered itself to spring at them; a massive beast, striped yellow and black, broke cover and charged towards them.
Tiger.
Shock skewed Mielitta’s aim and she missed.
Her bees were loud in anger and insistence. Flight! Up the tree!
In an instant, she leaped onto the most accessible branch and reached down to haul Jannlou up to safety. He shook his head, standing his ground in front of the tiger, which had not followed through – the stones be thanked! – but which crouched low in front of Jannlou, tail swinging, ready for a lethal spring.
What had Tannlei taught? ‘Don’t choose the companion who would fight a tiger with his bare hands.’ The tiger clearly felt the same concerns about a man unafraid for his own life. Unfortunately, the hungry gold eyes shifted to Mielitta, no doubt considering her an easier prey. She climbed higher up the tree, aided by a thousand tiny wings. If she could only secure herself to a branch, she could use her bow but the branches were bouncing with her weight and even if they held, she couldn’t guarantee shooting true. An enraged tiger would not think twice about taking the nearest prey and Jannlou was so close to the beast that, even with human senses, he must smell its foul breath, as she could.
Jannlou seemed to grow even taller and broader as he faced the predator but if that was all his magecraft could do, Mielitta wouldn’t bet on his chances. Every time the tiger opened its mouth, issued a threat, she could smell its last victims.
Then the tiger made up its mind, roared and sprang. Only to land on nothing but pine cones. Jannlou had leaped too, reading the intention in the coiled muscles. He opened his mouth as if to roar his own defiance but instead he yelled, ‘Stay in the tree!’
The tiger hesitated, then it saw what Jannlou had. Crashing through the trees, tearing off branches, came a growling brown monster. Clumsy but surprisingly fast, it attacked the tiger, raking its huge claws along the striped flanks. It reared up onto its back paws, a two-legged parody of Jannlou, before dropping onto the tiger and sinking its teeth into a writhing mass with equally dangerous teeth. Bulk against muscle, matched in tooth and claw, the giants wrestled with and gashed each other. Skin and hair made tattered fringes around bloody rips.
Mielitta clung to her shaking branch. She had never seen so much blood. Cuts, scratches and her own monthlies were the sum total of her experience and her stomach churned at this carnage. Jannlou stood like a charmed statue while the savage contest churned up the earth all around him.
Just when it seemed they would kill each other, in a ripple of black and yellow, the tiger freed itself from the bear’s crushing grip and conceded defeat by running away. The bear reared up again, facing Jannlou. Mielitta screamed. Mage and bear were face to face for a long moment, then the creature dropped onto all fours again and set off in pursuit of the wounded tiger.
Mielitta threw herself to the ground.
‘Are you all right? Was that magecraft? Did you summon the bear? Wasn’t there a safer way to get rid of the tiger?’ she asked Jannlou.
His eyes were distant and he still held the same warrior’s stance but he seemed his normal size again. He focused on her slowly, measured his words. ‘No, there wasn’t a safer way to get rid of the tiger. I think we should go home now.’
But she wanted to check on the beehive.
Silly girl, her bees murmured. If there was something wrong, we would know. Our people are fine. It’s better the man doesn’t go there.
She could feel their suspicion of Jannlou and of course, they were right to be wary. But she didn’t mind having human company as they walked back through the Forest together. She didn’t even mind returning to the safety of the Citadel. At least she knew what dangers lurked there and if she had to choose between Shenagra’s braids or a tiger’s teeth, she wasn’t sure which was worse. The Forest held its own terrors.
‘I don’t think I have the courage for this,’ Jannlou admitted and she glanced quickly at him. Was he a soul-reader too? So often, he seemed to know what she was thinking and yet he spoke as if they were his own thoughts.
‘Are you sorry you came?’ she asked, remembering the wonder of leaf-shadows, now that the danger had gone.
They had reached the edge of the trees, where the meadow was split by the stream, where they could walk side by side. He took her hand and she let him.
‘No,’ he said. If he stopped, pulled her to him, leaned towards her, she would kiss him.
Aftershock from the predators’ fight, she told herself, as he let go of her hand, moved away politely.
He indicated the water gate. ‘I’ll go in first.’ Then he smiled. ‘So you can get dressed with only the Forest watching.’
‘You did look!’ she accused him.
He just smiled but then the laughter left his eyes. ‘It’s too dangerous. You mustn’t come out here any more.’
Dangerous because of creatures with teeth and claws or dangerous because it was treason?
‘Thank you for not using magecraft against me, when we fought.’
‘I can’t–’ he began, then he shook his head, started again. ‘I don’t think it works in the Forest.’
Lie. Evasion.
‘Will you be my partner at the Courtship Dance?’ he asked.
Stones. Everybody knew that was the prelude to marriage. But she couldn’t afford to antagonise him, even if she wanted to say no. Which she probably didn’t. Courtship Dance. Which came after the Maturity Test. Drianne!
‘I haven’t promised anybody else,’ she answered, offhand. Not that she’d been asked! How Hannah and her friends would stare!
‘Then you can promise me.’ He smiled.
‘Yes,’ she agreed and rushed on before she could change her mind. ‘I mean yes, I can. Maybe yes, I do. That is – yes. My friend, the girl I rescued from–’ Not tactful, Mielitta! She corrected herself: ‘The girl who went into the stones and lost her voice. She’s going to be in the next Maturity Ceremony and I wanted to give her some words of advice. Is there any chance you can help me see her?’
If he wondered what advice she could give, when her own forging had obviously failed in such a spectacular way, Jannlou didn’t say so. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he said. ‘Till then, may the stones be with you. And we have to try to fit in. You know we do.’
‘Perfection guide our ways,’ she responded, the formula ashes on her tongue.
