The sun was dipping below the trees by the time I made my way back across the divide. Mangrove had long since abandoned his climb. I dropped down through the branches and met him a few boughs above the safe zone. He was sweating and pacing.
“Where have you been?” he yelled. I began to answer, but he rushed me as soon as I landed, pushing me powerfully and a bit painfully against the branches in an awkward, sweaty hug. “I was so worried! I didn’t hear you fall, but when you didn’t come back—”
His grasp was tight, his powerful arms wrapped around my back. I was hot, thirsty, and sweaty, and the last thing I wanted was to be mauled by another warm, sweaty body. Once I got used to the warm pressure of his hands on my spine, his moist curly hair pasted to my shoulder, I realized it was kind of nice. Icky and sticky, but nice.
“I’m okay, I’m okay.” I gently pushed him off me. His eyes met mine and I watched them drift down to my lips. His face reddened and he stepped away.
“Where … where did you go?”
“Put your hand in here.” I held out my satchel.
His eyes opened into two comical round balls as his fingers closed on the raspberries. “What the … where did you … can I—” The berries disappeared into his mouth. Juice stained his fingers and he licked them off, one by one. He grabbed another handful of the warm, sticky fruit and offered it to me.
“You can have the rest. I ate plenty already.”
He crammed the fruit into his mouth and gulped it down.
“Hold out your hands.” As I poured the fruit into his palms, I told him about the crossing I’d made, the berry bushes, the trees, and the untouched vegetable beds.
“You need to tell Maestro Hamamalis or maybe Maestro Drypetes. If you could get across, they can, too.”
“But no, don’t you see? It’s so high up. You weren’t even able to climb up with me. How are the builders going to construct a bridge way up there? For gardeners to travel across, back and forth. The branches barely supported me alone.”
Mangrove wiped his sticky hands on his shorts. “But the food. The first little kid died today.”
“I know that! Don’t you think I know that?” I felt the traitorous stinging behind my eyes. “Yucca was my patient.”
“Sorry. Of course. I should have realized.” He was silent for a moment before he began to pace again. “If we can get to the food, we can’t simply leave it. We have to tell someone.”
“Who? Who are we going to tell? We’re not supposed to be in the Outer Reaches—”
“It’s a way to get to the food. No one will care.”
“No? Will anyone care when little kids try to climb up here? What about the older climbers who don’t have the skills?”
“You think everyone will try to get over there? Across your bridge?”
Yucca’s apathetic eyes, his skeletal face. I saw them as clearly as if he were lying in front of me now in his hammock. His sobbing mother, Cassia’s arm supporting her. Every parent who’d ever entered the clinic with a sick child. How many would die trying to get to the skygardens once they learned I’d done it?
“You’ve seen the desperation. What do you think? Do you honestly believe there won’t be a mad rush on my bridge?”
He was silent, brow furrowed, thinking.
“And then what? A mob of starving climbers and worried parents? Can you see them trying to climb up here? They’ll break all the branches, fall off the limbs, rip down my bridge—”
He nodded. “And then no one gets across. Not even you. Okay. I’m with you. We don’t tell anyone.”
“Not even Sorbus.”
His lips twitched, drawing my eyes to his red, berry-stained lips. After a moment he said, “Not even Sorbus.”
“And definitely not Salix.”
“No. Definitely not … but you can get to the food.” He grabbed my hand, squeezed it so hard it hurt. “Don’t get mad, okay? I … I followed you once. I hid in a cluster of sword fern. You … you didn’t know I was there.”
I tugged my hand back. “You spied on me? You stalked me?”
“No. Just shut up a minute. Listen to me. You scrambled into the trees, climbed like some arboreal creature. Fast as a squirrel. Strong like a raccoon. But the way you swung from limb to limb. I’ve never seen anyone do that. I’ve been hunting for months now, and I’ve never even seen an animal do that.” His eyes were dilated in the gloom, intense. “You became something else—something beyond human.” His hands were on my shoulders then and he peered into my eyes. “You’re more than a bird. A tree spirit maybe, part of the Great Ones! You’re the only one who can do it.”
“I’m a good climber. That’s all.”
“We can all climb. Some of us are even good at it. But only you soar.”
His eyes were too intense, fanatical even. I shrugged his hands off me and stepped back. “Whatever. I can climb. Let’s not go crazy. Freaking tree spirit! Seriously Mangrove? Get a grip. I can cross to the other side and gather food. It won’t be enough.”
“So you’ll bring back what you can. Whatever fits in your satchel.”
“Then what? How do I decide who—"
“You drop it at the school. For the kids. Anonymously. Let Cassia decide. She’ll make the right choice. And no one will ever know.”
“No mob rush to the Outer Reaches. No destruction of the overstory. Nobody climbing too high—”
“Nobody else feeding the Great Ones.”
Our eyes met and that uncomfortable sick feeling rose up from my stomach and tickled me all over. My heart beat a little faster and I was warm straight through. Was this happiness? Was this hope?
Mangrove took my hand again, gently this time, and we descended into the lower boughs as the remaining daylight faded. By the time we reached Bough Seven, our eyes were adjusted to the murky dark.
Mangrove disappeared briefly into the warm candlelight of his new living space, a shanty built for two but hung with three hammocks. Having lost their shanties during the storm, many of the men and women of the sixth and seventh boughs were tripling up. I heard snatches of good-natured ribbing waft from inside. A curious male head poked through the door, eyes squinting to catch sight of me, the woman who had kept Mangrove out so late. Mangrove elbowed his shanty mate out of the way and strutted toward me with the remains of a hazelnut loaf and a squirrel leg, a generous gift on any evening, but especially lavish in the midst of rationing. Together with the berries I gorged myself on earlier in the day, it was a healthy, balanced meal, and I felt fortunate. We nibbled the meat off the tiny leg and choked down ripped chunks of the dry loaf.
Our meal complete, we were both suddenly tongue tied. “Thanks for dinner,” I said, sweeping imaginary crumbs from my thighs, faintly bluish in the gloom. When I looked up, my forehead crashed into Mangrove’s chin. He yelped, then chuckled, and then his hand was stroking the hair off my face. His lips brushed lightly against mine, his tongue tasting of charred squirrel. I was startled and stiff at first, but his lips were soft and warm, so I closed my eyes and kissed him back. Behind my eyelids I saw my mother, her lips straight and stern, her forehead wrinkled in disapproval. I opened my eyes and backed away slowly.
“Gotta go,” I said. “This was, um, fun.” Fun? I’m such an idiot.
“Yeah, sure. See you tomorrow?”
“Maybe. You know where I’ll be.” And then, I’m ashamed to say, I realized I’d been twirling my hair. I stopped immediately.
“Clinic. Yeah.” His eyes were soft and dreamy as he looked at me and it occurred to me suddenly how adorable he was.
“Um, yeah, so. Okay. Bye.”
I raced toward the central Great One and ran down flight after flight of the twining staircase until I reached Bough Two. I considered a number of excuses as I hurried home: patients I’d examined, accidental injuries I’d doctored, sprained limbs I’d wrapped. It was no good, I could never explain to Mom’s satisfaction where I’d been and why I’d been out past dark. My mother would assume, correctly this time, that I’d been with a man.
We’d kissed some, sure. Michelia would imagine much more. I wondered whether the fiction that I’d slept with a man, or the truth—I’d sailed over the abyss on a climbing rope—would be worse in my mother’s eyes. She saw women both before and after they’d consummated their relationships with men. The wise ones, my mother told me, came to see her before. I hadn’t told my mother about Mangrove, though she suspected plenty. Would she see me come in late and think I’d been unwise? Or would she assume, with my training, I’d known enough to take the appropriate precautions?
Of course, Mangrove and I weren’t there yet. Nowhere even close. I wasn’t ready to be partnered, and no matter what he felt, I could tell he wasn’t ready either. I had no plans to be like Cassia, watching other people’s kids while repopulating the canopy and living on Bough One. A woman with a pregnant belly can’t climb into the Outer Reaches, can’t cross the abyss, can’t smuggle food from the skygardens.
If my mother discovered the truth about what I’d been doing, what would happen? Would she punish me? What would that look like? Would she denounce me to the Council of Maestros? I doubted she’d go that far, but it was interesting to consider. What would the council do if one of the climbers broke the rules? Our canopy was so intimate, our community so small that rule breaking was virtually nonexistent. Everyone belonged, every one of us vital to the lives of everyone else. Except for small misdeeds, there was no need for punishment because there was no crime.
No, my mother’s disappointment and anxiety would be punishment enough. After Joshua—better that Mom suspect me of sleeping with Mangrove than that she know the truth.
I prepared myself for battle, the screaming war of words and recriminations, but when I arrived at the hanging shanty on Bough Two, the taper burned low in the candle holder, the flame nearly drowning in melted tallow. Mom lay stretched out and drooling in her hammock, unaware of my infraction. Maybe she thought I was sleeping at the clinic? Had she forgotten that it was Wingnut’s turn? But if that were true, why had she left an unattended candle burning? That wasn’t like her, my overcautious mother. A mystery, but not an interesting one, and I was tired. I pinched out the taper and dropped into my hammock, my head full of Mangrove’s glistening berry-red lips and deep brown eyes.