“You’re alive, Unar!” Oos blubbered.
“Get between me and the tallowwood, the three of you,” Esse ordered. “Go back to the fishing room.” Unar wasn’t going to argue with him. He’d taken her knife; let him try to fight a demon with it. She’d had enough heroics for one day. They grappled on the narrow walkway, and as soon as they were behind him, he began uncoiling something heavy-looking like a rusted rope. No, not rope. It wasn’t woven, but made of multiple metal links that clanked and jangled in the rain.
Marram and Bernreb erupted out of the river, shouting and splashing, forcing the trio to stop short once again. For a second time, the women tangled with the men, who tried to let them past without anyone falling off the log. Bernreb carried coiled rope, nets, and a spear with a long, wickedly serrated metal blade.
Marram carried nothing but his leathery, colour-changing wings of chimera skin. His yellow hair, despite being pummelled by the fast-flowing river, was matted with something the same suspicious consistency as the oily motions that Issi passed after a colicky spell. Unar was the last one forced to grapple with him.
“What’s that in your hair?” she yelled, wrinkling her nose as the stench hit her.
“Do not be afraid, Gardener,” Marram said with amusement. He paused on the other side of her while they still gripped each others’ wrists, holding her, it seemed, so that she would look at him and be convinced by his confidence. “The demon will follow me far from here. I will not allow it to empty our little nest.” Then he wrinkled his nose. “What is that on your hands?”
Then Esse called and Marram let go of her, turned, and dashed towards the danger, passing Bernreb, who had stopped to help Esse with the unusual chain. They lowered it around the underside of the trunk and held one end of it, each, in both hands. Esse pulled his end of it sharply, and the tree trunk under their feet shuddered. Then Bernreb pulled his end, and shards of green wood flew everywhere.
“A chain saw,” Unar said.
“They gonna cut it in half,” the child shouted, grabbing at Oos. “Show me where we can safely stand.”
Oos went with the child headfirst into the river that flowed down the tallowwood trunk. Unar watched the men, frowning, for a few moments longer. Marram was the only one who could fly, he’d asserted. How would Esse and Bernreb get back to the tree when they’d sawn all the way through?
Finally, she saw that the rope tied to Bernreb wasn’t all coils; a length of dark, twisted fibre led from a hastily tied harness at a steep angle, up towards the same lateral branch where the Canopians had become stuck.
With each step now, the trunk shuddered.
“Go back,” Bernreb hollered at her, but he didn’t stop sawing. Unar thought she heard Marram’s cries in the distance, interspersed with angry hisses, but she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t the rain and her imagination.
She turned and ran after Oos and the child, towards the tallowwood tree and safety.
THIRTY-TWO
THE RIVER loomed ahead.
Unar knew, now, why the men had been shouting as they burst through the wall of water; she shouted herself, to help focus her will. She increased her speed and thrust her arms above her head as if diving to try and reduce the downward impact of the river. If she slowed, or lost her footing, and truly did dive in, there’d be no going back.
The river smashed around her ears, a terrible, punishing blow. Blackness. Rushing in her head and around it. Legs still pushing. More kicking.
Then she was in the fishing room. Streaks of green-lit fungi exploded in front of her eyes. Her determination had carried her directly into a wall. Her teeth met the splintered wood, blood and river water in her mouth.
“Unghh,” she said, and fell onto her bottom in an undignified way.
“You rode on the back of a demon,” the child said. “I saw you. That was treasure, that was.”
Unar lifted her head towards a light source in her peripheral vision. Ylly stood, her expression horrified, by the gap where the door had been taken off its hinges, holding a lamp in one hand and cradling a grumbling baby Issi to her chest with the other.
“What demon?” she asked.
“A dayhunter,” croaked Oos from a dark corner.
“A big lizard,” the child added. “Dunderheaded and dank. It cannot jump or glide, but it crosses Floor and climbs to plunder the nests of nocturnal animals while they sleep.”
“We’re not sleeping,” Ylly said fiercely. “This dayhunter. Does it fear fire? Let’s heap the logs from the hearth in the hallway, and—”
“It does not feel fire,” the child said quickly, “and its flesh does not burn. We would die before it did.”
“Then what are the men doing out there?”
“Marram is distracting it,” Unar managed. She spat, hoping no teeth went along with the wood and slime, and added, “The other two are trying to saw through the yellowrain tree. You, what is your name?”
“I am called Frog,” the child said.
“An unlucky name in Understorey,” Ylly said. “Shall we call you Frogorf?”
“No. This Frog is going in only one direction, and that is up. What is there for me in Floor?”
Ylly seemed taken aback.
“How many monsoons have you, Frog?” Unar asked.
“This is my tenth.”
“You’re small for your age.”
“There is no light to warm me, here, Gardener. No fruit for me to pluck from laden branches. Neither slaves’ milk nor wasps’ honey.”
“Is that why you wish to climb higher?”
“I will climb higher,” Frog said, showing her white teeth again in that stark, pantherine grimace. “Startin’ right now, if I see that demon’s head come in through the river.”
Unar looked at Frog’s forearms. There were the twin creases where her spines were retracted. If the demon’s head came through, would Unar search the dwelling for her bore-knife and escape in the child’s wake, or would she stay and try to protect the baby and unconscious Hasbabsah to the death, as Ylly no doubt would?
“Audblayin’s bones,” she swore again.
Another sharp crack. Another single, hard shudder of the tallowwood tree. Ylly and Oos cried out in unison as the river’s flow was disturbed, but it wasn’t the head of the giant lizard; rather, it was the yellowrain log tilting, hitting the roof, and then sliding away.
They were all sprayed with water. Then there was only the river as there had been before.
“They did it,” Unar said, feeling weak with relief.
“I’m trapped here forever,” Oos said with despair.
“Is that your baby?” Frog asked Ylly, already shrugging off the fact they had all faced certain death. Even if they had climbed successfully, they would have reached the barrier to Canopy and then what? The demon could have eaten them at its leisure.