Sunborn Rising (2 page)

2. Stretched Thin

Plicks approached from upwind, and though Barra couldn’t see him yet, she could smell him. She could tell he was steadily closing in on her.

Barra was strong and lean, fast. Confident she could outrun most Listlespurs, she knew she could outrun a Kolalabat. For this game though, she had to hide. Barra found a tightly knit web of branches and climbed into it. The plush of short, slick furs that covered her body made her difficult to catch and hold, and also, difficult to see. Settling into position, she flexed the fine muscles beneath her skin that adjusted her fur. The follicles bent and shifted in a fluid cascade that tricked the light. Barra blended into the branches and leaves. When the hypnotic movement of her fur stopped, she was almost invisible. Her ears stuck out, but they passed for the pink petals of a lily. She tucked her limbs to cover her less furry hands and feet, and wrapped her long, striking tail around and beneath her body to conceal the braid full of colorful mementos which was wrapped around the end. Her Thread served many purposes but not one was stealth.

Certain she’d taken care of any tell-tale signs, Barra sat statue and listened through the pulse in her ears for any movement from Plicks. She waited. He advanced.

There was a rustling through the thicket, Plicks’ approach suddenly clumsy. Barra still couldn’t see him. She peered through the close foliage, her large emerald green eyes open wide, gathering light from the dim wood. For a moment, she wondered what it would be like if the flowers and radiant mosses shined as brightly as her father described, but the thought ended abruptly. Plicks was close. She snapped her eyes shut, not wanting to risk their reflections giving her away.

It seemed a great deal of time passed without another sound or any hint of Plicks’ movement. Barra had to fight off the urge to open her eyes. Plicks was so close that she couldn’t imagine why he would have stopped. He definitely hadn’t passed by her. She tried to count to one hundred, but gave up at thirty-three—she hated sitting still. Opening her eyes only a slit, she strained to see her furry friend. She saw nothing. Stretching one hand out from behind her cover, she started to climb down, but a sudden crash of breaking branches froze her solid.

When the leaves settled, Plicks’ small defeated voice called out, “Barra? Barra, I’m stuck.”

Barra hesitated. She remembered Plicks and Tory whispering conspiratorially before the game, and wondered if they were trying to flush her out of her hiding place with a trick. But it only took Barra a moment to dismiss the idea. Plicks just wasn’t a trickster. Good-natured, hopelessly clumsy, and maybe a little gullible—definitely not capable of deceit. And now that she thought about it, he
was
frequently stuck.

Graceful as a feather falling, she lowered herself down to the pathwood. This particular pathwood had been abandoned long ago, along with the rest of the Middens though at one time the wide bough must have seen hundreds of travelling Arboreals a day. The bark of the thoroughfare was petrified, ancient and worn. Barra couldn’t sink her claws into the pathwood, it was so tough. She did her best to pad softly in the direction of Plicks’ voice.

“Barra? Help!
Barra!
” Plicks cried out.

Barra pushed through some large ferns, and there he was. The Kolalabat dangled from above, suspended in a hammock of his own furry skin. Plicks’ scruffs, the two large flaps of stretchy skin growing from his back, had snagged on some brambles overhead, and he must have tripped and gotten all wrapped up in them on the way down. Plicks’ purple and gray fur stood on end all over his body, thick and puffy-looking.

Plicks struggled as Barra finally announced herself. “Hey, hey,
relax
. I’m right here,” she said as she scrutinized the tangle.

“Oh! Hello!” Plicks tried to sound cheerful. “I don’t know what happened. I thought I had you for sure! But then… then
this
,” he added with a little wriggle that must have been a shrug.

Barra was irritated that the game had ended without a clear winner, but she went to work at the new game of Untangle-the-Kolalabat. Her mind kept wandering to her father, and though she pulled and swung Plicks around vigorously, she wasn’t getting very far.

“So, uh, how bad is it?” Plicks asked.

Barra imagined he was nervously chewing away at his lip or clicking his talons together within the bundle of fur. She teased, “Well, I’m pretty good, but even I might not be able to get you out of this one.”

Plicks’ fur was accented sporadically by long, bright-violet whiskers. Usually, the whiskers helped him sense subtle shifts in air currents, but they were also effective indicators of his mood, and now they bristled in agitation. He was becoming frustrated. “Can you get me out?” he pleaded. “Where’s Tory?”

Splashing through the thick leaves overhead, Tory appeared as if on cue. He jumped down, landing with ease. He stood up. A head taller than Barra, with arms as long and almost as strong as his legs, he might have been intimidating if not for the casual way he held himself. He grinned, and asked, “Hey, hey. What’s goin’ on?” Then he added, whispering out of the corner of his mouth, “That’s five to four. I win.”
He
didn’t care, but he knew Barra would.

Barra scoffed at him, “No way. Uh-uh. This game doesn’t count.”

Tory kept on grinning, irritating her even more. Barra couldn’t always tell when the young Rugosic was teasing her. He didn’t have fur or whiskers, or a tail, or anything like a Listlespur that she could understand as body language. Instead, Tory was covered in a flexible layer of minerals bonded to his otherwise fragile skin. The tough second skin was thicker in some places, thinner in others, and it was cracked all over like the wrinkles in the palm of a hand. Barra’d had to learn to read the cracks, and sometimes, the translation was difficult and annoying. In particular, she’d been anxious all day about her father’s journal, so she had even less patience than usual. She still hadn’t told her friends anything about what she’d found. She wasn’t sure what they’d think about it, what they’d say about her father.

She held up one finger, extending a sharp claw from its tip, and pointed it at Tory. “It’s a draw if it’s anything,” she said.

Through his scruffs, Plicks said sarcastically, “It’s a
tough
decision. Really. It was such an
important
game for both of you—I’m such a
worthy
adversary. How can we ever settle this? Maybe whichever one of you helps me down first? Hmm? Maybe?”

Barra glared at Tory, waiting for his agreement, but he wouldn’t admit the draw. He shrugged off her annoyed look and slid over to Plicks. Without warning, he lifted Plicks up and flipped him over once, starting a reaction that unwound the Kolalabat completely. His scruffs tugged free from the brambles, and he fell to the ground in a heap.

Plicks stood up, long whiskers twitching to either side of his wide, stubby nose. He was only a little more than half Barra’s height. He began carefully gathering up his scruffs, flexing the muscles in his back that bunched them closer to his body. Out of habit, he reached into his pouch and inspected his Thread to help him concentrate. When Plicks noticed his friends staring, he tucked his Thread away in a hurry. But the nervous energy had to go somewhere, and he tapped his talons on the pathwood.

Tory said, “Hey buddy, don’t be embarrassed.”

Plicks shrugged. He was the youngest of eleven brothers and sisters and their persistent teasing had given him a thick skin, an armor of his own, so to speak. The armor worked well against overt ridicule, but offered no protection when he disappointed his friends. Tory and Barra were always careful not to hurt his feelings, but somehow that only made it harder to take. He wanted to impress them, not be consoled by them. He slouched and was glad the game was over.

Jerking a thumb at Barra, Tory added, “We all get tripped up sometimes. Even the
perfectly balanced
one over here.”

Barra’s mind had wandered, and she didn’t notice the verbal jab. She surveyed the treescape the way she imagined her father would have, and wondered what other secrets were in the journal. She found herself edging away from her friends, wanting to go home to read more.

“Whoa, whoa. Where’re you going?” Tory asked her.

“I was just…,” Barra tried to think of an excuse to leave. It was getting late… it
was
getting late. She demanded, “What time is it?!” while looking around frantically for a dayflower. She scrambled up a bough and pulled a large urn-shaped flower into view. Through the translucent leaves, she could see the thick fluid inside had risen almost to the bottom of a dark mark. She didn’t need an excuse, after all. “Oh no. I gotta go!” she said, but didn’t move.

Speaking over the top of one another, Tory and Plicks said, “Well, get going!” and, “Better hurry!”

Barra’s eyes grew wide. “Right!” She bounded along the pathwood, her tail flicking after her.

Barra jumped up and out of sight. The tip of her tail seemed to linger like it was reluctant to leave, but the slack ran out and it was dragged away. Plicks watched her go, and asked, full of hope, “Do you think she’ll make it?”

“She’s fast, but… I don’t know. Maybe?” Tory said with a devil-may-care grin. Neither was in a hurry, so they started walking along the pathwood in the general direction of the Umberwood Nest. Tory may not have been concerned about Barra getting home, but something else was nagging at him and he asked, “Did you notice how out of it she was today? I wonder what’s bothering her.”

Plicks thought about it, and said, “I noticed, but I guess I think she just gets like that sometimes.” He shrugged.

Tory nodded, but he thought there was more to it than that. He changed subjects anyway, and asked, “Been adding to your Thread?”

“Yeah. My weaving skills need some work,” Plicks said. His Thread was ragged, the baubles loose.

Tory pointed out, “Well, it’s not just your weaving, right? Your Thread is supposed to hold the most important moments together, not
every
moment.” Tory held up his right forearm where his Thread was wrapped clean and tight. There were baubles and trinkets tastefully woven into the tough braid. “Each one is special to me,” he said. He was distracted by one for a moment, his eyes shimmering. He shook his head and went on. “Anyway, what’re all those?” he indicated Plicks’ Thread.

Frowning, Plicks defended his misshapen Thread and the haphazard mementos it held. “Look, when you have as big a family as I have, there’s lots to remember. Their story is my story too you know.” He frowned at his misshapen Thread, “I just have to, erm, find a better way to weave it all in.”

Tory seemed to accept the explanation, and they continued along the pathwood without saying more about it. Even though he spent a lot of time in the Middens, it was still new and wondrous to him whenever he took a moment to look around. The abandoned treescape was within the Loft proper, the bottom of it actually, though it often felt a world apart. The unique dens found throughout were mysterious, ancient, and warped, stretched by gravity over many rings. Each den gradually imposed on its neighbors, and they crushed together into a tangled mess. The Middens was entirely unlike the bustling Loft where the majority of the Arboreals lived, and sometimes it felt like a private space reserved only for the adventurous.

Different and exciting an area as it was, Tory rarely went to the Middens alone. The top few tiers were safe enough and that’s where they spent most of their time—they could even see through to populated pathwoods, they stayed so close—but any deeper was risky. The deepest tiers were thin, boughs uncertain, and beneath the lowest bough was the Fall. He didn’t like to think about the endless emptiness, branchless and frightening as it was, and it was easier not to think about it with his friends around.

Tory squinted, spotting a clear shot through the branches overhead. He challenged Plicks, “Seed throw?”

Plicks was dubious. “You can make that throw?”

“Are you kidding?” The confident Rugosic didn’t wait for an answer. He knelt down and picked up Plicks. “Get ready,” he said.

Plicks hurriedly gathered his scruffs for the throw.

Tory tucked and rolled backwards, head over heels three times, and then stood up all at once, launching Plicks through the air. The Kolalabat went soaring up out of the Middens and into the Loft.

At the peak of his flight, Plicks reached out and dug the talons of all four paws into a mossy stretch of wood. “Wooooo!” he cried out, triumphant until he saw how narrowly he’d missed a large thicket of brambles. The blood left his face, and his whiskers hung limply.

Tory nodded. “See? Told you.”

A cool tingle shot up Plicks’ spine and he shook all over. Wincing, he said, “Yeah. Of course.”

They said goodbye and Tory started on his way home. Plicks took a moment to get his bearings. Then he plucked a pea-sized black fruit from the bramble bush that had almost gotten him. He popped it in his mouth and chewed on it to remove the bitter casing. Once he’d removed it all, he dropped it onto his paw to examine his work. It was a disc of swirled brown and orange. Exactly what he needed for his Thread. And with that, he scuttled off toward home.