Um, yes? Please?
Fuck off,said the tree, and Amma actually gasped, eyes popping open.
“What happened, dear?”
“The tree told me to fuck off.”
Em threw her head back and cackled.
“No!” Amma snorted, slamming her palm back against the trunk. “No, I’m here for a reason.”And this is it. You have to give me some seeds; I need them. Why else would the wildwood show itself to me? I have a duty, and this is how I’m going to fulfill it.
The tree tsked at her even though it, presumably, didn’t have a tongue.
Look, do you have seeds or not?
Yes, it said after a moment, begrudgingly,but you’re not equipped to—
Amma held up her silver dagger in her other hand.
Oh, well, maybe you are. But if you want them, you’re going to have to come up here and get them.
“Fine, I will.” Amma pulled her hand back, sheathed her dagger on her thigh, and took another long look up the trunk as her stomach dropped. Liathau typically grew their seeds in clusters at their peaks, and she’d been climbing them to harvest since she was seven-years-old, but the orchard’s trees never grew much more than twenty feet.Oh, boywas right.
“Going up there?” asked Em.
“You know it,” said Amma, taking a few steps back and eyeing the first branch.
“The canopy of the wildwood is quite different than the rest of it, you know.”
Amma nodded, readying herself, but something felt wrong. She looked down at her boots and quickly kicked them off until she was barefoot, feeling the ground beneath her feet. The calluses she’d developed walking across the realm helped, but her soles were still sensitive to the sharpest things as she planted her feet firmly and then sprinted for the trunk.
Jumping into a small hollow, she propelled herself upward, arms stretching and grabbing the nearest branch, and with a swing of her legs, she was up and over it, falling onto her stomach with a huge breath. Amma lifted her head and peered back down at the ground, and there was Em, only a foot or so below.
“This seemed a lot higher from down there,” she said.
“Oh, it is.” Em gestured with her staff and hobbled to a fallen log to sit. “I’ll wait here, you take your time.”
Amma glanced upward, and then pushed up to stand, the bark rough underfoot. The next branch was closer, and pulling herself onto it wasn’t nearly as difficult. She went on like that, carefully, just as she had done back in Faebarrow, and though this tree was narrower at its center, it had many more footholds and branches to climb up through. Amma quickly found a rhythm, and by the time her arms began to ache, she finally took a look down.
Em was a dot on the earth, but Amma was still not close.
A shiver ran through her legs as she crouched on a branch and stared up the lofty trunk. Gods, what was she thinking?
Can’t do it, can you?
Growling, Amma stood, looking for the next branch. Too high to be reached, she couldn’t find another way up, but there were other plants that had grown about the liathau including thick vines that hung from the far edges of the tree. Sitting, Amma wiggled her way out onto the branch and grabbed the vine. Heavy but pliable, she pulled it to her, looping the length over her shoulder until she had gathered enough and then shimmied her way back to the trunk.
Unraveling half of its length, she tossed the length of vine so that it would whip around the trunk, but it insisted on only making it halfway before falling. Again and again, she tried, and it continued to only go so far. Arms already sore, she gripped onto the vine tighter, and closed her eyes. Arcana flowed through the tendril, and she struck out a final time, the vine snapping around the trunk but clinging on this time, slithering over the far side of the tree, and then its end fell into her other, outstretched hand.
Holding both ends tightly, she squealed and tied them together. “Don’t have anything to say about that, do you?” she asked the silent tree and ducked under the loop she’d made. Pressing her bare feet into the trunk, she gave the vine a whip to clasp on higher, and pulled herself up. Suspended, leaning back, she held herself aloft with tension, took another breath, and continued straight upward.
Amma took breaks on thick enough branches until she came to the canopy. The world around her had grown darker with time and the denseness of the trees. Many thinner branches extended toward the liathau, their lighter-colored bark and brilliantly green leaves in contrast to the deep brown and pink she was climbing, but they were a help as she continued upward, more hand holds that allowed her to abandon the vine. The branches of the liathau itself were much wider as well, and she found she could walk on them with ease, footing steadier, even finding a place where they wound around like a set of stairs.
The canopy was different, as Em had said, other plants living off the liathau, winding around and hanging by ropy tendrils, but a bright, magenta ball of fluff caught Amma’s eye. Damien’s warning about poison popped into her mind, paralysis this high up being especially inopportune, but she ventured closer to see.
The creature was about as big as Amma’s hand, its body covered in dangerously purple fuzz. The little thing reached to its limit along the bark but got nowhere, excess, veiny skin stretching along its arms and sides like wings. Its back half was wrapped up in a thin tendril that traced back to a beautiful flower, but Amma had seen similar ones in the last week in the wildwood, and they were carnivorous.
“Oh, dear,” she said quietly, inching closer. The thing chirped when it saw her, its eyes too big for the rest of it, snout twitching madly. She could feel its panic as it struggled, gaining an inch and then being pulled back. “I’m not sure whose side I’m supposed to be on here, but…” Amma placed a finger on the tendril, avoiding the venomous creature, and there was a jolt of arcana beneath it.
