Barra let her friends believe she was headed home. After all, she was going home, just not yet. No need for them to worry about her travelling to the Middens first. Besides, if they didn’t know where she was going, they wouldn’t feel the need to back her story if her mother ever found out.
Barra descended through the Middens. She recognized a nearby ancient ramshackle den. The first ruin she’d ever explored. She didn’t head toward it. Instead, she shimmied down a thick bough and headed deeper into less familiar woods. The darkness became oppressive, stifling her movements, causing hesitation with each step. Her breathing was labored, the thick, cold air seizing her chest. Barra persisted.
She wondered how close she was to the Fall.
She thought she shouldn’t think about it.
The Middens were old, but how old no one really knew. Barra had heard the fables, and though they varied some, they all agreed the dens of the ruins were built by the Olwones when the Middens was young, and the Loft closer to the Root. From there the stories went their own ways: the Olwones vanished, and the untended Forest grew tall and wild, and tore apart the Middens as it reached for the sky; the Middens was left behind for lesser creatures while the Olwones live on at the Root in a paradise detached from the Trees; the Olwones are a myth and the Middens? The remains of an Arboreal Nest abandoned for the danger of living too close to the Fall.
Barra didn’t know what to think of the stories. No one could ever tell her what an Olwone actually was, what one looked like, or where they came from in the first place. They were portrayed as colossal creatures shaping worlds! But the dens of the Middens were sized for creatures like Listlespurs and Rattlebarks, Kolalabats and Rugosics—not giants, Barra thought.
Legends about the Middens, the Olwones, and the Root, Barra had heard a lot of them. The only story Barra had never heard was one of someone returning from the Fall.
The Fall had no branches, no holds, only emptiness. The prospect was frightening enough to keep even the boldest Arboreals away. Barra had a difficult time imagining a world without boughs, thin and thick, in every direction, and she had to admit the thought of it scared her too. So she tread carefully as she picked her way through the Middens, taking care not to delve too far, but the idea of finding the Creepervine drove her on.
Barra had never had a reason to go deeper with so much unexplored higher up. Looking around now she realized how much she’d been missing. Every branch was new and mysterious, each den strange. The homes were shaped from the boughs of course, but there were minerals, rocks, and metals embedded as well—materials in far too short supply to use in the Loft. She thought of her father, noted everything she saw, and imagined adding her descriptions to his journal.
Farther and farther down, she went. The dens were even more stretched out and gnarled than those above. They’d been worn by time and gravity in a way that was disorienting. Barra felt like she was in another world. There were more distractions, but fewer branches. The odd gaps between boughs startled her more than once. If she stumbled, if she misjudged a step, she may not be able to catch herself; she could drop into the forever black.
Barra slowed. She stepped from branch to branch only when she was sure of her footing, and continued to scout for the sticky fungal residue of the Creepervine. She’d never seen anything like it in her previous adventures, but she might have missed it, not looking for it then as she was now. She wanted a sample because she was worried about poor Ari—the insect deserved to be free of the fungus—but also, knowing that her father was collecting a sample when he disappeared, she hoped somehow that she’d learn something about what happened to him.
Time passed without a sighting. Watering was coming soon, when the “evils” were rumored to wander the Middens. Watering wasn’t a big deal otherwise. According to Venress Starch, Watering used to refer to a surge of water that would burst from the flowers of the Loft twice a day. As long as Barra had been alive, Watering was a once a day trickle that she sometimes missed. Nevertheless, the disappointing event marked the beginning of the treescape’s daily transition into night.
Inverted on a moss covered branch, Barra kneaded the brittle material, and it crunched beneath her paws—not a moss she recognized. Moving on, she hugged her belly to her spine to avoid the scratchy bits. She sniffed the air to gauge her surroundings in the waning light.
Not only was the light meager, but the number of sources was few. No bluebells or lemonlights or indiglows. No sparklenettles or lumenlichens or shimmerpollens. There were some starlights offering pricks of focused light, and a few radiantmosses softening the dark with a diffuse glow. Barra opened her eyes as wide as she could to gather the light.
There were irregular configurations of boughs making it difficult for Barra to orient herself. The bottoms of the dens looked like their tops, the branches growing with no purpose to shape them.
Barra wandered toward one of the dens. She wasn’t entirely sure of finding her way back, but trusted her instinctual sense of up and down to get her there. Still, the unfamiliar treescape was unnerving. Out of habit, she ventured into a small hovel. There were tables and chairs made of wood that had petrified so that they were difficult to distinguish from the rocks used to shape them. Above her was webwork of stone woven into wood, rocks spliced into branches to bend them with their added weight. The bindings were strong, but the kitchen was still crushed side-to-side like everything in the Middens.
Stretching herself out, raking her claws against the floor, Barra wrung the jitters from her body. She stood upright and then sat down at the table in the kitchen as though she was preparing to eat. Imagining the room filled with a family of Listlespurs, she acted out sipping a teaflower daintily. She thought she could almost see the room come to life with all species of Arboreals talking and laughing, drinking and eating, enjoying themselves. But her moment of pretending didn’t last long.
A prickly cold feeling grew like crystals in her blood. She felt the distance home, how far away she was from her mother. She wished she were somewhere else, somewhere safer than an isolated hovel deep in the Middens. Something moved in the corner of the room. Or maybe it was the corner that was moving.
Barra blinked several times to clear her vision. Still, the far wall was writhing. She froze and her heartbeat quickened. She felt blood push into her ears, and all the way to the tip of her tail. She sampled the air with several quick inhales through her nostrils.
The room seemed alive, but it wasn’t. There was something else in the room with her.
Along the far wall, a sheet of black undulated like a doorweave waving in a breeze. The sheet grew wider as it moved, spreading outward from the center. It rippled and slid, covering up the wall and continuing up the ceiling, working its way around the room toward Barra.
The low light turned the sheet into a canvas where Barra’s imagination painted nightmares. As the sheet grew closer, details resolved out of the darkness; it was a multitude of tiny creatures moving in unison. Barra caught glimpses of legs and antennae as the creatures flowed together and expanded along the wall. It didn’t take long for them to cover every surface of the kitchen. She had no idea where they were coming from, or how many there were.
They were almost at her feet.
She stood, and the creatures stopped sharply.
The warped kitchen was trapped in stillness. Barra’s heart was drumming the urge to run into her chest. She stole a quick glance over her shoulder to locate the way out, and when she looked back, the tapestry of creatures had closed the distance to her.
Eyes burning because she was afraid to blink, Barra backed up slowly.
The bugs moved. They matched her progress toward the doorway. She took another step backward. They narrowed the gap.
Barra felt her pulse in the quick of her claws. Adolescent claws her mother was always reminding her; fragile. Easily broken, easily repaired, Barra had argued. Suddenly, she wished she’d listened to her mother, and just tried to avoid danger. If she made it home, she would hug and kiss her mom, tell her how right she was, and promise to listen better. She had to make it home.
She felt the closeness of the insects, and the closeness of her escape.
She picked her moment. They picked the same.
Hundreds of pinprick lights turned on as the tiny creatures’ eyes flashed open. Wings fluttered and clacked ominously. In unison, the insects faced Barra and swarmed like tendrils of smoke reaching for her. They billowed around Barra, a terrifying, rattling cloud. Barra coiled, and then in one swift motion, burst through the cloud and out the doorway. She flew into the open boughs of the Middens with the insects trailing after her.
Barra fled through the woods. The oily collection of insects accelerated. They flew together as one large predator. Barra cut through a thicket of brambles, but the insects were unfettered, flowing like liquid over the sharp thorns. The chase sent Barra winding around branches, through dense nettles, and over great gaps in the boughs, but she couldn’t lose them.
Trying a new tactic, she jumped and spun herself around. She whipped out her tail, lassoed a branch, and pulled. Changing direction mid-flight, she headed up toward the Loft. But the insects were too fast. They swarmed and cut off her ascent.
Her pursuers flowed in and out of each other, eyes appearing and disappearing in a frightening miasma. Barra saw their eyes and felt chills—no warmth in those tiny lights, only predatory instinct. They were focused. They allowed her to turn any way but up, relentlessly driving her toward the Fall.
Barra dashed into a den. She bolted through distorted rooms and passages, found a window, and leapt back out. Her eyes were focused, seeing only the path ahead. She ran, but not at full speed. The shadows and boughs were dangerously interchangeable in the dark. Barra hesitated at turns and stumbled after jumps, all the while colliding with leaves and ferns she couldn’t see.
A large clearing in the branches yawned open ahead of her. She couldn’t mark the distance across, but all the way to the edge was clear. She went for it, increasing her speed to make the leap of her life… then realization skewered her like a broken branch through her chest. Her blood drained. Her lungs collapsed.
It was too far.
Digging in with all her strength, she tried desperately to stop. Her claws broke and cracked from the stress, but fear kept her fingers braced through the pain. Searching for a hold, her tail thrashed like an angry snake behind her.
Barra stopped. A whisker’s breadth from the edge, shaking, she inhaled. She didn’t finish her breath before the mass of insects hit her like a tidal wave. They engulfed her and carried her over the edge.
As she struggled viciously against them, Barra realized that she wasn’t falling, at least, not falling fast. The cloud of tiny beasts was metamorphosing, becoming thick. Each insect clutched at the next, holding fast with their claws and jaws. Working together, they became a stretchy, writhing net.
Arms and legs frantic, Barra fought through the ever-thickening mesh like she was swimming upstream through sap. Finally, she splashed through the amalgam and burst out. The bough from which she’d just fallen was close. She reached for it. Pain shot through the tips of her shattered claws as she shredded bark before managing a grip.
Barra hauled herself back up onto the bough and was running again before she was even conscious of it. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the disentangling mesh of insects was slow to follow, unable to detach from one another quickly.
Barra went vertical, heading for the Loft while she had the chance. Hot blood in her veins, she ran and climbed like never before. She didn’t look back again until she crossed into the Loft. Looking down through the dense branches, she was positive she spied the insects hiding in the shadows. But they didn’t follow her. Cautiously, she waited. She stealthed, camouflaging herself with her specialized fur.
“Why’d they stop?” she thought as she paced, ready to run, but curious.
Snap!
It wasn’t unusual for branches in the Loft to settle, creak, and crack, and sometimes for no obvious reason they snapped. That’s probably all it was, that sound, but Barra was away in a flash.
Halfway home, Barra thought, “At least I have a good excuse for being late.”