B34C18/19 - Tree Scaling

I was Hork-Bajir!

All the others were completing their morphs. I was back with my adopted people. Or at least the illusion of my own people. And in my life as it was, at this moment, nothing could be free of illusion.

<Lead the way,> Jake said, obviously preferring to use thought-speak rather than struggle with the difficult Hork-Bajir diction.

<Cassie, I want . . . it would be best if i controlled this body, for now.>

<Okay. Do it.>

I pointed upward, out of the valley. "To the trees!"

We ran up the narrow stairs. Hork-Bajir did not fear heights. Up the stairs, across the barrens, feeling the slope grow ever more steep. Up through the mist. And then, still at a run, my head rose through the mist and saw the first tree.

Huge! It was a curved wall, a monstrous Stoola tree. My hearts leaped. I ran straight for it. Cassie ran. The Hork-Bajir ran. Andalite, human, Hork-Bajir all become one in the excitement of running, running, then leaping up, digging blades into the soft bark.

I was climbing. The experience that was so strange for an Andalite had been so strange for me for so long and was now so familiar.

To my surprise the human Cassie was both afraid of the growing height and, at a deeper level, strangely comfortable racing up toward the lowest branches a hundred feet or more up the trunk.

Of course. I should have realized: the arms that hinge through three hundred and sixty degrees, the strong hands with opposable thumbs, the feet with vestigial fingers.

<You humans are a brachiating species?> I asked.

<Of course. Our ancestors, the species that came before humans evolved, lived in the trees.>

<I felt that you were more at peace than an Andalite would have been.>

<Yeah, as long as we don't fall.>

<Hork-Bajir do not fall from the trees.>

Up and up, toes and blades biting the bark, racing straight toward "Father Sky."

<These are some seriously big trees,> Marco said. <This one tree could be lawn furniture for the entire country.>

<Why are we climbing?> Rachel asked. <I mean, we want to go somewhere, right? Not just straight up?>

<This is the way to travel here,> I reassured them. <Go up to go left or right.>

<I've been telling them that for a long time,> Tobias remarked. <Altitude is everything.>

<How's it look, Tobias?> Jake asked.

<I don't see any Hork-Bajir, or anything else except some small, fuzzy, monkey-looking things.>

<Chadoo,> I said.

<Whatever. Aside from that I just see some really, really large trees. I mean, these trees are up in my face. I don't mind flying through branches for a while, but I'm used to the air above two hundred feet being wide-open.>

We reached a long branch that ran almost level toward the south. Toward the valley's end where Dak and I lived. Had lived. Had given birth to Seerow.

If I had hidden weapons, it would be there. And it was my home. A week ago, to my mind, it had been home.

I had to see it.

(...)

Run!

We raced along the branch. Ran at full speed on a curved, uneven, knotted branch.

Ran like giant squirrels, sure-footed, and yet, within a few inches of falling and falling and . . .

The end of the branch!

<Aldrea, the branch is - AAAAAHHHH!>

Leap! Fly! Falling, arms outstretched, falling, wind whipping by, a flash of Tobias, leaves the size of circus tents.

She stuck out a hand. Grabbed a thin branch, I could close my hand around it, too small to hold us, oh God, we were going to die.

Falling, the branch bending down and down and down and then, slower, slower, uh-oh, uh-oh, we were going back up! Spring action now whipped us up at dizzying, insane speeds, a giant rubber band, a slingshot, and at the top of the arc, she released.

<Aaaahhhhhhh!>

We flew, somersaulted, and fell, down, down, THUNK!

My Hork-Bajir feet bit into a new branch, a new tree.

<Okay, that was nuts!> I yelled. <Let's do it again!>

The others were following, move for move, more or less.

We took off again, more businesslike now, but still swinging wildly from branch to branch, tree to tree in a trapeze act like no one on Earth had ever seen.

Aldrea stopped finally and rested. She watched the others catch up. More specifically, she watched Toby. The young Hork-Bajir seer was blazing through the trees, smiling, laughing.

<She's all I have left,> Aldrea said.