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"She jumped down from here," my guide said, pointing over the edge of the world.
To our left, the sun was setting. It had just begun to slip behind the Trunk, softening the late-afternoon glare. The Branch below us was curved across ours, and deeper into shadow, but even across the half-mile drop I could still make out little clusters of trees and, further Tipward, a large natural lake. That was surprising, this far from the Trunk - and yet didn't it make sense that my fugitive, who knew well the tips of the Tree and was fleeing all civilization, would find a place like that?
That thought must have leaked into my face, because my guide took a step back. "I didn't know she planned to jump," he said, eyes on my soft new Pursuer's badge. "She claimed to be making a payment, for goods already delivered by climbers. Even showed it to me - a set of fine crystal knives, for bone carvers."
We'd covered all that before, in the 3-day trek from Redlake, but then maybe standing at the edge of the Branch was making him as nervous as it made me. I took a few uneasy steps away, then turned it into an amble back toward our pack lizard, which was patiently chewing a bush a prudent fifty feet from the edge. "They were hers," I said over my shoulder, which was enough to get him to follow me. "Hers, and very valuable. No one back home blames you; there was no reason at all to doubt her story."
"Yes, Lady Pursuer," he replied, though I didn't technically have that title, or any other. We'd covered that before, too, but he'd never once taken me up on my repeated offers to call me Tanya, nor invited me to call him Martim. I wasn't even perfectly sure that was his name - I'd found him, in Redlake, by asking to see the man who'd rented a pack lizard to the traveling bone carver. I hadn't said, then, why I was looking for her, and I'd since begun to wish I hadn't told Martim, either. I hadn't wanted to make up a lie, but knowing that I was chasing a killer had given me an aura of grim authority in his eyes, and created a distance between us that I hadn't been able to break down.
What knowing that I planned to bring her back or else kill her in turn had done to his impression of me, I preferred not to think about.
Whatever he thought, it didn't stop him from helping me unload my supply packs from his lizard, for which I was very grateful. We didn't try to lead it closer to the edge, but took two trips to lug everything over ourselves. I'd brought everything I could think of: a change of clothing, bandages, trapper's rope, my own bone knife, fire fetishes, and more. And, of course, bone digging tools and plenty of extra water, though that work seemed to be wasted, with the miraculous lake so close to my chosen landing point. I lugged it anyway.
Back at the edge, Martim wasn't surprised when we started to lay out the parachute. The one I'd brought was larger than usual, being meant to carry a person instead of just trade goods, and took a lot of careful unpacking to set up safely. The fine cloth was made by worms somehow, I'd heard, domesticated like our pack lizards by some civilization up the Tree from ours. It didn't look sturdy enough to survive a stern insult, but the trader who'd sold it to me had used it himself, he'd said, and didn't want to carry the weight on his climb back up the Trunk. He'd carefully explained its use, and reassured me that it was a safe and exciting way to travel. He could probably be trusted...
Martim interrupted my thoughts, which was probably just as well. "You plan to jump tonight?"
"Rina's already got over a day's head start," I replied. "Giving her three more hours of daylight," I gestured vaguely back toward the Trunk, which the sun was slowly slipping behind, "will make it even harder to pick up her trail. I'll start at the lake; she must have intended to make that her base, coming here."
Martim stirred, as if to say something. Stopped, and seemed to chew it over. Finally he came out with, "You think you'll find her?"
I nodded. "She's by herself, with no possible explanation for why she left her home city. No other city will take her, so she'll have to stay Tipward, and the Tips are narrow. If I wait by the lake, she'll have to come to me."
He stirred uncomfortably once more. "And what happens then?"
"We'll talk," I replied, which was true, but by his expression it came out sounding like a euphemism. I sighed to myself, and abandoned any effort to clarify. If I succeeded, the story would find him in Redlake.
Hooking me into the parachute, and hanging all my many bags safely around it, took almost an hour. At the last minute I took off my Pursuer's badge, and tucked it safely away. The shadow hadn't touched us yet, this far from the Trunk, but the Branch below us had grown hazy and soft-edged. I'd have to be careful not to land on any of the bigger bushes, if that was what those green things were. Or, before that, I'd have to be careful to hit the Branch at all. The World Tree went on forever, it was said, so I'd hit something eventually, but...
I squatted down, on the edge of the edge, facing back away from the drop as I'd been told to. Martim sat across from me, watching. The next step was to lean backward, to let gravity pull me down and open the parachute above me, but maybe I should say something first? Nothing came to mind. It seemed too casual, to just fall off of the world without saying anything.
We sat together like that, for a little while.
"I've already paid you," I finally said, and winced. "What I mean is, you've done a service to the city of Raingather, beyond what scales can pay for. If you ever find yourself that far Trunkward, tell whoever you meet that you helped Tanya find Rina, and they'll help you if they can." He nodded. "But don't ask for the Lady Pursuer," I added, with an attempt at a smile. "They won't know who you mean."
He tried a smile of his own. "Thank you, I will." A pause, then: "Tanya."
Deeps, this was awkward for him too. I'd wanted to say something, I'd said something, it was time to get on with it.
We sat together a little longer.
"Could I have a push?" I asked, as lightly as I could, and regretted it when his eyes widened. "Never mind," I said quickly, "I just need a moment. Three, two, one..."
I leaned back, then leaned back further. It worked, and my panicked, flailing hands could find nothing to grab on the smooth bark of the side of the Branch. Above me I caught a brief glimpse of Martim's face, shouting something I couldn't hear above the rushing wind. The parachute jittered above me, then finally settled, cutting off my view of the Branch above and jerking me against my harness. It held.
It took me some seconds to orient myself to the ground, and precious more to realize that the crosswinds were blowing me sideways, out from over the Branch below. But there was a technique for that, and by pulling on the parachute ropes I could guide my fall a little.
Drawback: it made me fall faster.
Oh deeps, what was it I'd been told to do when I landed?
Despite everything, I almost got it right. I flexed my knees, I rolled as I fell, I spread the impact through my whole body, but a gust of wind caught the parachute and pulled me sideways, turning my right ankle under me even as tried to correct. I felt it twist, and not quite break, before the parachute snagged on one of those big bushes and we skidded to a halt.
The first priority, when you're alone in the wilderness, is to find water.
A community working together can dig a lake, and scour it, and seal the sap away, and have good clean drinking water for dozens or hundreds of people. Almost six hundred people lived in and around Raingather, I'd been told, and on market day I could believe it. The lake itself was so big that we'd built special floating platforms made of wood, so that you could drift across the lake instead of having to walk around it. We barely even bothered to control access to it any more: travelers could just stop by one of the feeder ponds, and drink as much as they wanted.
You, a single human off by herself for suspect reasons, cannot build or maintain one of those. You can dig a hole, if you have a good spade and lots of patience, and let the waters of the World Tree seep into it, but don't drink too much: the sap will build up in your guts, and then it won't matter how much water you have. You could seal your little hole against the sap while still letting the water in, if you have the right stones, and the right plants, and a vat to boil them in, and the time to do it over once a month. You'll only need a small vat, since you only made a small hole, but it's not like those cook faster. Do you even have a vat, of any size, little miss human off by herself?
So humans need communities, and for more than just companionship. Except that there must be natural pure lakes, mustn't there, or else what did the first humans do? Most Branches had one or two, I'd heard, usually close to the Trunk, but I'd never been closer Trunkward than Raingather and I'd never seen one before today. It wasn't much compensation, for the weariness in my back and the pain in my ankle, but I'd take it.
I'd left most of my water at my landing site, wrapped up under a bush with the parachute and my other trade goods. This far Tipward there wouldn't be any large animals to mess with them, and if Rina or some other human found them...well, it seemed like a slight risk, in exchange for not having to carry it all around myself. After I'd established a camp by the lake, and set my snares, I'd go back for them. My ankle twinged at the thought, but I had time now. Rina had nowhere to go.
The sun had almost fully set by the time I reached the lake. Even in shadow, it was a pretty piece of land: a clean plain full of scrubby grass and gentle almost-hills, with blue water set in the middle like a giant shell. I didn't see any fires, or signs of Rina's camp, but that was fine; I'd set up camp and begin my search in earnest tomorrow. All I wanted right now was to refill my few waterskins and lie down.
Even in darkness, the lake was clearly deep. I lay down next to it, bad leg stretched out and crutch beside me, and rolled over so that I could put my face right in it and drink.
And, choking with surprise, spat out the taste of sap.
It was strong, stronger than any sap I'd tasted in any hole I'd dug myself. The lake had been steeping for decades, probably. Humans had dug it, deep and well, out here on the tip, but then something had happened, and they'd left, and the Tree had taken it back.
It was obvious in retrospect. Natural lakes mostly appear near the Trunk. This lake was far from the Trunk. Thus, it probably wasn't natural. But I'd expected to see something like that, some explanation of why Rina thought she could survive on her own, and when it had appeared I hadn't questioned it. It made so much sense for her to have found it that I hadn't thought about whether it made sense in absolute terms.
I'd brought lots of water with me, far more than I expected to need. But water is heavy, so "far more than I expected to need" worked out to "five or six days, maybe". I could stretch that to weeks by digging, if I didn't travel far from my watering holes, but never mind that: to survive I'd have to find other humans. Could I do that in five or six days, at my new, reduced speed?
Probably not, no.
My guide had likely guessed this, I realized. When I told him I was heading for the lake, he'd wanted to say something. But he'd held back, not willing to second-guess the Lady Pursuer. If we'd built some friendlier relationship, over those three days, might he have chosen differently? Or, deeps, I could have just asked him what he thought, then or earlier, instead of giving reassurances phrased as commands.
Those were all useful thoughts to have had, three days ago, or even an three hours ago. But I was having them now, and so I was going to die. The idea that Rina had made the same mistake, and would probably die the same way, wasn't much comfort. No one in Raingather would ever hear about this; as far as anyone there could tell, my mission had mysteriously failed. The damage to the community would never heal.
Unless I survived, somehow.
I wanted to stand right back up and go charging back to my cache site in the dark. I made myself stay down, though I did roll a few prudent yards away from the poison lake. My ankle was my biggest limitation now, and the way to travel quickly was to care for it, not to move around as much as I could. I carefully rewrapped it, ate some of my preserved lizard, and settled in to sleep as best I could, heavy cloak wrapped around me.
But my ankle hurt, and it was too quiet, and most of all the sun never quite set. It doesn't, when you're far from the Trunk, because past a certain point the sun is actually wider than the Trunk is: by the time it completely sets, it's already rising again. I watched that happen, bit by bit, over the slow hours. The width of the Trunk is known, more or less, and mathematically-inclined people have used that fact to hazard guesses at the size of the sun. Or rather, at the combination of its size and its distance from us, for it always seems to be the same size no matter where you are on the Branch. I'd even heard the figures, once, but my memory had blurred them into "very big, very far away, or probably both". Mathematics never interested me; I preferred to hunt, and travel, and see new things.
And so, when Pursuer Gan had looked around for someone younger and fitter to find our missing bone carver - or rather, to find the woman who'd killed Evelle the tanner - I had felt that I could do it.
I had a lot of time to think about that, watching the sun set and rise. Eventually I slept a little.
My ankle was much worse in the morning.
Binding it tightly hadn't helped: the cloth itself was warping, strained by the red flesh underneath it. Putting weight on it was pure agony. How long would this take to heal? Too long, surely, so I ate more lizard and stood. With my crutch I could manage a careful hobble, and I set off back toward where I thought my remaining supplies had to be. I saw nothing and no one, heard nothing but my own labored breathing and the stirring of the brown grass in the high Tipward winds. That empty stillness had felt serene, back on my home Branch; here it was somehow sinister.
The first time, the trip probably hadn't even taken me a full hour. The trip back took three or four, though by the end I was scarcely able to tell time. When I saw my parcel, still wrapped securely under my chosen bush, I just collapsed: moved all my weight onto my left leg and fell forward. When I woke again it was early evening.
Finding Rina wasn't the priority anymore; I just had to find humans, any humans. Civilization spreads from the Trunk, so that would be simple: just face the Trunk and keep walking forward. Eventually I'd find a merchant, or a road, or a field of domesticated flax, or something, and I could explain what I'd come for.
After the previous night I saw no reason to wait, so I ate a little more lizard, picked up all the water, and set out. In the dark, carrying the extra weight, I was even slower, but slight progress was still progress.
I ate again at dawn, and it occurred to me that I was going to run out of lizard before I ran out of water. I'd planned to set traps around a fixed camp, but now I couldn't hold still that long. No matter; I'd just eat less. It wasn't as though I was moving very fast, anyway. There were still no signs of civilization, and the terrain was rolling enough that I couldn't see far ahead. But there was no sense worrying about that now.
It was two days before I made a mistake. I'd been traveling at night, sleeping and waking whenever I felt like it, and caught my crutch on the far-flung root of a nearby bush. I fell, and instinctively tried to stop my fall with my bad ankle, and then walking was out of the question completely.
That was probably the end, I figured. But I had one more plan, and I had my revenge: I dragged myself to that bush, dug it up with my knives, drew out a fetish, and made fire. The smoke would be clearly visible against the Tipward sky. Anyone who looked would know there was a human out there. What they would choose to do about that, if anything, was outside my control.
I ate the rest of my lizard, drank as much water as I wanted, and tried to sleep. It worked somewhat: the sun ducked behind the Trunk, then leaped out, then futilely tried to hide again. I occurred to me to write a message, for whoever found my body, but I hadn't brought anything to write with. If I had, I would have left it at the cache anyway. There was something reassuring about that thought. I'd planned any number of things wrong, but not that.
In the end it worked out the only way it could have. There was no civilization, this far from the Trunk, but there was one other human. I woke, early some morning or other, to Rina's face above me. I tried to tell her I'd caught her, that she should come back with me to face judgment, but the world around me flickered, and died out again.
It was a few days before I was coherent enough to understand what had happened. I'd been breathing the smoke of the plant I'd burned and, like most plants, it concentrated the sap of the World Tree. The only cure was time, which Rina gave me: feeding and watering me, out of my stores and hers, and helping me attend to the messy details that followed.
She'd found two real trees, under our home Branch, and somehow dragged me to the little camp she'd made there. She was gone most of the time, and when I finally woke up clear-headed, I was alone. My ankle was tightly bound with bits of wood, and I didn't quite dare to walk, but from my spot under one tree I could see the whole camp laid out: a fire pit ringed with stones, a freshly-dug water hole, and then further away, another trench. I had a lot of time to think about that water hole, before she returned in the evening.
When she returned that night the sun had already set, as much as it ever did. I hadn't known her well, and the fading light wasn't enough to refresh my memory. All I had were vague impressions: height, long fingers, short dark hair, and a careful way of moving. She sat herself down by the fire pit, but didn't try to conjure any fire; her snares had been empty, apparently. I waited to see what she'd do, but she just sat, looking into the empty pit. Eventually I decided I'd found the line between cleverness and cowardice, and spoke:
"Where is the water coming from?"
She startled, and turned to me. "You sound a lot better. That's a huge relief, I didn't have any kind of plan for if you slept another day. What's your name? I know I've seen you at - " she stumbled over the name of our shared hometown, and recovered, " - we've never met, I don't think."
I thought about going along with that burst of blatantly obvious deflection. I could tell her my name, let her fuss over me - and I felt like being fussed over, still. We could wait until I felt better. We could wait until I had some ability to defend myself from a woman who had, after all, killed somebody. It was pretty tempting, all in all.
But I'd told her why I was here, probably ten times a day, over however long my recovery had taken. And even if I hadn't, even if my accusations had been too muddled to understand, why else would I have jumped off of the Branch to follow her? She might not know who I was, but why I was here must have been obvious.
It would still have been easier to say nothing.
If I wanted to do easy things, I'd've stayed in Raingather.
"Your water pit must be steeping," I pressed. "It'll work for a few days, but if - "
"It's not poisonous." She tossed her head. "I've just barely got you un-poisoned, I wouldn't poison you again." She tried out a smile, a bit of white in the gloom.
"If you come back with me - " "No!" Her good cheer slipped, for a moment; she took a breath and found it again. "I'm telling you, I don't have to! I took some sealant before I left, sealed it in a waterskin. This hole should be good for a month, at least."
"I don't think it works that way," I said slowly. "Or more people would do it."
"It might! It should help, anyway."
"It wasn't finished." I became aware that I'd been lured off track. "And, it wasn't yours."
"There's always some left over, you know there is! It's nothing compared to what I left behind."
"You left behind a corpse."
She flinched, and turned away from me, back to the empty place where the fire could have been. "That was a mistake."
She hadn't said "an accident". I let the silence stretch. "We were arguing, I - I just wanted to scare her. But I messed up, I cut her, it was going to scar, and I couldn't...there was no way to hide it. She panicked. I panicked."
"So you killed her."
"It was a mistake, I said! I knew I couldn't stay. Even if I could hide it somehow...deeps, her mother buys fetishes from me." Her voice hitched. "Used to buy. She used to - did they give her my shop?"
"Everything you left behind," I said, as calm as I could. "Not your tools, you took those, but everything you planned to sell."
She nodded, eagerly grateful. "Good. I didn't - I know it's not enough. But I didn't know what else to do."
That was enough like the opening I'd hoped for that I felt a little excitement, despite everything. "You could have stayed. You could have - "
"They'd have killed me. 'A life for a life', right? I couldn't stay, but dying wouldn't bring Evelle back. It wouldn't help her mother, it wouldn't help anybody."
We would, I decided, come back to that. "What are you planning to do? Even if your trick with the sealant works, it'll only last a month. What then?"
"There's a city, a real one, another week or so Trunkward. I saw once, over the edge of our Branch. Our old Branch." She left an inviting little pause after that, which I declined to fill. "I'll tell them...I don't know what I'll tell them. Maybe I'll just be mysterious. I thought I'd have more time to think about it."
Until I'd shown up and started drinking up her reserves of water, right. I felt real gratitude, and tried not to let it move me. "Do you think they'll let you live with them?"
She shook her head. "Live nearby, maybe. I'll show up every month and help with their lake, sell carvings...it'll take time, but they'll accept me eventually. They won't let me die within sight of their lake."
They would if I told them why she left. But it didn't seem like she'd thought of that, or she just thought it was impolite to mention it. "That doesn't sound like much," I said instead, and she shrugged.
"It's not. But it's something I can do. They won't know my past, I'll be away from people, I won't ever...it's something."
I'd had a speech planned for this, back when I was first leaving Raingather. How I'd convince her to come back, to fix what she'd broken. I couldn't remember it now. I was thinking about that lake. Had she -
"Did you try to visit the lake? The big natural-looking one to Tipward," I added, when she looked confused.
She shook her head. "I already had a plan, and anyway it must be abandoned, right?"
I nodded. "I thought you'd gone there, at first. I thought that was why you'd run, that you knew a secret way to live alone."
She wrinkled her nose. "If only."
"People came together to dig that lake, and clean and polish and seal it, over and over again, for years." That was so obvious it was a little insulting, but she didn't seem offended. "But they left, so long ago that even their buildings aren't visible anymore. If they farmed, if they had animals - all of it's gone."
She nodded, maybe a little warily. I went on, thinking as I spoke. "This far out, it can't have been animals that got them. A stray from the Trunk, or the Underneaths, could never make it this far. Probably not war either - who'd come out here, and why? What could you gain?"
She shrugged. "Revenge? Fear? It doesn't sound likely, I guess. But what else is there?"
"It's easy to dig a lake, hard to maintain one, and harder still to fill one in later. There must have been a hundred people living around that lake, when it was new. Working together, they could have maintained it easily. But fifty couldn't have." And then I saw where I was going with this, finally, understood why I'd been thinking about it. "If their community fractured, if some of them left on their own, the rest would have had to follow, or die."
Then she got it too. "I've never even heard a story where that happened."
"It's too terrible to think about. But it must have, from time to time."
"So, what, nobody can ever leave? No one can - " I held up a hand, and somehow that was enough to stop her.
"Evelle's mother is grieving, of course. Trev is the best carver left, and he's excited to show what he can do, and ashamed to be excited about something so terrible. Gan wishes he were fit enough to come himself; he's sure he could persuade you, and if I can't he'll blame himself for not being able to go. The community is stressed in a dozen different ways. That's what you've damaged by leaving. That's what you can fix by coming back."
"Fix how? I'm already gone, and so's - " she swallowed, pushed through it, " - so's Evelle. I gave up my whole life in Raingather. What can I give those people that matters, now?"
"If you come back, they'll know that justice was done. That everything that could be done to fix it, has been done. It will be enough." Those were Gan's words, not mine, but I still believed them. "And then, we'll be a little further away from the future where Raingather can't - " I let the sentence die, couldn't even think it all the way, let alone say it out load.
But Rina wasn't moved. "And if I didn't agree to walk back down the Branch, deeps, to climb the Trunk with you, to spend a year fighting my way back to my own execution? What then? Were you going to kill me, and go home to tell everyone you did it?"
I sighed. "No. I couldn't walk up to someone and kill them, any more than you could." As soon as I said it, I knew it was true.
Silence fell, and finally, on that uneasy note, we went to sleep.
That was a year ago.
We had that same conversation again, of course. More than once. Loudly. Quietly. With rude gestures, sometimes. Once Rina wrote me a poem. Each time, we hit the same wall: she wouldn't return with me, and I wouldn't return alone.
When I was well enough to travel, we gathered up my trade goods and started walking Trunkward. The city she'd been aiming for turned out to be named Torrent, and its people spoke a very strange language, but we managed to convey through gesture that we were traders, come from above. We join in freely when it's time to scour the lake, Rina rolling the vat and me diving. Soon they'll start to wonder why we're lingering, and someday after that they'll bring themselves to ask about it through the language barrier, but no one has seriously questioned us yet.
I did tell Rina my name, eventually, and then for months she stubbornly refused to use it.
We still talk about it, more and less obliquely. How can we help Raingather, without destroying any of the good that might come from the rest of Rina's life?
If you think of something, let us know.