Wolf Star Rise: The Claidi Journals Book 2 by Tanith Lee (children's ebooks online TXT) 📕

solemn good-bye cartwheel. Today her knickers were scarlet with blue dots. This almost seemed the saddest thing of all.

I hated coming here. I was terrified and raging. At least I didn’t cry as we marched away.

And I’ll be alone with him now, as never before, in the depths of the jungle-forest.

Her forest.

HER FOREST

Trees. Shrubs. Shadows.

Glittery strings of water falling from high rocks smothered in vines.

Flowers without colour or scent.

Flashes of parakeets high up in the canopy.

It’s the way it was, coming here. There’s no point going on about it again. The only difference is knowing she planted it and made it grow. It was her talent for science that enabled everything to grow so quickly, so lushly. And so tall.

This used to be a desert waste. Like the one that surrounded the House. Dust and buried ruins and mostly poisonous wells. And now, it’s this.

Trees, shrubs …

Glittery strings of water …

And vast silences, now the waterfall thunder has died away.

I’d thought we’d be awkward together, or I would, but while we’re on the move, of course, that doesn’t come into it.

Venn has to hack our way through, and so do I as much as I can. The faintly-shining path I’d seen before keeps on, descending from the Rise, now coiling to left or right, around things, and in parts smothered. It’s exhausting. When we rest during the day, we sometimes just drink some water and then fall asleep. Neither of us is used to this sort of thing. No proper stamina.

Often at night, though, we can’t sleep. The Vast Silences get shattered all the time by yowling monkeys, or deer (he says they’re deer) abruptly crashing by through the undergrowth. Once something leapt right over us, a living arc with legs and eyes.

Tigapards prowl. We hear them. They don’t come near the fire, or do the rings keep them away? (I’ve recalled that time on the beach, after I’d just got off the ship, the tigapard which behaved so oddly, and never came near me.) So, my ring is as powerful as Ustareth’s? This still seems wrong. How could it be? Was Zeera herself as powerful as Ustareth??? She didn’t sound that way. And Zeera was kind. She looked after people.

We did see a vrabburr, the very first morning.

We were on a steep part, and I’d got tangled in a creeper, slashing at it, and Venn said, ‘Ssh.’ I had the sense to realize it wasn’t him being moody again.

When the vrabburr appeared it was a few yards away – that area was abnormally clear, or we wouldn’t have seen it.

Vrabburrs kind of lope. Very unevenly, because the front paws are so much shorter than those great heavy back legs. It fallollopped across the path, and shouldered, if you see what I mean, through into the rest of the jungle.

Hadn’t scented or seen us, or whatever. He said, ‘It must have been clockwork, that one.’ So maybe the clockwork ones can’t even scent or see you – unless you’re very obvious and close. I haven’t asked. I’d rather not know, really.

Anyway, he says – now we’re out here, so perhaps he’s only lying to reassure me – that the vrabburrs are less in numbers now. The clockwork ones run down (why didn’t he leave that other one run down, then, why wind it up again, if they’re dangerous?) and the real, bred ones have spread out into the farther jungles. Lucky old farther jungles.

As I say, at night we stay awake a lot.

We sit, or lie, a great space apart across the fire, usually turned away and not looking at each other, and we talk.

Argul and I used to talk for hours when we were alone, but not yards apart. And even our most serious discussions were full of jokes. We didn’t seem to talk much either about the past. It was sometimes about that evening, or that day, but more often about tomorrow. Next month.

Venn and I talk mostly about the past.

‘I remember that tree over there, Claidi. Do you see? Yes, that palm. She used to bring me to look at it. I was about one and a half.’

‘You remember a lot from when you were very young. Most people don’t.’

‘That’s because most of my life happened to me before I was two.’ I digested that, and he said, ‘To start it was only a little plant, the palm, in the middle of nothing. All this was bare. Sand, with just a bit of water welling up round a stone. But when she brought me next, the palm was already taller than I was. And there were other things growing everywhere. All about thirty feet high. Look at it now. Tall as the sky. I thought it was magic, what she could do. I still do, in a way. Well, in a way, it is.’

Odd. I could just picture Zeera at that moment, with Argul as a little boy, standing by her, and the palm tree growing. ‘So you think she did some good then?’ I said.

‘Oh yes. Great good. If I think about her now I’m an adult, well, she must have been very unhappy. I remember something in her book, the one I showed you – did you read this bit? About how she quite liked Narsident – my father – when they first introduced him to her.’

‘I don’t remember reading that, I couldn’t read parts—’

He opened the larger bag and produced the book (he’s brought it with him). I wished he hadn’t. Her book makes me uncomfortable. But I suppose, once he found it in the library … didn’t he ever look before? … it’s all he’s got left of the real Her.

Anyway, he read me this thing about how she thought at first her husband was handsome and noble, and then found out he was awful and she hated him. But it was too late by then. Then Venn read a sentence in which she added that she thought everyone