Canopy, p.2
Canopy, page 2
When Joshua and I were kids, Yew had taught us to use slingshots on tiny prey. Anything we’d slain, we’d had to eat: All spirits are equal. You take a life only to prolong your own. Joshua had understood immediately, but I’d eaten a vast quantity of beetles before I learned my lesson.
“The hunters kill more than they need, so they report to Maestro Hamamalis, along with the gardeners,” said Sorbus.
Salix shook her head. “I didn’t know that. Did you know that Ostrya?”
“I knew Yew got the meat for the market from the hunters. I guess I never thought about who the hunters were. Seems silly, because we’d starve without them,” I said.
“We wouldn’t starve without them. We could always eat plants. Like Wingnut. He’s a vegetarian,” said Salix.
“Can’t you go one hour without saying his name?” said Sorbus.
“I was just … he’s the only vegetarian I could think of.”
“We couldn’t all be vegetarians. Do you know how many plants we’d need?”
“If we were all gardeners—”
“It still wouldn’t work. Not enough sunny places to grow as much as we’d need.”
Salix’s expression indicated that she was about to dig in for a great sibling debate, so I changed the subject. “So, Mangrove, who’s your teacher?”
He grinned, thrilled to have the attention. “No traineeship. They tested my aim with the bow and arrow, my skill with the climbing rope, and boom! Done! I’m a hunter.”
“I’m super excited,” said Salix. “Wollemia chose me, out of everyone. Me. I’ll be designing and making clothing.”
“Really?” The word slipped out of my mouth and I instantly regretted it. I tried to explain myself, but I only made it worse. “I mean, I’m surprised you want to work on Bough One, all those old people and little kids—”
“So what? You’re working on Bough One.”
“I mean, I never thought, working fiber seems so, so … not like …”
“You know, Ostrya, some of us have to choose for ourselves. We don’t all get to be a doctor because mommy says so. Not all of us are born into such an important family.”
Her words stung. Her intention was to hurt, her tone was sarcastic, but all she said was true. And if I was being honest, my words had been insensitive and stupid. She was so smug and selfish dismissing Sorbus and Mangrove with a flick of her tongue. I guess I wanted to hurt her. But I couldn’t stomach being the bad guy. “I’m sorry, Salix! I didn’t mean it like that! Fiber is an important job—the entire community needs clothing and blankets, and—” I didn’t know what else Wollemia’s fiber team did. “What I meant was, you know, I thought you’d want something more, um, physical maybe? Up in the canopy, I don’t know …”
Salix punched me in the arm. “Dude, don’t hurt yourself. No need to apologize. I love working with fiber—and I’m good at it! I’m gonna learn everything. Wollemia can barely sew anymore, her arthritis is so bad. I’m gonna do all the fine work—so much more than the other trainees.”
I barely heard her. My heart was pounding and my head was spinning, not the good turbulence like when I’m climbing, but the sick feeling I wake up with in the morning when I think of all the people I’ll have to smile at and greet. Salix was my friend, and I didn’t even know how to talk to her. How was I supposed to learn how to talk to patients?
Salix elbowed me in the side. “Hey, come on! You’re gonna be a great doctor. You’re smart. You’re gonna learn all the bones and medicine recipes and, whatever, wicked fast.”
I nodded and forced a smile. To my relief, Salix moved on to other prey. Her roommate Toona was pining after Sorbus, and this was apparently hilarious beyond measure.
The chartreuse larva of a Geometridae moth dropped from a small branch at my eyeline. I found it odd that they were called inchworms, since they were at least half a foot long. The Book of Silvanus classified the arachnids and arthropods living on the earth and in the trees. Generations ago, the Book claimed, insects and spiders were so small they would fit in the palm of your hand. The oxygen increases generated by the Great Ones had allowed them to grow ever larger; that’s what my mother explained. Of course, she believed in the Book. But such small orb weavers and beetles and inchworms—I didn’t believe they ever existed.
I bit a hangnail while I considered the worm drifting in the breeze. Blood welled up around my cuticle and I pressed my index finger against it to staunch the bleeding.
“Ostrya?” Mangrove had settled in beside me without my realizing.
I glanced at him and he reddened again, but he didn’t look away. His direct gaze was unnerving, and my heart began to beat loudly in my chest. I was sure he must be able to hear it. His brown eyes were soft and concerned. “What’s wrong? We’re talking about our new jobs. You don’t seem excited about yours.”
“I don’t get to choose, do I?” It came out more bitterly than I’d intended.
Salix stopped midsentence in her diatribe about her roommate. “What do you mean, Ostrya? We all thought you wanted to be a doctor.”
“No, not really.”
“Oh? What traineeship do you want?”
“It’s not about the traineeship. Or not only. It’s about everything. All of it.”
“Why do you have to make everything so serious all the time?” Salix fluffed her hair again. “You’re too intense. Relax. It won’t kill you.”
I was sick of being considered weird, especially by her. She’d look at me in a pitying way and shake her head. It was infuriating. And anger made me honest for once. “Don’t you ever wonder what else there is? Beyond these trees? Beyond these pathways? Outside of the canopy?”
“Ummm, earthwalkers and cannibals,” she said. Sorbus nodded his head in agreement. Even Mangrove seemed puzzled by my question.
“Earthwalkers and cannibals. Really? You believe all that duff they tell us when we’re little? Where’s the proof?”
Salix stared at me. “You know what happened. Earthwalkers destroyed everything down below and there was nothing left to eat, no plants or animals, so they started eating each other. Our ancestors escaped into the trees. Anyone left alive down there, as unlikely as that would be, eats human flesh. So, what else do you need to know?”
I’d started with this honesty thing and there was no stopping whatever came tumbling out. “What’s the point of it all?”
“The point of what?”
“We’re caged like those fantastical animals in The Book of Silvanus. The elephants and tigers. But we’ve caged ourselves. We’re both the zoo animals and the keepers. I mean, we’re born in these trees, we live in these trees, we die in these trees. We’re not allowed to climb past Bough Seven. We’re not allowed to climb into the Outer Reaches. That’s a pretty small area to live a life.
“And then, what do our lives look like? We figure out what job we want to do for the entire rest of our time in the trees, we do it every day until we’re too old to do it, and then we fall out of the trees, or get high and jump. Our lives are no different than our parents’ lives, their parents’ lives, all the way back to the First Climbers. That’s all our lives amount to. You want to see your future? Look at your parents.”
Sorbus and Mangrove stared at me like I’d consumed the clinic’s entire supply of psilocybin mushrooms. “You forgot falling in love and having sex and being partnered and having babies, though,” said Salix.
“Oh, yeah. How could I forget? Life is so satisfying that we create more people to come after us and enjoy the same exciting life. Nothing changes for anyone ever.”
“You’re even more sunshiny than usual this afternoon.” Salix rolled her eyes and stood up, signaling the end of the conversation as far as she was concerned. Sorbus stood, shrugged his shoulders, and the twins began making their way back to the legal limits.
Mangrove remained, dangling his feet over the branch. We sat in companionable silence, independently together, watching the inchworm descend on its invisible thread. After a while, he said, “Ostrya? What do you want? What would make you happy? If you could do anything?”
In that moment, it seemed as though the sunlight through the upper branches condensed into one ray and lit my heart with a warm orange glow. I turned my head and considered him, watching me with those needy brown eyes. He didn’t look away. He didn’t blush. He wasn’t thinking of me that way. He was simply thinking of me.
I said, “I want to climb down.”
Chapter Two
The early morning rays dripped through the needles, waking each successive bough as they passed from the top of the trees to the forest floor. The lighter sleepers woke and roused their more deeply sleeping neighbors with the sounds of their early morning bathing, breakfasts, and waking children.
Every morning a flurry of activity ensued from the top of the canopy and spread down to Bough One. Beside each shanty was a large rain barrel, and people in various stages of undress splashed water on themselves and others. They gobbled food rations, got children ready for the day, and set off for jobs, traineeships, or school. Not a soul in the canopy was idle. From the youngest infant to the most doddering elder, every person had a responsibility to fulfill their duty to the community.
My regular morning routine consisted of squeezing my eyes tight when my mother called to wake me, rolling over in my hammock, groaning, and trying to sleep for another three counts. When my mother’s voice rose to alarming, violence-threatening levels, I opened my eyes and blinked about the room, feigning innocence.
I simply could not wake in the early mornings. My mother’s voice blended into my dreams, coloring the chase sequences or punctuating a somnolent argument with sleep phantoms. She would tell me after, when I finally awoke, that I’d been carrying on an entire conversation with her. I had shambled from one end of the shanty to the other, bleary-eyed and mentally unfocused, allowing her to guide me with simple commands: Brush teeth! Comb hair! Eat something! Once she was confident I was thoroughly awake and would not slip back into dreamy unconsciousness, she recited a list of my morning rounds, and then left for the clinic. In the beginning of my traineeship, we split home visits to members of the community recovering from injuries or illnesses. As she became more confident in my abilities, she visited patients only on Boughs One and Two, leaving the upper boughs to me. Her knees were beginning to fail and the pain of climbing up and down stairs furrowed her brow and puckered her lips by evening.
One morning several months into my traineeship, Sorbus’s voice booming through the shanty awakened us both. “Good morning, sorry to disturb! We need a doctor on Bough Seven. Wingnut did something to his arm—it’s hanging there—he can’t move it—he’s in a ton of pain.”
“Ostrya, quickly,” yelled my mother. “Sounds like a dislocated shoulder! The longer the arm is out, the more difficult it will be to fix. Up! Now!”
I rolled out of the hammock, caught my big toe in the webbing, and bounce-tripped across the shanty floor toward my clothing balled in the corner. It was a relief to strip off all my clothing at night and swing in my hammock, my skin kissed by the night air. Our shanties only had doorways, no windows. They were hot and close, and sleeping was a sweaty business. I felt the crisscrossing pattern across my back where I’d lain on the hammock netting.
My mother scolded Sorbus, still hovering in the doorway, “Turn your head, young man. Nothing to see here!” He obediently turned his back to us. I smiled to myself. Like most of the adults, she didn’t realize that Sorbus was about as interested in me as he was in Salix’s roommate, which was not at all.
I squelched into my squirrel leather climbing shorts and bandeau, and then threw on a cedar fiber shirt, and then pulled my rat’s nest of hair out of my face, dug the sleep from my eyes, and scrubbed my teeth with my dogwood brush.
While I dressed, my mother drilled me. “Now, you remember how I showed you last time? Talk to me. What are the steps?”
“Bend the elbow ninety degrees. Grip the elbow, apply traction,” I said.
“Good. Next?”
“Hand to forearm, externally rotate the elbow. Maintain traction of the elbow with other hand.”
“Yes. Two vital things?”
“Ummm, elbow, forearm, traction—” I couldn’t remember what else. “I said ninety degrees, right?”
“Relax and pain. Make sure he’s relaxed and stop whenever he feels pain.”
“Yeah, duh. Of course, I know that.”
“If you don’t say it, I don’t know you know it. Last? The sound?”
“Popping. The ball of the humerus has to go back into the socket.”
“The socket?”
“The glenoid cavity.”
“Good! My hope is you won’t need to do any scapular manipulation.” She chewed her bottom lip. “We haven’t gotten to that yet, and you can get up there much quicker than I can.”
“Don’t worry, Michelia. I’ve got this.” She’d told me never to call her Mom at work. Even though we were in our shanty, this definitely qualified as work.
She squeezed my arm and faintly smiled. “I know you do. No more wasting time.” It was probably the humidity that warmed my face.
I grabbed my spider stick—I loved spiders and didn’t like killing them, but only someone courting sepsis sets out in the early hours without their spider stick—and then Sorbus and I set off running side by side for the stairway to Bough Seven, swinging our sticks in front of us.
In some earlier age, the adults had designated the upper boughs for unpartnered youth. We were told that in the beginning the entire community lived on the wide branches of the first and second boughs where it was possible to walk four abreast. As the population grew and spread upward, the adults decided the younger climbers would have an easier time among the higher, narrower boughs than the older climbers. Maybe the adults simply preferred having the loud, hormonal youth as far from the general population as possible. For some reason, most young women were assigned shanties on Bough Six and young men were assigned to Bough Seven. Non-binary and gender fluid climbers were interspersed across both boughs.
Unlike the other trainees, I still lived with my mother on Bough Two. It was closer to the clinic on Bough One, so it technically made sense. That was an easy explanation for others.
Sorbus and I were racing up the stairs when someone grabbed my elbow, yanking me to a stop. “Hey! Where you two off to at such a pace? Late from a tryst? Better hope Mangrove doesn’t find out you’re two-timing him, Ostrya.” It was Cedrus, the most sought-after builder-trainer who happened to be both Sorbus’s mentor and my sister’s annoying partner.
I shook myself free. “Shut up. Me and Mangrove aren’t a thing.”
He snorted. “That boy definitely has his eye on you!” He nodded at Sorbus. “You ready to take him on? You could certainly hold your own man to man, but Mangrove is a hunter after all, and a great shot to hear Maestro Hamamalis brag about him.”
It always amazed me how clueless the adults of this community were. I rolled my eyes at Sorbus. He winked back. “Ostrya’s not interested in me.”
“Ha! You must learn to read between the lines, my young friend. If men waited for the women, this community would have ceased to exist long ago.”
I stared at Cedrus wondering, not for the first time, what my sister saw in him. I knew that he was teasing me, and I hated being teased, especially by him. “You certainly can’t be suggesting that men should chase women who aren’t interested in them? More specifically, that Sorbus should chase me? Because that would make you sound like a grubby earthwalker. And you remember what happened to them.”
Cedrus laughed gleefully. “Oh no! Little sister’s getting mad!”
“Cedrus, let me explain this in simple terms you can understand. You and me, we’re not family. Cassia and I are sisters only because we share the same loser dad. She spent more time with him than I ever did, poor thing. Might explain her terrible taste in men.”
“Ouch!” said Cedrus. “That was harsh.”
Sorbus didn’t meet my eyes. He knew how I despised my father. “That was mean, Ostrya.”
He was right. Cedrus was annoying and forever antagonizing me—he claimed to do it out of affection for Cassia’s little sister—but he was no Yew. Yew, who’d broken one of the commandments by fathering three children, who’d walked out on Cassia’s mother before walking out on mine, who regularly swindled both buyers and sellers at the market, who abused whatever mind-numbing agents he could find, who loathed me nearly as much as I loathed him.
I should take back my words, I knew I should, but I couldn’t apologize, not to Cedrus. I wasn’t a child to be teased. Better that he thought me heartless, cold like my mother. No one dared tease Michelia.
I sniffed, glared at Cedrus. “We done here? Cuz, if you don’t mind, I have an urgent case waiting for me.” Cedrus stepped aside.
I took the stairs two at a time, feeling my thighs scream with the strain. I closed off my mind to pain, either feeling it or causing it, and I didn’t slow my pace until I’d rounded the fir on Bough Seven. Sorbus scrambled up the stairs behind me and took the lead. I followed him across the main bough, brushing past a cluster of drowsy men and leaving a chorus of angry voices behind us. Our feet pounded across a bridge, our pace causing it to swing wickedly. I was having difficulty keeping up with Sorbus; his thick legs sped on and on. I hadn’t realized before how fast he was. My lungs screamed in my chest and then, all at once, we arrived. Wingnut leaned against the side of his shanty, rocking back and forth, cradling his immobile arm.
I’d known him forever; he was as familiar to me as my own hands. And yet, his physical beauty astonished me each time I looked at him after not seeing him for a while. His broad chest rose and fell with each shuddering breath, and the sweat glistening on his golden skin accentuated his muscular abdomen and biceps. His sculpted face, set off by clear blue eyes, was drawn and pale with pain, and I set to work, trying to ignore the curious onlookers by mentally reciting the steps Michelia and I had reviewed. I squeezed my eyes shut, took a deep breath, opened them, and then he whimpered, ground his teeth, and it was done. I adjusted a sling around his shoulder.
