Crossroads of Canopy by Thoraiya Dyer

Author:Thoraiya Dyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

THIRTY-FIVE

IT WASN’T long before Unar opened her eyes again.

Rain, mist, and falling leaves whirled around her. She sank lower, parallel to the great tallowwood river. Spray from it wet the top of the ropy-barked lateral branch where Esse eventually landed with a lurch.

Unar’s arms jolted in their sockets. She made herself wait until Esse found his footing before her kicking feet found the branch, too. It was barely wide enough to stand on, and the top of it was neither flat nor smooth. Not like a Canopian road. The wood god, Esh, held no sway down here to form wood into functional structures.

Fibrous chunks broke away beneath her feet. She raised her arms to keep her balance and opened her mouth to accuse Esse. There were no structures at all here that she could see.

Then she smelled something awful and familiar. Issi’s solid waste and whey-like sick, mingled with somebody else’s menstrual blood. A smell, she supposed, that was irresistible to dayhunters. Past Esse, she finally saw the hollow in the tree. The smell was coming from there, and she squinted through the gloom, trying to see better.

Only then did she realise the opening into the hollow was too regular to be natural, and that there actually was some sort of structure built above it. Something weighted with a cross-section of tallowwood trunk, with perhaps a crumpled leather chute and several sharpened stakes. It was disguised by a net of leaves and bark, but it was there.

“Is it a trap?” she asked Esse, putting her hand out to his arm, half to steady herself and half to get his attention. “A trap to catch the demon?”

“One of my own invention.” He did not sound proud, or excited, or doubtful. He sounded far away as though envisioning what would happen. “Inside the hollow, the bait is suspended by a rope. When the rope is pulled, the door will close. Can you see?”

He pulled Unar close and put her on the other side of him, pointing to the mechanism, and Unar could see. She was impressed by it, actually, but wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of saying so.

“The weights will serve two functions. One, to drive the stakes into the holes I have made for them, deeply so that the demon cannot brush the door aside. It can dig out with its claws, given time, but by then the chute will have diverted the river’s edge, directing the water into the hole. It will fill to the brim in mere seconds and the demon will drown.”

“I’m glad,” Unar said slowly, “that if we had to fall into one of your traps, it was the net and glue trap, and not this one. You’ve kept your word, to keep us safe.”

“I am glad,” Esse said, “that you see the necessity now.”

“Wait. There’s no metal in the trap. Surely you didn’t use my little bore-knife to make that hollow.”

“No.” Esse unclipped his harness from the rope. He undid the knots and allowed that end to fall.

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