Horizon Storms - Kevin J. Anderson [10]
Before the hydrogue attack, Celli and her friends had spent their days amusing themselves in the forest, never thinking much beyond the next day or two. She would practice treedancing moves, and Ren was particularly good at catching condorflies. Lica and Kari both liked the same boy, but he hadn’t noticed either one of them. How they had all laughed and played together, never expecting anything to change…
None of them had ever guessed that enemies might lie beyond the sky.
Celli, the baby of the family, was now the only one of her siblings left on Theroc, since her sisters Sarein and Estarra both lived in the WhisperPalace on Earth. In the past, her sisters had often accused her of complaining too much; now the worries and discomforts of her youth seemed petty and meaningless. For the first time in her life, Celli felt both a spark of independence and the weight of real responsibility. And she was determined to help her people get through this tragedy. The problem seemed impossibly large, but she lifted her chin and gritted her teeth.
Like Celli, the Theron survivors possessed a new determination that formed a tough veneer over their despair. The people had been unprepared for such a holocaust, but this desperate time had revealed an inner resolve, as they simultaneously shored up the worldforest and drew comfort from it.
“We are not alone. We care for the trees, and they care for us. We will never abandon each other. This is the source of our strength, and together we will all get through our ordeal,” Father Idriss had pronounced when, shortly after the attack, he called the survivors together.
Now support ladders and pulleys, makeshift ramps, and walkways were erected against the main fungus-reef tree as crews salvaged what they could. Adults worked to clear debris and charred mushroom flesh from the lower levels, while cautious younger children crawled onto precarious perches, marking safe routes for the heavier adult workers. Celli remembered when she and Estarra had climbed to the top levels of the giant mushroom to harvest the tender whitish meat Beneto loved so well…
Fortunately, since their initial attack here, the hydrogues had been preoccupied with a new conflict against the faeros and had not returned to crush the worldforest. But Celli took little heart from that. There was too much death and destruction around her.
From above, she heard a shout of surprise, then moans of grief. In one of the fungus-reef chambers, a child explorer had just found an asphyxiated woman. Others made their way across the hardened fringes to where they could drag the victim out. Celli had known the woman, a family friend who made delicious treats from forest berries. Her heart sank, but her grief had no further to go; each fresh drop of cold tragedy ran like water off an already saturated cloak. Reynald, Beneto, Lica, Kari, Ren—the names rolled through her conscience, one after another. She was terrified she might forget somebody—and that didn’t seem fair. They deserved to be remembered. Each one of them.
Not wanting to be at the base camp when the workers brought down the woman’s body, Celli went to her grandparents. “I want to go where I’m needed most, Grandmother. Send me out.”
“I know you’re impatient, dear.” Old Lia’s watery eyes seemed extremely tired. “We’re all trying to decide which work is most important.”
Her grandfather scratched his seamed cheek. “Every day we’ve been doing triage for the forest.”
Uthair and Lia were busily keeping track of scouting teams, scribing notes and making records that only they could decipher. Normally, the green priests could connect to the worldtrees to see the whole scope of the forest, but the magnitude of the destruction was so overwhelming that many of them could not sort through the visual information to make sense of it all.
The old couple spread out detailed satellite images taken by EDF ships, showing