between them that after a while I found myself drifting in and out of dreamless sleep.
A few eternities later, I realized I could see movement in the clouds far below. It was a series of irregular flashes, burning just long enough to register before disappearing. More lightning, of course, but what caused my pulse to race was the realization that I could discern the clouds even between flashes. The Habitat was no longer pitch-black. It was shrouded by a dim murk unable to hide the gradual ignition of the suns.
Turning to my left and right, I made out the many furry, nearly immobile forms that had kept the long night’s vigil over me. There must have been dozens of them, visible to my eyes only as black shapes. I could not yet tell how many were facing me and how many were looking away. It barely mattered. Even in their nigh-total immobility, they were still aware of me, still measuring me by the standards of creatures who lived the only way they knew how to live.
I looked around for a likely spokesbeing and found one in the form of the nearest Brachiator, a great black shadow perhaps all of five meters away.
“Uh…hello? Can you hear me?”
The black shape swelled with breath, then exhaled. “Yes.”
“Are you the one called Friend to Half-Ghosts?”
“Yes. It is a pleasure to be your friend now, Andrea Cort.”
I cleared my throat. “Am I a Half-Ghost now?”
Another low, rumbling breath, with a cute little whistle in it. Maybe the Brachiator had a cold. “You have been a Half-Ghost for most of the night.”
“That’s all it takes, then? Just hanging here?”
“All it takes is a connection to Life.”
I wondered if Brachiators bored themselves to tears on a regular basis or whether they only spoke this way when humans were around. “What about the other human I spoke to last night? There was one here, wasn’t there?”
“There was more than one.”
“When?”
“First there was the one-in-two. The one that brought you here.”
The Porrinyards, obviously. Stupid of me not to specify that. And impressive of the Brach to perceive their nature so quickly. “And after them?”
“Another.”
“When?”
“After the one-in-two left.”
“Did you hear me talking to that one?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what we talked about?”
“We do not listen to conversations that are not our concern.”
That sounded prim. “It’s all right if you overheard.”
“Thank you. But we do not hear what we are not invited to hear.”
Brachiators, I decided, made the universe’s most useless witnesses. “Did you recognize the one I spoke to?”
“By reputation,” said Friend to Half-Ghosts.
I hadn’t suspected the word part of the Brachiator vocabulary. “What kind of reputation?”
“As a Ghost Who Kills Ghosts.” He sounded petulant, as if the answer was so obvious I’d wasted his time by merely asking.
“Would you happen to know whether it was male or female?”
“We have trouble discerning gender among Ghosts.”
“But you can tell the difference between New Ghosts and Half-Ghosts, right?”
Friend to Half-Ghosts sounded almost amused. “Yes. That is easy.”
“How?”
“Half-Ghosts are marked by Life.”
“Am I marked by Life?”
“Now you are.”
“And you can tell this?”
“It is what enables us to be friends.”
I almost recited my habitual response to offers of friendship: the one about not wanting friends and not looking for any. “Thank you.”
“You are welcome,” said Friend to Half-Ghosts.
He was being polite at best. He was not attached to me, or for that matter any of my semi-living kind. He could only be aggrieved by the intrusion of human beings, with their constant, distracting questions. Given common decency as an option, I would just leave him alone. But I didn’t have that option. There were still things I needed to know.
I subtly shifted my arms and legs within the network of roots and support wires that had held me fast for so long. They tingled like mad from impaired circulation, but would be able to move in a hurry if necessary.
I said, “I am happy we are friends. Because I need your help.”
Another rumble. “What would you like me to do?”
“I need your help staying alive.”
A low, disturbed rumble rose from the other Brachiators around us. I didn’t know how many members of the tribe had heard me, but those who had were scandalized, even angry, like the guests at any human gathering, hearing something distasteful from the stranger in their midst.
Friend to Half-Ghosts seemed more unflappable. “You are a Half-Ghost. You have all the Life you can ever know.”
“I don’t care. I’m tired of being a Ghost. I’m tired of having to return to the land of the Dead. I need more. I need Life the way you have Life.”
Was it just my imagination, or was Friend really trembling now, in fear or rage or frustration or dismay? It didn’t matter. I didn’t need imagination to hear a change in the timbre of his voice: a deepening, a hoarseness that had not been there before. “Too much Life is not healthy for Ghosts. We have heard this. The other Ghost—”
“Which one?” I asked.
“The one we have heard about. The one who embraced Life.”
“The one who died from it,” I said.
“Yes. She taught us that Life is not good for Ghosts. That it uses them up too fast.”
“It’s still a small price to pay for Life.”
A long pause. The quality of the air changed, and took on the quality of the last few seconds before a storm.
Friend to Half-Ghosts started begging. “Please, Andrea Cort. Do not ask for this. We do not want to use you up too fast.”
My throat went dry. I swallowed spit and said, “I know what I want, Friend. Give me Life.”
Everything in the world held its breath at once. The soft rustle of Brachiators shifting position on their vines, the sighs and grunts of Brachiator breath, the murmur of Brachiator words and all the other subliminal reminders of Life all abruptly cut away to nothing, replaced with the frantic, unspoken tension of creatures challenged to carry out an atrocity.
Then Friend to Half-Ghosts started to move.
21. PLUNGE
Friend to Half-Ghosts withdrew one limb from the Uppergrowth, held it before him like an offering, then reached up and found another handhold closer to me.
He withdrew another limb, hesitated again, and grabbed hold once more.
