‘It looks as if he has found something.’ said Kel, as the figure above looked intently at a spot on the main trunk, but the watchers below could see little detail of what he was looking at.
Mec took a short tube of wood from his belt, pulled a plug from one end, tapped the other end of the tube on the heal of his hand and then carefully withdrew the other plug.
Next he inflated his lungs as full as he could, inserted the tube into a hole in the trunk and applying his mouth to the other end of the tube, exhaled, his breath whistling out, and audible to the watchers below.
Mec came down to join the others at such a speed they thought he must lose his footing and fall into the depths below, but he was more nimble than they had supposed, and reached them safely, a little out of breath and grinning widely.
‘That should give them something to think about,’ he managed to say at last.
‘It’s a powder made by grinding up a certain kind of dried fungi, it seems to put them to sleep, or at least make them disinterested in coming out to see what’s going on. We’ll give it a few moments to be sure it has worked and then we can go on up.
‘Fortunately for us, there aren’t many of these nests around here as they are a much sought after food for something else even nastier, and I hope we don’t meet any of them.’
At last Mec got his breath back and the others had stopped shaking, so the party moved laboriously on up into the canopy above.
‘Why didn’t you just stop up the hole of those flying things to keep them in?’ asked Kel.
‘They have more than one hole to their nests, otherwise the air wouldn’t flow through. The other one might be some distance away, and they move very quickly.’ replied Mec.
‘Is that what you’re looking for?’ Moss was pointing at a dark brown, almost black, bag like thing, dangling on the end of a vine just ahead of them.
‘Yes, that’s one, and it looks quite ripe.’ answered Mec,
‘Now what do you propose we do?’
Moss and Kel got into deep discussion on methods of removing the Bag from its vine and carrying it back to their area of the forest, but didn’t like the idea of actually handling the deadly looking thing.
The final solution to their problem came from Moss, who suggested that they attach another vine at the top of the Bag, cut the hanging vine free and then they could each hold one of the vines, the bag of spores hanging some distance between them.
It was Moss, who without being asked, ran along the main branch tapping with his stave as he went to disclose anything hidden under the bark, finally arriving at the main point where the vine was attached to the tree branch. Reaching down with one arm he managed to get a grip on it, and bit by bit, eased it up onto the top surface of the trackway, wrapping it around a plant stem to hold it secure.
‘Kel, while I haul the Bag up, can you get another vine and tie it on where this vine joins the top of the Bag?’
‘On my way,’ Kel called back, eager to be doing something towards the project. He ran along the branch to a junction where a group of vines had sprouted from a mass of collected dead foliage and draped themselves over the main branch to hang down into the darkening depths below.
After Kel had selected a suitable vine, he severed it with his lesser knife and was nearly pulled off the branch, fighting hard to regain his balance before letting the vine go slithering and crashing down to the forest floor below.
‘There must have been something on the other end of that one.’ called Mec. In the same instant a scream rent the otherwise still air, fading as its originator sped ever downwards.
‘Everyone lay flat, and dead still.’ yelled Mec as the soft whoop whoop of leather covered wings grew closer. A dark shadow glided overhead blotting out the light of the Greater Sun for a moment, and then was gone.
‘That was a close one.’ said Mec, relief sounding in his voice, ‘It must have been nearby and was attracted by the dying wail of whatever was on the end of your vine.’
‘What was that?’ asked Kel.
‘It’s a bit like an elongated Snapper Bag, but very much bigger, and with more teeth. They usually live in the upper reaches of the forest where there is more room for them to fly about, but when they get old, they sometimes come down here where there is less competition for their food. They are attracted by motion and noise, so if you keep dead still, they will usually pass you by. We don’t see them very often, which is just as well as one of us would only make a light meal for one of them.’
While Moss pulled the Bag up and Kel selected another vine, tugging on it first to make sure he didn’t get caught out a second time, the supernumeraries from the two groups just stood around, looking as if they had no interest in the goings on at all.
Whether they were learning anything from the operation or not wasn’t clear, as they said nothing and didn’t do much either, keeping well clear of the operation.
Mec quietly acted as overseer, his eyes never leaving his prodigies except to scan the forest every now and again for intruders to their area.
Kel finally got the vine up from the lower levels and cut out a section of a thickness to match that of the rope-like tendril from which the Bag grew. Moss had hauled the
