She had wondered then if the original colonists had felt the way she did now. When they first beheld Ventus and knew that a chapter of their life was ending, and a new one beginning, had they felt the same unease? And the anticipation?
She had tried to picture what their imaginations brought to the pretty little islands that had caught her eye. Standing above this canvas, each must have painted it with his or her own colors, drawing the boundaries of new states and provinces. It would be irresistible, at a new world, to wonder what the forest looked like from underneath; how the rain smelled; what it would be like to sleep under the stars here.
At that time the skies weren't as empty as they now appeared. The Winds were still visible, like gossamer winged creatures dancing above the atmosphere. All frequencies were alive with their singing and recitative. They were almost as beautiful as the planet itself as intended and they took human shapes to communicate with the colony ships. This was expected; they had been designed that way.
The Winds sang, and danced in slow orbits in time to their singing. In those last moments before the nightmare began, the colonists' eyes must have beheld a perfect world, an exact embodiment of their dreams.
Thunder grumbled. It was so different when you were down here, she knew now. The invulnerability of space was a dream. Calandria found her steps quickening, not so much because of the coming rain, but because once again she was reminded that Ventus was not the natural environment it appeared to be.
They rounded another arc of escarpment, and there it was, right where the Desert Voice had said it would be: a manse. Jordan hadn't spotted the long rooftop yet, obscured as it was by trees. Calandria smiled at the prospect of warmth and comfort the manse promised.
Jordan was ignoring the view. In fact, he seemed to be sniffing at something. She raised an eyebrow, and cleared her throat. "What are you doing?"
"Death," he said. "Something's dead. Can't you smell it?"
Damn if he wasn't right. She should have been more alert. Jordan had walked several steps off the deerpath, and now gingerly parted a spray of branches. "Lady May, look at this."
She looked over his shoulder. In a dark, branch-shaded hollow of loam and pine needles lay a giant bloated object. It looked like nothing so much as a big bag of mangy fur. At the top was a kind of flower of flesh, which, she realized uneasily, had teeth in it. As if...
"What is that?"
"Looks like it used to be a bear," whispered Jordan. Its mouth had folded back to become a kind of red-lipped flower atop the bag of flesh, and its eyes had receded into the skin. She looked in vain for signs of its four limbs; save for the vestigial head, it was little more than a sack of fur now.
A sack in which something was moving.
She stepped back. For once, Mason seemed unfazed. In fact, he looked back, caught her obvious distress, and grinned.
"A morph's been here, maybe two, three days ago," said Jordan. "It found this bear, and it's changed it. I don't know what's going to hatch out of it, but... looks like several things. Badgers maybe, or skunks? Whatever the morph thought there was a lack of in this part of the woods."
Of course. She'd been briefed on morphs, she knew what they were capable of. It was a very different thing to witness the result.
"They'll come out full-grown," said Jordan as he backed away from the clearing.
Thunder crashed directly overhead. Calandria looked out over the escarpment in time to see a solid-looking wall of rain coming at them.
"Come on!" she shouted. "It's only a little farther."
Jordan looked at the rain and laughed. "Why hurry?" he asked. "We'll be wet in two seconds."
He was rightin moments, her hair was plastered down on her head, and cold trickles ran down her back. Still, Calandria hurried them away from the disturbing thing that had once been a bear. They continued to skirt the top of the escarpment for a hundred meters, then came out near what might normally have been a good deer-path down the slope; it was a torrent of muddy water.
"What's that?" Jordan pointed. Perhaps two kilometers away, warm lights shone through the shifting grey of the rain.
"Our destination. Come," she said, and stepped onto the downward path. Her feet went out from under her, and Calandria found herself plummeting down the hillside in a flood.
She was a hundred meters below him, with no obvious way back up. He debated turning and runningbut he had no idea where to go. Doubtless she'd be able to track him down, even if he got a half-hour's head start. He sighed, and started picking his way down the hill.
About halfway down he took a long look at the lights burning in the distance, and felt a chill greater than the rain settle on him. He ran the last few meters a bit recklessly, but arrived next to May still on his feet.
"Don't you know that's a Wind manse?" he said, pointing at the distant lights. "If we go in there, we'll be killed!"