She went back to the kids. They were sprawled on the grass. Youngsters that age can be energetic, blurs one moment, motionless heaps the next. Another talent lost with age...
Two of them had discovered the insect life in the grass. Jessica bent down next to them and peered between the yellowish purple blades. Something that looked like a red-orange beetle was caught in a sticky webbing, and thousands of blue mites, so small they resembled a powder, were swarming over him. They stripped the beetle and carried the parts away into the rocks.
The mites disappeared, leaving only an empty blue shell dangling from a transparent web.
Damn that was fast, she thought. Insects on speed?
She shook her head. "All right!" she called. "Campsite is down in the bowl. Let's get to it-we've got a lot of setup before dusk."
She hauled the kids up, complaining, and set them on their way, and followed after them. But she still couldn't quite get the memory of those mites out of her mind. If a Biter laid his sleeping bags in a nest of those...
Blankets and sleeping bags, tents and cookstoves were produced, assembled, spread about. The entire camp sprang into existence like magic, a bubbling, steaming, jostling cacophony filled with busy bodies and giggling children, Grendel Scouts scurrying about on secretive missions, and Grendel Biters channeled into busywork and told to mind their own business.
Carey Lou shucked off his backpack, and looked about for a place to call home. He wandered a little away from the main camp, toward the familiar shape of a horsemane tree.
The frozen-waterfall appearance entranced him. He had spent many nights back on Camelot in the shaded comfort of the local trees, and had stolen his first kiss in their shadow. He shucked off his backpack, perhaps nurturing romantic thoughts, and stepped toward the tree.
Jessica grabbed his shoulders, and marched him around. "No." Bad idea.
"Why?"
She brushed some of the hanging fronds aside. "Take a closer look," she said sternly.
He looked, and gulped. This wasn't at all like the friendly, sleepy trees on the island. From the root to as far up the trunk as they could see, and even in the strands of the mane itself, the entire tree was infested with symbiotes, parasites, things.
Near the base, the greenish brown mane had turned milky, and took on the appearance of a coarse spiderweb. Something was fluttering in one of those nearby. Maybe prey, maybe predator, maybe spider. Carey Lou didn't get close. He gulped again. "Maybe that one over there?"
"These things are notoriously hospitable to local life. Give it a try," she said.
Carey Lou walked cautiously to a second tree. He looked closely: no symbiotes. Relieved but still cautious, he pulled out his rolled tent. His thin arms snapped the roll outward and it unfurled into a triangle, then popped open further: a disk, then an open dome.
Four startled Avalon birds dropped out of the horsemane tree like so many dinner platters. They caught themselves, and wheeled around the tent as it settled to the grass like a big balloon. Two brushed wings, whirled to fight. One knocked the other spinning. It dropped toward a tree a dozen meters farther out, recovered too late. The tree had it.
Carey Lou stepped close, but not too close. Jessica was behind him, fingers resting on his shoulders. The bird: she could see details, now that it was trapped. Two big rigid wings, curved up at the tips into spiffy little vertical fins. Four little translucent oar blades, the motor wings, were still trying to thrash the bird loose.
The creature's relationship to a sea crab was very clear. The rigid wings had been a bifurcated shell, way long ago. That early crab hadn't been so specialized as today's crabs.
Jessica stepped forward, reached gingerly into the web. She was ready for something like a big spider. If anything had scuttled toward her hands she would have jerked back. Nothing did, and she pulled the bird loose, holding it by one wing. The motor wings buzzed, trying to pull it away. She held on until she had brushed webbing from the fixed wings. It was too rigid to bite her, but it shivered hard in her hand, trying to twist around to escape.
"I've seen these before," she said. "Have you? Where have you seen something like this?"
She waited expectantly.
Carey Lou studied it, knowing that she wanted him to get it right. His eyes suddenly opened wide. "Sea crabs!" he exclaimed.
"Right... go on."
"Split shell. You know, the wings are more like a beetle's than a bird's."
Jessica released the bird. It hovered for a moment. The four blurred motor wings were splayed like legs on a coffee table. Then they tilted aft and it zipped away. She said, "Very good. The grendels don't like salt water much-so there was a lot more variety in the life-forms just off the coast. All those crab things. Strange how often the pattern has repeated itself on the land, isn't it? We've seen leaf-cutting bee-things like little crabs, and birds like crabs... " "And crabs like crabs..."
She laughed. "Anyway-our lesson for the night-camp only in the open, and back with everyone else. Now scoot." She swatted his behind, sending him back toward the others.
She waited there in the clearing for a moment, smelling the forest. This was good. There was nothing around here that could hurt someone Carey Lou's size... but it wasn't a bad idea to put the fear of God in him.
A little healthy fear could keep you alive.
One of Old Grendel's daughters held the river hereabouts. Old Grendel moved up a tributary. Why fight her own blood, when far more interesting prey were about? She had a score of crabs trapped here. They hadn't tried to crawl past her; they were crawling upstream, and Old Grendel followed at her leisure.
She was following the weirds.
Far above her, the daughters of God had settled out of sight. They had come from the drylands, a place Old Grendel never expected to see close up, but now they had landed much closer. Those flattish shapes with their blurred wings reminded her of the near-universal shape of the Avalon crabs. But the huge grinning Grendel God was of a different shape entirely. Perhaps the "daughters" were parasites.
And the little ones, could they be parasites on the parasites?
She could see three, four of the little ones at the edge of the cliff, looking about them, then withdrawing one by one. Now others moved downslope, slowly, clumsily. Would they come to her?
No, they were gone before they came that far. Old Grendel observed patiently. The sky was darkening before she saw them again. Five, six weirds moving back up the rocky slope.
Old Grendel believed she could reach them.
She could see the tip of a tree up there. Likely there was water.
She would have to drink until she could barely move. If her daughter caught her then, she would die. With a belly like a drum, she would have to crawl two miles uphill without ever going on speed. At the top she would have used up every erg of energy; she would be dry as an old bone.
If there was no water, she would die.
If anything attacked her, she would die.
Watch them move, slow and clumsy, easy prey. It was like watching hunter-climbers. Old Grendel flashed underwater and crunched down on a bite-sized crab. She would see where else the weirds led her.
At suppertime there were baked potatoes, and Cajun-style greens, and a Grendel Scout favorite, a rolled biscuit-bread baked in the campfire.
And as they settled down to enjoy the feast, the kids were treated to another specialty.
With great ceremony, Aaron and Chaka tramped back in from the shadows, carrying a steaming cauldron between them. "This," Chaka announced, "is the specialty of the house. This is the real reason that we like to come over here. There's never enough of it to take back to the island." He paused, and then said smilingly: "There really isn't enough for you guys, either, but if there's any left, you can divvy it up."