The crew’s time back at the ranch was brief. Their flock of goats and beetles still needed to fatten on the rich mosses, funguses, and vines of the wild branches. With Barkle’s knee healed, the three herders spent one more day enjoying home-cooked food and sleeping in warm hammocks before gathering the flock and heading back the way they came.
They took the trek back at a relaxed pace. Barkle let Reg and Martha shepherd the full flock and spent his time watching their work and occasionally yelling out critique. Barkle wasn’t much of a teacher, so his feedback tended towards things like “cankerous dung! Could you have moved that mist-touched beetle any slower? I know the beast is smarter than you are, but your hands must be good for something.” Despite his explanations being similarly lacking -- “ground-headed boy, you have to go to the right spot to turn ‘em. No, I told you, the right spot is the spot that will make ‘em turn..” -- Reg found the feedback about when he was making mistakes useful. He did his best to translate some of Barkle’s less useful feedback for Martha; she was twigs-to-staves better than she’d been, but she hadn’t been raised on a ranch the way that Reg had and didn’t have as good an idea about what she and her spider could be doing differently.
The remaining four weeks of the fall grazing season went well. The days and nights were full of work: rescuing goat kids from thickets; driving off chimera-cats, griffons, perytons, invisi-snakes, and other predators of the wild branches; moving the herds around to different grazing patches; wrangling an ornery sick beetle. During a wild thunderstorm, a beithir wriggled off with a fat doe. Martha carved a simple flute out of a straight stick and played jaunty tunes at night. Barkle taught them a dice game, and then refused to play more after losing three day’s worth of middle watch in poor wagers. While tracking down a kid, Reg discovered a grotto full of vibrant purple flowers that tinkled like bells whenever he walked near them.
After those full weeks, the crew gathered their flock and headed back to the ranch. The weather was starting to turn cool, and none of them wanted to be trapped by an early winter storm. Plus, they were all anxious to get back to town to enjoy good food and see a larger variety of people. The trip home was smooth, and when they arrived at the ranch, Reg’s older sister Nadia had just gotten in with her crew. She teased Reg while interrogating him about how his first season had gone.
The phase spider-herding crew with Reg’s mom, brother, and Auntie Bel were still out and nobody had heard from them. It wasn’t that strange for a crew to be out that long without sending word and that was one of the most experienced crews on the branch.
It took another three weeks for Reg to admit to himself that something must have gone terribly wrong for his mother’s crew.
Whenever he asked anyone else, they brushed him off, “I’m sure they’re fine. Remember that year Bel spent the whole winter out?” or “They’ll be back soon, don’t worry.” His father, Adrian, told him off sharply for worrying and sent him off to shovel manure.
Reg did his best to put his worries aside, but late at night, he still found himself in his father’s study poring over the map plates of the lower Tree. Reg’s great-grandmother had commissioned the plates from an artisan in Ithilia. The pieces of thin lacquered wood could be laid on top of each other to plan out branch to branch routes. Bridges, towns, and elevations were scribed in careful red lettering on the dark lacquer. From other hands, Reg put together the route that his mother’s crew had planned on taking.
At this point in the year, the first snows had come and gone, and other than short trips into town, folks stayed at the ranch. Reg knew there was no way his father would allow him to go off to try and track down the lost crew. Traveling the Tree solo in mid-winter was too dangerous. But there was no way Reg could spend the entire winter waiting and wondering when he might have been able to help.
Reg’s chance to put enough distance between himself and the ranch before people realized he was gone came a few days later. The ranch’s workshop -- a small building where hands worked on fencing, travoises, chairs, and everything else that herders needed -- was running low on hardwood. Softwood was easy to harvest from offshoots that grew out of their branch. Hardwoods were harder to come by. [1] Luckily, there was a copse of black snakewoods two hours away. Adrian’s father had opened up the large chest that kept the ranch’s few metal implements to grab the ranch’s saw and asked for volunteers to head that way and bring back some lumber.
Reg had jumped at the chance. As had Barkle. So, the next day, the two of them hiked away from the ranch towards the copse of black snakewoods. Barkle’s brought Nem, a young phase spider he’d been working with. The spiderling was half the size of a goat and spent the first bit of their hike away from the ranch sprinting from one lingering patch of snow to another, trying to stalk Ankie, and then leaping into Barkle’s arms whenever she got tired. Barkle’s old trapdoor spider was near her last molts, so he’d started working with Nem as a replacement.
After they got thirty minutes from the ranch, Barkle called a pause and then looked at him seriously. “Reg, which way you think for your mum’s crew?”
Reg paused for a few seconds before replying, “Somewhere on a fork off of East Starswallow, right? I don’t know any better than you.”
Barkle chuckled, “C’mon Reg, I ain’t blind. You must know better than that. You’re headed after them. I heard you were asking about their route and anyone with eyes in their head who sees the size of your rucksack should know what you’re up to. Your pops didn’t see it because he don’t want to admit that they might be in some real trouble. Plus, it’s a pure beetle dung plan and folks think you ain’t that mud-headed.”
Reg’s words came out in a stumbling rush, “I’ve got to go after them! I think they’re in real trouble. Not hearing any word from them isn’t normal, no matter what my da says. Especially after a mist storm like the one we were in! You can’t stop me from going after them. They must be stuck somewhere and I know the wild branches better than almost anyone. I can get them back.”
Barkle waved his hands like he was trying to calm down an ornery goat. “Calm down, calm down. Kid, what was I just saying about your rucksack? Look at mine. I’m coming. It’s a dirt-brained scheme and I should know better, but leaving ‘em out there don’t feel right. Bel and I go way back, and I reckon she and your mum would have done something similarly rot-headed if the situation were reversed.”
Reg felt a huge surge of relief. Barkle wasn’t going to drag him back to the ranch. More than that, with the old hand, they’d have a better chance. The hike towards East Starswallow branch might be a bit slower with Barkle, but the old hand would be invaluable when it came to figuring out where the shepherds would have taken the phase spiders to hunt and get fat for the winter. He couldn’t find the words to express his relief, so he just said “I left a note in Nadia’s hammock. She’ll see it when she gets back from Willowbend tonight. We can leave the tools here and get moving. Try to keep up, old man.”
The two shepherds headed out at a brisk hike. For the first hour, Reg was chafing to go faster, but as the day wore on, he found it harder and harder to keep up the pace. Despite his limp, Barkle just didn’t stop. He kept the same solid pace hour after hour as they headed upwards, towards East Starswallow branch. Lunch was eaten on the move, and Reg found himself struggling and focusing hard on close landmarks. Just fifty more steps and then they’d be at that large hanging vine. He could do that. He could do another hundred steps. He could make it to that bridge spanning two branches. To that lichen-encrusted burl. That forking in the distance, still shaded by a clump of stubborn copper-bright leaves, couldn’t be that far away. The day went on and on, and Reg kept up the pace.
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When it got too dark to travel safely, Barkle and Reg stopped for the day. Reg barely stayed on his feet and offered to grab some wood for the evening fire, but Barkle waved him off. “Rest. We kept a porter’s pace there and you didn’t shame yourself. Tomorrow, you’ll have your legs under you and you’ll know you can do it.” After gulping down some stew, Reg slept deeply, curled up closely with Ankie to keep both of them warm. For the first time in a long time, he was too tired to have any nightmares of walking off of the branch.
Reg and Barkle woke up early the second day and started their trek before dawn had fully broken. Their breath misted in the air and the bark of the branch was covered with a thick frost that made footing a bit unsteady. The first day, they’d still been near Willowbend and had passed by moss-farms, other ranches, reservoirs, and other travelers. Inter-branch bridges and ladders were common and well-maintained and had let them cover a good deal of distance the first day. The second day, bridges were less common, and they started fording a few gaps, anchoring the humans together and moving carefully over thicker patches of branches that had grown close together. Nem and Ankie were unfazed by the crossings. Ankie had warmed up to the enthusiastic Nem and spent time play-stalking the spiderling when Nem wasn’t being carried in her harness.
This wasn’t the route that the phase-spider shepherding crew had taken, but the two herders could take a more direct route. If they’d followed the likely path of the phase-spider shepherd crew, it’d have taken close to a week to make it to the hunting fields. Taking a more direct route meant that they’d make it there in a little over two days at the pace that Barkle was setting.
For Reg, the second day felt easier than the first. The pace was still hard, but knowing that he could keep the pace all day made a difference. The times when they were fording gaps, especially when they needed to set temporary anchors, meant that they had a few more natural breaks than they had yesterday. He was able to look around and appreciate the views of the Tree in winter a bit more. The branches were bare of leaves, so they could catch glimpses of the trunk and of far-away branches. In the mornings, the whole tree glinted brightly in the dawn sunlight.
Reg and Barkle pushed on as late in the evening as they could, but they eventually were forced to stop. They were both anxious to get to the phase spider hunting grounds, but fording a branch in the dark was too dangerous.
The third day, they made good progress until they reached a huge gap between two branches. The map plates that Reg had looked at to plan their route showed that there should be a bridge here, but the plates had been commissioned generations ago and the bridge’s only remnants were two decrepit anchor points standing tall on either side of the enormous gap.
Reg looked at the gap and felt his spirits drop. He’d felt so smart when planning out this route. They’d have to retrace their steps back a few forkings to get on a different, slower, route. It’d mean extra days of hard travel. His head went down as he apologized, “sorry, Barkle. I thought the bridge would still be there. I should have known that without people living out this way anymore, they wouldn’t have kept it up.”
Barkle looked thoughtful, “Nah, it wasn’t a dirt-brained idea. Don’t apologize for a decent idea that didn’t work out. I thought it’d be up too. I wonder if that mist storm was what finally pulled it down. We’re not lost just yet though. You seen a phase spider spin a web before? Nem’s a youngin, but if we can show her what we want, she can get us across this.”
Barkle and Reg spent a frustrating half hour trying to convince the flighty spider to heel and then spin a web across the gap. Nem was eager to please, but kept repeating the old tricks that she already knew. She herded Ankie, who snapped at her. She rolled over and played dead. She leapt through a bush, her body phasing in and out of reality as it went. She did every trick she knew, but nothing that’d help them cross the over hundred meter gap.
Barkle paused to give Nem some rubs on the abdomen. “rising mist, at least she’s a game little beast. Normal-times, you wait until the spider is weaving her web, and then you mark that with some treats. Takes a bit, and they figure it out. I don’t think this is gonna work.”
Reg looked around and then grabbed his satchel of spider treats and started forming them into tight balls around some of his sling bullets. He looked at Barkle, “maybe we’re tackling this wrong. How about we show her that she wants to go over to that far side and let her figure things out?” Reg took the sling bullet to show Nem what he had. He then whirled his sling to toss the bullet at the far branch. The first two shots bounced off of the branch, but once Reg started targeting a heavy patch of moss, the bullets started piling up. With each bullet that he showed the small spider, the more excited she got. She ran back and forth along the branch and let out some piteous squeaks.
After running back and forth for a few minutes, Nem stopped and started anchoring a web to the old bridge anchor. As soon as she started building her anchor, Barkle said “web” and gave her some treats. She took the treats from Barkle, but she was more focused on the pile of treats on the far branch. Once her anchor was ready, her body shimmered and shifted as she put herself partially into the world where only phase spiders can go. She started to fall sideways, as if the far branch anchor was down for her. As she fell across the gap, she let out her silk behind her. After a few minutes, she made it across the gap and fastened her web to the far mount point. She then dove on the large pile of treats. Reg was relieved to see that despite scarfing down the pile quickly, she was nibbling around the sling bullets. After finishing off the treats, Nem flopped down in a happy heap and ignored Barkle’s calls to come back across.
Reg eyed the strand, “that’d probably hold me, but I doubt it’d hold you. Ankie, could you make a web there? Good girl!”
Ankie wasn’t the fastest web-weaver, but with Reg’s encouragement and frequent treats, she went back and forth to fortify Nem’s single strand. After a few passes, it was solid enough for Reg and Barkle to cross. Both fashioned crude harnesses out of rope. Reg went first. He looped the harness around the strand and then started walking on it. Balancing on a strand of web like this was a common game that he’d played as a child. They’d practiced tricks like sitting down on the strand before standing back up, and they’d played games where they tried to knock each other off by jumping up and down to vibrate the webbing.
He hadn’t walked on a strand suspended this far before, and it swayed back and forth as he took each small step. As he took his first few steps onto the strand, he heard Barkle curse behind him, “mist-touched groundling, you go under the web. You’re liable to get yourself killed” but Reg was confident in his balance and trusted his harness. He was quickly to the middle of the line, where the line rocked back and forth in slow arcs with Reg’s steps. He looked down once and could see branches silhouetted against the dark mist below before fixing his gaze back on the anchor point across the gap. After another minute, he made it fully across the gap and hopped down. He turned around to watch Barkle cross.
After looping the harness around the strand, Barkle grabbed hold of the strand from below and wrapped his legs around it and then scooted his way across. It was a much slower crossing than Reg’s, but Barkle was soon back on solid ground as well.
After crossing, Reg and Barkle started hiking again. Barkle carried Nem swaddled on his chest because the over-full spider refused to get back up. Coming around a bend, they got their first view of East Starswallow branch. Or, at least, where East Starswallow branch should be. There was a massive gap in the tree where the primary branch should have been.
Reg started to cry. “By the heart. The whole branch. It’s gone. It’s all gone. They’re gone.”
Barkle said nothing. He put his arm around Reg and held him close while Reg wept.
[1] As a child, Reg had asked his teacher why they didn’t use “easywood” for everything. Mrs. Moonspring had, somehow, kept a straight face, and then explained the Hazelcloud hardness scale. By measuring penetration depth and impact radius of a standardized magic missile on a sample of lumber, woods could be compared to each other for hardness and suitability for use in armor, flooring, and other high-impact applications.