At the same time, Joaquin registered the low thrum of wings, and knew why the crossing seemed so familiar. He’d followed it the autumn Mariam had disappeared. Beyond that small rise he’d come to an open dell in front of a small cliff. Vera vines fell in a tangle down one side of the cliff, and a narrow path wound its way around their base and around the hill away from the cliff.

  The mantids grew abruptly still, also registering the thrum of wings, and Joaquin held his breath. As he watched, they leapt into the branches above them, their passage revealed only by the shaking of the trees…and then it stopped, and the creatures vanished.

  All around them, the forest leaves settled to silence and the trees seemed to wait. A pair of schliva hummed their way along the trail, using it as relief from dodging between the forest trunks.

  Joaquin wondered momentarily where the insects were nesting, but forgot about the need to locate it when the mantids attacked. One minute, the trail was calm and quiet, but the moment the schliva reached the fjord, the trees erupted around them in a frenzy of red and gold.

  Joaquin heard the crunch as the mantids struck, and the high-pitched trill of the schliva’s danger cry, and then Big Blue moved. Instead of trying to edge past the mantids and their prey, the big orsovite backed away from the path. It ignored its rider’s urgent signals to move towards the river, but retreated away from the path.

  Joaquin stayed flat to the creature’s back, resisting the urge to scream a denial at Blue’s choice of direction. As he prepared to intervene, Joaquin felt Blue change direction, and sat carefully up to see where the orsovite was going.

  He was relieved to find his mount had chosen a path that paralleled the original route, and loosened his grip on the reins. Holding his tongue, he let the orsovite carry him to a different part of the stream, and over the water.

  The animal moved with such surety that Joaquin let it direct itself through the brush and trees, hoping Blue new how to find Ry and Little Blue. When they came to the cliff-edged dell, he saw them waiting, and breathed a sigh of relief.

  The pair stood at the base of the path that would take them around the cliffs and over the hill, and Joaquin felt his breath catch in his throat. He raised a shaky hand by way of greeting, and Ry waved back, her face as pale as the lemon silk-grass surrounding their cottage.

  For their part, the two orsovite bumped snouts, and entwined their antennae in a rare show of affection. Joaquin mimicked the gesture, and stretched an arm far enough forward for Ry to touch her fingers, and then he returned his daughter’s shaky smile.

  They stayed, fingers touching, until the orsovite broke apart.

  “Mama has a cross in the next valley,” Ry said, and Joaquin resisted the urge to tell her they were going to turn back. He’d done what he’d intended, and he wanted to know if she was all right, but that wasn’t a question he could ask out here.

  Such questions were better asked between the safety of the homestead’s walls, where tears could blur a person’s vision without endangering their life. Instead, Joaquin leaned forward in the saddle and focused his attention on the path ahead.

  He noticed how Ry glanced more often at the trees and brush around her, and that the orsovites’ antennae were more active, twitching delicately this way and that, as though trying to sense danger before it struck.

  They needn’t have worried. The four of them made it to Mariam’s x-marked valley without encountering another mantid, and Joaquin didn’t need Rylie’s whoop of delighted victory to know Mariam had guessed it right. They drew the orsovite to a halt and looked down at the deep rift hidden in the forest’s depths.

  The path led down a set of creeper covered cliffs, bejeweled with sun-struck schliva, castanet beetles, and shimmer flies. Blue-furred orsovite scurried along the thick vines to disappear into tangles secure in the deep green foliage, before emerging with filled pollen pouches and nectar sacs…and the purple bells of helical blossoms hung amidst the red vera and pink kells, each vying for space, and the attention of the insects swarming amongst them.

  “It’s beautiful,” Rylie whispered, but, before Joaquin could agree a pair of schliva flew past them, screeching in alarm.

  The two orsovite didn’t wait for their riders’ instructions, before bolting down the trail, to head for the nearest tangle. Joaquin and Ry ducked close to their shoulders, and let them run. They had no idea how close the mantids might be, but they daren’t shift their weight to look back. Joaquin felt the space between his shoulder blades twitch, as though it might feel the sharp bite of a mantid foreclaw at any second, and wondered if his daughter felt the same.

  When Big Blue reached the first massive tangle, and abandoned the path for the safety of the thick, twining stems and emerald foliage ahead, Joaquin breathed a sigh of relief. To his surprise, his mount didn’t stop its headlong scurry, until it had reached the valley floor, and then it hurried through shoulder-deep silk-grass and bright blue bud knots, making a curious chirring sound.

  Little Blue moved in close to Big Blue’s flank, and the two orsovite kept calling as they moved. They only stopped when the valley narrowed enough for the tangles to overgrow it and form a deep, green-lit cave.

  “Blue,” Joaquin murmured. “Whoa, Blue.”

  But the big orsovite gave a curious shiver, as though shaking off the sound of his voice, and kept going forward. Rylie stayed silent and still, letting Little Blue run as close to Big Blue as it chose. The orsovite pair followed the tangle-enclosed tunnel until the ravine widened and sunlight shone ahead, and then they came to a halt. Their chirrs increased in pitch, developing a rhythmic rise and fall, and then, as if on cue, both fell silent.

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  Joaquin turned in the saddle, trying to take in the valley. Helical tangles mingled with kells, but fewer insects flew amidst the blossoms. An odd clinking sound made him look down, and he noticed a cluster of castanet beetles scurrying past. A shimmer fly brushed by him, and then he realized what was so odd about the valley.

  None of the flying critters, flew in through the clear patch roofing the centre of the valley. Those who arrived came via the tunnel, and every single one of them left by it. Joaquin looked up, and caught a glimpse of autumn foliage just beyond the valley’s rim. Scanning it, he realized they were standing at the bottom of a sinkhole, surrounded by helical and kell tangles, and then the orsovite emerged, and his understanding of the world took a tumble.

  Orsovite were solitaries. That’s what all the planetary surveys told them. They moved in family groups, when the young were small, and then became solitary wanderers on reaching maturity. But the surveys were clearly wrong, because, all around him and Riley and the two Blues, orsovite were emerging.

  Granted, most emerged on their own, but there were at least half a dozen instances of pairs or family groupings. The two Blues called again, and the gathered orsovite answered, their own calls blending with the rhythm of their mounts’. Joaquin felt Big Blue relax beneath him, and Little Blue moved a little further from its parent’s side.

  Joaquin was starting to wonder whether to order the orsovite to stop, when a human figure emerged from amidst a small family group clustered around an opening in a helical tangle some twenty feet up…a woman.

  “Jo?” she called, then, clearly recognizing them, “Jo! Ry!”

  Joaquin froze. In the last year, he’d almost convinced himself that the owner of that voice was dead—long-eaten by whatever danger he had glimpsed at the beginning of that early winter. Rylie had no such inhibitions. Before he could even twitch, she had flung herself from Little Blue’s back, and disappeared into the silk-grass.

  “Ry!” he shouted, as a wave of panic roared over him. “Ry!”

  He tried to slide out of the saddle, but Big Blue had other ideas. It scurried through the grass, its long spindly legs carrying it more swiftly than Rylie could run. As it reached his daughter, the orsovite snatched her from the ground, gripping her in its pedipalps like a piece of fruit, as it continued to run towards the woman. For her part, Mariam was half-climbing, half sliding down the helical vines, and ignoring the orsovite family, with whom she’d emerged.

  The orsovite clattered their mandibles in warning, to which Blue deposited Rylie, before responding with a distinctive clatter of its own. This it followed with a rising chirr, and then it flattened its antennae out to either side of its head in what looked like apology. The woman ignored the exchange, reaching the sinkhole floor and leaving the tangle to hurry through the yellow fronds of silk-grass and wrap her arms around her daughter.

  “I thought you’d never come,” she said. “I didn’t even know if your father would give you the diary.”

  She looked up at where Joaquin was sitting astride Blue, dumbstruck.

  “Are you not going to come down and hug me?” she demanded, and Blue gave another of its curious shivers, nearly unseating him.

  Joaquin took the hint, and climbed down. What he wanted to do was reach out and gather the woman into his arms, and then ride out of the valley and back home. There he could shut the world away and give in to the emotions crowding his chest, but he didn’t. Instead, he walked slowly over to Mariam and Rylie, and wrapped both his wife and daughter in his arms.

  “They live in villages,” Mariam whispered, looking up at him, her eyes shining with joy. “They kept me safe, but they wouldn’t let me leave, because winter had come early, and the burrowers had arrived.”

  “Why didn’t you call?” Joaquin asked.

  “The mantids,” Mariam said, and some of her joy was replaced by fear. “The equipment was broken in the attack.”

  Rylie gave a small gasp of dismay, and Mariam pulled the girl close.

  “I’m sorry, Ry. Splotchy gave me time to get away, but by the time he escaped the mantids, he’d been too badly hurt. I couldn’t save him.”

  “It’s okay, mama,” but Rylie buried her face in Mariam’s side, and wept, anyway.

  “How did you survive?”

  “Splotchy threw me during the initial attack, and drew them away. I just ran. I ran up the path and into the valley, and I hid in one of the caves. I nearly broke an egg.” Her face showed horror at the memory. “But then I stopped, and I sang to it, and I told it was sorry, and the parents adopted me as one of their own. I’ve been helping with the hatchlings ever since.”

  “Why didn’t you leave?”

  “They wouldn’t let me leave on my own, and it takes a year before any of them are big enough to ride. The adults… well, I wouldn’t dare. They’re too wild, so I’ve been working with the wiggles and the crawlers.” She paused, blushing. “That, and I hoped you would come sooner.”

  “I didn’t read your diary,” Joaquin admitted, and Mariam reached up and laid her palm against his cheek.

  “I knew you wouldn’t, you silly man”—she glanced at their daughter—“But I knew Rylie would.”

  “And you knew the helicals would run out,” Joaquin added.

  Mariam smiled at him.

  “About the helicals,” she said, and led her family back up the tangle to shelter for the night, “Apparently they need the schliva, as well as the orsovite. Let me introduce you to the nest, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  Joaquin followed her carefully up the vines, copying the way she greeted the orsovite parents, and observing the cautious way Blue introduced herself and Little Blue to the nest. As much as he wanted to be home before dusk, Joaquin knew it wasn’t to be…and Mariam didn’t seem in any hurry to leave.

  Joaquin guessed, that after a year of living with the orsovite, another night was no time at all, and tomorrow it would be safer. They could return, in the morning, hopefully before the mantids appeared, and just as the helicals started to unfurl.

  Home! Joaquin hugged Mariam and Rylie close. He knew Mariam would miss her orsovite family, but he also knew she would do her best to protect them, and her second home—and she knew the best way to do that was from the colony itself.

  Tomorrow, she told him, she would sign in to the colony land register and stake her claim on the valley and its creatures—and woe betide any who opposed her.

  “And then you’ll write a paper,” Joaquin joked back, and she smiled.

  “And you’ll pick up the profits from that first shipment,” she reminded him. “It’s been twelve months, and the ship’s due any day.”

  He gaped at her, then motioned to where Big and Little Blue were mingling with their hosts.

  “D’you think they’ll understand how important it is we get back?” he asked, then frowned. “Or convince them to let you go?”

  Mariam’s smile grew wider.

  “They’ll let me go,” she told him, “And then we’ll secure their future, as well as our own.”

  That night, Joaquin slept soundly for the first time since he’d thought Mariam taken from him, and when he woke, the scent of helicals and kell blossom were a promise that the future would be better than he’d thought.