Page 13 of Into Orbit
The air went taut between us as we stared – Maeve at me, and me at Maeve.
‘You don’t have a belly button,’ she blurted, one hand on her stomach.
‘You don’t have thorns,’ I answered, stroking the line of sharp points decorating my collarbone and ears.
She gave a bark of laughter. ‘Fair enough.’
There was a rustle of movement behind me. ‘You’ll need to remove everything, I’m afraid,’ Willow said apologetically, his voice rather thicker than usual.
I eyed him sideways. The doctor wasn’t part of a family, but it wasn’t from a lack of others trying; I knew he’d turned down several potential bonds. The gossips on the ship loved to discuss him, mostly because he was impeccably courteous and perpetually self-controlled; no one had ever seen him angry, ever seen him distressed, ever seen him green-cheeked over another Tirian. No matter how hard they’d tried to uncover something salacious, the gossips were forced to concede that Doctor Willow Unclaimed was just as he seemed – respectful and measured to a super-Tirian degree.
But his eyes were heavy as he took in the patterns on Maeve’s skin, and I wondered whether therewasa being who could break his famous self-control.
‘Ink,’ Willow said wonderingly, studying his hand-scanner. ‘Your skin allows its absorption?’
‘You pierce the skin with tiny needles and deposit the ink beneath it.’ Maeve frowned. ‘You don’t have tattoos?’
Willow shook his head. ‘We have too much arboreal DNA. Our skin knits immediately after any injury, leaving no trace of scarring. Our bodies would reject the ink and push it straight back out.’ He glanced at the lilies growing up her side almost wistfully. ‘They are lovely.’
‘Lovely,’ I echoed, my eyes on a bloom very like an arcadia covering her hip, some of its petals disappearing under the black material circling her waist.
She snorted, and, without ceremony, pulled down the flimsy garment. Willow coughed, turning away; I swallowed and pressed my thighs together.
‘Choose a unit,’ Willow said, busying himself at the control screen. I gestured to a unit, waiting until Maeve entered and the door slid shut before escaping into one myself, trying to will my arousal away.
Not yours. She’s not yours.
Willow’s voice came over the intercom. ‘The sequence will begin in ten seconds. Take a deep breath and hold it …Now.’
I closed my eyes and held my breath as the light microbial mist swirled around me, dancing over my skin in swift, ticklish eddies. I held my arms out and reluctantly spread my ankles, knowing that Willow would be able to detect my arousal in the monitoring tests, but not knowing what else to do.
‘And three … two … one. Done,’ Willow said. ‘Breathe easy.’
I took a gulp of air and opened my eyes again.
The unit door slid aside, and Willow handed me a pile of regulation casuals in my size. Our eyes met; I lifted my chin, trying not to flush.
He gazed back calmly, then inclined his head. ‘Congratulations, Hamadryad,’ he said softly. ‘May your love grow as wide and deep as the Forest.’
‘Thank you, Doctor,’ I answered, guilt twisting in my stomach once more.Not yours. She’s not yours.
Maeve was glowing after the spore bath, her chestnut hair shining, the dark cosmetic around her eyes gone, her skin lit from within. Mine was the same, but it was lit with the green of our sap-like blood, not Maeve’s pink.
She stared at me. ‘That’s some decontamination,’ she muttered. She turned to Willow. ‘I want my boots.’
‘They’ll take a little longer to go through the decontamination process,’ Willow said evenly, ‘but you will get them back, I promise.’ His moss-green eyes flickered to me. ‘I imagine Ashton may be some time. Will you allow me to escort you to your new room, Hamadryad?’
‘Okay, someone really has to tell me what that means,’ Maeve said. ‘It sounds familiar, but I can’t quite remember …’ She shook her head in frustration, then winced. ‘Urgh. I hate this. My brain feels like it’s made of cotton wool. Cotton wool that’s been set on fire and poked with something sharp.’
‘Tir – our home planet – is largely covered in plant life,’ I said softly. ‘It’s divided into territories, which we call Forests. Every Forest has a heartree – the mother tree, the oldest tree in a territory, with the deepest roots and widest branches. The Forest grows around it, and it protects the saplings in a thousand different ways as they grow, helping to direct water and balance soil and deterring pests and predators. All the other trees take their cues from the heartree. A strong heartree means a strong Forest.’
‘And where does the Hamadryad – doyou– come into that?’ Maeve said warily.
‘Well …’ I trailed off and looked across at Willow, who gazed steadily back, keeping pace with me as I stepped from the clinic and into one of the ship’s labyrinthine corridors. ‘Iamthe heartree. Sort of.’
‘You’re atree?’
I waved a hand. ‘I’m its spirit. Its consciousness, outside its usual arboreal awareness. I am linked to it in such a way that I bothamand amnot, in that I can both exist as part of it, and apartfromit. Do you follow?’
