From the lip of the basalt ridge, the birch trees below could not seem to agree on what season they were keeping, or even what sort of tree they meant to be.
Ysabet rested her elbows on a flat boulder to ease the old ache in her left ribs and looked down into the first hollow of the Wild Cradle. The nearest white-barked trunk carried three distinct kinds of leaf on the same lower bough: small serrated birch blades near the fork, broad waxy paddles in the middle, and long needle-tufts at the tip that dripped cold mist into the fern beds. None of the growth looked sick or grafted. The bark simply widened at each joint and tried another arrangement.
Below the tree, a grey stream slid over stepped slate shelves. Three fat river fish with pale bellies were hauling themselves up the wet rock on stubby, leathery forefins. While Ysabet watched, the largest fish reached a dry cushion of moss, opened and closed its gill slits twice in the thin mountain air, appeared to think better of the whole enterprise, and flopped sideways back into the current with a loud slap.
“Sensible,” Chaska muttered beside her. She had unslung her folding glider frame to rest her shoulders and was squinting through her brass scouting lens toward the valley floor. “Walk twenty paces uphill and somebody hands you a pack.”
