Chapter 6: I Show You

A/N: Yes! I feel so clever! I forgot that I'd completed this chapter and thought that all I had to show for my two-and-a-half weeks' holiday was one random fluffy oneshot (i.e. Precious Little), but it isn't! I have! *runs in happy little circles * And also:

SQUEEEEEEE!

Ladies and Gentlemen, this fic has been nominated for the Universal Fanfiction Open Awards by the author Still-Birth, who is a super-duper reader of discernment and deserves a special heart-shaped cookie! I suppose that means I should get my skates on and actually complete it, so that it can be eligible for winning instead of just an Honourable Mention. If I succeed, I hope you know how to change your nomination from incomplete to complete, Still-Birth. But don't hold your breath; I am about to go to a new school and start my A levels (actually school work normally stimulates fanfiction production, fanfiction being the highest form of procrastination, but there we go). Anyway, many thanks!

A special shout out also goes to heartbrokenbella, whose plea for an update did wonders for my ego. Anyway, I'm sure you'd all rather read the story than listen to my burblings, so on we go!

Tsu'tey darted between the trees, setting a pace that had her sprinting to keep up. She thought about calling out to him to slow down, but there was something about his manner which seemed to insist on silence. So she struggled after him as best she could, planting her feet in his footprints to avoid tripping.

After a few minutes she realised that they were heading into an area of the jungle which she had never explored before. Never on foot at least; the jutting rock formations and the slope of the ground were familiar. She had seen them in a birds-eye view, from high up in Trudy's helicopter.

'Hey,' she said, 'aren't we getting close to the Well of –'

'Shh!'

Finally Tsu'tey slowed, until they were picking their way at a slow walk through the undergrowth. He moved absolutely silently, as though afraid of being heard. At last he stopped in front of a screen of broad leaves, turned to her and spoke.

'Doctorgrace, can I trust you?'

'Of course you can,' she whispered back.

He swallowed, eyes flickering nervously from side to side. 'You tell no-one of this. Especially not my people...but especially not yours. You understand?'

'Yes,' she nodded. 'I promise.'

'Good.' He hesitated for another moment, then turned and pulled the leaves aside so that she could pass through.

For a moment she was disoriented, and then she realised that she was no longer in thick jungle, but in a more open glade, and that there was much more light than she had been expecting. She took a step forward, blinking as her eyes adjusted. In front of her were several...she would have to call them 'willows' but they were like no trees she had ever seen before. Long pink fronds swayed in the faintly stirring air, giving off a soft radiance which dimmed the bioluminescence of the surrounding forest. Atokarina shimmered in the air between the trees, and she realised that she had found their source.

'Utral Aymokriyä,' Tsu'tey said. 'Tree of Voices.'

'This is one of the places you won't talk about,' she whispered. 'The place you don't let dreamwalkers see –'

'Yes,' Tsu'tey said shortly. 'Now come.'

Grace glanced down, and found that the earth was carpeted with the mossy grass which she had questioned Tsu'tey about at their second meeting. So there was a link. The two grew together, at least. She had noticed that the grass flourished only in the lighter and more open areas of the forest. The brighter phosphorescence of the Tree of Voices must be enough to give them the extra few watts of light they needed to grow. Incredible.

Momentarily distracted, she knelt down to examine the grass. She knew that a part of her was stalling, choosing to examine this manageable phenomenon, rather than grapple with the mystery of the trees. She had no idea as of yet what that mystery might be, but she had a feeling that it was all coming together – the electrical pulses between the trees, Tsahaylu...something that Tsu'tey might show her after she'd said she didn't believe in God.

'This is the plant I asked you about the second time we talked,' she said, brushing her fingers over the rough grass. It pulsed with light when she put pressure on it. 'The one that you said is pollinated by the riti fly. It likes sunny, open spots, so it's not common in the thick jungle...I guess these trees must provide the little bit of extra light it needs...'

'Yes, always the moss grows with the tree, they need each other. But come.' He pulled on her arm, lifting her to her feet. She felt strange as he led her towards the trees themselves, subdued. She had never been religious, but that didn't mean she was immune to the beauty of a cathedral. This was the same thing, and for a moment she felt as though she shouldn't approach. This place was for the Na'vi, not for her. But Tsu'tey was holding her hand, pulling her in among the curtains of leaves. He brushed them lightly with his fingers as he passed. Like the moss, the glowing tendrils shone when she touched them, brightening from pink towards pure white light.

'It's beautiful,' she said.

'Here is where we hear the voices of the people,' Tsu'tey said quietly.

She was nearly at the foot of the tree itself. These plants allowed the Na'vi to tap into the tree network, he had said. This was the answer to the questions that had plagued her for so long. Abruptly Grace realized the magnitude of his gift. He had risked the wrath of his people and betrayal from her to show her this. But she sensed that there was something more to this than the answer to her question, something he wanted her to learn...

A shining tendril rippled past her face. Slowly Grace reached out for it, watching Tsu'tey carefully to see if he would object, if she was permitted to touch as well as to look. He made no move to prevent her, so she took the frond in her hand. The blue of her skin turned almost white in its radiance.

'Come here, doctorGrace.' He was behind her, quiet humour in his voice. 'Let me show you.' He reached up, catching three fronds together in his broad hand. He reached for his braid and brought it over his shoulder, holding it to the leaves. Grace watched the white nerve endings twine around them, pulling them together. They glowed with a brighter light at the point of contact.

'Tree of Voices,' Tsu'tey repeated. 'Now you try.'

Her hands trembling, though she didn't quite know why, Grace imitated the process, catching three strands and fumbling for the end of her ponytail. Her heart began to flutter as she held it to the leaves. Had Tsu'tey been right when he said that their false bodies couldn't form the same connection as the Na'vi could? Or would she be able to...do what, exactly? What was the purpose of this connection?

There was a brief moment of fuzziness in her mind as the nerves connected, and then she heard the voices.

Thousands of them, a soft, distant murmur, like when she would sit in the library at school and hear the noise of the building going on all around her, but softly, distantly, soothing rather than frantic. Stray words flicked out at her like moths in car headlamps on a dark road, briefly illuminated and then gone, and now there were images, too: images of faces, of hunting techniques and flowers and hot summer nights around the fire. Grace focussed on that picture, the excitement of the evening drawing her in, and thus found that she could sort through the memories at will.

She sifted among the sounds and homed in on the voice of a woman, singing a slow, unaccompanied song of incredible beauty. She delved deeper and found the same woman's memory of her children, running and laughing on the faint jungle paths. And then she found Tsu'tey's voice.

Not coherent sentences, exactly, more like the impressions of thoughts. He was glad that she could make the connection, startled and happy at hearing her voice, but there were other, more complex emotions underneath...he was worried about whether the Tree would be safe now that he had shown her, and he was still struggling to understand what he was doing, why he was letting her speak with him and answering her questions...and there was something else, too. He was waiting for her reaction to the Tree, wanting to know what she would make of it.

She broke the connection and stepped back from the tree, her legs unstable as water.

'I...I...'

Oh my God.

A network, a biological internet where the Na'vi could store their thoughts and memories for the next generation, accessed by this tree...

'And it links up through the whole forest,' she said out loud. She was almost hyperventilating now, her breath coming in faster and deeper gasps. 'And in the places where there are no trees...' She looked down at her feet. 'I guess this grass helps to link it. I took a sample: it has wide roots, and it must grow on the plains between forests and link everything up...a global network...but why? Why would something like that evolve?'

She turned to look at Tsu'tey. He slipped his braid off the tree and took a step towards her.

'Grace...?'

'The People care for the trees,' she said. 'They respect them and help them to grow, and they do it because the trees provide them with this network. A symbiotic relationship. But how?'

She sat down suddenly, shaking her head.

'You people have gotta be right,' she stated. 'There's no way this could have evolved by itself. There's gotta be some kind of a god out there.'

Tsu'tey pulled her to her feet and hugged her so hard her feet left the ground.

'Woah!' she yelped, clutching at his shoulders to steady herself.

'I knew,' he said, crushing her ribs. 'I knew you would see!'

And he was going to kill me an hour ago? Caught between terror, joy and impatient curiosity, Grace struggled to breath.

Tsu'tey lifted her up above him so that he could look into her face.

'We must all make our own way in this world,' he said, 'and there is pain, but mother Ey'wa does not forget us. What our ancestors have learned she keeps safe for us, and when we die we join her in the tree.'

He put her down. Grace found that her legs wouldn't hold her. She stumbled backwards and sat down on one of the shelves of earth formed by the roots of the tree. She slumped forward and rested her forehead in her hands, breathing deeply.

'Grace?' Tsu'tey asked. He sat beside her. 'You are OK?'

'Yeah,' Grace huffed. 'I'm just...amazed.'

Tsu'tey smiled. 'Is special, yes? Here, you can see God.'

Grace sighed. 'I think I'm a little bit crazy right now,' she said. 'Tomorrow morning, I'll probably wake up and say that there's some kind of scientific explanation for it. But I can't see it now. These things...well, if you told me something put them here on purpose, I would believe you.' She paused. 'I would...want to believe you.'

'I have a question,' he said.

'Shoot.'

'If nobody puts these things here, how do they come?'

'Ah, well...' Grace massaged her temples. She felt altogether too shattered for a proper explanation of evolution. 'Things fit together the way they do, because...if there is a way to live...an animal or a plant will always come to fill it.'

'Yes, yes,' Tsu'tey nodded. 'Everything has its place.'

'Mmm.' Grace leaned backwards to look at the hanging fronds once again. They seemed to sway even without wind, shimmering with frosty radiance in the twilit glade. 'Tsu'tey,' she said suddenly, 'I...for showing me this...thank you. Thank you for everything.'

He grinned at her. 'Is fine. You want to learn, it's a good thing. I know when I show you will understand, know I can trust. And when you say you have no mother, I know I have to bring you here. Some Sky People hide their eyes, don't want to see. But you, always searching. Ought to find something.'

'I see what you mean. Just because I don't think of Ey'wa in the same way that you do, it doesn't mean I don't think the tree is special.'

'By this you mean...' Tsu'tey frowned over the English, '...that you do think the tree is special?'

Grace laughed. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'That was a complicated way of phrasing it. Yes, it's special. Very special.' She lay back and raised an arm over her head, gesturing at the tree above them. 'God, Ey'wa, souls...whatever you call it, there's something very precious up there. There's a wealth of thoughts and memories, generations' worth, and if that's not a soul, then I don't know what is.'

She fell silent, and let her eyes grow unfocussed, so that the trees blurred into a haze of pink above her. She wondered whether the voices that she had heard were just memory, or whether the ancestors of the Omatakaya really lived on in the Tree, as Tsu'tey had said. Nothing seemed impossible right now. If so, did the dead Na'vi speak to the living, through the tsahaylu connection? She imagined what that would be like. Never having to lose anyone. Knowing that they had gone on, that they were safe in the tree...

Until the tree got cut down, of course.

She shook her head, dispelling the thought, and found another question.

'So can you communicate through the tree? With other clans, I mean? Use it to send messages?'

'Is not tele-fon, doctorGrace,' Tsu'tey said.

'I heard you, though.'

'Hmph. Is true. Yes, you can hear voices, but outside of one tree, it all gets a bit spread out, you know? From another tribe we wouldn't get a message of words, more...a sense of trouble. Or happiness, or whatever the thoughts of the clan were. To send an ikran is quicker.'

'I see.' Grace closed her eyes altogether.

'I hear your voice, too,' Tsu'tey said after a moment.

'And what did it sound like? A long row of exclamation marks, I expect.'

'Excla-what?'

Grace made an exasperated noise in the back of her throat. 'Oh, for goodness' – sorry. You know when Sky People put their words in writing? Well, an exclamation mark is a sign to show that words were spoken loudly, or surprised...something like that.'

'Yes, you were loud and surprised,' Tsu'tey agreed. 'But now quiet.'

'Huh?'

'You are very silent.'

'No I'm not, I've been talking all this time –'

He shook his head impatiently. 'Talk around the edges, but silent inside. I think you have many thoughts.' He leaned over so as to meet her eyes. Grace averted her gaze from his golden stare. She felt pinned down, without quite knowing why.

'Do you?' she said, trying to speak calmly.

He grinned, though his eyes were still watchful. 'You see? As soon as I ask a question, it is another question from you. You don't want to speak.' He looked at her sidelong. 'You must have secret thoughts.'

'Well, I wasn't silent until you started asking your questions,' Grace said. She got to her feet. 'I'm thinking about the tree. I need to work it out in my head before I talk about it.' She was a little surprised by her own brusqueness. Normally she was as courteous as she knew how among the Na'vi, but now that Tsu'tey had shown her the Tree of Voices, she felt as though some barrier had been removed between them. All the same, she reflected, it wouldn't do to push her luck. She tried to soften her demeanour a little as she stretched and turned about.

'This place is deceptive,' she said. 'It's darker than I thought. I have to go back to the station. They'll be missing me.'

'Back to the place where I make my trap?' Tsu'tey clarified. He stood up. 'I come with you. In case the bad palalukan comes again.'

'Ah, don't worry about me. I think I understand how to deal with them, now that I've watched you do it once.'

'So you are fine to fight palalukan now, is that so?'

'I feel like I'm fine for anything, to be honest,' Grace said. Her system was still humming with the thrill of discovery. Besides, she felt that she'd had her share of action for one day – though, in practise, it didn't always work like that. Either way, fear was the furthest thing from her mind. 'Actually, I wasn't that worried about the palalukan. I was more afraid of you.'

Tsu'tey gave a bark of laughter. 'Very wise, dreamwalker! You saw what happened before: hunting palalukan himself turned and ran when Tsu'tey came to meet him! But come; now he will have heard us laughing. He will be coming to teach us some respect, if we don't go quickly.'

He caught hold of her hand and darted for the jungle screen. Grace took one last look over her shoulder at the shining grove before the foliage obscured it from view. Tree of Voices. She shut her eyes tight for a moment, and when she opened them again the last glow of the willows was gone.

They darted quickly between the trees, and Grace, relaxing and allowing her instincts to guide her over the invisible ground, soon found herself keeping pace. Some things were easier when you stopped trying. In a few minutes her eyes had adjusted from the brightness of the willows, and then she was able to make out more of the jungle.

She was so rarely out at night, but she could still remember the first time. The brilliant glow of bioluminescence that had traced and highlighted every leaf, as soon as they had dared to turn out their torches. She craned her neck back to gaze up at the blueish mosaic of leaves above her, and caught her foot on a jutting root.

'Don't trip,' Tsu'tey said, catching her.

'Sorry,' she muttered. But he seemed to understand. He slowed to a gentle jog. They were nearing the bunker where she, Norm and Jake had been staying; she could see the clearing between the trees, denoted by a patch of darkness rather than a patch of light.

They reached the edge of the trees.

'Stars,' Tsu'tey said, looking out over the ridge, up at the night sky.

'Yeah,' Grace said. 'You don't see them much around here. I could never get used to it at first, you know, how it was darker out of the jungle than inside it. I can't sleep with all the light around.'

'When the people from the plains come to us, they find it too close. They miss seeing the sky. Is the same with you?'

'Well,' Grace sighed, 'where I come from you can't see much sky. But I like to see the stars, yes.'

He squeezed her hand. They stood side-by-side for a moment, gazing out at the view. Below the ridge, the forest stretched out, marked by little glints of bioluminescence winking between the dark covering of leaves. Above them, the velvety sky was studded with stars – thousands of them, sharp, luminous, dizzying. On the horizon PLANET was rising, hazy and blue-green. The stars around it faded and disappeared in its brighter, closer light.

She could see dark silhouettes against its face – floating mountains. And, closer to, her own cabin cut a black hole in the starscape. It looked safe, and familiar, and very, very small.

'Well,' she said, a little shakily because of the view, 'here we are.'

Tsu'tey took her by the shoulder and turned her back towards him. The markings on his face shone brightly in the darkness of the clearing. They seemed to shine as brilliantly as the stars, and they made her just as giddy. PLANET had left a ghostly afterimage burned into her eye. She blinked, trying to clear her vision. She couldn't see.

Tsu'tey's expression was unsure, almost afraid. He put his hand on her cheek. Grace looked into his eyes and felt sixteen again: breathless, fizzing, lighter than air.

His skin was no warmer than the moist tropical night, but it seemed to burn her just the same. It wasn't exactly heat, but something with the intensity of heat. A form of energy with the power to change. His hands trembled as they grasped her shoulders, but they moved without hesitation. They pulled her to him, twined in her braided hair, tilted her head backwards and kissed her.

Years of research. Millions of dollars. Days and weeks of painstaking labour to grow this hybrid avatar, to align its brain with hers and thread the lattice of nerves through every muscle and along every limb, so that she could feel and move in this body as though it were her own. But the link was stable at ninety-nine per cent alignment. A part of your mind was always in your own body.

But now her body, her work, her human life – all were forgotten. She wrapped her arms around Tsu'tey's neck and let them melt out of her mind. All her training, exploration and research... during all of that, she had never felt so purely Na'vi as she did now, in this one perfect moment.

'So did he kiss you?'

'Jake, you should not be asking that kind of question,' Grace said, pulling open her desk drawer, glancing inside and then slamming it shut again. 'It is sick and wrong.' She moved along the work benches, pushing sheaves of paper aside as she did so.

'Hey, I think I have the right to know if my boss is dating the enemy,' Jake complained, wheeling himself after her.

Grace rounded on him.

' "The enemy,"' she echoed scornfully. 'That's the trouble with you marines: the slightest whiff of contention and you have to blow it into an all-out war. Besides, who says you're the only one who's allowed to consort with the Na'vi? We all know you're sweet on Neytiri.' She got down on her hand and knees and peered under the lab bench. 'Norm, has this jarhead been in my desk drawer?'

Norm was standing to one side, his hands innocently clasped behind his back. 'Not that I've noticed,' he answered.

Suddenly Grace lunged forward, seizing Jake around the waist and dragging him half-out of his wheelchair.

'I'm not sitting on anything,' he laughed, not even bothering to protest. 'So when are you seeing him again?'

Grace cuffed him on the side of the head and turned in desperation to her colleague.

'Norm?'

He stared back at her, straight-faced. 'What Jake said.'

'Fine,' Grace sighed, closing her eyes in defeat. 'I'm seeing him tomorrow.

'Now please give my cigarettes back!'

A/N: I know, so I copped out on the kissing. But anyway. This jokey final scene could be the end of the fic if you are all delighted with it, but on the other hand you may find it a little harsh to be left teetering on what we know is the brink of ex-plo-shuns and stuff. Personally I favour continuing on a little bit, just to show the conclusion of the relationship. Anyway, my co-writer Essence is standing over me, wanting her laptop, so ciao for now!

True and Essence.