The teylu fried up nicely, their soft white flesh puffing out of the slits in their backs. Lo'ak popped them in his mouth whole, and while he told Neteyam they weren't as good as when mother cooked them, that didn't stop him eating them by the handful. Neteyam would have done the same if he could, but his mouth simply wasn't big enough. He had to pull pieces out of the skins and eat them little by little.
Prisha watched him do this and then tried it for herself, plucking little bits out and setting them aside on a stone. She did this as if afraid the grubs could come back to life and bite her at any moment, and shuddered when the skins, which had hardened in the fire, cracked in her fingers. Once she had her pile of pieces, she put one gingerly in her mouth and chewed it.
Her eyebrows rose. "They're actually pretty good," she decided. "Like shrimp, but stronger. They'd be great in a curry." She took another piece.
Neteyam grinned. "So as soon as they taste good, they're not scary anymore?" he teased.
Prisha looked at the meat in her fingers and shrugged one shoulder. "I still don't wanna touch the live ones. I think it's more that they don't look like bugs anymore."
That sounded strange to Neteyam, but he didn't question it, because that was when he noticed that one of his bracelets had caught on something and the cord was frayed. He finished his teylu, along with some strips of breadfruit that had separated and crisped when fried into something Bohan likened to 'puff pastry', and then took the piece apart to repair it.
"Can I have one of those?" Lo'ak asked, with his mouth full of breadfruit and mushrooms. He was pointing to the beads.
"They're just plastic," Neteyam told him.
"I know," said Lo'ak.
"Which one?"
Lo'ak shrugged. "You pick."
Neteyam chose a pale yellow-green one and tossed it to him. "This one glows if it's been in the sunshine."
Lo'ak caught it out of the air, and untied his songcord to add it. Neteyam had suspected that was what he meant to do with it, but he still couldn't help a snicker. "What is that verse going to say?" he asked.
"I haven't figured that out yet," Lo'ak admitted. He looked over at Bohan, who was eating her own supper: more of the mushrooms he'd found, as well as some vegetables from her own rations, which she'd shared with him. "Are you gonna try the teylu?"
"I'm trying to be polite," she replied. "I don't want to take something the humans can eat when they don't have the options for living off the land that we do."
"I think you just don't want to eat a bug," Lo'ak told her. "Look, even Prisha's eating them."
"Well, if you're gonna make fun of me, then all bets are off!" Bohan declared. Lo'ak handed her one of the cooked insects, and she was about to pull the meat out of the middle as Neteyam and Prisha had done – but then Lo'ak himself took the last one and put it in his mouth whole The harder parts, crisped in the fire, crunched in his teeth as he looked Bohan directly in the eye.
She rose to the challenge, and met his gaze while putting the whole thing in her own mouth. After chewing a couple of times, she made a face and spat it out on the ground. Mixed with the white meat were fragments of something narrow and black.
"Oh, bad luck!" said Lo'ak. "That one had a gutworm. Ruins the whole grub!"
"That'll be why it tastes like grilled shit, then," said Bohan, rinsing her mouth out with water from her canteen. "Did you do that on purpose?"
Lo'ak laughed.
She shook her head. "Neteyam, has your brother always been a little shithead?"
"Since the day he was born!" Neteyam said. He put the last piece of breadfruit in his mouth and pulled his mask back down so he could breathe while he chewed. He still got a whiff of the sulphurous smell of the atmosphere every time he did that, but it didn't make him gag anymore. Maybe that was just because he was expecting it.
He rearranged his legs crossing the left over the right, and realized something else had stopped bothering him – his tail no longer hurt. Neteyam hadn't been thinking about that the past couple of days, but now that he did... he couldn't remember it being painful even once since he'd met back up with Lo'ak. Maybe it was just because he had other things on his mind.
"Whatcha got there?" Bohan asked.
Lo'ak had found some stringy roots, which he was now pounding up on a stone. This was producing a lot of clear, sticky goo, which they would have to leave overnight. In the morning, Neteyam knew, there would be more ingredients to add.
"Paint," said Lo'ak. "For your iknimaya tomorrow. Have you got a strap?"
"What kind of strap?" Bohan asked. She'd opened another of her rations, which contained something called fruit cocktail, and her mouth was now full of that.
"Usually leather, although some people use woven tree fibres," Lo'ak told her.
"It's to wrap around the banshee's snout," Neteyam explained, "so it can't bite you."
"I thought you were supposed to do this with your bare hands," said Bohan. "Are you sure a strap's not cheating?"
"Everybody does it," Lo'ak said. "I had sticky woven fibre the first time, but the banshee got away, so the second time I used the same leather strap Neteyam had made."
"He didn't actually ask if he could borrow it," Neteyam noted.
"You weren't using it for anything," said Lo'ak.
"I've got a belt." Bohan scraped out the bottom of her dessert, then put the can and spoon aside and unbuckled the belt to pull out and show. "Is that long enough?"
Neteyam examined it. "It doesn't look very flexible."
"You'll have to take the metal bits off," Lo'ak said. "You don't want to hurt the banshee. If you do, you'll be feeling it yourself once you're bonded."
"You're the expert," said Bohan. She unfolded a red-handled knife and started cutting the buckle and tip off.
Lo'ak shook his head. "I'm not an expert. Neteyam did it on the first try – and he's always been a better flyer than me, anyway."
"I'm not going to be riding a banshee for at least eight months, according to her," said Neteyam. "So yeah, no, you're the expert here."
"Great. That's what I need – pressure!" laughed Lo'ak, but he smiled. "Anyway, yeah, you have to hit with the strap so it wraps around the banshee's jaws. The bite muscles are powerful," he traced the line of his own jaw with one finger, "but the ones that open the mouth aren't, so that'll keep it closed long enough for you to make tsaheylu."
Bohan nodded. "Sounds like an expert to me."
Lo'ak looked proud of himself, Neteyam observed, but also embarrassed. It wasn't often that anyone treated him like an authority on anything – Neteyam certainly never did. Lo'ak was his little brother, after all, the one who'd always been just two steps behind him in everything the family did. Now that Neteyam was... no longer there... what had things been like for Lo'ak? He'd mentioned learning to use the humans' weapons, and having to be the 'responsible one'. Neteyam would have liked to know how he felt about that outside of his jokes, but he wasn't going to ask. Not here, in front of relative strangers.
Camping in the Samson would have seemed like a good idea if the weather had turned bad again, but with the sky clear they abandoned it, and looked for a less obvious place to spend the night. Using the machine would have made them easy targets if the Sky People came back. They chose a place instead in the lee of the pile of landslide rubble, and put up a camouflage tent Bohan had in her backpack. With an extra person to take a turn keeping watch, everybody was able to sleep a little longer than they had the previous night.
Not too long, though, because early morning was the best time to find banshees at their roosts. The wild ones were crepuscular creatures: they hunted after sunset and before dawn, and during eclipse. Once the sun was well up, they would return to their roosts with full stomachs to nap, groom, and socialize. The group ate a very early breakfast while Lo'ak added some ochre to his root paste, and used it to paint the banshee symbol on Bohan's face.
"Feel the spirit of the ikran enter into you," Neteyam instructed her, the way Mother had told him on the morning of his own ritual. "So that they will know you as their sister."
"Didn't you guys say the one who wants me is going to try to kill me?" Bohan asked.
"They fight over roosting sites all the time," Lo'ak said.
"Oh, that kind of sister. Okay."
With that done, Bohan double-checked that she had all the things she'd been told to bring – food and water for herself, the belt, and a knife for self-defence if worst came to worst. She'd commented last night that she would have liked a parachute, but had not been issued one. Lo'ak had cheerfully assured her that it wouldn't have been any use in the mountains, as the wind would have snagged it on rocks or trees and left her hanging there for the banshees to devour at their leisure. Once she was sure, she swung her knapsack onto her back and nodded to the kids.
"All right. I'm ready," she said.
"We'll meet you at the top," Lo'ak said. He scrambled up onto Tìtstew's back, and helped Prisha up ahead of him. She reached forward to rub at the banshee's neck, which he now seemed willing to accept.
"You're coming?" Neteyam asked Prisha in surprise. She hadn't liked being up the mountains before.
"I'm not gonna stay down here all by myself," she huffed. "I know what lives in these woods."
"Some of those bugs are as big as you are," Lo'ak teased her.
Neteyam took Bohan's hand to climb onto the direhorse. "I'll give you directions to go up," he said. "Once we reach a certain spot we have to leave the horse and go on foot."
She got him settled. "Is the horse gonna be okay with that?"
"Just tell him to go rejoin his herd. He'll be fine," Neteyam promised.
They started off. The route was very similar to the one Neteyam had taken on his own, days earlier, but it was much easier to do on horseback. The animal's long legs could cover ground even faster than a Na'vi's, and certainly quicker than the legs Neteyam was currently using. As they began their ascent, the direhorse started breathing harder and Bohan, not yet used to tsaheylu, did the same in sympathy, but Neteyam had no trouble. He focused on staying calm, conserving his strength for climbing when the time came.
The path wound up the spires where long-ago lava flows had followed the lines of the magnetic field, and came to an end at the same point where Neteyam had waited for a vine. He was planning to take the same way for a while, but then change direction halfway up, to head not for High Camp but for where the wild banshees roosted. Hopefully there would be no scouts in the area from either side of the ongoing war; the Sky People would surely kill them if they saw them, as they would by now be aware that Bohan was a deserter; and a patrol from High Camp, recognizing her as a recombinant and him as a human, might well do the same before they looked close enough to see who Neteyam was.
That thought made him wonder if Tarsem and Pa'ay had told anybody other than Dad. Now that he was missing they were probably looking for him. Had they told everybody who they were trying to find, or did the rest of the clan still think Neteyam was Jake's human nephew?
"This looks like the end of the line," Bohan observed.
"That's right," said Neteyam. "From here we climb."
Bohan slid down from the horse and lifted him after her like a child, and then patted the animal's rump. "Thanks for the ride, buddy," Bohan told it. "Off you go!" She pulled her queue free, and the horse shook its head and neck before turning around with surprising agility for a bulky creature in a narrow space, and headed back down the spire. In a few minutes it was out of sight, leaving them alone for the rest of the climb. Bohan tightened the laces of her boots and checked that she still had her knife and belt in easy reach.
"We just grab them as they pass by?" she asked, watching the dangling vines dance.
"Make sure it's one think enough to hold you," Neteyam said. "It's a long way down."
She went to the edge and bent her knees, waiting. "There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold," Neteyam heard her sing to herself, "and she's buying a stairway to heaven..."
He smiled a bit. Somebody must have told her what iknimaya meant.
"When she gets there she knows if the stores are all closed..." Bohan sang.
"That one!" Neteyam pointed to an approaching vine with a smaller strangler species wound around it. That would be perfect for climbing.
Bohan rocked from one foot to the other, then took a flying leap and grabbed it. She succeeded in grabbing hold, but had put too much momentum into the jump and ended up swinging like a pendulum, though that only made her laugh. Her motion kept the vines swaying unpredictably for some time, even as she started to shimmy up to the rocks above, so she was far ahead by the time Neteyam felt safe to follow her.
When he did, he discovered that his broken wrist was not as completely healed as he'd thought it was. Hanging his weight from it as he gripped the vine was shockingly painful. Neteyam had to make do with his left hand and his feet, which he could do – it was how he'd gotten up here the last time – but it was very slow. He wouldn't have been surprised if Bohan simply went on without him, but she was waiting on the next large rock when he hauled himself up, panting, to join her.
"You did this all by yourself once already?" she asked him.
"Yes." Neteyam tried to shake his wrist, but that hurt, too, and he had to settle for rotating it back and forth to try to stretch it out. "I don't think it's all healed yet. They said they didn't have some of the equipment they needed."
"I think I'm gonna give you a piggy-back ride the rest of the way," Bohan decided. She offered a hand.
"No." Neteyam backed away from her. "I don't need to be carried. I can do it myself."
"I'm sure you can," she said, "because you already did, but it'll take forever and you're the one who's got limited oxygen, remember? Waste not, want not."
Neteyam looked at his feet with a scowl, which didn't help because all he saw were his shoes, which were a reminder of just how little he could do in this body and how bad he was at doing it. He'd fallen from the wall, he'd nearly knocked himself off the branch with the crossbow... Reet had called him a child and everybody continued to treat him like one. Just like Dad telling him to wait with the banshees while he and Mother rescued the younger kids. If they'd let him help, maybe he wouldn't be in this mess right now.
On the other hand, the longer this took, the longer it would be before they got back to Site Nine, and the longer it would take to get his new body started, and the longer it would be before he could use it. Until that happened, he was just going to have to put up with these unaccustomed limitations. He sighed heavily, and took Bohan's hand.
She swung him onto her back, letting him hang on with his arms around her neck and his legs looped through the straps of her backpack. It felt surprisingly familiar. Dad had used to give him rides like this when he was little.
"You got a good grip?" she asked. "If you feel you're gonna fall, tell me before it happens."
"I can hang on just fine," grumbled Neteyam. Of all the things he couldn't do right now, he certainly hoped just holding on wasn't one of them.
"All right." Bohan paused, and even though Neteyam couldn't see her face, he could imagine she was smirking. "Don't worry, I'll put you down before your little brother sees, okay?"
"Yeah. Thanks," said Neteyam sourly.
Progress was faster that way. Bohan was not as agile as the young Omatikaya warriors, who would swarm up the vines and rocks like a colony of ants to get to the roosting grounds, but she was stronger and faster than any human. She was cautious in her movements, always taking the thickest vines and choosing the narrowest gaps, but Neteyam couldn't tell if that were because she was intrinsically cautious, or because she didn't want to drop him. He hoped it was the former.
"No, that way," he said, pointing east, away from the vine she'd been about to climb. "See where the banshees are?"
Bohan lifted a hand to shade her eyes from the sun. "Oh, yeah. There they are!" She squinted. "Is that the black one?"
"I can't tell from here," said Neteyam. "You don't get to choose your banshee, you know. It chooses you."
"Yeah, your brother said," she nodded, and started clambering up a line of floating rocks held together by twisted vines and roots. "I like to hope our eyes met across the crowded airspace and it was love at first sight."
At the top of the chain of stones, Neteyam got his legs out of the backpack straps and let himself down. "We'll be catching up with Lo'ak and Prisha any time now," he explained. Several times he'd seen them circling overhead, but always too far to make out any detail. Hopefully they couldn't see him either.
"Almost there, then," Bohan said. She took a deep breath before selecting the next part of their route, and Neteyam heard the inhale shake a little. She was nervous – that was good, actually. It meant she appreciated the danger associated with the task. Neteyam, on his attempt, had not. Not until he'd actually been surrounded by banshees, not sure which one to go for until the green female he would call Pawk had charged at him. Then reality had caught up, and there'd been a moment of sheer, freezing terror before he'd gotten a hold of himself.
He'd reminded himself why he was here. He was Neteyam, the eldest son of Olo'eyktan, whose father and great-great-great grandfather had both been Toruk Makto. The entire clan was watching. If he failed, he would disappoint not only his parents but the entire clan. He had to do it right.
And he had. Just as he'd done it right on his first sturmbeest hunt, his first attempt to collect Delta Tree roots to poison his arrows, all the way back to the first time he'd gone fishing with Dad. Neteyam did things right the first time because he was the eldest, the good son. Everybody counted on him.
He followed Bohan up, and soon caught a glint of motion against the blue sky. Tìtstew was perched on a rock above, fanning his wings to soak up the morning sunlight. Lo'ak, standing a short distance away, waved down to them.
"took you long enough!" he shouted as they approached.
"Yeah, Neteyam was complaining at me the whole way!" Bohan called back. She dragged herself up to the last boulder, and reached down to pull Neteyam up after her. He was careful to give her his left, uninjured arm, but she had a far better idea how delicate humans were than Syulang did, and was much gentler.
Lo'ak gestured at the mountains spread out before them. "There they are," he said, meaning the banshees. Their calls could just barely be heard over the high-altitude wind as they jostled for perching space. "Go for it!"
"That's it? Just go for it?" asked Bohan. "No more advice?"
"If you're meant to have one, you will," Neteyam told her.
"And if I fall to my death, it's the will of Eywa." Bohan nodded. "All right." She squared her shoulders and slid back down the vine she'd just climbed, to plan a route back to the rookery.
"I'll go keep an eye on her," Lo'ak said. He climbed back up on Tìtstew. "Are you two gonna be okay here by yourselves?"
"Of course we will," said Neteyam. The wildlife hadn't bothered them so far. He was confident by now that Eywa knew who he was, even if some of the People didn't.
He found a spot to sit down, careful to choose one that wasn't damp or mossy. Wearing so many clothes made it very uncomfortable when they got wet. Prisha, who'd been up by Lo'ak and Tìtstew, came down to join him, and unzipped her backpack to take out a small device with a shiny screen. When she held this up, it caught the light like a mirror, or like her watch face had.
"Here we go," she said. "Like I said on the way up, if we see anybody coming, we'll signal you."
"Great! See you soon." Lo'ak scratched Tìtstew's jaw in the spot the banshee liked, and the two of them dived off the rocks to follow Bohan.
Prisha sat down beside Neteyam on the ledge. This spot did not seem particularly precarious to him – the side of the mountain was a good four metres away, and they had a slope below to rest their feet against rather than letting them dangle. Prisha, however, sat as far back against the rocks as she could, and pulled her legs up to cross them.
Neteyam remembered how terrified she'd been in the net of vines they'd fallen into, and thought he'd better ask, "are you all right?"
"Yeah," she said. "It's not as bad the second time. Plus, you know, we're not dangling over a foggy abyss, that helps."
"I guess it would, yes," Neteyam agreed.
She started looking for something in her backpack again. "How about you?"
"Me? I'm fine," said Neteyam. "I've been climbing these mountains all my life."
"I know, but... oh, here they are." Prisha took out a pair of binoculars. These were too big for her to use comfortably. They were one of the pieces of gear they'd taken from Konstopoulos, and had been made for a recom. Prisha started her sentence again: "I know, but we could see Ms. Bohan carrying you. I told Lo'ak it would be mean to tease you about it. Did you get hurt?"
"No," said Neteyam with a scowl. "I've done more than enough of that."
"Sorry," Prisha said quickly.
"She just thought I wasn't going fast enough," he added.
Prisha fiddled with the binoculars, moving the lenses to the narrowest setting possible, but she could still only look through one side at a time. After thinking about that a moment, she moved them to the widest position instead. "Here, see if we can both look at the same time," she said, holding them out to Neteyam.
They could, if he used his left eye and she her right, although it involved leaning in very close to each other, craning their necks to the side. It also took both of them to hold the device, which was a bit too heavy for human use. They managed.
With this somewhat awkward setup, they turned in the direction Bohan had gone. First, they found Lo'ak and Tìtstew, perched at the summit of a floating mountain that was absolutely crawling with roosting banshees. Many of these were, as Tìtstew had been doing, holding their wings out wide to warm up in the morning sunlight. They weren't at all bothered by Lo'ak, since he was on Tìtstew's back, but a few down the bottom of a cliff were starting to flap and squawk. When Neteyam got Prisha to move the binoculars down with him, they found the figure of Bohan, climbing up onto a ledge.
Neteyam licked his lips. Very few people did iknimaya alone. Neteyam himself had gone with four other candidates, plus their adult guides, which left the banshees unsure which potential threat to focus on. Maybe this had been an even worse idea than they'd thought.
"How long does it take?" Prisha asked nervously.
"Not long," said Neteyam. Young warriors either succeeded or failed very quickly. One way or another, it would only be a few minutes.
The first banshee Bohan encountered was a blue one that gave her a disdainful look before launching off the mountain to find somewhere else to roost. Two or three others followed, but an orange-brown female lingered, looking Bohan over as if considering her. Bohan glanced up at something further up the rock face that was not visible from Neteyam's perspective, then back down at the orange one.
The banshee feinted at Bohan. She took a step back, then changed her mind and moved forward, raising her left hand in front of her. Neteyam could see her mouth moving. Was she trying to calm it with her voice, the way she had the horse? That wasn't going to work on a banshee... but on a second look, Neteyam realized she was keeping the animal focused on her left hand while her right prepared the belt.
She wasn't quite close enough to try to use it when the banshee suddenly opened its wings and charged. For a moment Neteyam thought it would be either captured or killed, but it went right past Bohan and into the air, leaving her clinging to a vine to keep from falling. Her feet scrabbled at the loose rocks on the cliff face below her, trying to find purchase. Neteyam heard Prisha gasp. Her left had was holding the binoculars, but her right found his wrist and squeezed it.
Bohan pulled herself back up onto the rocks and stayed there on one knee for a moment, trying to catch her breath. Then she looked up at Lo'ak, who pointed to another group of banshees roosting higher up. Bohan nodded and started climbing again.
More of the animals took wing, not wanting anything to do with this intruder. Tìtstew had to move over to make room as the others climbed higher. Neteyam spotted two green ones, a male and a female, as they reached the highest point on the mountain. A few moments later they were joined by a third – the melanistic one Bohan had noticed on the way to Kilvanoro.
Bohan was putting her knapsack back on as she appeared in silhouette among them. The belt was long gone – she'd dropped it when the orange banshee came at her – but there was something else in her hand now, a squat cylinder with a hole in the middle. Neteyam couldn't identify it at first, but then it caught the light and he recognized it as a roll of the silver industrial tape humans sometimes used to hold things together if they couldn't be properly repaired right away. Bohan pulled a length of this off the spool, but did not cut it.
The green male decided he'd had enough of this – he took wing and circled away. The female seemed indecisive for a moment, then followed him, leaving only Bohan and the black one. This last banshee watched the other two fly off, then appeared to make up his mind to stand his ground. He planted his alulae on the rocks, and screamed at Bohan as she approached.
The sound of his cry was just barely audible. Bohan could be seen through the binoculars screaming back at him, but the wind carried her smaller voice away.
"Come on," Neteyam whispered under his breath. "Come on." If the Omatikaya or the Sky People had sent any scouts by at that moment, he would have missed them completely.
Bohan lunged, holding on to her strip of tape, while the spool flew out and wrapped itself around the banshee's mouth. The animal, startled and annoyed, shook its head and pawed at this unknown substance, trying to flee itself. Bohan seized the moment and threw herself on top of it. The banshee didn't want her there, and tried to roll over and crush her, but it went too far and the two of them tumbled down the other side of the mountain, out of view.
"Oh no!" Prisha exclaimed.
Neteyam pointed the binoculars down, hoping to catch a glimpse of them falling in the air below the mountain – but they did not reappear. The other banshees were circling there, waiting to see what happened and whether they would get a free meal out of it... until suddenly they took off in a dozen different directions. At the top of the rocks, Tìtstew opened his wings and took to the air, while Lo'ak yelled something and waved one arm. Whether he was shouting encouragement or a warning was impossible to tell. More banshees flew out from the far side of the mountain and sailed away, shrieking at each other.
For what seemed like a very long time, silence fell. Then, at the top of the mountain, dark against the bright sky, an irregular figure emerged. At first it looked like a monster, an irregular tangle of limbs and tails, but then Neteyam recognized where the wings were, and saw it was a banshee with a person on its back. Bohan was leaning forward, pulling the tape off the animal's snout.
"She did it!" Prisha exclaimed.
"Now she's got to fly!" said Neteyam. If a young warrior didn't get into the air right away, the banshee would become impatient and break tsaheylu, and the same animal could never be caught a second time. It wouldn't let another Na'vi near it as long as it lived.
The black banshee opened its wings and screamed, then exploded into the air.
Neteyam pushed the binoculars into Prisha's hands and got to his feet to cheer. Bohan might even have seen and heard him – the black banshee sailed directly overhead and then kept going, spiralling down towards the forest far below. Neteyam took Prisha's hands to pull her to her feet, and grinned at her.
"When we've got you an avatar, I'll teach you to do that!" he promised.
She was laughing, both out of joy and terror – Neteyam could feel her shaking. "I don't think I'd want to do that," she said. "I think I'll just ride with you!"
Neteyam hugged her, smiling so hard his cheeks hurt. This was another sign. It had to be. Eywa was looking after them, supporting their plan. Maybe it would take months, but he was going to get his body back. He was going to be able to ride Pawk again. He was going to go home.
A few minutes later, Lo'ak landed Tìtstew on the rocks above them, and the two humans grabbed their things to climb up and meet him.
"She did it!" Prisha repeated, climbing up in front of Lo'ak.
"Well, she learned from an expert, didn't she?" Lo'ak asked, laughing.
Neteyam got on behind him, and squeezed his brother's shoulders. "My big little brother, the mighty banshee tamer!" he said. "Let's go find her!"
Tìtstew made an annoyed sound at the idea, and Lo'ak reached out to give his mount's neck an affectionate slap. "This is the last time, I promise," he said. "Everybody hang on!" And they leaped from the rocks into an almost vertical dive towards the jungle.