'I do indeed! Tattooed across his face like a criminal, and all know him as the son of a thief and a murderer! Bad enough that one such as you allows a man to call on her, but you have to pick the lowest of the low to dally with!'

'Mother! I ... he is just the boy who helps Father sometimes at the trunk market! Just a friend. That's all. I know that I can never . . . that no one can ever court me. Who would want to? You're being unfair. And foolish. Look at me? Do you really think that Tats came to court me?'

'Why not? Who else would have him? And he is probably thinking that you'll get no better offer, so you'll take what pleasure you can get, with whomever you can get! Do you know what our neighbours would do to us if you became pregnant? Do you know what the Council would decree, for all of us? Oh, I tried to warn your father, from the very beginning, that it would come to this. But no, he never listens to a word I say! What can it come to, I asked him, what kind of life can she have? And he said, "No, no, I'll look after her, I'll keep her from being a burden, I'll keep her from bringing shame on us". Well, where is he now? Turned down the offer I had for you, without ever hearing me out, and then off he goes and leaves me here alone to deal with you, while you go flaunting yourself through the by-ways!'

'Mother, I did nothing wrong. Nothing. We sat and we talked. That was it. Tats was not courting me. We had a conversation, and as you yourself said, we were out in plain sight of everyone. Tats was not courting me, he doesn't think of me that way. No one will ever think of me that way.' Thymara's voice had started out low and controlled but by her final words her throat was so tight that she could scarcely squeeze the words out in a high-pitched whisper. Tears, rare for her and painfully acid, squeezed from the corners of her eyes and stung the scaled edges of her eyelids. She dashed them away angrily. Suddenly, she couldn't stand to be in the same room with the woman who had given birth to her and hated her ever since. 'I'm going to go sit outside. Alone.'

'Stay where I can see you,' was her mother's harsh reply.

Thymara didn't deign to give her a response.

But neither did she defy her. She climbed up onto the branch that was the main support for their home and walked out toward the end. That, she knew, would satisfy her mother. The branch led nowhere, and if her mother truly wanted to be sure she was alone, all she had to do was look out of the window. Thymara went farther out than she usually ventured and then sat down, both legs on the same side of the branch. She swung her feet and looked down, daring herself. If she focused her eyes one way, she became aware of the bright lights that sparkled below her. Each light was a lit window.

Some were as bright as lanterns; others were distant stars in the depths of the forest below her.

If she focused her eyes another way, she saw the bars and stripes of darkness that latticed the forest below her. A falling body would not plummet straight down to the distant forest floor. No. Her body would strike and rebound and despite all her resolves, snatch and cling, however briefly, to every branch she struck on the way down. There was no swift plummet to an instant death there.

She'd learned that when she was eleven. It was strange. She remembered that day in fragments. It had begun with an encounter at the trunk market. As she recalled it now, it was the last time she had ever brought her mother flowers from the Top to sell at the market, and accompanied her there. The trunk markets were the best places to sell. Close to the trunk of the trees, the platforms were large and they were often the crossroads for hanging bridges from other trees. The traffic was good, and of course, the farther down one went, the wealthier the passing customers. The flowers she had gathered were deep purple and brilliant pink, as large as her head and brimming with fragrance. Their petals were thick and waxy, and bright yellow stamens and sepals extended past them. They were bringing a good price and twice her mother had smiled at her as she pocketed silver coins.

Thymara had been squatting beside her mother's trading mat when she noticed that a pair of slipper-shod feet below a blue Trader's robe had remained in front of her, unmoving, for quite a time. She looked up into an old man's face. He scowled at her and took a step back, but his blunt, scolding words were for her mother. 'Why did you keep such a girl? Look at her, her nails, her ears - she will never bear! You should have exposed her and tried for another. She eats today but offers us no hope for tomorrow. She is a useless life, a burden upon us all.'

'It was her father's will that she live, and he prevailed in it,' her mother said briefly. She lowered her eyes in shame before the old man's rebuke. By chance, her gaze met Thymara's. She had been staring up at her, hurt that her mother offered so poor a defence of her. Perhaps her look stabbed a drop of pity from her mother's shrivelled heart. 'She works hard,' she told the old man. 'Sometimes she goes with her father to gather, and when she does, she brings home almost as much as he does.'

'Then she should go out daily to gather,' he replied severely. 'So that her efforts may replenish the resources she consumes. Everything is dear here in the Rain Wilds. Have you lost sight of that?'

'And a child's life is most dear of all,' her father had said, coming up behind the old man. He had come down to meet them at the end of their day's trading. He had just come from the canopy; his clothes were bark-smeared and leaf-stained from his climbing. Thymara was far too old to be carried, but her father had scooped her up and carried her off with him as he strode away from the market. The carry basket on his other shoulder was half full. Her mother had hastily rolled up her mat with their unsold wares inside it, and hurried along the walkway to catch up with them.

'Stupid, sanctimonious old man!' her father growled. 'And what, I'd like to know, does he do to be worth what he eats? How could you let him speak of Thymara like that?'

'He was a Trader, Jerup.' Her mother glanced back, almost fearfully. 'It wouldn't do to offend him or his family.'

'Oh, a TraderV Her father's voice was scathing with feigned awe. 'A man born to position, wealth and privilege. He earned his place here exactly as any eldest child did; he was wise enough to be first to grow in the right woman's belly. Is that it?'

Her mother was panting as she tried to keep up with them. Her father was not a large man but he was wiry and strong as were most Gatherers. Even carrying her, he crossed the bridges and climbed the winding stairs that circled the trees' big trunks with ease. Her mother, burdened only with her market bag, could scarcely keep pace with his angry stride.

'He saw her claws, Jerup, black and curved like a toad's. She is only eleven, and already she is scaled like a woman of thirty. He saw the webbing of her toes. He knew she had been marked from birth and it offended him that you had -kept her. He isn't the only one, Jerup. He simply happened to be old enough and arrogant enough to speak the truth aloud.'

'Arrogant indeed,' her father said brusquely, and then he had stepped up his pace again, leaving her mother behind.

On that long ago evening, Thymara had finished her day alone on their tiny veranda, fingering the budding wattles that fringed her jawline. Her knees were drawn up to her chest. Occasionally she flexed her webbed toes, regarding the thick black claws that ended each of them. Inside the house, all was silent, the silence that was her mother's most potent anger. Her father had fled it, to do late bartering with what he had brought home. One could argue with words, but her mother's silence denied everything. The silence left plenty of room for the old man's words to echo in her mind.