Free Horizon by Jenn Reese Page B

Song, we hinder and poke, trip and rescue. When glints leave Song — these trees, this sky, that breeze — we do not follow.” He motioned to all the people around him. “Silvae do not leave Song. Silvae do not fight wars.”
    “You’re already fighting a war,” Calli said. “You’re just not acknowledging it.”
    “Harmony defends Song and Song only,” Melody said. He pointed a twiggy finger at each of them. “When war is done — fields of dead, red rivers, weeping young ones — Silvae and Harmony will remain.”
    Aluna clenched her fists and looked away. Melody was almost as closed-minded as her own father. The Silvae had survived on their own for hundreds of years, and even now, faced with the destruction of their beloved forest, they insisted on fighting alone. And probably dying alone, too.
    But the Silvae had rescued them and had left Odd’s kludge alive. They clearly valued life. If she spent a few days here, maybe she could convince Melody to see things a different way.
    “You will go now,” Melody said abruptly. “We take you where you want.”
    “What? Take us where?” Calli asked.
    Melody pointed east, west, south. “Wherever, but not to swarm,” he said. “You pick and we take you to Song’s edge.”
    “They’ll take us to the edge of the forest in any direction we choose,” Hoku translated. “Except the one direction we want to go — toward the army.”
    “Even if we got to the army, we would not pass as Upgraders without Odd and his kludge,” Dash said. “They would take Aluna and Calli and we would not be strong enough to stop them.”
    Hoku plucked a twig off his shirt and broke it in half. “Dash is right. We can’t find Strand on our own, and walking into the army by ourselves would be suicide.”
    “Can we just go back to the kludge?” Calli asked. “We could tell them that you and Dash stole us back from the Silvae.”
    “Odd is too smart,” Hoku said. “He thinks we can fight, but he’ll know Dash and I aren’t strong enough to win you both back ourselves. I couldn’t even beat the Silvae choking me at the camp.” He rubbed the angry red welt across his neck. “And Pocket knows our secret. With us gone, there’s no reason he wouldn’t tell the kludge everything he knows.”
    “I agree,” Dash said. “Odd and Mags do not fully trust us even now. If we came back without injury and with our prizes . . . they would never take us in.”
    Aluna’s tail ached. She’d been balancing on it for a while, leaning on the others when she needed to, but trying to stay upright by herself. And none of them had slept yet, not after a full day of hiking through the forest and a full night of being lifted into the treetops.
    “Melody, we’re too tired to travel tonight. Will you let us sleep?” she asked. “We will know which direction we want to go in the morning.”
    The old Silvae’s face twisted, and Aluna feared he might say no. But then Melody mumbled, “Bad rescue,” and began calling to his people.
    “But my fathers,” Dash whispered to her. “We need —”
    “We need rest,” she said firmly. “We can’t be smart if we’re too exhausted to use our brains. Tomorrow we’ll figure it all out. I promise.”
    “The Dawn-bringer speaks, and I will listen,” Dash said.
    Aluna sensed an odd hitch in his voice. He would do as she asked now, but for how long?
    Melody led them to a cluster of webbed hammocks nestled under a massive branch. “For sleep,” he said.
    “Thank you, Melody,” Aluna said wearily. “And . . . please, think about what we said.”
    Calli and Dash helped her hop onto the closest hammock, but she couldn’t balance, even with their help. She fell, grateful that the thick fibers of the web were softer than their strength implied.
    “Are you okay?” Calli asked.
    Aluna nodded. Her hammock swayed in the breeze. “I’ll be okay if I never have to move again.”
    “Not for a few hours, at least,” Calli said. She put her hand on