Free The Color of Distance by Amy Thomson Page A

then Spiral nodded, and flashed an explanation to the other aliens. Their ears went up, and they looked at her, deeply purple. They began talking among themselves in shades of pink and purple.
    Juna watched and waited. She had created a stir among the aliens. One of them flushed purple and held out a fruit, its ears raised inquisitively. Juna turned her leaf so that the lines were vertical and shook her head, refusing the fruit. A blue and green ripple of amusement passed across the aliens.
    Another alien offered her a gourd of water. She turned the leaf so that the lines were horizontal, and drank a few sips. She offered the gourd to another alien. The horizontal bars of agreement appeared on its chest. She handed it the gourd. The alien took the gourd from her and drank.
    Her attempts at communication became a game. The aliens offered her things, and she would accept or refuse them. Juna learned the symbols for several kinds of food, the symbol for basket, and what was probably a verb for
show
or
offer,
or perhaps
try.
She wrote approximations of these symbols on leaves with the glowing blue fungus, much to the amusement of the aliens.
    Then a complex pattern appeared on Ripple’s chest, and the alien held out its wrists, bright red spurs pointing upward. Juna panicked for a moment, thinking that it was asking her to join spurs, but it ignored her, looking instead at the other aliens. It was asking something of them. The aliens turned a soft, misty grey. One by one horizontal bars flickered across their chests as they agreed.
    Spiral touched Juna lightly on the shoulder, and pointed to Juna’s bed of leaves. It indicated that she should lie down and sleep. Then it left her and joined the other aliens. The game was over; she had been dismissed. Juna watched as the aliens linked arms in a large circle, and abandoned themselves to their strange communion. It reminded her of the two aliens healing the lizard in the forest, only there was a ritual solemnity to it.
    Juna yawned. The huge meal on top of a long, stressful day had made her sleepy. She burrowed deeper into the warm, moist pile of leaves and slid down into sleep.
    The next morning Spiral nudged Juna awake, beckoning for her to follow. Juna followed the alien down the inside of the trunk to the pool at the tree’s base. Spiral dove in. Juna, eager to rid her skin of the rotting leaves from her bed, plunged in too. The tepid water felt wonderful. Curious, she dove for the bottom. The pool was surprisingly deep, at least three and a half or four meters. The bottom was soft mud. Something wriggled under her questing fingers. Startled, Juna shot toward the surface, emerging with a splash that drew curious stares from the aliens seated around the pool. She swam to the edge of the pool and sat on a low ledge.
    Spiral emerged a few moments later, carrying a fat, wriggling burden. Juna thought it was a fish. When Spiral handed it to her she realized that it was an enormous tadpole. It was the size of a large house cat, mud-brown, with an oily, iridescent sheen. Its tail was horizontally flattened like a dolphin’s and its eyes were large and golden, with vertical catlike irises. The hind legs were strong and well-developed. Beneath the translucent skin, the small dark lump of its heart pulsed slowly and steadily behind its gills. It was soft, slippery, and cool, like the mud at the bottom of a lake.
    Juna wondered what species it was, and how closely related it was to the aliens. She wished again for her computer, so that she could catalogue the tadpole. So much knowledge was slipping through her fingers without it.
    The tadpole wriggled wildly, slipped out of her grasp, and fell back into the pool with a soft plop. Spiral shot after it, caught it with both hands, and stuck a wrist spur into it. It ceased wriggling and lay motionless. Spiral handed it to Juna, and dove into the depths of the pool.
    A small, dark green alien climbed down to the edge of the pool, carrying a