‘Colony’. At first, I wondered why she had used that word, and then I remembered one of the researchers saying Blacklegs’ Forest was home to a colony of the spider-bugs. Perhaps the spiders thought of us as all one group.

  “They are not human,” I said. “They look like us, but they are bigger, their skins are thick and grey, and they have little pointy ears like this,” and I put my hands up on either side of my head, showing how the bandits’ ears poked up from the top of their skulls.

  “And they smell bad,” I added.

  It was almost the truth. The bandits did smell different to humans, a kind of sour apple smell overlaid with mud.

  “And their heads are squarish, and their teeth…” I stopped, swallowed, tried not to remember that the chopping block had a practical use for the invaders. “…their teeth are pointy.”

  “Vardigans,” the starman said, the word barely louder than a breath, and holding more fear than I wanted to hear. “You poor, poor people.”

  He stopped, when he realized he had the arachnids’ total attention.

  “Tell us of these vardigans,” Yellow Tears said, and I realized what the starman had been holding tucked in the hand he’d kept close to his chest.

  It must have vibrated, for he glanced down, and then up at the spider.

  “All right,” he replied, but the spider nearest him laid a claw on his shoulder, and he stopped.

  Watching them, I saw all the arachnids look upwards, and all raise one of their central legs.

  “We must find shelter,” flashed on my screen, even as I was lifted from the ground and tucked up against an arachnid chest. It was surprising how swiftly they could move using just six legs, surprising, too, how securely I was held. I hadn’t realized their legs had so many joints.

  We travelled, the world beyond the spider’s body a blur of movement as they climbed into the trees and through a trellis of webs I hadn’t noticed. Shortly after, I was deposited on a platform high in the forest canopy, with a series of chitters and whistles telling me to go inside. The starman was taken through a thickly-fibred tunnel to an even broader platform.

  “Wait,” I whispered, not wanting to be separated from the only other human I could see, but they didn’t stop.

  I didn’t move until the first fat drop of rain hit me, hard, in the middle of the forehead, and then I turned and hurried into the low crawlspace the spiders had indicated. I wondered if there’d be any more inside, if the crawlspace led to something bigger, and how long I’d be alone.

  To my surprise, the webs gave way to a smooth, white surface that reflected a growing brightness from within. Brightness and warmth. I crawled a little faster, and found the crawlspace expand as the ceiling arced upwards and the walls grew apart to surround a well-lit room. Slowly, I stood, and was greeted by a happy shout.

  “Allie!”

  “Boyce?” but I’d barely got the question out, before my brother’s arms were around my waist and squeezing me in a delighted hug.

  “Allie?” my mother’s voice was more cautious, but my father’s greeting was filled with relief.

  “So they did find you!”

  “Mum? Dad? Yes, yes they did. Are you okay? How long have you been here? Are, are you really okay?”

  It took us some time to tell our stories, and we told them to the muffled roar of rain, and thunder. We only stopped when the starman emerged from the tunnel, slow and uncertain as he stood and took us in.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “They’ve gone,” he said, just as my father demanded, “Who are you?”

  “In the rain?” I asked. “But that’s…”

  “They say it’s only a little storm,” the starman replied, and we all flinched as thunder crashed around us.

  He looked at my father.

  “I am Makron Kavil. Your…” He indicated me. “Your daughter?”

  Dad nodded, and he continued.

  “Your daughter saved my life.”

  This brought a stern disapproving glare from each of my parents.

  “You silly girl!”

  “You could have been killed!”

  But the starman let them get no farther.

  “I would have been killed, if she hadn’t pushed over the crates of bottles.”

  His words caused my parents to gasp in horror.

  “You knocked over the beer?”

  I blushed. It had been a really stupid thing to do, and I’d been lucky to escape. The starman joined us at the table as my parents made me recount exactly what I’d done and how I’d gotten away, and then I learned how the starman had survived.

  “Heroism must be contagious,” he said, his words making me blush, “because as soon as the vardigans had looked away, I was grabbed by this man from across the street. He had to have run all the way out into the square to get me, the stars know why. Anyway, he dragged me back and pulled me into this cellar he’d dug beneath his house.”

  “Mr. Cameron,” Boyce whispered, and I nodded.

  Our parents just looked puzzled. The cellar wasn’t something Mr. Cameron had chosen to share with the adults of the village, but he’d had a hard time keeping it a secret from us kids. Only Mrs. Cameron’s bribes of cookies and sweets had kept us quiet. No way did any of us want to be cut from her taste-testing team.

  The starman looked from Boyce to me and back again, and then he shrugged.

  “He’s got a tunnel all the way down to the river…”

  “That stupid man!” my mother exclaimed, but our father just smiled.

  “You know how he loved his fishing. He always said he’d find a way.”

  Mother glared at him, and turned back to Makron.

  “But I thought Allie said you’d come through the hedge.”

  “I did. Your Mr. Cameron would have taken me to the river, but I said I had to make sure the girl got away. He took some convincing, but, in the end, he got me to the field. The terachvor were waiting at the forest’s edge.”

  “Terachvor?”

  “You call them blacklegs,” the starman said, “and your Mr. Cameron’s been talking to them for a while.”

  “He what?” After that one exclamation, Dad was about as speechless as I’d ever seen him.

  “Talking to the terachvor,” the starman repeated, lifting up one of the black boxes. It’s where these handy little things came from. They’d been working on a way to talk, so that the next time the terachvor met some of your researchers they could communicate. They’ve never seen anyone sentient so terrified before.”

  “The council is going to kill him,” mama said, and the starman looked horrified.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” papa hastened to reassure him. “I’m sure they’ll only kill him a little bit.”

  His attempt at humor left us all silent, so he added.

  “I wonder how long they’ll give us to organize a new home.”

  “We can’t leave,” I said, thinking of the work we’d already done, and of the colony’s financial state. “We couldn’t afford to set up anywhere else.”

  Papa just shrugged, but Boyce looked heartbroken.

  “But we’ve only just got here!”

  To give the boy credit, he wasn’t asking why we’d have to leave, just mourning the loss of what had promised to be a beautiful home.

  “Easy now,” the starman said. “I don’t think the terachvor want you to leave. I think they realize just how useful it will be to have a human alliance to present to the worlds beyond. They’re not ignorant, you know. They’re probably even aware that the stars might have other people. You’ll have to ask. Either way, they want you to stay—or so I understand it. They just hadn’t gotten around to asking yet, which is what your Mr. Cameron was working on with them.”

  “With them,” papa said, laying one hand on mama’s shoulder, and settling the other over his heart. “He was working with them.”

  “And now he just might have found a way to save us all,” mama said, with a sniff. “Honestly, that man has the luck of the devil himself.”

  The starman watched the exchange.

  “You’re fortunate he does,” he said. “If he hadn’t been able to save a terachvor youngling, that happened to have fallen in the river, you might not have had a chance in all the stars of space.”

  “I knew there was a reason we let him come,” papa said, and it was mama’s turn to give him a teasing smile.

  “You mean, outside his ability to fix pretty much anything he sets his mind to?”

  The starman stared at them like he’d been hit by lightning.

  “I didn’t drop it!” he said. “That scheming old…”

  He sputtered to a stop, suddenly aware my parents were staring at him.

  “He took my transmitter!”

  Dad groaned. “He’s probably already called your ship, you realize…”

  “And they’ll have sent a half dozen message torps on the grounds at least one will make it through.”

  “Odyssey?” my dad asked, and he nodded.

  “Odyssey,” he said, and from the way relief colored his voice, he thought we were already safe, and our colony and alliance with the terachvor a done deal…and all because an old man liked to fish and had a soft spot for kids…even if they were spider kids.

  I couldn’t help it; I started to snicker.

  “When we get through this,” I said, “it’s going to take me forever to get it into the records.”