“So will I.” Turning at a sudden thought, Masurathoo found himself searching the surrounding trees and deadwood for waltzing black rhizomorphs. None were to be seen. That did not mean, he realized, that the pannula was not present. Its mycelium could be running through the body of the decaying tree just off to his left or through the fallen log under his feet. If it was as vast an organism as Hasa had suggested, it could be everywhere around them.
“Coincidence. We have just been traveling in the right direction all along.”
“Right direction, yes,” Jemunu-jah agreed. “Original direction we chose, not. How do one give thanks to a fungus?”
“It’s coincidence.” The Deyzara was insistent—but not as insistent as before.
Peering across the river, the villagers had been astonished to see three strangers staggering out of what they had believed to be uninhabited forest. While their dialect was distinctive, Jemunu-jah had no trouble communicating with them. Hasa and Masurathoo managed less well. It did not matter. What was important was that the villagers were friendly, distant relatives of the minor but well-known Kioumatii clan. The hunting party of S’Kio was happy to bring the strangers back to their village.
It was a rudimentary community, Jemunu-jah saw immediately. The dwellings in the trees were suspended above the water by cables of woven vines, loopers, and lianas, not imported strilk. Few signs of modernity and Commonwealth culture had penetrated this far south. There were a handful of advanced tools and utensils, sheets of lightweight rain-shedding fabric, a couple of vermin-proof food storage lockers, and one thing more.