The ravine was ten or more dragon-lengths from the cliff edge, and Moreta was suddenly filled with apprehension. She hadn’t cleared the bushes completely last autumn, but then the moons had been in a different conjunction and the Red Star was higher in the west. No one was more relieved than she to break onto the lip of the ravine and see needlebushes thick with brown spikes. Above them the rainforest closed over the sky. The ravine, winding away to the north and the south, had been caused by an ancient earthquake, and the
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shallow soil over solid rock could not support many of the lush rainforest plants though creepers draped its sides, keeping well clear of needlethom bushes. Alessan commented on that.
“The needlethom is omnivorous,” she said. “The spines are poisonous through spring and summer. They’ll suck the juice from anything that comes near them until the autumn when the thick stem of the plant has stored enough moisture and food, vegetable or animal. The vine grows during the winter and has to shed its old corona or leave too many unprotected gaps. I understand that the flesh is tasty.”
Oklina shuddered, but Desdra went down on one knee by the specimen they were examining.
“During spring and summer the bush has an odor to attract snakes and insects. The hollow spines suck essential juices from the creatures the plant impales, and also rainwater. See, on that one there, the top is scarred. Some animal broke off the spines. That’ll make it easier to harvest.”
“You said the spines are poisonous.” B’lerion was not too keen to start picking.
“In spring and summer, but right now the poison has dried up. See where new thorn buds are capping the scarred one? It’s the new growth that forces the spines off. So all you do is” With a sweep of her hand starting in the scar, she cleared a swath of needlethoms, holding the handful for all to see. “Very simple, but don’t get too ambitious. Clear a small area first to give your hand room. You don’t want to tick off the point and you want to avoid the fine hairs on the skin of the plant. They can cause an irritation and possibly an inflam-mation that would be rather difficult for us to explain.”
“We can’t transport them like that,” Capiam said, looking at Moreta’s handful.
“No. We have to wrap them in the fronds of the ging tree. Slice the edge, and sap from the frond provides its own glue. Very handy, and the fronds are thick and spongy enough to cushion and protect the needlethom. It takes only a moment to strip a bush, so it might be more efficient if we paired off, one to pick and the other to pack.”
“I’ll pack for you, Moreta,” Alessan suggested, and, taking his belt knife out of its sheath, went off to hack down the nearest ging frond.
“A grand idea,” B’lerion said, his eyes dancing as he laid a posses—
260 Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern
sive hand on Oklina’s shoulder. “If you don’t mind working with a one-handed man?”
“My dear journeywoman, pick or pack?” Capiam asked in high good humor as he bowed to Desdra. “Though we can switch off as the whim takes us.”
“I daresay I’ve picked more often than you, good Master Capiam.” She laughed as she led Capiam off down the ravine. “You’d best see how it’s done.”
“Take the tenderer fronds, Alessan,” Moreta cautioned. “They’ve more sap and suppleness.”
He had cut several, muttering about doing hatchet work with a table knife, when Moreta showed him how to break the frond off at the stem of the tree with a quick downward jerk. She laid the ncedle-thoms on the petiole that was sufficiently concave to form a bed, and, deftly cutting away the excess leaf, she closed the needlethoms in a tough, tight little envelope, sealing the ends with the sap of the severed frond.
“No wonder you said we’d have everything in the rainforest. It’s easy once you get the trick of it.”
“That’s all there is to it. Just a knack.” She grinned up at him. “That package has roughly two hundred needlethoms. I tried to count as I picked but my concentration is abominable. Time distortion, I expect. Some of the bigger bushes will have thousands of spikes, each big enough for the largest runners on the continent.”