"They're a chance," she whispered. "Morgan's sure."
With daylight they saw four flyers patrolling instead of the usual one. At their backs colossal blackish-gray, deeply rugose tree trunks eighty feet in diameter rose up and up without a branch for many hundreds of feet. Then branches jutted out enormously and the colorful cascade of forest-top epiphytes came down the side and hung over their heads a thousand feet above.
Pia opened the food basket and they ate, seated on a bank. She wore her brown dress, her finest, he had learned, and she had new red shoes. She was quiet, as if tranced.
Cole remembered the picnic on the forest top, the secret island of beauty and innocence, and his heart stirred. He saw that the food basket was the same one. He did not tell her his thoughts.
They talked of trivial things or were silent for long periods. He held her hand. Once she roused herself to say, "Tomorrow, about this time, Uncle Garth will come looking for us." Shortly after, she gasped and caught his arm, pointing.
He peered, finally made a gestalt of broken outlines through the shrubbery. It was a stomper, swinging its head nervously.
"It smells us," she whispered. "Oh Flinter, forgive me darling. Take off your clothes, quickly!"
She undressed rapidly and hid her clothes. Cole undressed too, fear prickling his skin, remembering what Bidgrass had told him. The stomper moved nearer in a crackle of brush and stopped again.
Man and girl knelt trembling under a fan of red-orange fungus. The girl broke off a piece and motioned the man to do the same.
"When it comes, pretend to eat," she breathed, almost inaudibly. "Don't look up and don't say a word. Morwenna be with us now."