“Hello,” Diamond said softly.

The hunter pivoted and dove from sight.

A flock of usher birds arrived, coming from several directions to form a loud happy flock. Maybe a hundred colorful bodies swirled in a one-minded mass. Diamond watched them, trying to understand the manners of the flock, but just as he seemed to be anticipating what would happen next, the flock dissolved. The ushers flew away on a dozen important courses, leaving single birds and several pairs chattering even louder about some vital, left-behind matter.

“Hello,” he repeated.

Unaccustomed to distances, his eyes were endlessly fooled. But he knew the ushers were tiny, and what flew beside the water and out in the open air had to be much, much larger. Birds were usually brilliantly colored, but the quickest birds were brownish green and difficult to see against the trees. And there were flyers that weren’t birds or insects, their bodies covered with brown or black fur while the wings looked like leather. Every animal had its manner of flight. Some turned long elegant circles while others hovered, and some tucked their wings and dove, and he watched one of the brown-green birds turn tiny before colliding with a smaller flyer that exploded in a spray of golden feathers.

Birds had raucous, important voices, and Diamond understood nothing they said. By contrast, the skin-winged creatures were silent, and one of them was especially large. After a few moments of watching, the boy realized that the giant was gliding in a wide arc that was bringing it in his direction. Chin on the rail, he studied the creature’s narrow face and the huge unblinking eyes. Even in the open air, the giant felt close, its body as big as a room yet tiny between the gigantic wings. But the leather was so thin that light passed through, revealing a lacework of skinny bones and veins like crooked ropes. Diamond had never imagined any creature so large, and being gigantic, that it would be so quiet. A soft swoosh of air was the only sound it made, each of its four black eyes constantly looking ahead, conspicuously ignoring the astonished boy who was cowering behind those little wood slats.

Suddenly a great pink mouth pulled wide, big enough to swallow boys and men, and that sleek long body steered into a cloud of tiny black insects, the entire cloud inhaled and then gone.

A thousand questions bubbled.

And Diamond remembered who wasn’t there, suffering that wrenching loss all over again.

The giant had passed.

Diamond rose up on his toes again, watching.

The world was air, and the air was full of trees. This was something he had always known, something so deeply embedded in his parents’ thinking that they couldn’t keep the eternal forest secret. Diamond had imagined the scene endless times, but nothing from his mind matched what stood before him. The falling water was a marvel. Every sound was complicated and important. He couldn’t count the animals, each intensely busy with its own great life. But even the largest creature was little more than a drop of blood and dab of meat beside the titanic pillars of living wood and pushing sap. How many trees? He called Marduk, “One,” and counted quickly and carefully, turning in a half-circle. Twenty-three mature trees were visible, plus three pole-like saplings, and between any two trunks were other trees standing in the shimmering distance that might never end. This magnificent realm was just a sliver of the world’s endless forest.

Trees made the world, feeding every mouth while supporting everything above and everything below. Four types of trees were closest. Most common were smooth brown cylinders like Marduk. Another variety bristled with stubby limbs tipped with dense clots of emerald-green leaves. A third tree sported tall ribs of bark running up and down the trunk, green growth clinging in the valleys, while the fourth species was deeply black save for half-domes of intense blue-green.

Mother had claimed that their home tree wasn’t exceptionally large. Yet Marduk looked like a great flat wall, part of something too large to measure. The wall reached upwards forever, and the bark that seemed smooth from a distance was pocketed with cavities and odd ridges, and every place that wasn’t perfectly vertical and slick was home to bunches of plants, exposed roots drinking from the air, birds roosting in the foliage, no substantial piece of this perfect tree left barren.

The next closest tree sported the same slick brown bark, and like Marduk, its body was sprinkled with little landings perched before curtained doors. Long walkways and brief walkways clung to the bark. There were hanging ropes like the one that Elata had climbed, while other ropes were moving. Moving ropes came in pairs, one lifting while its neighbor descended. Diamond didn’t see people at first. Again, distance made him into a fool. Then the eyes caught something tiny, like a midge held at arm’s length, except when he looked more carefully the anonymous bug turned into a grown woman.

Hands around his eyes, Diamond saw people walking across their landings, climbing the dangling ropes and sometimes riding the moving ropes up and down. One man came up quickly, and he was straight across from Diamond when he jumped to one side, his journey moving to a suspended walkway that led to the landing where the first woman waited.

The two people clung and kissed.

Diamond dropped his gaze, watching his feet and sandals.

Every time he looked at the world, new details begged to be noticed. He stared at his home with the face on the curtain and the one big window and the long hallway that led to his hidden room. Beside the window, a piece of the railing was missing. Diamond went to the gap, discovering a short rope ladder leading down to a narrow walkway. The walkway passed several more ladders leading up or down, and it ended with empty air and two thick ropes carrying people where they needed to be. Stout wooden platforms were fixed to the ropes, each big enough for two people to stand together, and there was a steady clatter as the ropes and platforms bumped against the tree’s bark, wearing it smooth and pale, and people rode past him and away, and he watched each of them.

This was where his father would appear, coming home.

The monkey squatted nearby, holding the railing with every hand and its eyes closed. It was sleeping, and it was dreaming. Smacking its lips, once again the happy voice said, “Good.”

The boy tried ignoring the animal. What mattered were the people coming into view. Each traveler caused his hope to build before it crashed, again and again, and after a while, when nobody was his father, Diamond began to watch for his mother too.

Where did she go, and why?

A familiar sick feeling took hold, his heart beating faster. He wanted to talk to someone. If he couldn’t find the voices he wanted, he would accept another. That’s why he approached the monkey, asking, “Did you see my mother?”

Lips smacked again.

He reached for the little monster.

“You don’t want to do that,” said a new voice.

The monkey woke with a jerk, growling at something above.

Diamond turned. A strange woman was hanging from the fixed rope. Elata was dangling above her. Despite the difference in ages and size, they looked like one another. That’s what he noticed before anything.

“That critter will bite you,” said the woman.

Diamond nodded, pulling his hand back.

“You’re waiting for your mother?”

He nodded.

The monkey climbed outside the railing, hanging over the open air, a thousand escape routes waiting.

“Do you really live here?” the woman asked skeptically.

“Yes.”

“I told you,” Elata said.

The woman jumped. She wasn’t as graceful as her daughter, but the motion was almost unconscious, bent legs and endless practice breaking her fall. Her daughter landed beside her, and they approached to within an arm’s length. Quietly, the woman said, “You’re not what I imagined.”