“And back then, once a month, as a family, we’d go out for an evening meal in Grassara’s Spice Bazaar, and we’d have meat as our main course. A whole piece of meat to eat myself, and one for my mother and one for my father.” She shook her head. “My mother was discontented even then. But I guess she always was and always will be. No matter how much we have, she wants more.”
“Sounds pretty normal to me,” Tats said quietly. She opened her eyes and was surprised to see that he had edged closer to her perch without her even feeling it. He was getting better at moving through the branches. Before she could compliment him on it, he asked, “So when did it all change?”
“It changed when my father started putting more of his time into trying to grow things. Seems like every year we had to move a bit higher and farther out.” She glanced at Tats. He sat astride the limb, with one ankle locked around his other leg. He looked secure if a bit uncomfortable. His attention to her face made her self-conscious. Was he staring at her scaling? At the tiny scales that outlined her lips, at the nub of fringe that ran along her jawline? She turned her face away from him and spoke to the trees. “The last place we lived before we came to the Cricket Cages was the Bird Nests. Those used to be the poorest part of Trehaug. But then the Tattooed came and then other newcomers, and we got pushed out of there.”
The houses in the Bird Nests had consisted of small rooms, woven of vine and lath, with airy narrow pathways that led down several levels before one reached the good wide walkways and branch paths. “We lived in the Bird Nests for only a couple of years before we saw a flood of artists and artisans moving in. A lot of them were Tattooed, new to the Rain Wilds and needing cheaper rents and neighborhoods where their neighbors would not complain about noise and parties and strange lifestyles.” Thymara smiled to herself. She had loved living in the Bird Nests as much as her mother had despised it. Artists displayed their creations on every branch. The poorest section of the city became rich in beauty. Wind chimes hung at every crossroads, the safety walls along the paths were tapestries of colored string and beads, and faces were painted on the rough bark of the tree branches that supported the flimsy homes. Even her family’s chambers became bright with color, for her father often was offered only barter for the small crops he managed to grow. Long before Diana earned a reputation as an inspired weaver, Thymara wore a sweater and scarf made by her clever fingers and the carved chest that held her clothing had been made by Raffles himself. She loved those things not because they were valuable, but because they were daring and new. It was only later that her mother would be able to sell them for prices that amazed them all, but did not console Thymara for their loss.
As always happens, or so her father said, the wealthy patrons of the artists began to frequent the Bird Nests. Not content to purchase merely what the artists made, the patrons began to buy their lifestyles as well. Soon the sons and daughters of the wealthier Rain Wild Trader families were living among them, behaving as if they were artists but creating nothing save noise, traffic, and a wild reputation for the Bird Nests. Their families were able to pay much higher rents than her father could afford. The wealthy folk who had holiday homes among them demanded safer walkways and wider branch roads, and so they were taxed accordingly. Shops and cafés moved into adjacent trees. The artists who had established themselves were delighted. They were becoming wealthy and well known. “But the high rents pushed us right out. We couldn’t afford to pay the taxes anymore, let alone eat in the cafés. We had to sell off all the art my father had received as barter, take what coin we could get, and move up again.” She craned her head and looked up. A few yellow lights in tiny cottages flickered above. “I suppose the next time we get pushed out we’ll end up in the Tops. You get light every day up there, but I hear the rooms rock in the wind almost all the time.”
“I don’t think I’d like all that swaying,” Tats agreed.
“Well, no. But I like it here in the Cricket Cages. We get plenty of rainwater, so we don’t have to haul it ourselves or buy it from the water carriers. My mother wove us a bathing hammock when we first moved here, and it’s lovely in the summer when the water is naturally warm. Moss grows along the edges, and we get visits from little frogs and butterflies and basking lizards. And it isn’t so far to climb to find the flowers that reach for the sunlight. When I can get those, my mother takes them down trunk to sell, in the markets where they hardly ever see the flowers from the Tops.
As if the mention of her had summoned her, her mother’s voice, sharp and angry, split the peace of the evening. “Thymara! Come in this minute. Now!”