The rain had stopped and the sky was the deep gray-mauve of pre-dawn. In an hour the sun would stand full on the horizon. No one was on watch. She scampered to the shelter. “Koz?” She peered over the edge; he was not among the tumbled bodies of the sleepers. “Koz!” Run away? Not likely here. Over her hands, clutching the rim, a tendril of crimson runner-vine slithered, branching among the hairs of her fingers, rooting between them prickling as they went. She stared at it for one astonished second and pulled away. It came with her hands, binding them. She wrenched and bit until it broke, dragging away a great creeper swarming over the tree buttresses; it writhed and quivered at every differentiation of heat and moisture in its movement. As she pulled she heard the gasping. “Koz! Koz! Oh, get up, get up! All of you! Get up!” Koz was wedged between the buttresses and the branch floor in a twisted shape; the red tendrils had swarmed over his arms, neck and head, run into his gasping mouth, his nostrils, ears, the corners of his eyes, his braids of hair.
