Chapter 336: The Nest

The drag marks crossed the shelf toward the overhangs.

Ren followed them with Eira behind him and Vesper last, Mistwhisker held against her chest. Vesper looked back along their approach between checks of the ground ahead. The furrow held its shape in the damp soil, vanished over bare rock, and appeared again beside a strip of crushed growth.

Warm air drifted from beneath the nearest overhang. Pale vapor rose above the water and thinned in the cold.

The marks reached a rooted margin at the water’s edge. One side had been torn open. Beyond that, Ren could no longer follow the furrow.

— • —

Vesper stayed where the shelf gave her a view back toward the head of the channel. Eira waited beside her while Ren approached the water.

It lay shallow over rock, beneath an overhang that sheltered it on three sides. A mat of roots followed the bank from the disturbed ground to the edge of the pool. Along the sheltered margin, several flat stones rested among those roots.

One stone had been pulled partly out of place. It lay tilted across a crack, with a haul strap trapped beneath its raised edge. Water entered through the gap and ran into a corner screened by the remaining stones.

Ren crouched to examine it. The strap resembled the one beneath the abandoned root mass. The roots here had also been cut, their ends exposed beside the displaced stone. He could see how someone had begun to pull the margin apart, but nothing identified them or showed what else they might have removed.

The bed of rock beneath the water appeared undisturbed. The damage he could see was in the cover above it.

Something moved at the far side of the pool.

He had taken the broad, low shell for another wet stone. A soft fringe rippled along its rim as it came forward, its limbs working beneath it. It stopped at the exposed corner.

Several smaller shapes lay close together under the remaining cover. One at the edge rocked whenever the current entered through the gap.

The adult pushed a loose piece of cover toward it with the edge of its shell. It pressed the piece down and settled over the young. After a moment, water worked beneath the cover and shifted it again.

The adult moved it back before turning toward Ren.

He remained on the dry edge and asked the System privately about the creature.

[DANGER TO HOST: LOW.]

That assessment was for him. He kept the others back and left the creature room to move between the exposed corner and its young.

[IMMATURE CORE SUPPORT: COMPATIBLE UNDER SUITABLE CONDITIONS.]

It could provide the kind of support the princess needed. The conditions still mattered, as did whether it would willingly leave this nest.

Ren watched the fringe stir against the rock. The name in the supplier’s record came back to him.

"Broodshell," he said quietly.

— • —

"Eira. Come to the near edge. Keep the way to the young clear."

She approached beside the outer shallows and knelt where the rooted margin was whole. Her kit went onto dry rock. Before leaving the landing, she had packed the two declared samples in it for comparison with the site.

She put a hand into the water, held it there, then checked another point closer to the edge. Afterward she opened the habitat record beside her own notes.

"Warm and shallow, under stone cover," she said. "That part matches."

Her eyes moved from the description to the low shell and the soft fringe along its rim. Beneath it, the young remained pressed together.

"The body and the way it shelters them fit too. I’d treat it as a likely match." She looked toward the displaced stone. "We haven’t seen this water through a full change of flow. I can’t tell you the young are healthy from here, or whether they can travel."

"And home?"

"The warmth is close to what I recorded behind the barrier. We’d need to check it again."

Ren looked at the nest around the adult: the young beneath it, the rooted margin, and the cover that broke the current. Lifting the broodshell would bring none of those with it. Each time the water disturbed the corner, its attention went straight back there.

— • —

Eira opened the sediment container on a flat stone away from the nest.

She set a small pinch of the sand and silt beside loose sediment taken from the outer shallows. She spread both with her fingertip, checked the grains, then moistened them with a little site water and pressed each together.

"Similar texture," she said. "This has more fine silt." She pointed to the site’s sediment. "The grains in ours are a little coarser, but it holds together."

She opened the water sample next. It had cooled during their journey; its temperature could tell them nothing about the pocket now. She compared its appearance with the water at the edge of the pool, then closed it again.

"Both look clear. That’s about all I can get from the water here. The sediment gives us more to compare."

She put the sealed water container back into her kit. The substrate sample remained open on the rock.

Ren looked at it, then at the broodshell. The sample had been packed for this comparison. He could also let the creature investigate it, without taking any of the ground from beneath its young.

"Leave that one open," he said.

He carried it to the edge of the shallows, outside the rooted margin. A small recess in the rock held the container upright above the passing water. He checked that it wouldn’t tip, took his hands away, and backed up until the way between the nest and the container was clear.

The broodshell turned toward it but stayed over the young.

— • —

Water continued entering beneath the cracked cover stone. The small shape at the corner shifted against the bed with each stronger push.

Ren moved along the bare rock on the outside of the nest and stopped an arm’s length from the loose stone. He could see the hollow where its edge had rested before it was pried up. The roots beside that hollow had been severed.

He extended his hand toward the stone, keeping clear of it, and indicated the direction it would need to move.

The broodshell came forward and settled between him and the raised edge. Its fringe spread against the rock, filling the space his hand would have to cross.

Ren withdrew his hand. He had touched neither the stone nor the nest. He stepped back along the way he had come and waited beside Eira.

The adult stayed at the edge for a moment, facing them.

Vesper glanced over from her watch. Ren shook his head once, and she returned her attention to the approach. During the pauses she had made short notes about the damaged margin and Eira’s checks; the rest could wait until they were back at the landing.

Ren checked his slate. They still had time for the descent beside the channel, the exposed shoulder, and the road back, with a margin for the broken sections of path. He would have to preserve that margin.

"We haven’t established whether the young can travel," he told Eira. "We need to know that before planning to move any of them."

She closed her kit and stayed beside him.

The broodshell turned away from them and moved toward the open container. Ren held still as it crossed the short stretch of shallows. At the rock recess, it stopped with its fringe just below the rim.

It remained there for several breaths. Then the loose cover shifted behind it, and one of the young rocked in the entering current.

The broodshell left the container untouched and settled over its young again.