Death Fang’s Bane made mouth noises at him. One of these was the one she used as his name; the rest was only noise. Yet Climbs Quickly sensed concern in her mind glow, a desire to comfort, to reassure.

She made more mouth noises. Climbs Quickly felt fairly certain that she understood he was not merely repeating his warning about the fire, but a frustration that matched his own indicated that his new message was not reaching her.

“Bleek!” he said desperately, wishing the sound carried different meanings the way mouth noises seemed to do. “Bleek!”

“Easy, Lionheart. Easy,” Stephanie said soothingly.

The treecat flowed down from her seat back onto her lap. Then he stood and turned, his flexible spine meaning that his feet could remain oriented forward even as he turned to face her. He placed his remaining true-hand on her face and looked deeply into her brown eyes with his green.

“Bleek,” he said with a sort of pathetic intensity. Then, gently but firmly, he grasped two locks of her short, curly brown hair and began tugging them.

Stephanie heeded the prompt-not to do so would have been to have her hair pulled, since the treecat was very strong. She found she was looking down.

“Karl,” she said, her voice coming just a little choked from the tight angle of her throat, “I think he’s telling us that whatever has his attention is lower.”

“Well,” Karl replied. “That’s a given, since we’re flying above the tree canopy.”

Despite the sardonic tone of his reply, Karl began guiding the air car lower down. Stephanie felt precisely when Climbs Quickly let go of her hair.

“Okay, Karl! I think we’re at the right elevation. Can we level off here?”

“Pretty well,” Karl replied. “There’s a lot of mature near-pine here and they tend to leave space between as they develop. If it was picketwood, no way. What direction does he want me to go?”