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thought it was a tree that brought him luck. The Veed's raking hands curled around his thighs and he felt the blood spring out into a thin line of pain and he jerked the knife free of his belt and slashed the coarse Veed flesh and felt the hands recoil instantly. In the brief moment this gave him, Roan was scrambling up, swinging on a rope vine to the next tree. Around him gracyls fluttered and squawked. The cry of the wounded Veed had brought his fellows to his side; and there were indignant conferences and hisses of outrage. No gracyl had ever dared to use a weapon against a Veed.
    Roan listened, catching a word here and there. They were out without permission, because young Veed were always carefully protected. So they couldn't complain to their elders about the wounded Veed. This meant they had to take their vengeance on the spot.
    But they couldn't get up into the trees because their bodies were too awkward for climbing and they couldn't throw things up into the trees without hitting each other.
    Several of the Veed went over to one of the slenderest of the trees, where three gracyls hung in the branches like clumps of moss, and began pushing the trunk back and forth. The gracyls screeched, clinging tighter in their panic, and as the tree gained momentum, one of them fell to the ground, too panicked to try to fly.
    The Veed were gleeful. It was like shaking the purplefruit off a tree. Several Veed grabbed the gracyl and Roan carefully didn't watch what they did with him.
    "Fly to the next tree," Roan called to the other two gracyls. "All you have to do is stay calm."
    But they couldn't. They could only cling and screech, the way gracyls always did when they were frightened. They couldn't change, even to save their lives.
    Another gracyl fell.
    Other Veed were starting on other trees.
    "Make for the thickest trees," Roan called. "They can't shake the thickest ones."
    But no gracyl moved. Roan burned with the frustration of it all, the helplessness of the gracyls and the blunt cruelty of the Veed. Where was Clanth? Perhaps he was already safe in a broad-trunked tree.
    "Clanth!" he called, but there was no answer. Perhaps Clanth couldn't hear him, or perhaps he was clinging to a tree, squawking with terror, like the other gracyls. But he had always been a little different; surely he would save himself. Then Roan remembered. Clanth couldn't fly.
    Roan's tree began to sway.
    He looked around for a rope vine, to make it to the broader trees toward the center of the grove, but there was no rope vine. He cursed himself for not having cut one and looped it through his belt when he was in the first tree. But it was too late.
    Well, it would be easy enough for him to hang on. He stood on one branch and held on to the next, watching the gleeful Veed below, their teeth gleaming as they smiled their crocodile smiles, their crests swaying contentedly.
    Something dropped past Roan and fell into the waiting arms of a Veed. They gasped to see it and so did Roan. It was all white and for a moment Roan thought it must be a human child.
    That was the moment he leaped.
    He leaped for the back of the Veed holding the screaming white creature and he drove his knife deep into the Veed's right eye, through to the brain, and the Veed died beneath him.
    Roan pulled the knife out and stood on the dead Veed, the white creature clinging to his neck, and stood to meet the slashing blows of the other Veed.
    But they backed away from him.
    They were in awe and fear of him, that he had wounded one Veed and killed another. They had seen many a gracyl die, and that was funny. But they had never seen a Veed die before; they hadn't thought anybody could kill a Veed.
    They fled to take revenge on more gracyls. It was safer.
    Roan pulled the white creature from his neck and looked at it. She was a white gracyl.
    "I'm not dead," she said wonderingly. Gracyl fear didn't last long when the danger was over. "I knew I was going to be broken and I prepared to die and