He was packing when the new signature entered the Sunken Green.
It had been watching him from the undergrowth since morning, not out of any particular interest, just habit at this point, the same way it tracked everything that moved through its territory. He was moving better than he had three weeks ago, the warmth signature steady and full, the careful way he placed his feet through the undergrowth replaced by something more confident. Another day maybe two and he would be ready to travel.
The book was already sitting outside the root circle.
It had read the title on the cover the evening before when he placed it there, the marks different from anything in its collection, thicker and more formal than the pages he had been leaving. It had not touched it yet. Just read the cover from a distance and gone back to the current work and thought about it while the groove deepened its slow way through the night.
Then the new signature came in from the east.
Fast. Moving through the Sunken Green with the kind of certainty that meant it knew where it was going and had been here before or somewhere enough like it to make no difference. The current inside it was the strongest it had read since the groups that had fought in the flat area, denser than the hunter from before, sitting compressed and ready rather than low and quiet.
Not hunting beasts.
It read the direction the signature was moving and drew a line through the forest in whatever it thought with and the line ended at the root circle.
The person had stopped packing.
He had felt it too somehow, or heard something, because he was standing very still inside the root circle with his current doing something it had never done before, pulling slightly inward, trying to concentrate the way strong currents concentrated before movement. There was not enough there to concentrate properly. Just the attempt, thin and strained, the body trying to do something the current was too weak to support.
It watched the strong signature close the distance through the undergrowth.
Not my business.
The person had been here three weeks and was leaving today or tomorrow and whatever had followed him into the Sunken Green was his problem and had been his problem before he arrived and would continue being his problem after he left. The Sunken Green was not his forest in any way that created obligation. The food had been practical, keeping a warm signature nearby that larger threats would read and factor into their approach calculations. Useful. Not personal.
The strong signature was maybe two hundred body lengths out and closing.
It thought about the pages stacked with its books. Forty three of them. More language gained in three weeks than in the previous four months combined. Words for ideas it had not had before, grammar structures it was still working through, combinations that were opening up the two books it had not been able to read properly since finding them on the road.
Not relevant.
One hundred and fifty body lengths.
It thought about him sitting against the root talking to the forest because he did not know what else to do and saying he would leave when he was strong enough and meaning it.
Also not relevant.
One hundred body lengths. The signature was not slowing down.
It looked at the person standing in the root circle with his thin strained current trying to be something it was not yet and calculated the outcome of the next few minutes without the variable of its own involvement.
Clear. Fast. Not in his favor.
It was already moving before it decided to move, low through the undergrowth, cutting toward the strong signature's path at an angle, reading the terrain ahead, the roots and stones and the thin wet ground near the small runoff channel that cut through this part of the forest after rain.
The channel.
It changed direction slightly and moved faster.
The strong signature was seventy body lengths out when it reached the channel and found what it was looking for, a section where the bank had undercut itself and the ground above looked solid but was not, a thin crust of compacted leaves and soil over open air, the kind of thing that held the weight of something small and collapsed under anything larger.
It positioned itself on the far bank and waited.
Fifty body lengths. Forty. The signature was moving in a straight line, fast and confident, not reading the ground because it had no reason to read the ground.
Thirty body lengths.
It watched the signature's path and the channel and the undercut bank and did the calculation one more time.
Twenty.
The ground gave way on the third step past the channel edge, not all at once but enough, the crust folding inward and the leg going through to the knee and the forward momentum doing the rest, the body pitching forward hard into the channel bank with a sound that carried through the still forest air.
It was already gone back into the undergrowth before the person in the root circle heard the impact.
The strong signature was down. Current spiking with pain and then pulling inward hard, the concentration it had been carrying releasing unevenly. Not seriously hurt. The leg had gone through soft wet soil not rock. But down and tangled and needing time to get clear and recalibrate.
Time was enough.
It circled wide back toward the root circle through the undergrowth and found the person still standing inside it, facing the direction of the sound, his current thin and strained and useless.
It passed close enough that its scales brushed the outer root of his circle without slowing down and kept going toward its own territory.
Behind it the strong signature was pulling itself out of the channel slowly. Angry. The current compressed tighter than before, all of it pulled inward, trying to locate what had just happened. It would find the undercut bank and the collapsed crust and read it as bad ground and nothing more because there was nothing more to find.
It reached its territory and checked the books were undisturbed and lay down beside them and turned the tongue inward and found the speck.
The current moved left and slightly forward on the first try. Then the second. Then the third.
Seven times out of ten now.
The groove was getting there.
Behind it somewhere in the northern part of the Sunken Green a person was picking up a book from outside an empty root circle and a strong signature was working its way back out of the forest and neither of them would ever know what the other had just missed.
It worked on the current until the tiredness came and stopped for the night.