“Like what?”

“That we had to prove ourselves, so people would know we were men now, not boys any longer.”

“Why wouldn’t a girl feel that?” Her eyes had caught a glint of yellow. She pointed toward it, and he nodded. At the end of this branch, out over the river, a parasitic vine garlanded the tree. The weight of hanging yellow fruit sagged both vine and branches. It swayed and she saw the flicker of wings. Birds were feeding there, a sure sign the fruit was ripe. “I’m going out there,” she told him. “I don’t know if the branches will take your weight.”

“I’ll find out,” he replied.

“Your choice. But don’t follow me too closely.”

“I’ll be careful. And I’ll stick to my own branch.”

And he was. She ventured out onto the branch, and he transferred to one beside it. She crouched, digging her claws in as she ventured toward the vine. The farther she went, the more the branch sagged.

“It’s a long drop to the river, and shallow down there,” Tats reminded her.

“Like I don’t know,” she muttered. She glanced over at him. He was belly down on his branch, inching out doggedly. She could tell he was afraid. And she knew that he wouldn’t go back until she did.

Proving himself.

“Why wouldn’t a girl want to prove herself?”

“Well.” He gave a grunt and inched himself along. She had to admire his nerve. He was heavier than she was, and his branch was already beginning to droop with his weight. “A girl doesn’t have to prove herself. No one expects it of her. She just has to, you know, be a girl.”

“Get married, have babies,” she said.

“Well. Something like that. Not right away, the having babies part. But, well, I guess no one expects a girl to, well—”

“Do anything,” she supplied for him. She was as far out as she dared to go, but the fruit was barely within her reach. She reached out and took a cautious grip on a leaf of the vine. She pulled it slowly toward her, careful not to pull the leaf off. When it was near enough, she hooked the vine itself with her free hand. Carefully she scooted back on the branch, pulling the vine with her as she went. Most of the parasitic vines had very tough and sturdy stemwork. She’d be able to pull it in from here and pluck as much fruit as she wanted.

Tats saw that, and she credited his intelligence that he stopped risking himself immediately and backed along the branch. He sighed slightly, watching her. “You know what I mean.”

“I do. It didn’t used to be like that, with the early Traders. Women were among the toughest of the new settlers. They had to be, not only to live themselves but to raise their children.”

“So maybe having babies was how a girl proved herself, back then,” he pointed out, an edge of triumph in his voice.

“Maybe,” she conceded. “To some degree. But this was before any of the tree cities were built or Trehaug unearthed or any of it. It was just survival days at first, figuring out how to get drinkable water, how to build a house that would stay dry, how to make a boat that the river wouldn’t eat…”

“It all seems pretty obvious now.” He was working a smaller branch back and forth.

“It usually is, after someone else thinks of it.”

He grinned at her. He’d broken the branch free. Now he stripped it of most of its leaves and then used it to reach out and hook a different vine. Slowly and carefully, he pulled the vine toward him until he could catch hold of it. She twisted her mouth and then grinned back at him, conceding his cleverness. She opened her pouch and began to methodically strip fruit from the vine into it. “Anyway. Back then, women had to be able to do a lot of different things. Think of different ways to do things.”

“And the men didn’t?” he asked innocently.

She’d come to a bird-pecked fruit. She tugged it off, shied it at him, and went on picking. “Of course they did. But that doesn’t change my point.”

“Which is?” He’d opened his own pack and was loading it now.

What was her point? “That at one time, Trader women proved themselves just as men did. By surviving.” Her hands had slowed. She looked out through the leaves, over the river, into the distance. The far shore of the river was a misty line in the distance. She hadn’t realized how much it had widened until now. She tried to put her unruly thoughts in order. Tats was asking her the very same questions she’d been asking herself. She needed to formulate the answer for herself as much as she did for him.