A man prowled by: one of the scouts. He was not much more than a shadow with tall boots. One shout from him and the whole hunting pack would be on Jean-Claude before he could limp to the edge of this draw.

Jean-Claude held still, barely breathing as the scout padded by. The insects buzzed louder. An itch on his leg turned out to be a large black beetle with glowing speckles climbing his trousers. Jean-Claude resisted the urge to kick and shake the thing off, for Travers’s scout still hunted nearby. The beetle crawled up his thigh and then his chest. As it drew closer to his head, he noted that the beetle itself was not speckled but rather bedecked in luminescent dust or pollen. Its tiny hooked feet scrabbled for purchase on his neck, grabbed his beard stubble and jabbed a hind leg in his ear before it finally found its way onto the rough bark of the tree.

The beetle disappeared into a hole in the trunk. There was a brief flash of light from the hole, as if the beetle had stepped into a well-lit house and closed the door behind it.

Curious and careful, Jean-Claude eased up so that his eye was level with the hole. With a twig, he prodded the recess. His prod pushed aside a flap made from a leaf. The inside of the trunk was hollow, and though his field of view was like staring through a keyhole, he could see a complex structure within. Tendrils like spiderwebs crisscrossed the space, and the outer wall was covered in something that looked like pale blue honeycomb. Many different sorts of insects crept, crawled, flew, and hopped around on whatever business the Builder had given them.

Isabelle would love this. She’d spend hours staring at it and taking notes, and counting things. He’d have to show it to her someday, if he was lucky enough to ever see her again. He ached with missing her and Marie and young Rebecca. Not knowing what happened to them on that barren skyland was a weight greater than all the pains of his body.

Jean-Claude pushed the leaf-gate a little wider for a better view, and his twig poked and popped one of the honeycombs. A sickly sweet and vinegar smell puffed from the hole. Every bug in the trunk went completely insane. Beetles clamped onto his stick, buzzing wasplike things stung the tip. Jean-Claude lurched back as long segmented creatures erupted from the holes all around the crown and poured down the side in angry, venomous streams. Midge-like specks of hate swarmed from the branches to bite and sting.

Jean-Claude ducked out from under the overhanging branches. The canopy seemed to flash as if it had lightning beneath it. All around, other umbrella trees answered in kind, and swarms of insects rose from them, answering the call to arms.