“Sorry,” Leia murmured, dropping her hand to her side and feeling like an idiot.
[Chewbacca said in his message that you requirre sanctuary,] Ralrra continued, perhaps recognizing her embarrassment. [Come. I will show you the preparations we have made.]
Leia’s eyes flicked to Chewbacca and Salporin, still clinging to each other. “Perhaps we should wait for the others,” she suggested, a little uncertainly.
[Therre will be no dangerr.] Ralrra drew himself up to his full height. [Leiaorganasolo, you must understand. Without you and yourr people many of us would still be slaves to the Empirre. Slaves, orr dead at theirr hand. To you and yourr Republic we owe a life debt.]
“Thank you,” Leia said, feeling the last bit of residual tension draining away. There was a great deal about Wookiee culture and psychology that was still opaque to her; but the life debt, at least, she understood very well. Ralrra had formally committed himself to her safety now, that commitment backed up by Wookiee honor, tenacity, and raw strength.
[Come,] Ralrra growled, gesturing toward what looked like an open-cage liftcar at the edge of the platform. [We will go to the village.]
“Certainly,” Leia said. “That reminds me-I was going to ask how you keep the village in place. Do you use repulsorlifts?”
[Come,] Ralrra said. [I will show you.]
The village was not, in fact, being held up by repulsorlifts. Nor with unipods, tractor anchorlines, or any other clever scheme of modern technology. Which made it all the more sobering for Leia to realize that the Wookiees’ method was, in its own way, more sophisticated than any of them.
The village was held up by branches.
[It was a great task, a village of this size to build,] Ralrra told her, waving a massive hand upward at the latticework above them. [Many of the branches at the level desired werre removed. Those which remained then grew strongerr and fasterr.]
“It looks almost like a giant spiderweb,” Leia commented, peering from the liftcar at the underside of the village and trying not to think about the kilometers of empty space directly beneath them. “How did you mesh them together like that?”
[We did not. Through theirr own growth they arre a unity.]
Leia blinked. “Excuse me?”
[They have grown togetherr,] Ralrra explained. [When two wroshyr branches meet, they grow into one. Togetherr then they sprout new branches in all directions.]
He growled something under his breath, a word or phrase for which Leia had no translation. [It is a living reminderr of the unity and strength of the Wookiee people,] he added, almost to himself.
Leia nodded silently. It was also, she realized, a strong indication that all the wroshyr trees in this bunch were a single giant plant, with a unified or at least an intermixed root system. Did the Wookiees realize that? Or had their obvious reverence for the trees forbidden such thinking and research?
Not that curiosity would help them all that much in this case. Dropping her gaze, she peered down into the hazy dimness beneath the liftcar. Somewhere down there were the shorter wroshyrs and hundreds of other types of trees that made up the vast jungles of Kashyyyk. Several different arboreal ecosystems were reputed to exist in the jungle, arranged in roughly horizontal layers descending toward the ground, each layer more deadly than the one above. She didn’t know whether the Wookiees had ever even made it all the way down to the surface; it was for sure that no one who had would have taken the time for leisurely botanical studies.
[They arre called kroyies,] Ralrra said.
Leia blinked at the odd non sequitur. But even as she opened her mouth to ask what he was talking about, she spotted the double wedge of birds flying swiftly through the sky beneath them. “Those birds?” she asked.
[Yes. Once they werre a prize food to the Wookiee people. Now even the poorr may eat them.] He pointed toward the edge of the village above them, to the haze of light coming from the searchlights she’d seen during their approach. [Kroyies will come to those lights,] he explained. [Hunterrs therre await them.]
Leia nodded understanding; she’d seen visual lures of varying degrees of sophistication used to attract food animals on other worlds. “Don’t all those clouds interfere with their effectiveness, though?”
[Through the clouds they work best,] Ralrra said. [The clouds spread the light. A kroyie will see it from great distances and come.]
As he spoke, the double wedge of birds banked sharply, climbing toward the clouds overhead and the lights playing against them. [Even so, you see. Tonight we shall perhaps dine on one of them.]
“I’d like that,” she said. “I remember Chewie saying once that they were delicious.”
[Then we must return to the village,] Ralrra said, touching the liftcar’s control. With a creak of the cable, it started upward. [We had hoped to shelterr you in one of the morre luxurious homes,] he commented as they started upward. [But Chewbacca would not allow it.]