On Blue's waters

“They have a lean-to on the bank, down where the land flattens out and the water slows down.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Can you tell me where the river goes after that?”

He shook his head. “Sinks into the ground, maybe. It’s pretty sandy all around here. But I don’t know, and it might reach the sea. I didn’t follow it.”

“We’re going to hunt here, for greenbucks or whatever we can find that can be shot and eaten. What do you think of our chances?”

He hesitated, scanning the monotonous expanse of thickly spaced bushes and scrubby trees just as I had earlier. “Not much, but I could be wrong.”

“Did you see any game?”

He shook his head again.

“What did you see? I mean here, where we are now.”

“Trees, mostly.” Before I could stop him, he had started down the dune toward the sloop. I watched him for a moment or two, then clambered and slid down the other side, reaching the bottom just in time to meet Seawrack and Babbie, who had walked around the end.

“I was going to climb up there after you,” she said, “but it hurt my feet, and our Babbie sank down in it. Sand that’s full of sharp little rocks belongs under the water. Could you see much from up there?”

“All sorts of things,” I told her, meaning more than the mere geography I had observed. “Some of which I don’t want to talk about. Not yet, at least.”

I scratched my beard. “Seawrack, I plan to hunt due west, which will mean we’ll be walking almost parallel to the shore for a long way, but tend gradually inland. The nearer to the mountains we get, the better the hunting is likely to be. Do you still want to come?”

She nodded, and we set out.

I tried more than once to show her the mountains, but in every place we stopped our view was obstructed by leaves and branches. “It’s going to be horribly easy to lose our way,” I told her. “We’ll have to stop and look at the sun wherever it can be seen. The boy says there’s a river, though, and we can follow that-if we can find it.”

“Did he kill something?”

That called for a flat lie, and I supplied it, saying that in spite of his boasts I thought that he had really eaten raw shellfish.

We started off again, but had not walked far when Seawrack asked whether Krait had met any of the people who had built the fires we had seen the first night. I replied that I believed he had, but that he had been unwilling to tell me anything about them.

“Aren’t you willing to tell me either?” She was following me as we made our way through the tangled trees, but apparently my voice had been all the clue she needed.

“I’m willing, because I’m very worried about you as well as worried about us both. I don’t quite know how to go about it, however, because I don’t actually know anything about this part of the whorl and its people. Everything I might confide is guesswork.”

“Then tell me your guesses.” It was a demand; and Babbie, who had been ranging ahead of us, stopped and looked back at us, ears spread.

I took a deep breath, more than half certain that Seawrack knew more about the fires and their builders than I did. “To start with, I don’t believe they were human beings.”

“But you’re not sure.”

“No, I’m not. Krait said he met some people along this river I’d like to find, a good long way from here. According to his account, he must have gotten pretty far inland. Whqever built the fires would have been much nearer.”

“Didn’t he see them?”

“I don’t know,” I told Seawrack. “He didn’t want to say. If you’d like my guess, I think he knew who or what they were and avoided them.” She would have questioned me further if I had allowed it, but I told her that our noise would frighten the game, if there was any, and that she would have to be quiet or wait on the sloop with Krait.

About noon (squinting up at the sun every chance I got kept me very conscious of the passage of time) we struck the little river and stopped to drink. Its water was clean and cold and good. Seawrack asked, “Are we going to follow this now?” and I told her we were.

“You want to find the people the boy found?”

“If I can.” I had stopped drinking and was taking off my boots. “For me the easiest way will probably be to wade through the shallows.”

I waited for her to speak, but she did not.

“Are you going to do that too, instead of swimming?”

She nodded.

“There’ll be less brush for me to deal with.” I had been forced to cut our way with Sinew’s knife in half a dozen places. “And if I try to hike through the brush next to it, I’m liable to lose it every chain or two. The people that Krait met lived alongside it, he said. If I lose it and find it again upstream of their camp, I’ll miss them completely.”

She nodded again. “Maybe they’ll give us something to eat.”

“Exactly. We need food, more clothing and blankets, or even hides. Something to keep us warm. Boots or shoes for you, if we can get them.”