Alex’s first instinct was to deny what she said, but he couldn’t. He thought back to that happy day, sitting on the grass where their little house now sat. The warm sunshine had been on their back and all had seemed right with the world, even with future pronouncements of doom.
If he had known this was approaching, would it have tinged all the intervening days with sadness?
Yes. Of course it would.
Finally, Alex said, “You’re right. But, I can’t give up.”
“I would never tell you that you have to give up, or even that you should. It is one way of showing Senta-eh how much she means to you. Although,” she added with a mischievous smile, “she already knows. I can see it every time you are together. So, railing against this fate is fine, Manta-ak. Just don’t let that effort get in the way of savoring what you have.”
Alex absorbed the wisdom of those words and realized that was true of everything. He had a strong tendency to be single-minded. He always had. When he had enlisted as an 18X Special Forces candidate and then passed selection, that had absorbed all his attention. When he had returned home, without a single focus, he felt lost and adrift. He knew he had let that aimlessness wash him away from Mindy and even Amy.
Here in Kragdon-ah, this singularity of focus had continued. Becoming accepted as a hunter, building his army to attack Denta-ah, pursuing Lanta-eh’s kidnappers. It had all been one specific goal and mission at a time, to the detriment of all else.
I don’t know if I can ever change that.
“Thank you, Lanta-eh. You are the sister I never had.”
In another of her adopted habits, she hugged him tight, then laid her head against his shoulder. They sat like that for a long time.
“Still,” Alex said, “there’s got to be something I can do. I cannot just sit here and wait for her to die.”
Lanta-eh drew a deep breath and said, “It will not do you any good, but I know of one thing you can do. It will put you in motion. It will make you feel like perhaps you are achieving something, but in the end, it will change nothing.”
To Alex’s desperate ears, that sounded like hope.
“How do you know I can’t change our future? Can you see everything?”
“Think of it like this. I am standing on a hill. Below me, there are valleys, plateaus, and other, smaller hills. As I look out, I cannot see everything that happens in the valleys, or on the other side of a plateau. But, I can see the final hill and I see that all paths lead to that result.”
Alex shrugged this off as he often did with Lanta-eh’s prognostications. He believed he could always change any path.
“What is this thing? What can I do?”
“There is a place that the holy men told me about. I have seen it in my dreams. It is a place where others from your time have lived. I do not believe there is anything there that could help, but it is possible.”
“Yes, but you believe that nothing will change Senta-eh’s fate. You believe there is nothing I can do, and nothing will help.”
“I know it will not. That is why I think you should spend your time savoring the time you have with Senta-eh.”
“Our greatest times together have been when we are on an adventure. Staying at the cliffside, raising krinta is fine, and there is goodness in that. But she and I are adventurers first. If nothing else, this could be one last adventure, one last chance to make memories I will carry forever.”
“No one is so easy to convince as he who wants to believe.”
Alex ignored her.
“Where is this place?”
“It is only a few day’s ride, but I don’t know how to tell you to get there. I can see the route in my mind, but I cannot translate it.”
Alex grunted in frustration, then turned and looked meaningfully at her.
Lanta-eh smiled, dipped her head, and said, “Yes, I suppose it could be one last adventure for the three of us.”
Chapter Twenty-SixHidden
By noon the next day, Lanta-eh, Alex, and Senta-eh had traveled south and then east fifteen miles. This was a part of Kragdon-ah that Alex was not familiar with. They did not hunt here, simply because it was too far away.
Lanta-eh had insisted that they should bring more water skins than they normally would, as there would not be many chances to refill them.
As they headed farther east, the deep green of Winten-ah turned brown. The thought occurred to Alex that if the Zisla-ta had swarmed over this area, it might not have made any difference. There seemed to be nothing but rocks, sand, and dry riverbeds.
Senta-eh had not wanted to come on this trek. She preferred to stay in Winten-ah, where she could continue to train her young band of archers. Lanta-eh had told her it would only take a few days to get where they were going, though, and they both agreed Alex would feel better if he knew he had done all he could.
The first night, they camped out beside a large boulder. They didn’t bother to build a fire because they didn’t have anything to cook. No furry creature had crossed their path since they left the forest behind. They stopped at the boulder because although there was no running water nearby, they did find a brackish pond where their horses could drink.
Monda-ak drank a bit from the same source then gave Alex a baleful look. He was used to better. Alex shared his jerky with him and that mollified him. Eventually, Monda-ak found that if he would lay perfectly still for a few minutes, various skittering lizards or slithering snakes would move right in front of him. He decided this moving buffet made up for the lack of moving water.
The three of
