“My question?” Amero’s confusion cleared when he realized the man had overheard his thoughts. Well, he decided, nothing such a powerful spirit-being did should surprise him. “I didn’t mean to disturb you,” he said awkwardly.
“Then don’t think so loudly. I’m bound to hear.” Duranix sat up with a quick, fluid movement Amero found hard to follow.
The strangeness of his host, the unfamiliarity of his surroundings, began to overwhelm him. Backing to the edge of the platform, Amero asked, “How did you get me into this place? We must be a whole day’s climb from the bottom.”
“Three hundred sixty-two paces, as you would measure it,” said Duranix as he rose and stretched. Amero saw there were several of those shiny leaves where Duranix had lain.
Duranix straightened his loincloth and walked down the notched platform ledge. Amero hobbled along at the taller man’s heels, trying to keep up.
“How long have I been here?” Amero asked.
“Since last night.”
Amero stopped dead in his tracks. “But how? We are many days’ journey from the plains. It’s imposs — ” The boy cut himself off, once more remembering the ease with which his host had dispatched the yevi.
Duranix offered no explanation. Holding onto the rim of the lower opening, he leaned out toward the waterfall. Spray dampened his short hair. He leaned further and opened his mouth. Water beaded on his face and filled his mouth.
When he’d drunk his fill, Duranix swung back into the cave. His fair skin glistened. He smiled with some secret amusement and said, “Thirsty? There’s no sweeter water in the world than my waterfall.”
Amero was thirsty. He licked his cracked lips and gazed longingly past his host at the tumbling torrent.
“I can’t reach out that far,” he said, shaking his head.
“I’ll help you.” Duranix grabbed Amero by the scruff of his neck and thrust him through the opening. The boy let out a shriek of terror as he saw the distant ground between his feet.
“No! No! Don’t drop me! Please don’t — ”
Duranix shoved him into the stream. The water pummeled Amero, and he locked his hands on Duranix’s arm, certain he would be dropped over the edge. However, Duranix never lost hold of him, and after a few heart-stopping moments, he was hauled back inside the cave.
Gasping and sputtering, Amero collapsed on the floor. “Why were you screaming?” Duranix asked. “I would not drop you.”
“The water — too hard — too hard,” the boy choked.
Duranix sighed. “What fragile creatures humans are.” He left Amero coughing and spitting. A moment later he was back with a scrap of dry deer hide and one of those shiny oval leaves. He rolled the hide into a cone and crimped the seam shut by folding the leaf around and pinching it with his fingers. He held this odd object in the edge of the flow of water until the hide hollow was filled. He offered it to Amero.
The boy pushed wet hair out of his face and took the proffered gift. The hide held a double handful of water, and he drank it quickly. The water was cold and pure, with a mineral tang missing from lowland streams.
“Thank you,” he said, eyes closed as he savored the wonderful taste.
His thirst appeased, Amero turned the unusual object around and around in his slender fingers. “You made this?” he marveled.
“It would be foolish to die of thirst within sight of a waterfall.”
Wet through and through, Amero began to shiver, his teeth chattering in the cool air. He returned to his bed of boughs and crawled among them, trying to get warm. The water-catcher he kept firmly in his hand.
Duranix busied himself in the far corner, below the high, larger opening. He returned shortly with an armload of furs and hides.
“Use these as you see fit,” he said, dumping the load beside Amero.
“Where are you going?” The boy’s voice cracked as he asked the question, and Duranix turned slowly toward him, red eyebrows pressed together in a frown. Amero muttered, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… I’m sorry.”
Duranix studied him silently for a moment, and Amero hid his embarrassed face by turning to the heap of furs.
“What did you call the animals who attacked you?” the man finally asked.
Amero pulled a thick white ox hide over himself, up to his chin. “Yevi?”
“Well, boy, I must find out how far the yevi have penetrated into my domain.”
“Your domain? Are you… are you the father of the whole plains, Duranix?”
He smiled briefly. “Father? Quaintly put. I am the master of the lands from these mountains west to the forest’s edge.”
“Are there other masters? In the forest?”
Duranix’s handsome face darkened. “There is. He is called Sthenn.”
“Your… brother?”
Duranix folded his arms, looking angry. Then he relaxed and said, “I must remember you have a limited range of expression. Sthenn and I are of the same race, if that’s what you mean.”
“You look like a man, but you do things I’ve never seen any other man do.”
“I sometimes go abroad in human form.”
“Why look like a man if you’re not one?”
Duranix was silent and Amero realized he was asking a great many questions. It was a habit that got him in trouble so often with Oto. The boy bit his lip. It was hard not to voice the questions that filled his head.
However, Duranix did not look annoyed, as Oto so often had. He simply looked thoughtful and replied, “It makes traveling easier for me to appear as a man. Besides, humans amuse me. Most of them are no better than the beasts they hunt and kill.”. He gave Amero a penetrating look. “You’re different though. I see signs in you of higher faculties — intelligence, curiosity, and perhaps something more. You heard the yevi speak. When you think clearly, I can hear your thoughts as loudly as I hear the falls outside.”
Amero felt oddly embarrassed. “I’m just Amero, the son of Oto and Kinar.”
“True, but you are different from your parents and siblings, aren’t you?” Amero hung his head, admitting as much. Duranix added, “You have special abilities. It’s why I brought you here. I want to know more about you.”
Duranix fixed the cape around his shoulders and stood in the lower opening. “I’ll return after sunset.”
Before Amero could protest being left alone in the cave all day, Duranix leaped into space. He plunged through the waterfall and disappeared. Still wrapped in the white ox hide, Amero crawled to the ledge and looked down. There was no sign of his host. The waterfall was more than an arm’s length from the cliff wall, and he could see nothing through the thundering stream but the blue of the sky. While he was gazing down the cliff wall to the boiling pool below, a large shadow passed swiftly over the cave mouth. Amero looked up, but whatever it was had vanished.
He sighed. Though he was pleased at having been rescued from the yevi, Amero thought of his current situation and found himself reminded uncomfortably of a field mouse he’d once captured. He had kept the mouse in a hollow length of cane. He would spend entire evenings playing with the mouse, seeing how it reacted to various things he put in its little home, learning what it would and would not eat. One day he found the mouse was gone — it had gnawed through the bottom of the cane over several nights and run away. Amero, only five at the time, had cried over the loss. Nianki had told him it was only an animal’s nature to want freedom. He was beginning to understand how the mouse must have felt.
Thoughts of his future couldn’t compete very long with the return of his curiosity. He decided to explore the cavern and see what clues he could glean about his mysterious host. If he found food along the way, so much the better.
He began at the lower opening and worked around the cave wall to his left. The floor here was rougher. Hard stone had been gouged out in some way, leaving long troughs in the floor. Each groove was as wide as his hand, and they occurred in close groups of three at a time.
He found more of the oval leaves along the wall, though most were green with mold. Amero tried to bend one, as he’d seen Duranix do. Arms quivering with effort, he managed to put a slight bend in one. How firm they were! He put one on the floor and stomped it, gaining nothing but an aching foot. With a loose stone, he hit the leaf
