Dani’s mood was cranky to say the least. Her thoughts returned again and again to the last entry she had read in Mama’s journal. Mama’s personal and private thoughts were so real and down to earth, so human. Dani could not think of her mother as a grieving sixteen-year-old who had let a beautiful stranger lick her fingers. She could not picture Mama hanging out at Stewart’s eating ice cream, or fathom that she and Walter (AKA, Dad) had shared a moment together when he had been nothing more than a cocky nineteen-year-old and no hint of the monster gestating inside.

She wanted to call Barb in the worst way. Barb would know how to put the information into perspective, she would direct Dani to some helpful insight to enlighten her but not make her feel worse. She dug her cell phone out of her pack. It still had battery juice but there were no bars. Clearly there was no cell phone service this far out from planet earth. She texted a message anyway:

Hey B – Safely made it to Haven. Not having a good time – confused. Wish you were here. -- D.

That had been hours ago just before leaving the waterfall shielded cave.

Dani’s overall health was improved but she was not at one hundred percent yet and her energy would, from time to time, drain away unexpectedly. At the moment Theo held her high against his chest and Dani’s arms were wrapped about his neck with his face mere inches from her nose. His beard was trimmed now and no longer crawled up his cheeks and the fullness of it appeared less ragged. When had he started grooming his beard?

“Danielle, what is so troubling that you are still in such a foul mood?” Theo asked the damnable question again.

Dani knew she was bad company for Theo, which was a switch, and this latest blow to her pride was about to endanger the rapport they had recently established. Her mood was dark as it had been after Maris’ cowardly letter. She felt like her mother had materialized from her journal and stabbed her in the heart and then retreated out of reach. She was certain Theo did not want to know all the gory details of her screwed up life. If he had asked because he cared that would have been one thing but from his tone she inferred he was tired of her moodiness.

“I’ll tell you all about Mama when you tell me about Anthony.” She said in a waspish tone her voice filled with more acid than she intended.

His steps faltered but he quickly, effortlessly recovered.

She wanted to be let down, right then and there, but her body betrayed her with its physical weakness when another, brutal wave of exhaustion left her trembling and she was not even exerting herself. She should have apologized but her will deserted her. Her head was spinning so she leaned into his cheek, because she did not want to wake up again to find her head hanging back and her mouth wide open with drool spindling across her cheek. Waking that way once had been humiliating enough for a lifetime. The spinning sensation in her head deepened.

“Slow your breathing, Danielle.” Theo’s warning rumbled up out of his body. “Remember; take deep even breaths.”

His beard tickled her nose and scratched her lips and cheek.

Dani knew an apology was warranted but the longer she waited the harder it was to do it. Theo was withdrawn but he continued as always to be polite, considerate and attentive. The Anthony comment had really rankled him. She was not sorry she had said it, but she was sorry for the way she said it.

They followed the river for a day and a half until they reached a place where the steep banks leveled and the river widened until the water ran shallow over a bed of pink purple and orange river rocks that were small rounded and smooth. They crossed there. The water was clear and icy cold. Her legs and her feet – and her fingers too when she plunged them into the water –ached all the way to her bones and even with the late morning sun’s heat beating down on her head her body shivered. Dani watched plentiful fish swimming and an occasional brilliant sparkle of light. Halfway across in water up to her knees and an orange dappled purple fish nibbling at the toe of her sneaker, Dani stopped, dazzled by another flash of white light.

She plunged her hand in up to her elbow and grabbed for the source of the sparkle, a lump cradled between a pair of orange stones. The fish skittered sideways, but momentarily returned to nibble on her sneaker. The lump filled her palm. It was a clump of several pyramidic shapes. The sun struck one slanting plane. It looked like quicksilver.

“What is this?” She called to Theo.

“Keep moving.” He shouted.

She closed her hand around the clump and made her way to the opposite shore, where Theo waited to pull her into the shelter of the trees and the overarching cover of the Canopy. The diffuse shadows in the forest were a relief to her eyes after the stark light of the narrow open area between the rocky banks of the river. She was happy to be out of the cold water.

Theo peered at her face. He grabbed her chin and tilted her face first one way then the other way.

She pushed his hand away. “What are you doing?”

“I am checking you for sunburn.”

“I was hardly out there long enough to feel the heat.” That was only half-true because the heat of the sun still pressed heavily on her head and shoulders despite the bone chill that wracked her from exposure to the water.

“Even very small doses of the UV radiation can burn your skin if you are not careful. With your fair pigmentation I suspect you burn easily.”

She accepted his opinion on the subject because he was right about her fair skin burning easily and neither did she want to argue with him; she wanted to know about this amazing rock she had found in the river. She opened her hand and showed Theo the tri-fold double pyramidic shaped lump. He would know what mineral or rock or gem it was.

“What is it?”

“It is diamond.” He said it with as much enthusiasm as if she had shown him a cat’s eye marble.

“A diamond? The river is full of them.”

He shrugged. “There is a sleeping volcano north of here, so yes diamonds are plentiful.

“But in a riverbed? Aren’t diamonds buried deep? How’d they get out of the earth?”

“They are pushed toward the surface by gravity where subterranean rivers wear away the rock until they break free and are washed out and carried down the slopes to be deposited into the river.”

“I can’t believe the river hasn’t been harvested clean.”

“Why would it be? What use would these diamonds be to you in quantity? One is more than enough. As for the Insiders, mining is strictly regulated by the Authority with the objective to avoid disturbance of the ecology as much as possible, one of its legitimate functions.”

Dani did not so much care how the diamonds got into the river any more than she cared about mining restrictions imposed by the Authority. At the moment – never mind it was her question Theo had addressed -- the diamond’s white light radiated energy into her hand and sizzled up her arm like an electric current. The sensation was at once extremely alarming and deliciously odd and strikingly familiar. She felt an impulse to drop the diamond but her fingers clenched it even tighter.

Theo reached into the small bag slung across his chest and handed her a small leather pouch. “Keep it in here. You never know it may prove useful should you need it to trade for items you cannot harvest, hunt or make yourself.”

As the diamond slid from her palm into the leather pouch she felt a loss so keen it nearly eclipsed even the loss of her mother. Trade was not an option. One did not trade the Hope Diamond for common supplies. As soon as the diamond was into the pouch, Theo pulled the drawstring up tight and tucked it into his pouch.

“Hey!”

He patted his pouch. “For safe keeping. I will give it back when we make camp tonight. Then you can find a deep pocket inside your pack in which to keep it until you finish your pouch.” He may have acted casual about Dani finding the diamond in the riverbed, but clearly he did appreciate its value.

Once across the river they left the steep mountain slopes behind and traveled through low lying wooded hills always with the river on the right and across the river an open plain, land that extended as far as the eye could see with the towering Fugharim dispersed throughout, each standing lonely sentinel in a sea of silvery grass. Theo kept them always on the edge of the wood with the river and the grassland in the west, on the right. He taught her how to identify direction by subtle changes in the intensity of the light, or failing that, to locate true north by finding which side of the tree the moss grew on – moss enjoyed cooler temperatures and less intense sunlight, which flooded in from the south. Were they situated in the Southern Hemisphere then with the equator between them and the North Pole? Well, at least something about this planet shared something in common with Earth even if in reverse. They traveled due south but Dani still experienced occasional bouts of confusion, because though the cooler temperatures came from the south, her body and brain assured her that they were traveling north and that west should not be over her right shoulder, but her left.

They fed on jerky while on the move and ate fish and early berries when they made camp. Theo taught her which berries were edible, which would give her a belly ache and which would kill her if she ate them or in the case of one plump lemony scented berry, which would poison her with a mere touch.

“It will not kill you.” Theo cut off one branch thick with dozens of the berries and shook it over a large, leather square covered with tiny holes until the ripest berries fell and rolled into a mini pile that he then secured by pulling the corners together and synched it with a fine leather cord. He attached it to his belt. During this procedure he explained why he wanted to harvest such a dangerous fruit.

“Absorbed through the skin the juice will make you very sick, but in powder form it has medicinal qualities; the stomach acids neutralize the poison.”

In the next days, Theo pushed hard. He was unwilling to stop until they absolutely had to setting up camp in thickly sheltered copses of tress and building a fire only at night and then keeping the fire very small, using a dry wood that burned half as efficiently as the blue cedar without smoke or the pungent scent. He was agitated and restless, frequently leaving her at the fire to make a quick scout of the area and returning without a word to take up work on the staff of his new spear – he had lost his spear their last day at Theo’s wintering cave escaping the King’s men.

“What’s wrong Theo? Is it the king’s men?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“Nothing.”

Dani was poised to make a scene about Theo being obstinate.

“Would it hurt you to be civil? I’m getting tired of being force to drag every little bit of information out of you. You are obviously being extra careful for a reason, why I have to be kept in the dark about the reason is a mystery to me.”

“Eat and then sleep.” Was all he said.

She couldn’t believe he was still mad about her Anthony comment. Really. What did she have to do, bend her knees to the ground and kiss his feet to get him to lighten up? How could she ever be expected to apologize under such conditions?

“I’m too angry to sleep.”

“It is nothing Danielle. Sleep. I am only applying caution. Tomorrow we will make an early start. It is a long journey to the coast and I want to get through the narrows as quickly as possible and into Rhydar.”

The narrows was the area further south where a series of tall mountains to the east butted up against the river and made a deep gorge that was miles long. Theo called it Cjherthuin (guttural char-thoon/Mighty Gorge). Rhydar was a massive forest region in the territory governed by the Rhydar Duchy and was the all encompassing term for all the peoples of Rhydar. All this was indicated on Mama’s map. Also from Mama’s notes Dani knew the Rhydar Duchy was the Orphan King’s tribe of origin. She had already asked Theo a few times what business he had in Rhydar and with whom, but typically he had kept that information to himself. She had an intuition his mission had to do with Anthony. What was Anthony’s connection to the Rhydar? Was he connected to the Orphan King?

“It’s the open country that has you worried?”

“I am not worried. I simply prefer the denser environment of the forest.”

“Why?”

“Sleep,” was all he said. He lay down across the small fire from her, and went to sleep almost immediately. Dani stayed awake, fuming.

Restless and disgusted and rebellious she got dressed in as many layers as she could, and with her flashlight in hand went to the river. She found a large boulder at the water’s edge that still retained warmth from the sun and sat on it. Dani switched off the flashlight and hugged her legs to her chest and tucked her chin into the valley between her knees. She looked up at the sky.

The sheltering trees were at her back but at the river’s edge and on the opposite bank where the tall grass swayed in the cold night wind a vast portion of the sky lay open. It was the first real look at the unfamiliar night sky she had enjoyed. The moon had gone to sleep, Dani thought, falling back on the colloquialism Theo had used to explain that the moon, Anress, was running new for the next few nights and would remain unseen. The sky was an explosion of light, the stars stretched out like a great sparkling carpet.

Across the river the widely interspersed Fugharim were shot through with shimmering prismatic strokes of light, intermittent kaleidoscopic bursts flaring and flaring again, a silent stroke of rainbow tinged heat lightening inside the foliage of the giants. This was the Eden the boyfriend had described seven years ago, but as captivated as she was by the beauty of the sight and the night sky above, Dani wished for the stubble of a harvested corn field awash in the buttery light of a harvest moon, for an afternoon of play in a foot of freshly fallen snow, the smell of roast turkey and the scent of freshly cut evergreen in the livingroom.

How many weeks had she been on Haven? She had lost count of the days. Not that she had counted them trapped in that cave without night or day while that storm raged. Now, stumbling through daylight hours that stretched on and on and sleeping fitfully twice through the sweltering noontime and midnight hours that stretched on so long that she felt winter’s breath on her neck, keeping track of days was impossible. Her internal rhythm and clock was thrown all out of wack. Dani was sure that by now she had missed all the best holidays: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas; and New Year’s Day. She was lost on an uncharted island in a sea of stars. When would she ever see home again?

When was the last time she had spoken French?

“Utilisez-le ou perdez-le, Dani.” She muttered in French.

She had not conjugated a verb in forever.

She stayed at the river until the very last drop of heat was leached out of the rock upon which she sat, until fat lazy snowflakes drifted out of the cloudless night. Sheets of ice thin as tissue rimmed the rocks protruding from the river in the shallows at her feet and in the dark rippling water she caught the occasional glimmer of more diamonds.

Theo must have noticed her reaction to the diamond. He did not return it to her as he had promised and she had not pursued the issue, but she wondered what was the point in securing the diamond against thieves (she supposed Theo was concerned about theft) on a world where all you had to do was wade into a river and pick one out. Had it to do with her reaction to the stone?

When she returned to camp, Theo was in the exact spot in the exact position as when she had left. She retrieved her notebook and a pencil from her backpack and wrapped in her fur she huddled beside the dying fire and began to write a letter to Barb in French, telling of her strange journey and her myriad fears and her doubts and her frustrations with the enigmatic Theo.

When finished she settled beside Theo on the hard ground. The fire burned so low it was putting out very little heat. She was cold. At the very least he owed her his body heat, in consolation for keeping the diamond and so much other information from her. He was asking her to trust him and the level of trust required was perhaps beyond her ability. She stripped down to her second skin and two pairs of socks then worked her way under his fur and snuggled against his warm side and added her fur on top of his.

Still she could not sleep. So while she listened to Theo’s even breathing she began to conjugate verbs, any verb she could think of in all the languages she had ever studied or just picked up in order to get by while visiting foreign nations (Hebrew) or just for the hell of it (Welsh). She was fluent in all the traditional languages taught in American public schools – French, German and Spanish, conversational in Hebrew, Welsh, Gaelic, Italian and Japanese. Her plan had been to add Chinese and Russian to the first list and Farci to the last.

After a while as she drifted sleepily through the German conjugation of the verb think Theo shifted, turned his body and engulfed her in his arms. He pressed his face to the top of her head. His nose was cold. He murmured sleepily, but Dani did not quite catch what he said. Then she wondered did she have enough of a handle on Theo’s language to conjugate think? With her head cradled in his neck her face stealing warmth from his scratchy beard she wrapped her arm around his waist and welcomed the cedar smoked scent of him and the swell of his body heat.

In a whispery voice she began. “I think. I thought. You think. You thought. I am thinking, I have thought. I will think. I will have thought, I was thinking, I had thought….”

Next Chapter: Chapter 13