“Everything is growing so fast.” Danielle commented. It was early the next morning and they had been walking for about an hour.

Theo stopped walking and pointed to a long narrow patch of ground cover like the patch she had hoped to navigate yesterday before Theo had tackled her.

“Do you see what lies in between, there, low to the ground?”

She nodded admiring the lime green oval leaves that had spider web sized veins of pink in its leaves and sprigs of tiny white flowers that emitted a scent unlike anything she had ever encountered.

“Pretty.”

He leaned close to her ear. “Deadly.”

She gave him a look. The entire space to their left was covered with the beautiful, lovely scented plant almost as far as she could see. Rocks and trees protruded from the vine cover and one giant reddish trunk she guessed must be the base of a Fhugari. She wanted to explore the Fhugari in the worst way. She felt the pull of the vine’s scent and her own curiosity about the Fughari called her forward. Instead she heeded Theo’s words at least for the moment and resisted temptation.

“I do not believe you.”

“For your vocabulary, the plant is called ‘Verminudice.’”

“Vver-mee-noo-dice?” She sounded the clumsy name back to him phonetically. Translated loosely Theo declared it meant: the plant that will eat you before you die.

“Verminudice is carnivorous. Yesterday you were about to take a walk through a patch. You would have been dragged under. It looks pleasant and smells sweet, makes you want to reach out and touch it, hmmm? Underneath its lovely foliage and those sweet nectar flowers its stems have hair-like barbs filled with toxins that render you immobile, that grip you and drag you to the ground. I once saw a noofin wander too close to a patch, drawn to its scent and it got pulled in so suddenly it had no time to even scream. In a matter of minutes it was a lump in the middle of the patch, the only evidence it was even there, that and its terrified screams.”

“A noofin?”

“One of the large land animals. It was young about twice my size.”

“Are you putting me on?”

He paused to tap her temple.

“This plant will begin to eat you before you die. Never forget that. Never go near them again. The path meanders on purpose. To avoid such dangers always trust the native trails.”

“Is That why you tackled me?”

He nodded.

“You do not always use the trails.” She pointed out.

“I know what I am doing. I recognize the dangers and can avoid them.”

They moved on. There were other gargantuan reddish trunks they passed, one so close she stretched her arm out straight and trailed her fingertips along the cool ruddy surface. A current passed into her fingers and raced up her arm. Her first instinct was to snatch her hand back, but she maintained the contact, while the current filled her head with a strange arrhythmic thrum as cacophonous as an orchestra tuning up.

Theo tried to pace himself to Dani’s slower pace, but she could see that it was a challenge to his patience. She was slowing him down, but she did not feel any sympathy for him, she would have gladly struck out on her own, now that she knew the native trails were her friends. She was only slowing him down because he insisted on dragging her along. He wanted her to believe it was for her safety, but she was not convinced. Did he harbor some other motive? Did he feel guilty about stealing her necklace – though she had to admit she still had not proof that he had stolen it. Until she knew for sure she would have to stay with him, her only alternative would be to return to the cave, but she had no idea where that was.

“Why are we traveling southeast?” Dani had gotten a least that bit of information from the surly Theo. Southeast was the exact opposite direction in which she wanted to go. She tried to remember what lay south and east of the wilderness, but she could only remember the big red star circled in black that lay to the west and the mundane name of New City.

“I have business to attend down by the sea.”

“How far away is that?”

Again his only answer was a continuing silence. Why was he so secretive? She never thought anyone could make her so itchy to pry into their personal business. Dani had always prided herself in letting people set up their personal boundaries and usually respected them. But with Theo she wanted to grab a handful of his beard and pull his head down and glare into his eyes and demand an explanation. She did not understand it. It was such a girlie thing to want and she prided herself in not being girlie.

Maybe it was because she feared he really had stolen the necklace. A part of her did not want that to be true, while the other part wished fervently that it was true because without it she would never get home

Theo did what he wanted and felt no compunction to explain himself to her or probably anyone. She had never known anyone like him, male or female – except for Mama’s boyfriend. Theo was much closer to her in age than the boyfriend had been, older by only a few years, she thought, young but mature, maybe even mature beyond his years.

As the morning wore on with the temperature rising and the light intensifying, her stamina sank until every time she lifted a foot it felt like a bowling ball was attached to each ankle. The day seemed to stretch into infinity. As the day progressed the heat swelled further and in spite of the canopy and the thick burgeoning branches laced above their heads the filtered light intensified to a point that it began to hurt her eyes. Traveling southeast really bothered her because it put West behind her right shoulder and that was not right at all. West was always over the left shoulder. Wasn’t it?

She heard a voice mumbling and felt a sick lurch in her stomach when she realized it was her own voice, vibrating in her throat and dripping words in French, Russian and Hebrew that had no object as if she had decided to conjugate verbs without any word or language parameters.

She watched Theo’s broad back and dragged one foot after the other as he pulled her along, keeping her upper arm cinched in his beefy hand. His hold was so tight her fingers were tingly. She wondered when they would stop for lunch but there was no hunger to assuage only a growing nausea and a pounding headache until finally Theo turned and stared down at her looking ferocious and then angry.

Her father used to get that mad look in his eyes sometimes, never predictably when she expected it, when she was being unruly and bad, but when she was sitting quietly watching college football with him and all of a sudden he would turn on her and send her to her room for absolutely no reason. She never argued when he had that expression in his eyes. She had never argued with him in any case, even when he was drunk and acting goofy, or oozing the charm that made women everywhere fall panting at his feet. At a very young age she knew something was not quite right with Walter, but sometimes he would seem so normal, she would forget and let her guard down and then she would find herself in trouble for absolutely no reason.

She was so hot. She wanted to take off everything and run naked to the nearest Fughari, but instead became weightless and dimly realized that Theo had picked her up and carried her in his arms. He picked up his pace, Dani thought. As a matter of fact they fairly flew along the native path and all at once, they left the path altogether. He dodged small branches and leapt over knee high shrubs, scaled rock outcrops with the dexterity of a mountain goat.

Dani would do anything to erase that mad expression from Theo’s eyes because it awakened a chill in her spine she had not felt in years.

“Don’t be mad at me, it’s not my fault.” The words came out in a gibberish mix of French, English and the new language she had not quite learned yet.

“Easy,” The familiar baritone of Theo’s voice soothed her away from her strange thoughts. In another life, Dani thought, perhaps a life when he had not been so moody and non-communicative, he may have actually been charming, even kind. “Almost there. Soon you will be able to rest”

What a marvel he was. The pace he had set vibrated up from his feet and legs through his upper body into his arms and her body, the rhythm of his run an easy cadence. No evidence of physical stress expressed itself as a gasp in his throat.

Theo paused and shifted her body and slung her over his shoulder. The potato sack carry, Dani thought feebly. She felt him climbing and shortly he lowered her to the ground, flat on her back, and then he dragged her backwards until her vision of the forest proper and the sharp light and the towering shelter of the Canopy disappeared behind an outcrop of dark glistening rock.

Theo knelt beside her, divested himself of their packs and gear and began stripping her. When had he taken her pack from her? His hair was damp with sweat, his face bright pink, but his breathing remained even.

His mouth, however, was grim.

Dani felt the heat in her body like the heat that filled the kitchen at grandma’s house on Thanksgiving without the fabulous aroma of roast turkey. Her stomach tightened on the memory of holiday food, but she had no appetite and the thought of eating was as foreign to her as the idea that she could sprout wings and buzz into the canopy like a bumble bee.

She pawed at the collar of her second skin but Theo stopped her.

He laid her out beside a water-filled wedge and without delay he scooped water in his hands and threw it across her body. He repeated the action over and over until the suit had sucked up all the moisture that it could – it seemed to leach coolness from the rock at her back as well while the water that Theo poured on top of her spread out all over the garment until the cooling began to take effect and the heat abated. He scooped a hand full of water to her mouth and she drank the slow dribble greedily. She wanted more.

“Not too much.” He said. Then he sipped a little before he turned away and undressed quickly, slowly peeled off his second skin and pushed it into the small pool until it was saturated to his satisfaction and then quickly pulled it back on again.

Dani was getting used to Theo’s shameless nakedness, but he had assumed the habit of turning his body, just so, because he saw how his nudity made her uncomfortable. That quality of mindful consideration reminded Dani of Mama’s boyfriend and that made her angry because she did not care how gentlemanly the boyfriend had been, it had not stopped him from stealing her mother away into the night. He had run off to this marvelous godforsaken planet that did not have enough oxygen to keep her puny little body working properly.

Theo allowed her another short drink of the cool sweet water and helped himself to another before he stretched out beside her. There was just enough room on the narrow ledge under the outcrop for them to settle side by side.

“Sleep now.” Theo’s eyes were on the overhang. “If the heat gets to be too much, dip your arm into the water, your second skin will absorb the moisture and keep you cool. We will eat later.”

“Eat?” Dani stared at his spikey lashes until her vision blurred and she heard herself weeping. The inconsolable quality in her voice only made the sobbing deepen and finally Theo took her hand, lacing their fingers.

“Sleep now.” He repeated. “When you wake up you will feel better.”

When Dani sat up she bumped her head on the low hanging ledge. She groaned. It was just one more pain on top of a litany of pains. Her head ached and felt all swimmy, her stomach was queasy and her muscles ached in general. Even her lungs hurt, every breath seared her chest. Theo was seated at her feet with his back to her his knees up under his chin. He glanced over his shoulder and motioned with his head for her to join him. She scootched forward and let her legs dangle free.

Theo handed her a couple of strips of jerky.

“Eat.” He mouthed the word without sound and nodded to the food.

She took a pull off the strip of dried meat and looked down, chewing slowly. The incline was sharp, so sharp that another degree or two and it would have been straight up and down.

“You carried me up that?”

He pressed one finger to his lips, shook his head encouraging silence.

Ignoring his warning, she pressed on. “What?”

He leaned in and spoke in her ear raising his voice to a whisper. “Listen.”

She listened to the sound of the lively forest. The filtered sunlight sent shafts through the verdant growth amid the noise of birds and wildlife.

“There.” Theo said after a low warble could be heard in the distance. A moment later there came an answer from the left of the first. There was another and another, each repeat of the sound moving to a new location and a little further away. In each case he pointed. It seemed whatever made the signal had them surrounded.

“What is it?” Now she was whispering too.

“The King’s scouts.”

“What King?”

“The Orphan King.”

Dani’s heart skipped a beat. He was king now? There was no doubt in her mind it was a reference to the boyfriend. Still, she was mentally unprepared for the news.

“What do they want? Are they after me?” Why did the prospect of being found send a current of fear up her spine?

“They have been tracking us since yesterday. They have us surrounded.”

“What? Why? When were you going to tell me?”

“I am telling you now.”

“Is that why you were in such a rush to get out of there?”

He nodded.

“What do they want?” She asked again unwilling to believe they had any inkling she was even there or that they would recognize her as anybody important.

He frowned but hi eye were full of puzzlement. “They are moving off.”

“Maybe they are just hunting?” Her relief at the thought was overwhelming until Theo dashed her hopes.

“They saw me yesterday and gave chase.”

“Why? What did you do?” She wondered if it had anything to do with the necklace or some other act of thievery.

“The King’s people are under standing orders to round up any Orphans they find in the Wild so they can be absorbed into the Orphan Tribe.”

“You do not want to be absorbed?”

“I have business on the coast. If I allow myself to be absorbed, there will no end of officers and other minions of the King telling me where to go and what to do. My plans would take a distant second to the King’s needs.”

“Of course; that is the trouble with monarchys.

“So what is this business of yours at the coast?”

“I have a promise to keep.” Theo said, but he did not clarify any further.

“To Anthony?”

“What do you know about Anthony?” His voice sharpened almost to the point where it rose above a whisper.

“You talk about him in your sleep. A lot.”

Silence was his only answer.

“So what are we going to do?”

He frowned.

“We? I thought you wanted to find your mother. If the scouts have not already done so, they will see your likeness to the queen and will take you to her straight away. That is what you want.”

“You knew about my mother and the King all along and did not tell me?”

He looked away. “I have my own life to live.”

A charge of alarm gushed through her.

Theo recognized her as the queen’s daughter. If so then why had he dragged her to this out of the way place rather than leave her to be found by the scouts yesterday? At the very least, if they failed to recognize her as the queen’s anything, they would take her into custody to be absorbed into the Orphan Tribe. It would have all worked out very nicely for Theo; he could be rid of her and abscond with the necklace if he had it. He could sell it at the coast, or possibly use it to pay for passage on some ship to another ungodly location, far from the reach of the King. Her heart gave an unexpected leap of agony and just as intensely a spurt of anger surged through her. It was one thing to want to get away from a person and quite another to suddenly realize they were as eager to be rid of you.

Theo’s duplicity was one thing and she would get to that later, but at the moment she was faced with a problem wholly unexpected.

“I am not ready.” She blurted much to her own astonishment. Not ready? This was the very reason she had suffered the brutal journey to Haven, to locate Mama and take her back home. Not ready? What was there to get ready for?

Her cheeks were hot with shame. Theo’s subterfuge and the fate of the necklace took a distant second to this new problem.

“Danielle, has it not occurred to you that the Queen may be looking for you?”

“How could she? How could she even know I’m here?”

“She is the Queen.”

What had that to do with anything? Dani’s reply was full of the bitterness.

“My mother is no Queen. If she wanted to see me she could have come home anytime. I am not the one who moved away. She left me.”

“That is the answer of a child.” Theo rebuked her. “Do you want to go with them or not?”

What good would it do her to go barging into Mama’s castle and demand that she return home immediately without the key to return to earth? Until she retrieved the necklace she was in a kind of indecisive limbo. She was certain the way to regain possession of the necklace was to move forward. It had never occurred to her to wonder if she had inherited her mother’s telepathic gift, and she did not wonder now. She only felt relief that she had an excuse to avoid Mama. It was easier to believe her fear had to do with the missing necklace.

If it turned out Theo did not have the necklace she could always go back to the area of the cave and search the wood for the artifact. She could have done so now except her intuition suggested it was not back there, so until Theo was ready to explain why he had the necklace –if he had it -- her only recourse was to continue to travel with him and pretend she knew nothing.

“You would be better off with the King’s men.” Theo said.

“I am not ready to meet the Queen.” She was glad all semblance of panic was gone from her voice, replaced by firm determination.

“What are you saying?”

“I am going with you. My mother is not going anywhere and now that I know you know where she is, I expect you to escort me to her once you have finished your business on the coast.”

Expecting Theo to argue or get up and leave, she braced herself for the inevitable tirade or to see his backside disappearing into the wood below. But instead he did the unexpected.

Theo released his breath in a rush, -- she had no clue he had been holding it in -- pressed his eyes into his knees and linked his fingers behind his head. His body rocked gently. Dani heard him whispering desperately but she could hardly believe what she heard, nor could she comprehend its meaning or understand why the sound made him seem ever so much younger than she had first suspected.

“Thank You. Thank You. Oh God, thank You.”

Next Chapter: Interlude II