Return to Eden

confusions of the city.
    If Vaintè thought, and she twisted away from it when cogitation came close, she merely took pleasure from her surroundings and her companions.
    Dawn followed dusk, dusk followed dawn in stately, unending progression.
    CHAPTER ELEVEN
    Alitha hammar ensi igo vezilin gedda. Sammad geddar o sammadar oapri.
    Tanu saying
    A deer cannot have two heads. A sammad has only one sammadar.
    It was raining. A heavy tropical downpour that cascaded ceaselessly from the leaden sky. It drummed so loudly on the stretched skins that they had to raise their voices to be heard.
    "Is it ever going to stop?" Armun asked. The baby wailed as the sky split with lightning; thunder rumbled through the trees. Armun opened her clothing and nursed the infant into silence.
    "This is the third day now," Kerrick said. "I don't think it has ever rained for more than three days at a time. It should stop today, perhaps tonight. The cloud seems to be thinner."
    He looked at Harl who was drying a thin slab of deer meat over the fire. The smoke spread out along the ground: a gust of wind blew it swirling around him and he coughed and rubbed his eyes with his forearm.
    Arnwheet, squatting across the fire from him, laughed—until he breathed in some smoke as well. Ortnar sat as he always did, his swollen and useless leg stretched out before him, staring sightlessly into the rain.
    He had become too silent and sat like this too much of the time since they had come to the island. Kerrick was worried. It was his only concern now, for the island was far superior to their encampment at Round Lake. There were ducks in the reeds that could be taken with nets, game to be hunted, deer and small murgu with sweet flesh. They had killed the large murgu carnivores as they found them. More of them had crossed over the shallow river since then from the mainland, but not many. This was a good place to be. Armun, as she did often when they were together, seemed to be sharing his thoughts.
    "This is a good camp. I don't think that I would ever like to leave it."
    "Nor I. Though sometimes I think about the sammads. I wonder if they are still with the Sasku in the valley?"
    "I worry that they are all dead, killed and eaten by the murgu with the death-sticks."
    "I've told you many times—they are alive and well." He reached over and moved aside the strands of hair that had fallen across her face when she looked down at the baby. Tucked them aside, then ran his fingers over her sweetly cleft lip until she smiled. This was not a thing a hunter was supposed to do, not with others looking, and for this reason she appreciated it all the more.
    "You can't be sure," she said, still worried.
    "I am sure. I've explained, these murgu cannot tell lies. It's the way they talk, think really. It's as if you spoke aloud every thought that went through your head."
    "I wouldn't do that. Some people might be very unhappy." She laughed. "And some of them happy too."
    "Then you understand. The murgu have to say what they think when they speak. The one I talked with, the sammadar of their city, the one I gave the skymetal knife to, she said she would stop the fighting and return to the city and stay there. She said it—so it happened."
    The rain was slowly dying away, although water still dripped down from the sodden trees. Before dark the skies cleared a little and the late afternoon sun slanted between the boughs. Kerrick rose and stretched and sniffed the air. "Tomorrow will be clear, a good day."
    Happy to finally be out of the confining tent he took his spear and hèsotsan and started up the hill behind the encampment. Arnwheet called after him and he waved the boy forward. It was good to be moving about again. Arnwheet trotted at his side with his small spear ready. He was learning woodcraft from Harl and Ortnar so already, at the age of seven, he moved far more quietly than his father. There was a rustle in the undergrowth and they both stopped. Something small hurried away and Arnwheet hurled his spear after it.
    "An elinou," he said. "I saw the colors on its back, I almost had it!"
    He ran to retrieve his spear. Elinou, a small and agile dinosaur, very good eating. Arnwheet had learned its correct name from one of the males by the lake, so he spoke in Yilanè when he talked about it. But he used the language less and less now, had little opportunity to.
    They reached the ridge and looked across the lagoon to the little islands of the coast. White surf broke on