Chapter 8
Red month rolled into Orange, and the leaves on many of the trees in the Garden were turning a burnished gold colour. For the past few days—or had it been a whole week?—I’d been exploring the other side of the river with Nayn. He’d told me many stories from when he’d lived in Nalong. It had been at least three hundred years ago, as far as I could tell. He had been eating enough of the Living Fruit to stop ageing, so his mind was as bright as a child’s, and yet how could he remember so much of his life in Nalong when I struggled to remember the faces of the people I loved? When I’d asked him about it he said that the Fruit must not have needed to clean out as many of his memories as it did mine.
I could have spent much longer travelling with him, learning from him, exploring his
