Thirst for Adventure

Chapter 21

Leo and Adious spent many hours now walking in companionable silence. They no longer needed words to express the awe they felt as a huge eagle lifted from the heath near them and flapped away, nor to express their amusement as two birds diving for a piece of apple narrowly avoided a head-on collision. They spent much of their time pulling faces and poking out tongues at Jessie, who gurgled with endless delight at these obliging humans who nonetheless always grew tired of the game before she did.

At

night, beside the fire that was burning quietly down into coals, Leo wondered again at the fascination that glowing coals had for all men and women. Had life itself been born in molten rock and fire, and did man somewhere have a dim memory of this? Was it the duality of fire, its power to destroy and its power to give comfort, that fascinated people, who instinctively recognised the same duality in themselves? Was man afraid of fire? The fire burned with its greatest intensity as it neared the end of its life. That was when its heat was at its utmost, when it was at its most alluring. The young fire that burned raw gave little heat and held little interest.

Leo felt frustrated again at the inadequacy of his language which held no words to describe the colour of fire. Yellow, orange, red: they were the words most commonly used, but they were wrong. They failed to evoke the smouldering power of these glowing coals.

Perhaps it was the panther-like quality of the fire that held men in its t****l. Controlled, circumscribed, secured, this fire was kept within its bounds by a few rocks and by the boy’s watchful supervision. Yet, like the panther on a chain, the restraint of the fire was an illusion. A moment’s carelessness, the intervention of some other force, like wind, and the fire would snap its chain. Raging and foaming, it would leap at the throat of a dead tree, rip and tear through the grass of the plateau, and gorge itself in a savage gloating feast on the bodies of every creature in its domain.

Adious, who had been washing herself in a nearby spring, walked back into the light of the fire. She had not bothered to dress again, having always been much less self-conscious about her body than Leo. Her lithe and feline beauty struck Leo anew with its force. Her dark skin gleamed in the firelight, but her black springing curls absorbed the light like some kind of sombre night-time mystery. Leo took a piece of charcoal from the edge of the fire and with strong firm lines began to draw her on a slab of rock that had been at his back. He had never drawn much, and had never been very good at it, but now the lines flowed, like runnels of velvet. The charcoal was still warm in his hand as he drew.

Adious sat by the fire, eating an orange, not aware of what Leo was doing. She had torn the orange open and was biting into it, unconcerned about the spraying and spilling down her chin. Leo could not draw that, so he drew her at rest, lying on her side, a hand supporting her head. Yet it was impossible to portray her as relaxed; there was no mistaking the ripple of the muscles under her gleaming skin.

Finishing the orange, Adious rolled over, stood up and came to see what he was doing. She laughed, and became self-conscious.

‘Don’t.’

‘What?’

‘You’ve made me look like an animal.’

Leo laughed and continued to draw, but he too had become self-conscious, and the lines now would not come out; they formed clumsy shapes.

‘Oh, don’t!’ Adious said again, grabbing at the stick of charcoal to stop him. Leo fought back and in a moment they were locked in a fierce wordless struggle, melded together in sudden heat. Although they were both snuffling and giggling Leo felt that there was something acrid in the fight. He sensed from the strength of Adious’ grip that she felt the same. They rolled in the dust, first Leo on top, then Adious. Adious sat on top of him and laughed down into his face. He laughed back, then did a quick roll that upset her and reversed the positions. It was a struggle, a battle, but for what? Leo did not know, but he panted and growled at her, determined to win. She twisted and kicked and they were lying side by side in the warm ashes at the edge of the fire, the girl’s skin reflecting the light like copper. They rested for a moment, locked together, then the scuffle began again. But as it did so the tension was cracked by a thin wail from Jessie, who had awoken and was demanding attention.

‘You go,’ said Adious.

‘You go,’ said Leo.

‘No it’s your turn.’

‘Go on.’

‘You go.’

‘You look after Jessie,’ said Adious, ‘and I’ll get some wood for the fire.’

‘All right,’ said Leo, after a moment’s thought.

But later that night, as he lay in peace beside Adious, looking up at the burning stars, he wondered at the tension that had flickered so quickly and been resolved so quickly. Their friendship had a sharp edge that he had come to like.

Chapter Twenty-One

Leo and Adious continued on their way under a cloudless sky. The view was changing; they had left behind the cultivated flatlands that stretched out from the foothills below, and now wended their way above dense and wild country. At dusk they watched as a thousand or more small black birds plunged from trees at the top of the escarpment to their roosting places in the forest below. A litter of baby foxes, each with beautifully long flared brushes, scattered at their approach and ran, one of them with something furry held in his mouth. A mob of horses, feeding on the rough grass, moved uneasily as the small cavalcade went past, and stood watching until the travellers were out of sight.

Walking became difficult at times, over sharp loose rocks. For three days and three nights they pressed doggedly on above the great brooding cliffs and slashing gullies. On the fourth day they began to emerge into populated areas again, and to drop down from the ridgeline.

The country they were now in was only semi-cleared and lightly settled. There were many dark patches of forest which the track wound through tentatively. Farming in these regions seemed a desultory affair: the land had not by any means surrendered to the people. The people merely camped at its edges and made shabby incursions into the wilder parts. There were plenty of tubers to be dug out of the ground for food — some of them of a type that neither Leo nor Adious had seen before. Leo worked for a day on a small farm in exchange for fruit, but found his employer to be surly and ungrateful. Hurt by his attitude, Leo finished early and took his payment in an equally surly way.

‘Moods are contagious, personalities are contagious, everything’s contagious,’ Adious said to him that night as they lay together in their blankets, with Jessie dribbling on a piece of cord nearby.

‘Maybe,’ Leo said. ‘Let’s move on fast tomorrow. I don’t like this area. It was good up on the escarpment. I liked being up there.’ He lay back with his arms behind his head and looked up at the sky, but the dark trees obscured most of the stars and denied him one of his favourite night-time occupations. There was a rustle in the branches though and he thought he could see a small face and a pair of little black eyes gleaming down at him.

‘What is it?’ Adious asked.

‘I don’t know . . . something furry and small,’ said Leo, peering intently upwards. He could see a long tail wrapped around a branch.

‘I’ll find out,’ he said and with a sudden impulse of energy leapt out of the blankets and swung up into the lower foliage.

‘Careful!’ Adious called out, torn between laughter and anxiety. But Leo was now climbing confidently. Even Jessie had stopped playing and was staring up into the tree but all that could be seen was an occasional glimpse of the boy as he gained height rapidly. He could see the animal more clearly but then realised that there was more than one. In fact there seemed to be a treeful of them. But they showed no awareness of his presence. He was now three-quarters of the way up the tree and with reckless disregard for the consequences began to shake the upper branches vigorously. The animals, of a type unknown to him, reacted with varying degrees of alarm. Several ran out to perilous positions among the buds and tips but most stayed around the trunk. Leo moved up to another foothold and a certain amount of panic set in. At last one of them ran straight down the trunk and down Leo’ back and leg, treating him as part of the tree in its headlong dash to safety. Leo chortled, swung around the tree and laughed.

‘What’s happening?’ Adious laughed up at him.

‘They’re running all over me!’ he yelled. ‘And they’ve got claws!’ Several more followed their leader down. As the last one swarmed down the boy’s back he gave a quick lurch of his shoulde

rs and the little creature was flung through the air, tumbling and turning in a shower of leaves. Then he landed on a more substantial branch and swung his tail around it in a firm grip. He shook himself and ran off along the branch into the dark sanctuary of the foliage.

Leo, his fun finished, came down reluctantly. It was one of the few times that he missed the company of a boy his own age. He was aware that most of his friends had been adults, like Mayon, or girls, like Jasper and Adious. He had gained much from these friendships. In fact he was wise enough to recognise that through them he had gained in ways that placed him far ahead of most of his peers. Yet he would have liked someone to wrestle and roll around with, someone who could race him up a tree or outswim him across a dam. Instead he contented himself with tickling Jessie and rolling her backwards and forwards across her blanket — thus arousing the wrath of Adious, who had been assiduously lulling the child to sleep.

Leo was still restless but with no outlet for his energy he was forced to crawl sulkily back under his blankets, while Adious, still grumbling, came in beside him. It was only a few minutes before she was asleep: Leo watched the rise and fall of the blanket over her and the stillness of her dark cheeks. He sighed and looked up at the tree again, but could see no sign of life.

An hour or two passed. Leo lightly drifted in and out of sleep but was never sure whether he was asleep or awake. Then a branch cracked in the darkness and he was sure that he was awake. He lay still, his heart pounding. He had heard many sounds during many nights in many strange places but there was something deliberate and watchful about this sound that set it apart. This was danger. Beside him Adious stirred a little and murmured something about ‘hurting, hurting’. Leo wished he could quieten her but realised that any attempt to do so was likely to cause her to make even more noise. He lightly pushed the blankets aside and waited. Suddenly the stillness of the night was torn apart, so quickly and dramatically that he was made helpless by shock.

He did not know where to start. Things were happening everywhere. There were dark shapes rushing at him, a wave of them. They were big and, although he was ready to believe that they were evil apparitions, his rational mind told him that they were men. He flinched from the expected attack but it did not come. Just as they appeared to be about to fall on him they paused, grabbed at something on the ground and swept it up. For a moment they seemed hesitant, caught as a wave can sometimes be caught at the moment of its breaking. Then, as Leo began to struggle to his feet and Adious beside him began to stir into wakefulness, the men faded back into the darkness. Leo felt some kind of relief, as he registered the possibility that he might not be attacked. He was on his feet now, peering after them. Assuming they had stolen some of their few possessions, he cast around on the ground. It took him another infinitely slow moment to realise what they had taken.