Page 44
I had just started thinking how beautiful this place was, for all its strangeness. Sure, there were birds that would pick your bones if their friends, the flowers, lullabied you to sleep; yes, the light looked off somehow, as if colors were a slightly different version of themselves here; no, there was neither river nor stream nor any evidence of a well. But the grassy, rocky hills had a bleak dignity to them. The trees, while few and solitary, were old and quite unlike trees in the east. The bark was thick, they bent like old women, and the leaves hissed in the dry wind as if to reassure you that everything was as it should be; that even if you died, your bones would stay and bleach exactly where they were meant to and so ornament the land.
And always and ever, the mountains overlooked this world.
It was from the foothills of these mountains that the monkeys came, six or eight of them, with red arses and quick little hands made for mischief. At first, they watched us from a distance, sitting on a flat rock, hugging their knees, looking at us as if we were here to amuse them. Perhaps we were.
One chittered, then yawned, showing off fangs you wouldn’t want to see up close.
“What do you reckon?” I said to Galva.
“What do you mean?”
“Do you think they are dangerous?”
“To you or to me?”
“Ha ha.”
Their heads slowly turned as they watched us go by.
One leaned close to another, and I swear I thought it whispered in its ear.
“That one asks if we are good to eat,” Galva said.
“I’m wondering the same about them.”
So saying, I got out my bow, strung it. Nocked an arrow. They went farther up their hill.
“Well, they know what a bow is,” I said.
“And how far you can shoot.”
“I could hit one where they are.”
“Not the first time.”
I wanted to object, but she was right. She’d once seen me miss a goblin at about this range, when it mattered.
“I don’t like how smart they look,” I said.
“They make me think of a story from Montabrecola, a province north of my lands in Braga.”
I waited.
She just kept walking.
“That’s it, is it?”
“What?”
“You do this on purpose.”
“What do I do?”
“Who mentions that they know a story but then doesn’t tell it? Or at least say what it’s about? You’re trying to be an enigma.”
“What is that word? Enigma.”
I walked on.
