I do not know which was more startling, to have him address me so plainly or to have him make me a party to his plans. Did he think I would help him? Or did he think me incapable of opposing him? Either way, I might well prove him wrong. But for now, he exuded an air of well-being that was at odds with the burning hunger that seethed through him. He drew in a deep breath.
“Likari! Awaken. I have chores for you!”
It took a moment or two before the small boy stood in the doorway. He looked around for Soldier’s Boy, rubbing his eyes sleepily.
“Two tasks for the day. Gather enough wood for three nights. No, four. When we come back, we will not want to have to do that task before we sleep. And when that is done, find food. Any and every sort of thing that you can gather that a man can eat. Fish, meat, roots, berries, greens, nuts, fruit of any kind. If you see it and you know it can be eaten, gather it and bring it back to the lodge.”
“Yes, Great One.” The boy managed to utter the words before he was ambushed by an enormous yawn. He knuckled his eyes again and then without another murmur went off down the faded path in a purposeful trot.
Where there is water there is almost always food. It may not be food of a sort that one regards with relish, but it can be eaten. Soldier’s Boy ate it. He found a grass with a fat, oniony bulb on the end and pulled and ate them by the dozen. I was heartily sick of the flavor before he was; or perhaps he no longer cared what anything tasted like. He was bent on quantity, not quality, in his consumption. He moved upstream and found ragged and yellowing water lily leaves decaying on top of a small pond. Snails clung to them. He popped them loose of the vegetation and ate them, crunching down shells and all. I would have felt nauseated if the stomach were my property, but my squeamishness meant nothing to him.
Uphill of the stream a tangle of wild roses in a dappled patch of sunlight were heavy with yellow and red rosehips. These at least were tangy and sweet. Some were as big as the end of my thumb, with a thick layer of soft flesh over the packet of somewhat fuzzy seeds in the middle. I would have eaten only the flesh, but he put them into his mouth by the handful and ground up seeds, pulp, and all before he swallowed. When the patch had been stripped of fruit, he moved on.
So the morning passed. He knew the foods of the forest and moved like a grazing animal. By midmorning, I found myself wondering why man had ever stopped being a forager and hunter and become a farmer. Without any previous investment of toil, there was abundance here. Only when he had wearied of fruit, roots, and vegetation did he return to the stream bank. He drank heavily of the cold, fresh water, and then judiciously gathered a handful of likely stones.
For the next two hours, he employed the sling. He brought down a squirrel, and then two rabbits. He also found a bee tree, the inhabitants moving more slowly in the cool weather, yet still quick to buzz and swarm when he deliberately thudded a stone against the hollow trunk. Mentally he marked its location, and I knew he would return after a few freezes had subdued the swarm for him.
The squirrel and rabbit carcasses he carried in his hands hampered any further hunting or gathering, so he returned to the lodge. Before he settled down to gut and skin them, he saw ample evidence that Likari had been busy. There was a clumsily woven but effective bag made from vine. The boy had lined it with big leaves and used it to bring home a trove of gleaming-shelled nuts, superficially similar to the chestnuts I had enjoyed at the carnival in Old Thares. Four fish hung from a piece of hooked willow threaded through their gills. He had also gathered wild parsnip and garlic and a tuber that was yellow inside when I snapped one in half. I immediately envisioned a savory stew, and shared Soldier’s Boy’s regret that we had no suitable cooking pot.
He skinned the rabbits and squirrels, pegged out the hides, and inspected the hare skin from the day before. He took it from its pegs, kneaded it between his hands to take some of the stiffness from it and then staked it out again. As he stretched the hide he realized he was lucky that no scavengers had come to carry it off in the night. Would he be so lucky again?
He hung the fish and the fresh meat higher in the crook of a tree, and then urinated at the base of it, a clear sign to any other forest residents that he was claiming ownership of the area. He fed the hearth fire a few sticks of wood to keep the coals alive. Feeding a fire was much easier than starting one again. Then he returned to his foraging.
He filled his belly that afternoon, but did not stop eating. Everything that was edible, he ate. Mushrooms in a clump growing in the shade, and then young fat bracket fungi that grew like shelves on the stumps of dying trees he ate. He found fallen cones and sat on the ground amid the prickly things to shake out the plump seeds and eat them. He ate them, and continued to eat, past sufficiency to repleteness and on. The man stuffed himself and took satisfaction in the distending of his belly.