Page 63 of Earthbound

‘I–I’m not sure what you’re talking about,’ she said.

‘Worry not.’

But worry she did. Her hands tightened in Ajax’s fur. Afa noticed.

‘The obeah cannot harm me,’ he said.

‘He will if provoked. Ajax will protect me at all costs.’

Afa cocked his head. ‘He is bound to your lover, then?’

‘I—’ she hesitated.

‘He still will not hurt me.’

‘Ajax, is Rayan watching through your eyes?’ Lettle whispered to the obeah. He shook his head in a clear ‘no’.

He must be asleep then.

She felt uneasy.

‘You’ll still protect me, won’t you, Ajax?’ The obeah let out a small mewl, his green eyes sorrowful.

‘I can hear you, and no, he won’t,’ Afa said, his head turned towards the waterfall.

He was so sure that Lettle began to doubt her own conviction. She was about to ask why when he spoke again. ‘It has been many years since I looked at this view. The waterfall was not always here, you know. There was a shift in the mountain a few hundred years ago which caused the streams to converge. Year on year it has grown in a fascinating example of environmental evolution.’

He looks just like Alder when he teaches me something. It made Lettle’s heart ache and her voice cracked as she said, ‘What happened to my friend?’

Afa looked at Lettle as though she had spoken a language he didn’t understand. Then he clapped his hands together, making her jump. ‘My apologies, I have not even offered you any refreshment, my mother would be ashamed of me. Please sit, sit.’

Startled by his frantic hospitality, Lettle found herself being led into an alcove by the waterfall.

‘Partake in the waterfall. The rivers are fed from the snow on the mountain tops and I have been told the water is very refreshing because of it.’

Lettle was thirsty and her mouth still tasted of the nerba root Mortah had given her. She removed her flask from her bag and filled it. She was about to put it to her mouth but a prickle of uncertainty washed over her.

Could he have poisoned the waterfall?

No, that didn’t make sense, the entirety of Caperly would have been killed. But as she pulled the flask away from her mouth she found Afa watching her curiously.

‘It’s not poisoned,’ he said.

‘Then why aren’t you drinking it?’ she asked.

‘I’m not thirsty.’

It was such an odd exchange that Lettle wanted no more than to break eye contact, so she sipped from the flask.

‘Fresh, is it not?’ he said.

‘Sweet, almost.’

‘Are you hungry? The crops have grown a little unruly since my time away, but I think there was a strawberry thicket somewhere near.’ He pressed his hands into the dirt and between his fingers sprouted strawberry plants laden with glistening fruit as though kissed by morning dew.

Lettle nearly choked on her water. ‘What are you?’

‘I am a human, no more, no less. I was once emperor of these mountains, also known to the common folk as the Human Lands. But we called it Kaa’pah’lie.’