She rolls off me afterwards. We lie in the sun, watching the sky.
“You’re a good mate,” she says.
“I didn’t even feed you.”
“You don’t always have to feed me.”
“I should feed you. I should fish before dark.”
“That would be good. Can I come along?”
“I’m faster without distraction.”
“I want to go with you,” she says. “And I still kind of can’t believe you catch fish with your bare hands.”
“You’d question me at a time like this?”
“Who catches fish with their bare hands?”
“What do you think I use?”
“I don’t know. Sticks? A net made from a sock? I’d believe almost anything before your hands.”
I frown and rub my face. “Come on, then.”
She trails along behind me to the stream, a speck of light at the edge of my dark world.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Ann
The river flowsthrough a bed of rocks and boulders in the shade of a huge limestone ridge, which stands like a dark sentry above us. Kiro leads the way, picking along stones and spots of dry ground until we hit a downed tree whose fat limbs stretch out over the river like a giant’s hand.
“This was always the best place. This tree. This shade.”
“It’s beautiful,” I say.
He regards the mighty downed tree for some time.
Kiro has a powerful imagination for putting himself in the past—he told me that he’d lie in that institution bed imagining himself free and wild. I know he’s thinking about his pack.
I don’t want him to stop thinking about his pack, to stop honoring them with memory, but I hate seeing him in pain. “What now?”
“I catch the fish. This is going to be boring for you to watch.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” I say. “Considering it’s pretty much an impossible feat.”
He climbs out onto the tree over the water and stretches out on his belly. Then he sticks a hand in the water. And waits.
And waits.
“That’s what you do?”
“Shhh,” he scolds.
“Are you shitting me?”
“They think my hand is part of the tree. I grab them.”