He himself needed food. And water. How pathetic to long, not for wine or well-prepared food, but a simple drink of water. And now he was right back to where he had been hours ago, except that most of his daylight was gone. Soon darkness would fall, and he’d be back to huddling under a smelly blanket in a small boat. He glanced at the sky and decided that he had to at least try to find where Jess had found the fruit.

Meat. She’d been following his thoughts sleepily, and the idea of fruit didn’t please her. Find meat. She let the sharpness of her hunger touch him. He was appalled. He’d just fed her!

Not enough.

“Maybe I’ll find some meat.” Then, trying to accept the desperation of their situation, he forced himself to say, “I’ll try.”

He walked back to the boat and looked at the selection of animal-killing tools that remained to him. The hatchet still lay in the bloody bilgewater. His gorge rose as he picked it out and set it on the seat to dry. Jess’s blood, diluted with slimy water, was on his hands now. He knelt and thrust his hand down through the matted debris and into the river water to sluice it off. To his surprise, it did not sting as he had expected it to. Was he becoming accustomed to it? A glance around at the river showed him that not only was it far less acid than it had been, but that the level was much lower. The high water mark on the tree trunks was well over his head now.

He worked his way over to the cage of tree trunks that edged the river, stepping from log to log. Sometimes they bobbed deeper than he expected, and one spun under his foot, nearly dumping him into the river. But at last he stood at the edge of the forest, looking up at the trees. He knew he’d seen Jess descend one of those trunks, but they all suddenly looked much smoother than they had before. When was the last time he’d climbed a tree? He couldn’t have been more than ten years old, and it had been a friendly apple tree, its branches laden with sweet fruit. The memory of those apples made him swallow hard against his hunger. Well, no help for it. Up he must go.

The horn’s long low call startled him. He spun to face it as Relpda lifted her head and trumpeted out a response to it. The sound seemed to come from all around him. He stared around wildly, even looking up into the trees. Relpda was gazing upstream and as he watched her, she lifted her chin again and trumpeted.