"...and besides, Zuzun always says you can't make dragons do anything. It's the snow you can shape, or maybe even ice, I think, even though it's hard, but the dragons will be dragons, and they're too powerful for humans to change anything about them. If they want something, they will simply take it and not care..."
For the hundredth time that day Anaya wished they had simply left the sleeping boy on the shore when they took off in the morning, and taken his canoe with them. Tiu had argued they really couldn't do that, because they couldn't leave a kid in the forst with no transport. Anaya thought he would find his way back to town following the river, canoe or not, they weren't that far away, but when Madiza sided with Tiu, there was nothing she could do.
Last night he'd gotten off his canoe and simply sat down at the campfire with them. They all had simply stared at him.
"Who are you?" Madiza had finally asked.
"Kimo," he had said, as if that explained everything. "Where are we going?"
Before Anaya had had the time to open her mouth to say they weren't going anywhere, because first thing in the morning he was taking his canoe and going back downstream, Tiu had answered.
"The mountains."
"Why are we going to the mountains?"
"Because we want to know where the ice dragon came from and why," Tiu told him.
Kimo was silent in thought for a moment.
"Why are we going to the mountains?" he asked again.
"Because ice dragons live in places with ice, and the closest of those is in the mountains, so maybe it came from there, and we can find out something about why."
Kimo had thought for another moment in silence, then nodded.
"What's for supper?" he had then said. It had turned out he hadn't thought to bring any food with him.
Based on the tension in Madiza's shoulders in the front of the canoe it seemed to Anaya that she was starting to regret the decision to bring him along. Anaya wasn't sure how it hadn't been obvious from the moment the kid joined them. Maybe Madiza wasn't as smart as she'd given her credit for.
Suddenly there was a splash of water from Madiza's paddle. Only a few drops of it got onto Anaya, most of it hitting Kimo directly.
"What was that for?" he spluttered.
"Oh, I'm sorry. My paddle slipped," Madiza said with a tone and a look that made it very clear she wasn't sorry, and that if he didn't shut up, there would be more where that came from.
It, miraculously, actually worked. Anaya would have smiled a thanks to the other girl, if she hadn't been facing away and wouldn't have seen it anyway.
Instead she looked over to where Tiu paddled away in the solo canoe. They had agreed she should take that one, since she was the strongest paddler of them, so it was easier for her than any of the others to keep up with the other two. How Kimo had been able to keep up with them at all yesterday was a miracle. If something bad could be called a miracle. Anaya understood why Tiu should be the one in the solo, but that didn't mean she had to like being stuck with the two most annoying people she had ever met for the entire day.
They paddled in silence for a long, blissful while, Kimo sulking, soaking wet from river water.
"How much longer to the mountains?" Kimo finally broke the silence.
"Three days," Anaya said.
"Three da..?!" he cut off mid-word, as if shocked. For a terrifying moment he looked like he was about to say something more, but eventually he closed his mouth and turned to face front again. (Yeah, a kid who thought a five-day trip up the river was long clearly had a cousin they regularly visited who lived far enough to have snow.)
And so passed the day. And the next. They talked some, and Kimo had a bad habit of lunging directly into long explanations of what his cousin Zuzun had told him about this thing or that, but usually a dirty look from Madiza was enough to get him to close his mouth.
In the evenings they bathed in the river, washing away the sweat from the day's paddling. It might've be cold, but the movement was enough to keep them warm. And to spring bilsters in their hands. They could easily do short trips, but days on end of paddling was unusual. Luckily Tiu knew a good healing spell. It didn't get rid of them completely, but it was enough to have their hands in good enough a shape to continue the next day.
On the third day of the trip Madiza started humming, then singing. It was one of the songs they sang at the school whenever they wanted something to pass the time when they were working on something boring. When it came to the chorus' part, Anaya didn't even notice answering, it was such an automatic response. The second time she could hear Tiu's tinkle of a voice adding to her own from the other canoe, and for a long time they sung back and forth, the journey feeling a little better.
And then, on the morning of the fourth day, they woke up to find Kimo feeling sick.
"What did you do?" Anaya demanded.
"I didn't do anything!" he insisted.
"You're not feverish, or coughing, or have a runny nose," Tiu said. "So it's just a stomach bug, I think. But you've been eating what we've been eating, and none of us have it. Unless some of the fruits you've eaten have been bad?"
"I can tell if a fruit has gone bad," he said, sounding insulted. Tiu nodded. Being able to tell if a fruit was bad was something a baby could do.
"Have you been eating anything we haven't?" Anaya asked him.
"And what exactly do you think he would have eaten?" Tiu asked.
"Actually..." Kimo muttered. "I did find some berries last night, when I went to get firewood, and I didn't say anything because there weren't that much of them, and they were so good."
Tiu turned to look at him.
"What were they?"
Kimo shrugged.
"I don't know. About this big," he showed with his fingers, "and sweet and yummy and purple. They grew in a big bush a little ways away."
Tiu stared at him for a moment like he was an idiot for eating something when he didn't know what it was (because he was an idiot for doing that), and then headed in the same direction Kimo had gone the previous night, following his tracks in the snow. Five minutes later she was back.
"You," she said to Kimo, "just poisoned yourself last night."
The look on Kimo's face was priceless.
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The topic for tomorrow is Pick.
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