“He’s a cute little guy, right?” asked Elijah, which caused K’hana to recoil. That certainly wasn’t the reaction he’d intended to elicit. Though, that was probably due to the creature he held in his hands.
“I don’t think she likes Lizardface,” Miguel remarked, scratching the creature’s scaley ribs.
“They are incredibly venomous!” she hissed, taking a step back to put some distance between herself and the giant desert monitor Elijah held in his arms. The thing was as large as a Komodo dragon, so without his enhanced Strength, he never would’ve been capable of holding it aloft. Or at least not easily.
“Lizardface?” asked Elijah.
Miguel shrugged. “He needed a name.”
“That’s worse than Snappy.”
“Snappy is a good name!” Miguel insisted.
“And Trevor? What about Susan, Annabelle, and Bubba?” Elijah asked with a small smirk. As he spoke, the desert monitor tasted the air, then closed its eyes and rested its head on Elijah’s shoulder.
“Those are good names, too!”
“Giving animals people names is weird,” Elijah stated.
“Whatever. Talking to you is like talking to a brick wall,” Miguel muttered. “Nobody else is ever right.”
“In this case, I am objectively right.”
“That’s not what objectively means.”
“It is if I say so,” Elijah stated. “Respect your elders.”
“Is…that thing coming with us?” asked K’hana, cutting in. Elijah suspected she’d done so to put a stop to the bickering. Both he and Miguel knew it didn’t mean anything. It was good-natured. But it was clear that K’hana’s culture didn’t really include things like that. Or perhaps she was just as uptight as she seemed.
“Oh, no. I just thought you’d want to meet him,” Elijah said. “You know, a lot of people in Seattle eat these fellows. They taste a bit like chicken, especially when they’re fried.”
With that, he set the monitor down, and it waddled off. Normally, they moved pretty slowly, but when they were threatened, the lizards could move like lightning. Elijah watched it with some admiration as it dipped behind a low rise and disappeared. It wasn’t a skill or anything. Their hides were simply perfect for camouflaging them in the desert.
“I guess we’ll get moving again,” Elijah said, setting off. The other two followed, with Miguel hurrying to catch up.
“You think we’ll get there today?” he asked.
Elijah shrugged. “Probably,” he said. Only a few days before, they’d passed the copse of Joshua trees he’d planted the first time he’d been in the desert. And to his horror, he’d found that most of them had been chopped down. That had infuriated and saddened Elijah to the point where he’d spent a couple of days replanting the trees and helping them take root.
But now, they were closing in on the Circle of Spears, which meant he had a choice to make. To that end, he asked K’hana, “Can I trust you?”
“Perhaps,” she said without hesitation.
Elijah stopped, and the other two stopped as well. “That wasn’t the answer I expected.”
“I suspected as much,” she admitted. “But I feel that I must be honest. If breaking your trust will help my people survive, then I will do so without hesitation. They are my first priority. However, I will not break your trust unless it is absolutely necessary.”
That elaboration made Elijah feel a little better, but it wasn’t really what he’d wanted to hear. It meant that it would be a little irresponsible to take K’hana to his island. So, that left him with a few choices, none of which were ideal. First, he could simply go straight to Seattle and drop the elf off with Lucy or Isaiah. That ran the risk of taking longer than he could afford, but it was probably the safest option.
Yet, it would also necessitate taking Miguel into the city, which he had no intention of doing. It wasn’t the cesspool that Valoria had been, but it was perhaps much more dangerous. And given that Miguel didn’t have an archetype yet, it would be even worse for him.
So, he wanted to avoid that route if possible.
The other option was to take Miguel home while leaving K’hana in the oasis. But that was just as dangerous for her, because without Elijah around, the wildlife would prove much deadlier. There was every chance that Snappy might react poorly to the intrusion into his territory, and if that happened, either the turtle or K’hana would end up gravely injured.
Finally, there was the option that made the most sense, but also played host to the most risk. Taking K’hana back to the island would only delay him a little, but it would be much safer for everyone involved. Yet, it did come with the risk involved in showing anyone – especially someone like K’hana, who knew the value of a place like the grove – his island.
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It seemed like a lose-lose sort of situation, and not for the first time, Elijah wished he’d thought things through before setting off. But the past was the past, and as such, he couldn’t change his circumstances. So, he needed to work with what he had.
And looking at his options, everything pointed to taking K’hana to the island. Hopefully, the fact that it was thousands of miles away from her home would keep her from being able to determine the location of his grove.
Besides, he knew he couldn’t keep it a secret indefinitely. Eventually, the people of Ironshore would let it be known that something interesting was on his island. Perhaps they already had. The only answer to that sort of threat was to simply be stronger than anyone who might try to invade his domain.
So, he said, “I’ve got two choices for you, K’hana.”
“Does one of them involve killing me?” she asked, and Elijah felt ethera swirling around her.
“What? No! Jesus…”
“I don’t think she knows who Jesus was,” supplied Miguel.
“No. The choice is more of an invitation. I was going to ask if you wanted to come back to my island,” he said. “The alternative is to hang out in an oasis with an ornery turtle. So…up to you.”
“Snappy isn’t ornery,” Miguel said. “He’s just a little shy around strangers.”
“He tried to eat Colt the first time he wandered near the pond,” Elijah pointed out. “And there’s a reason birds don’t land there anymore.”
“Just shy, like I said. And he didn’t eat Colt. That has to count for something.”
Elijah rolled his eyes, then turned his focus back to K’hana, who was clearly having second thoughts about her decision to accompany him. “So, what’s it going to be? We’ll be gone for about a week, then we’ll come back here,” he said. “I promise you’ll be unharmed.”
She took a deep breath, then said, “I will accompany you to this…island.”
Letting out a sigh of relief, Elijah said, “Awesome. Then, on we go as we try to forget this awkward interaction ever happened.”
After that, he did just as he’d described, marching off across the desert. The other two struggled to keep up at first – he often forgot that others weren’t equipped with his level of physical attributes – so he slowed to what felt like a glacial pace. To distract himself, he occupied one facet of his mind with cycling his Core while with another, he focused on maintaining a steady conversation with Miguel. Throughout their journey, he’d endeavored to help the young man connect with nature, and one of the best ways of doing that was to describe all the different forms of life. And even in the desert, there were plenty of living creatures ranging from spiders to reptiles to large worms that lived below the surface. It may have looked desolate, but that appearance was far from reality.
For his part, Miguel soaked in the information like a sponge. He had his mothers’ intellectual curiosity, which told Elijah that his nephew would probably make a fair Scholar, if that was the route he chose.
Finally, though, they reached the Circle of Spears. While Miguel dashed toward the pond to reacquaint himself with his favorite turtle, Elijah watched K’hana’s reaction as she circled the dolmen.
“Who made this?” she asked at last.
“Me and my sister-in-law. Pretty awesome, right? Getting those monuments just right was a pain, but the carvings turned out really well, I think,” Elijah said. Then, he went on to describe the process, explaining where he’d gotten the stones and how he and Carmen had put everything together. “But it’s more than just a monument. It’s tied to one of my spells. I won’t go into how it all works, but from here, I can open a gate to a few different places. One of those is my island, which is where we’re headed.”
After that, Elijah yelled for Miguel. Predictably, the boy was loathe to leave the turtle behind, but he came anyway. And then, Elijah used Roots of the World Tree, creating a gate made of vines that snaked up from the ground. Then, the air inside shimmered into a portal to the grove.
Elijah gestured, “After you.”
Miguel was the first to step through. Then, K’hana hesitantly followed. And finally, Elijah brought up the rear, letting the gate fade away the moment he was through. The dense ethera of the island enveloped him like a warm blanket, and he took a deep, relaxing breath before saying, “Ah. That feels good.”
“W-what is this place?” K’hana whispered, looking around in obvious wonder.
“My island,” Elijah said. “Well, my grove to be more accurate. But the grove is on my island, so I guess I was right the first time. Regardless, welcome – let me show you to where you’ll be staying for the next few days.”
Elijah had considered sending K’hana to Ironshore, but he’d thought better of letting her wander too far. Instead, he wanted to keep her on the island where he could keep an eye on her. So, with that in mind, he escorted her to his treehouse and showed her to the guest room. Once she was on her way to getting settled in, Elijah turned his attention to the biggest reason he’d returned to the island.
His coffee cherries were ready to be removed from the water, then separated from their beans. So, he headed to the large trough where he’d submerged them and got to work plucking them from the liquid. Once that was done, he removed the beans from the flesh, tossing them into a separate basket.
It was a tedious process, but Elijah found that it was strangely calming. More, it gave him an opportunity to continue his core cultivation. And at last, he felt that he was finally starting to make progress. Though, even as his core felt like it was expanding, he couldn’t deny that cycling became even more difficult. However, that was as expected, based on everything he’d learned. So, he kept at it, and over the next eight hours, he finished his task.
Once the beans had been separated, Nerthus took the discarded flesh away, saying that it would make a great addition to his compost heap. Meanwhile, Elijah laid the beans out to dry. Night had already fallen, but he hoped the process would be complete by the middle of the next day.
As he worked, Elijah also kept one facet of his mind trained on K’hana. She didn’t stray far from the treehouse, instead confining her movements to the grove. Yet, it was clear that she was impressed – and a little frightened – by what she saw. Never was that more apparent than when she spent an entire hour standing at the base of the ancestral tree and just staring up at its branches.
That’s where Elijah joined her.
“This tree is not normal,” she said after a few moments.
“It’s not. Even among others of its species, it’s special,” Elijah said. “I think you can understand why I was hesitant to bring you here. If the wrong sort of person sees this tree – or the rest of this grove – everything will be in danger. I hope you’re not that kind of person.”
“I would never violate a druid’s grove,” she said. “Those of us who came to this planet are not as well-learned as some, but we hold nature’s protectors in high esteem.”
“Didn’t feel like it before when you first found out I was a Druid,” Elijah remarked.
She glanced at him, saying, “I was merely surprised. Druids are not normally combatants.”
“Well, I am,” Elijah said. “But I’m still a Druid, and this grove is everything to me. So, please respect it while you’re here. And I’ll ask that you not reveal anything about this place when you return to your people.”
“I will not. You have my word.”
“Good,” Elijah said. Then, he clapped his hands together and asked, “So, how would you like to see the ocean?”