I was watching the river in the first darkness of night, as was becoming my habit. I had seen some beautiful sunsets at sea, but few as beautiful as those here by the river. As I followed the sun’s descent along its westward course it was as if the river held the light in, prolonging the sunset, turning from yellow to orange to gold to red—looking for all the world as if there were a large campfire burning just over the mountains, slowly going out.
Then I heard a stir in the water and saw Gandhaarr lift his head and call to me. ‘Come closer,’ he said.
‘No,’ I replied. ‘You can torment me from a distance.’
‘I have something to tell you,’ he said. ‘Come closer.’
But I refused.
‘You will regret it,’ he said.
‘I don’t think I will,’ I replied.
‘I wish to teach you the words for the land here,’ he said.
‘I have my own words for everything. Perfectly good words.’
And he laughed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You create the landscape in your own words. If you don’t know the right words you will never know the land properly.’
‘You’re talking nonsense,’ I said.
‘Am I? Are you sure about that?’
Of course I wasn’t sure, but I did not tell him that.
Then he said, ‘The waters here pull me slowly along in one direction, and then they turn and pull me in another direction. Do you know what I’m talking about?’
‘The current of the river,’ I said. ‘And the tides.’
‘No. It is the movement of the past and the future that pulls me back and forth.’ Then he said, ‘Your future lies upriver.’
I turned my head in that direction and saw the two bright eyes considering me from the darkness there. It took me a moment to understand that they were the glow of two campfires. The first signs of the natives I had seen since our arrival.
I looked back to Gandhaarr, but he laughed and sank out of sight into the dark waters, letting them carry him away from me.