Conlaodh did not return the smile. He was furious – furious with himself for so stupidly dropping his guard and furious with the girl, for she had his pack and without his pack he had nothing. The thought flashed into his head that she might not be alone but the anger that boiled inside him was too strong to allow straight thinking. It was his pack and he would take it back.

He lunged forward, reaching out with his right hand to grab the strap, but his fingers closed on thin air. She had mirrored his movement, rocking backwards and twisting to her left before stepping two paces further away. She was still smiling. He tried again, this time feigning to take the bag before ducking down and charging straight for her in an attempt to send her to the ground. But she was moving almost before he was, spinning to her right and then away from him, timing her move perfectly to escape his outstretched arms. If he was furious before he was raging now. He reached forward, she shifted back. He moved left, she shuffled right. He moved right, she side-stepped left. It was like a dance in which he thought he was leading but where his partner was actually calling the moves and he’d always hated dancing when forced to do it at the gatherings. He tried trickery, seeming to relax and display an air of nonchalance before suddenly leaping forwards. He tried brute force, charging at her with all his might in an incessantly flurry of attacks and in these moments they were almost indistinguishable, a ball of activity twisting and turning over the dusty ground between the four trees. But it was no use, he was fast and he was strong but this was like fighting water, so fluid were her movements. She still had his pack and she was still smiling.

After a pause in their struggle during which he bent over, hands on his knees as he gasped to regain his breath and to collect his thoughts, he stood upright and looked her in the eyes.

“It’s my pack. Give it back”, he growled.

“Well hello to you too. Have you come far?” she responded mockingly.

That was it, he would take it from her if it was the last thing he would do, and he knew how. He was standing with his back to the marshy lands looking back towards the forest from which he had come and he started to shift his gaze away from the girl and look into the distance screwing his face up into a look of puzzlement. It worked. The girl seemed to become uneasy and more rooted to her position and she slowly turned her head to try to follow his gaze. She was almost looking back over her shoulder now and at that moment he launched his attack. He rushed forward in a crouching run arms outstretched ready to clasp her around the middle, but in an instant she dropped down to the ground and he was over her before he knew it. He felt her hands fix around his ankles and then thud, he was down on the soft, pine-needle covered ground and she was standing over him, one foot poised gently on his chest, left hand on her hip and right arm stretched high and holding his pack like a trophy. She had read his mind and used his own movement to bring him down.

“I think that makes me the winner”, she said, smiling even more broadly so that her white teeth sparkled like jewels.

She stepped back a couple of paces and then leaned forwards to place the pack beside him.

“Here you go. You only had to ask nicely. I’m Yara by the way”, she continued, and then after a slight pause as he pulled his pack towards him:

“But the interesting question is ‘Who are you?’”.

Conlaodh wasn’t interested in answering the girl’s questions, he felt humiliated and he was angry at how easily he had been taken by surprise. At least he had his pack back. Part of him wanted to run, to get away from this place and to be away from her constantly smiling face, but there wasn’t anywhere that he could run, at least nowhere that he knew he would be safe. Part of him wanted to stand up and fight her and to teach her a lesson, but he’d already seen how swiftly she could move and he’d already taken one beating of a sort from her. He started to relax and as he did so she spoke again:

“You’re thinking you could run or you could fight and that neither seems like a good course of action. There is another option you know.”

He had to admit it to himself, she was a smart one, this smiling girl whose movements flowed like water who called herself Yara. Perhaps he should see what she was about. Perhaps she would be able to help him. He drew his pack towards him and shuffled backwards until he was sitting against one of the trees and looked at her properly for the first time. He guessed she was about the same age as him but she was different in so many ways – instead of his pale and freckled skin hers was a smooth dark olive colour; instead of his blue eyes hers were dark brown; instead of his straight red hair hers was shorter, slightly curly and almost as black as the night. Yet she spoke the same language and she was a child, just like him. Perhaps she would even be a friend. That thought made him smile and noticing this, she began to laugh quietly, not in a teasing way but in a gentle encouraging tone that relaxed him further. He found himself laughing too, and in that instant the connection was made.

“I’m Conlaodh, I’ve come from my lands over there”, he said, raising one arm to point back along the dune ridge behind him, “I’ve been travelling for days.”

“I know”, she said, “I’ve been watching you, and in any case, looking like that you’re obviously not from these parts. I often come up to these trees to look out at the world. I saw the smoke from the fires you lit as you came this way.”

As she said those words she saw him tense and look around and she instinctively knew what concerned him.

“It’s alright, no-one else will know you are here. No-one else from my village ever comes up here and we hardly ever get travellers in these parts. It’s just me here. Why have you come?”

Conlaodh opened his mouth to answer her question but found that he didn’t know what to say. Why had he come?

Before he could begin to answer his own question she was talking again:

“A week ago I saw a huge smoke cloud filling the far horizon. Then a couple of days after that I saw that someone had lit a small fire near the dune ridge and I’ve watched each night as the smoke from the fires has got closer. I knew someone was coming and today I picked you up as you came up the rise towards these trees. I call them ‘The Sentinels’ by the way because they stand here looking out at the world, just like I like to. When I saw you I knew you weren’t a danger to me as long as I made the first move and because you had no idea I was around that was easy. You should really look after your belongings better.” She winked playfully at him.

“Where are you going?”

“Away”, he responded, “away from there”, and his arm waved back towards the dune ridge and forest again, “But I don’t know where, just away. I can’t go back”.

“Well you won’t get anywhere if you keep going in the direction you were. My people will find you and they don’t welcome strangers. And if they don’t find you you’ll only get lost in the marshes or drowned in the channels”, she replied.

“Well you’ve welcomed a stranger” Conlaodh observed

“I’m different from most”, she responded, “I like to look outwards not inwards. I don’t really fit either. I can help you.”

And with that she walked forward a few paces and held out her arm towards him. He reached his own arm upwards and felt her hand clasp around his arm just above his wrist. He closed his own hand around her wrist and with that contact made he allowed her to pull him off the ground and into the clearing. She released his arm and he hers and she bowed slightly towards him:

“Yara Ribiero-Sorriso at your service!”

It was beginning to get dark and that meant that to avoid suspicion from her family Yara needed to return home, but before leaving she led Conlaodh away from the exposed position where The Sentinels stood and part way down the slope towards the marshy lands below. The path she took was windy and Conlaodh wondered how he would have found his way without his newly acquired guide.

“You can’t come all the way to the huts with me, it’d be too dangerous. But there’s a good sheltered spot just off the track that I can take you to where you can camp for the night”, she explained, “There’s a stream nearby for water and you’ll be completely out of sight if anyone did come this way. But they won’t. My people don’t like to roam far unless they’re in a boat on the water.”

About half-way down the slope she stopped and after taking a quick look all around she plunged off the track along an almost imperceptible path that was never wider than the length of his forearm. Not long after leaving the track they came to a small grassy flat area next to a tiny stream that tumbled down through a rocky crevice and she stepped back and drew her arm in a sweeping motion as if she was a market trader displaying her wares on the ground in front of her. She was right, he thought, this was a good spot to camp.

“I’ll come back tomorrow with food. In the meantime you can have this.”

She reached into a pocket at the back of her breeches and drew out a piece of rubbery material and handed it to him. He raised it to his nose and sniffed it, jerking his head back strongly as the pungent aroma entered his nostrils and a scowl came over his face.

“It’s fish. Dried and salted. It’s good food, but if you don’t want it you can always go hungry.”

He nibbled at a corner and found that once he had overcome his initial instinct and broken the chewy flesh in his mouth the taste was okay. He was not used to the saltiness and that made him cough a little, but as he had not eaten much but shellfish and berries for days anything was better than nothing.

“No, thanks. It’s good, just not what I’m used to.”

They spent a few minutes exploring the area together. She showed him an easy place to drink where a stone formed a small overhang causing the water to flow out and down in an arcing path and they dragged a fallen tree branch onto the bank, propping it up against some nearby rocks to form the backbone of a shelter. He would gather smaller branches later to lay across as a roof. The area was not overlooked, but Conlaodh didn’t like the fact that this meant that he could not really see out either. He would just have to trust her when she said that no-one else knew about this spot.

“I’ve got to get going now. Don’t move from here – we’re pretty close to the village now so you might stumble into danger. You’ll be safe and anyway, if you do move I might not find you again.”

Conlaodh thanked her for her help. In truth, he was looking forward to being on his own again. Once the initial shock of her appearance had subsided he’d enjoyed having her company, but he needed to think, to take stock of where he was and where he now seemed to be going. Moving away from the danger of his own home and his own people was one thing. Moving into another person’s world, a world about which he knew nothing, holding dangers he had no experience of was quite another.

She moved away from him and started along the small path back to the track. At the last moment, before she disappeared from his sight, she looked back over her shoulder, smiled at him and gave a small wave of her hand.

“There’s one more thing… Don’t do anything stupid like lighting a fire will you?”

With that she turned and was gone. Conlaodh was alone again.

---

Next: Chapter 5 – Yara’s World
Previous: Chapter 3 – Conloadh’s Journey
Return to Empedocles’ Children (Home)