KINGDOM OF THE STONE -- a Wattpad featured novel

Chapter Fourteen

Eiraena took a strong interest in Karux.  He soon learned he couldn't go anywhere, not even the latrine, without seeing her trailing behind him.

One late autumn evening after the men had returned from the mountain pastures, Arrain sat next to Karux at the table for the evening meal.  He cast a glance over his shoulder at Eiraena who stood some distance away staring at Karux.  "Dressela has a lot of kind things to say about you, Karux."

"Oh?" he asked looking up and catching her eye.  He smiled and waved at her but she stared back, unresponsive.

"Yes she appreciates the kindness you've shown Eiraena and thinks all the time and attention you've given her has helped her learn to be around other people."  Arrain paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth and grinned.  "Plus she thinks it's cute to see you two together."

Karux groaned.  "I wish my so-called friends didn't think it so cute.  Most of them seem to think I've been doing something shameful with her."

Arrain frowned.  "Yes, I've talked to some of their parents about that.  Hopefully that sort of talk will cease.  All the same, you need to be careful where you are seen with her."

"That's just it.  I don't invite her along, yet she follows me around everywhere I go like some sort of faithful lamb."

"Do you want me to speak to her parents, make her stop pestering you?" Arrain asked.

Karux sighed.  He knew her attention had nothing to do with romance.  His own patterns, what he'd come to call schemas, had changed since the day he'd spent staring into the smoke.  How could he tell his father that Eiraena seemed to know it and, since he now knew the names of the elements of creation, she followed him around to see what he would do?  "No," he shrugged, "I don't want to upset her.  Hopefully she'll lose interest and wander off."

"Well, when you come south with us for the fall grazing, I guess you'll lose her then."  Arrain shoved some food in his mouth.

"I'm not going."

"Why?"

"I gave my animals to Macander."

"You did what?" Arrain's raised voice turned everyone's heads.

"I thought about giving them to Bazma, but he has his hands full with Garick's herd."

Arrain pushed his trencher away, signaling a long stern talk to come.  "What would ever possess you to do that?"

"They're all going to be dead by spring anyway."

 Arrain's face stiffened and he squinted at Karux suspiciously.

"Why would you say that?"

"I've seen it."

Arrain returned to his food, picking at it.  "The visions have returned while we were gone, haven't they?"

Karux paused as he considered how best to answer him.  Arrain looked up quizzically in Karux's silence.  "Yes and no," Karux finally said.

"What do you mean 'yes and no'?"

"I mean I can see things that haven't happened yet, if I look for them, but they do not haunt me like they used to."

"I'm not sure I understand."

Karux held up his spoon fashioned from horn and stared at it as he talked.  "I used to think that time was like a stream whose destination was certain.  I know now that time sometimes jumps out of its banks and like a stream can even be diverted."

"So you are saying that the future is uncertain?"

Karux lay his spoon down on the table.  It had become a long coiled spiraling shape.  "Certain things can be changed."