Father Alex had said not to look, but it was difficult not to, even though the danger was most certainly there. How could they, so very far away, possibly know if one little man was staring at their city?
But they did know. They, or something of them. As he stared, finding it harder and harder to take his eyes off the distant alien-looking city, which had to be enormous to be so clear from this vantage point, he found himself almost going into a trance; the chill and the lack of oxygen and the fatigue just seemed to drain away. Not that they were gone—they just didn’t seem to matter anymore.
And suddenly he saw that there was far more out there than had ever been apparent. Thin lines that looked to be made of nothing solid, of nothing he could comprehend, all over the sky, above him, below him, creating a complex but highly geometric three-dimensional grid that linked up with the distant city on the one hand and with certain points in the high mountains on either side and behind him somewhere. He had never seen them before, and did not understand why he had not, nor what they could possibly be, but they covered everything, the whole of creation.
He didn’t actually feel their presence, either; nothing rummaged in his mind, possibly because it already knew that there was nothing of interest to it there. But, slowly, without his even realizing it, it was as if a part of him was being drawn out, as if scum were skimmed off the top of standing water, or more like the wisps of cloud that made Littlefeet who he was just breaking off and lazily drifting out over the edge and above the plain toward that distant strange sight.
As if something cared not about his body but was skimming off his soul.
A thick cloud broke off and away behind him and slowly drifted overhead, darkening the lookout and dropping the temperature. It continued on, sinking as it went until he suddenly found himself in a chill fog unable to see the distant place. It felt like a connection had been broken, and at once the discomfort was all too real.
Still, he felt not fear or anger but confusion. It was odd; he couldn’t seem to remember who he was, or where he was, or why he was there. It was as if the humanity had been drained from him, leaving him only basic animal reasoning. He was tired and he was cold. He carefully made his way back toward the trail, which some remaining instinct said was the safe way to go, and then he started down, just wanting out of there, down from there, and out of the cold, wet cloud.
He had no idea then or later how he got down; everything was a total blur. When they found him, wandering near the base of the mountain near the entrance to the valley, he was dazed, confused, and didn’t seem to recognize anyone.
Father Alex rushed to him as soon as he heard. The scouts who discovered the boy were quite right not to bring him back into the camp; no matter how well they knew him, they dared not risk the entire Family on what might have been a possession, conversion, or some other kind of trap using him. Besides, there were still a dozen unexplained dead men not far away.
“Littlefeet!” Father Alex snapped. “Look at me! Look at me! Look directly into my eyes. Look only at me! Look!” He reached out and his powerful hands forced the young man’s head to face him. “Now speak! Speak! Say anything at all! Who am I? What is my name?”
Littlefeet’s field of vision filled with nothing but the ruddy-faced bearded man’s stern face and penetrating eyes. He was unable to turn away because of the strength of the priest’s hands; he had to stare directly into them and listen to the shouting. Something inside him told him that he was in no danger here; that these were friends. Kin. Family…
“I—I—” he tried, but then he simply collapsed, limp, unconscious on the ground. Father Alex let him fall, then checked to be sure that Littlefeet had simply passed out and wasn’t dead.
“Bind him,” he instructed the warriors who stood close by, watching none too comfortably. “Run a spear through the bindings on his hands and feet and we’ll carry him suspended that way. I do not want him unbound until I can get him to come around. Give him food, drink, whatever, but he is not to be unbound, understand?”
They didn’t like it, but they did as they were told.
Littlefeet did not protest; he was sleeping the sleep of the dead, and it was more than two days before he awoke.
He came around and discovered that he was bound, and he struggled, but they had done a good job. His arms were behind his back, bound together at the wrists with strong, tough vines; his feet were also brought back and bound, then hands and feet had been tied together. They had varied this now and again to ensure that circulation wasn’t cut forever, but otherwise he was on his side and unable to move more than his head and neck.
They had moved in the patterns, he’d sensed. This was not where he had left them nor where they had found him, but, nonetheless, they were where they were supposed to be.
The guard went and fetched Father Alex right away, even though it was dark and the priest was actually settling down for the night. He wasted no time making it over to Littlefeet.
“Can you talk?” the priest asked him gently.
“T—tma al-ka? Taalk! Talk…” he managed. It was hard to speak; the words would not come.
Father Alex sat the young man up against a rock and, with the aid of the guard, retied him so that his arms and legs were no longer bound together, but were still bound. It was then a long, patient night drawing him out, bit by bit.
In many ways, Father Alex thought, it was as if the boy—to him, Littlefeet was still a boy, no matter what the Family said—had suffered a brain seizure. Knowledge of medicine was pretty well faded, but he understood that much, and had seen its effects. He’d also seen this sort of thing before, with a more troubling cause—the one he rightly suspected had done it here.
Littlefeet was slowly regaining conversational abilities, but on a limited basis, having to think out each word as if doing so for the first time. It gave him a kind of pidgin that was useful for communication on some level, but it wasn’t normal by any means. Father Alex knew that the lasting effects went in different ways depending on a lot of factors. Littlefeet might always have some problems, they might go away quickly or slowly over time, or he might suffer a second stroke and either die or be as good as dead. A lot depended on getting the sufferer back to some kind of activity quickly.
Even so, it was morning before a tired but satisfied priest had him to where progress was clear.
“What is your name?”
“No—no can think name.”
“You are Littlefeet. Can you say that?”
“Li—Li’1… No.”
It was tough on him, and he could see the young man was going through inner agony.
“Name,” Littlefeet repeated. “No names in head. Like all gone. Know you, know me, know them, no names.” Over the next couple of days he was allowed a limited freedom, always under guard but no longer bound, and was able to physically recover to some extent.
“Some of it is venom,” Mother Paulista said after examining him. “He was bit repeatedly by rock spiders and some other things I cannot imagine. It is likely he got a terrible fever from it. Such fevers are known to damage minds.”
Father Alex accepted that this was the probable cause of much of it, but not all. Littlefeet had become conversant enough to tell, in somewhat broken sentences, what he had seen up there, high in the mountains, and once he’d gotten past water as a white solid and warm, wet caves and the like, he’d told of looking out over the vastness of the world.