The Last Hunter - Collected Edition by Jeremy Robinson

Author:Jeremy Robinson [Robinson, Jeremy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fantasy
Publisher: Breakneck Media
Published: 2013-12-09T06:00:00+00:00

26

I spend an hour with the hunters, learning their names, who their masters were, where they lived, what weapons they prefer—the kinds of things hunters talk about. As the group disperses slowly and the hunters go back to their work, Em clears her throat signaling that she would like a word with me. I nod a goodbye to the last few hunters and turn to Em.

“Well done,” she says.

I shrug. “I’m not sure how much of this is me and how much is a show.”

“Don’t worry,” she says. “I know you, remember? That was all you.”

I’m not so sure, and certainly not as confident as I appeared. But I don’t argue, mostly because there are other things I want to do.

And as usual, Em can read my mind nearly as well as Xin. She points to the right. “The beach is that way. Go. Spend some time together. We’ll talk tonight.”

Her words, “We’ll talk tonight,” carry weight. The reprieve with Luca will be short-lived.

“Krane. Adoni,” Em says. “Keep an eye on them.”

As I move to the lake, Krane and Adoni fall in line behind me, hands near their weapons. I should probably be wary, too, but as we reach the beach, Luca sees me and beams with excitement. He quickly shows me the sand castle he built, which is really more of a mud castle. I crouch next to him and start to feel like a kid again. I used to build castles just like this when my parents brought me to the beach.

“This is my house,” Luca says. He begins decorating it with leaves, flower petals and blades of grass. “You can build a house next door.”

Slightly embarrassed by the request, I look for Krane and Adoni. They’ve taken up positions twenty feet to either side of us, backs turned to us as they watch for trouble. I have a hundred questions for Luca, but decide the child has the right idea, and I dig into the mud. The earth is wet, but warm, no different from the air really.

Twenty minutes later, I’ve got a foot-tall tower built and glowing in the light of the now setting sun. It has finger indents for windows and a flag-like branch and leaf stabbed into the top. As I smooth out the sides of the tower, I say, “This means something,” quoting Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Luca laughs like he understands the joke and says, “What could a mud house mean?”

“I have no idea,” I say.

“Are you done?” he asks.

As I take my mind off the task of building my tower, I realize that Luca has been done for several minutes. We built in silence, just enjoying being with each other, the ways kids do. It felt foreign and unnatural at first, but some part of me now feels rejuvenated. “Yeah, I think I’m done.”

“Okay,” he says, and starts to tear down his creation.

I stop him with a hand on his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

“Em says I can’t leave any evidence,” Luca says.

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