The animal bobbed its head again. It smoothed the dirt with its hands, looked carefully up at the canopy, and began to draw.

Ani recognized the Tendu and the new creatures right away, but she didn’t understand the rest of the drawing. She shook her head, imitating the animal’s gesture to show that she didn’t understand. The creature bobbed its head up and down. It walked to the stream, picked up a double handful of stones, and laid them down on the jagged lines to the left, until it had a line of small piles of stones. It uncapped its water gourd and began sprinkling water on the outside of the line to the right until a small puddle of water formed on the heavy clay soil. Then it poured a small stream of water into the forked line that ran through the middle of the picture. The water trickled slowly along the line, flowing out to join the puddle. The creature tapp’ed the forked line with the stick, then walked over to the stream and dipped the point of its stick in the stream.

“The river!” Ani said, understanding breaking through the clouds of her confusion. “That line is the Kiewa River, Ninto. Then those lines must be the mountains, and the puddle is the ocean. Its people are on the coast near that big point of land!”

“You know, they may be at Lyanan. That’s almost twenty days away from here. What is it doing so far away from its people?” Ninto wondered.

Ani rippled a pattern of purple clouds. “Who knows?”

“Well, let’s try to convince it to come back with us for a while. We can’t do anything until after Ilto dies. Then we’ll find a way to take it back to its people.”

The rain clouds were beginning to build for the afternoon downpour by the time all the explanations were finished. Out of respect for the creature’s reluctance to climb, they walked back. It was a long, weary trip, and Ani was relieved when they climbed up into a fruit tree at the end of the day for dinner. Ani showed the new creature how to pick fruit while Ninto went hunting. The elder returned an hour later with a necklace of small birds hanging limply around her neck. She held them up.