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"...when I was your age," he begins, as gently as he can manage, as though telling an old tale. It has been a long time since he last had cause to do so, but right now a little story seems the best way to distract the girl from whatever might be lurking in the darkness of the forest, "a very noble and very important man came to our town. His kingdom lay far away, beyond the sea — and it was the wind that brought him."
"Like the waves bwought you?" the girl asks, staring up at him with her enormous eyes. The fear in them gives way to curiosity, and her fingers no longer clutch at his tunic quite so tightly. All that is left for him is to hold on more firmly.
"No, the waves did not ask me where I wished to go when they cast me ashore. But this man had tamed the wind itself, so that it would carry him across the world — for in all the world there was no ship so splendid as to be worthy of his notice, nor of the honour of having him aboard. His clothes shimmered with every colour that exists in all the world, and were embroidered so richly that other sovereigns could not gather such treasures in a lifetime. He would walk the streets as though he were the one and only lord of the place, and the other boys and I kept trying, on a dare, to pluck at least a single peacock feather from his mantle — until the grown-ups finally caught us at it. They told us that he was a very wicked wizard, who..."
Bright, ringing laughter cuts his tale short.
"You're making it up again! There's no such fing as wicked wizards."
Oh, how he wished those words of hers might prove true. How he wished he could one day repeat them to someone with that same naïve, childish certainty. How he wished he had never seen, had never known, those who once ruled the now-vanished Thassilon — nor those whose accursed arts nearly doomed their whole world to ruin.
"Wizards is good," the girl goes on, as though revealing a simple, obvious truth to a foolish grown-up, a foolish stranger. "They helps grow the harvest an' scares the monsters out of the jungles so the monsters don't comes to the town, an' they talks to the old tree on the hill."
Did the people of Arcadia ever know how lucky they were, once? And how lucky they still are?
"You're sad again," she says. And then answers herself, putting on the gravest, most important face a child can wear. "That's 'cause you lives alone. Mama always says so. All men is sad when they're alone, an' then they gets married an'... an' then they isn't sad no more."
He has to disguise a chuckle as a cough.
"An' why does you lives alone?" The girl tilts her head with even greater curiosity — and leans so far to the side as she does so that he has to catch her.
It seems no one else in all Arcadia would ever think to ask such a question. To everyone else, the answer was obvious. To everyone except a little girl.
"Well, I suppose it is because I am a stranger," he ventures. "Who would take a liking to some foreigner washed up out of the sea?"
"Me!" the girl blurts out. "Then I'll grows up an' marries you," she declares with the very same certainty with which she had just been speaking of wizards.
"That is a bad idea."
The girl looks at him with displeasure. How could her idea possibly be bad? All that is left for him is to continue.
"Well, think on it yourself. When you grow up, you shall become a young and beautiful maiden. And by then I will have grown old and ugly. What use would you have for a husband like that?"
He is being sly, of course, but his own argument seems ironclad to him. Which is to say: he is underestimating a little girl yet again.
"My sister says an old husband is even betterer."
He chokes on air from sheer surprise and cannot help asking.
"Truly? And why is that?"
"'Cause a jaguar didn't eats him," the girl replies without blinking, looking him straight in the eye. Only a miracle lets him keep a straight face. "If he's old, that means he's wise. An' my sister says a wise husband is betterer than a pretty one."
He must admit, the thought is a sensible one — especially amid the wild forests of Arcadia.
"You should listen to your sister more," he remarks. "She speaks wise words."
"She's very wise!" the girl agrees eagerly, starting to wriggle in his arms again. He has to slow his pace just so he does not drop her. "Mama says so too, an' Papa, an' 'El says she's foolish 'cause she went away to study when she shoulda stayed home, an' it's bad that she didn't stay. But she's gonna become a wizard an' come back to help everyone, an' that's good. So is 'El the foolish one?"
The girl falls still so suddenly that he is briefly lost, not at once understanding that the question is now meant for him. But he only shrugs.
"Is you wise?" the girl presses on, at least ceasing her wriggling.
"I do not know," he answers easily. His reply does not satisfy the child's curiosity, forcing him to go on. "I suppose not, after all. If I had been wise, I would have turned back for home the moment I noticed the storm, instead of sailing further out to sea. And the sea would not have shattered my boat, nor torn my nets, nor cast me up on your shore so very far from home."
He is being sly again — a hapless fisherman, defeated by the untameable elements. But a child has no need to know of that.
"Then it's good that you isn't wise," she muses, drawing out the words. "If you was wise, then no one woulda found me."
"Perhaps someone else would have found you," he soothes her, knowing he is being sly here too. The girl had wandered far too deep into the jungle. Even he had come upon her more by sheer chance. Who knows how many quiet, hidden corners lie in the jungles of Arcadia, where no human foot has ever stepped before? "But for now... do you recognise this place?"
The girl looks around. The trees surrounding them seem the same as everywhere else. They seem so. But then she knows them at once.
"Over there! My home is over there!" She points ahead, where rooftops are barely visible beyond the tangle of branches and vines, leaning over so far again that he has to catch her. But this time he is ready. And this time he carefully sets her down onto the ground, and the girl at once seizes his hand and pulls him insistently forward. "Come on, I'll show you!"
And all that is left for him is to follow.