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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 sus-pended 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.
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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 fac-tors. 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 exam-ining him. "He was bit
repeatedly by rock spiders and some other things I cannot imagine. It is
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