The Purity of Blood: Volume I (14 page)

The rocks that
lined the side of the river were wet with spray giving them a violet hue that
shimmered in the sunlight.
 
After pausing
for a minute to look around, Daniel started down the slow incline of
rocks.
 
I watched him for a moment, just
observing the way he moved then followed after him.
 
He stopped at the bottom of the first drop of
about three feet and turned as I approached.
 
After hesitating for an awkward moment, he reached his hand up to
me.
 
Taking it, he quickly helped me down
and let go before turning to continue on.
 
I just stood there at the base of the drop for a moment, unmoving.
 
His hand had felt odd.
 
I’m not really sure how to describe it with
words.
 
It wasn’t really warm like I
would have expected from our mornings physical activity, but not cold either
from the damp of the spray off the river.
 
I’m not even sure I would have noticed except that he’d seemed hesitant
to offer it to me at all.
 
Standing above
him, I’d thought his momentary internal struggle odd for a man who’d said he
was going to treat me like a lady whether I liked it or not.
 

Following the
river, he’d continued on down the rocks and was now about thirty feet in front
of me.
 
Probably sensing I wasn’t behind
him anymore, he stopped only to turn and see me standing where he’d left me,
half staring down at my hand, half up at him.
 
Realizing he was watching me, I quickly shook off the sensation and
started towards him as if nothing had happened.
 
Whatever it had been, he didn’t seem to want to talk about it either and
without any kind of a smile, he just turned back in the direction we were going
and continued on without a word.
 

His hand had
been hard, maybe that was it, like a taught muscle.
 
Yet it was so much more than a firm
handshake.
 
Then I remembered something I
hadn’t thought of before.
 
I remembered
lying on top of Daniel in the bushes.
 
This was how his whole body had felt under me, except that I hadn’t made
contact with his skin in the bushes.
 
I’d
only felt him through the fabric of his clothes.
 

My thoughts were
all over the place as I followed behind his broad shoulders.
 
After the incident on the rocks, I began to
notice a subtle change in his gait as I walked behind him.
 
For most of the morning it was loose and
casual, but now he seemed stiff, his shoulders more squared, his footsteps
heavier as if he was shouldering some great weight he hadn’t before.

The sound of the
water ahead of us changed, and as we rounded a corner we found ourselves at the
edge of a rocky cliff.
 
The water spilled
over the edge of the cliff into a basin at the bottom of a steep gorge.
 
As the sunlight bounced off the spray it
created faint rainbows in the mist.
 
Staring down, I found myself at a loss for words.
 
It truly was breathtaking.
 
We were very high up, much higher than the
falls I’d seen last week with Ben and the others.

“Beautiful,
isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I
muttered, still in awe.
 
“How high up are
we?”

“About a hundred
feet – give or take.”

“My friends
never told me there were falls this high in the area.”

“They probably
don’t know there are.
 
We’re on private
land.”

I looked up at
his face with an expression that must have showed my concern that we might be
trespassing.

“Don’t worry
about it,” he laughed.
 
“I know the
owners.
 
Let’s make our way down and take
a break on those rocks,” he said causing me to look over and see the totally
charming smile he now wore.
 

He suddenly
seemed at ease with me.
 
Much more so
than he ever had before.
 
For some
unknown reason I found myself smiling back at him.
 
Shoot, I’ll admit it, I was probably grinning
ear to ear and I wasn’t even sure why.
 
I
think deep down, I was secretly pleased he’d had some kind of breakthrough and
felt comfortable enough around me to smile like regular folks do.
 
Not that his smile could ever be regular in
any shape or fashion.
 
It was dazzling
and revealed a perfect set of pearly white teeth.

Dragging myself
away from his smile, I followed him off to the right as we began to follow a
rudimentary trail.
 
One I was actually
able to make out this time.
 

He watched me closely as I made my way along the top of the
cliff.
 
I was thankful as the rocks were
especially slippery and one tumble on the thin path that hugged the edge of the
cliff would have seen me lying in a broken heap at the bottom of the gorge.

It took about fifteen minutes for
us to wind our way down the trail and into the clearing at the base of the
falls.
 
Walking up to a dry rock, I took
off my backpack and set it down, stretching out my shoulders as I did.
 
When I finished, I reached into my pack,
pulled out my jacket and slipped it on.
 
I’d taken it off about an hour ago when I started to get warm from the
exertion, but the air down here in the gorge was much cooler.
 
Stretching out some more, I took in a deep
breath.
 
The crisp cool air felt good in
my lungs

As I sat down on
the rock, I felt its warmth beneath me which helped chase the chill out of my
bones.
 
Feeling hungry, I pulled a
granola bar out of my pack and took a few bites.
 

Daniel paused
when we reached the clearing then walked off circling the area like he was
looking or listening for something deep in the woods.
 
A minute later he strolled over to where I
sat relaxing in the sun.
 

“Want a granola
bar?” I asked, holding another one up to him.

“No, thank
you.
 
I’m not hungry,” he answered
politely.
 
Then I watched as he smiled to
himself as if laughing at some inside joke he was happy I was unaware of.

I was starving
so I couldn’t understand how he wasn’t.
 
I hadn’t even seen him take a drink from the canteen he had slung over
his shoulder.
  

While I was deep
in thought about the depths of his strangeness, he looked down at my water
bottle on the rock beside me.

“You’re almost
out of water.
 
I’ll fill you up.”

Before I could
say anything, he took my bottle and headed off behind me to the pool at the
base of the fall.
 
After filling it up,
he put it back down beside me where it had been.

“Is that water
okay to drink?” I asked.

“Yes.
 
It comes from a spring a few miles up the
mountain.
 
It’s as pure as they
come.”
 

He paused for a
moment and then laughed to himself.
 
Again, another inside joke I wasn’t getting.
  

How very annoying!

Circling around
to the other side of my rock, he sat down behind me facing the falls.
 
Leaning back, he put his hands under his head
as he relaxed on his back.
 

“This is one of
my favorite spots,” he murmured.

I didn’t say
anything for a while, I just observed him as he watched the water cascade off
the cliff above our heads and the clouds as they rolled by.

“How do you know
this area so well?” I finally asked as I laid down on the rock beside him.

He paused for a
moment as if he wasn’t sure how to answer the question.

“I spent time
here when I was a youngster,” was all he said while he continued to gaze
upward.
 

Knowing he
couldn’t see me, I smirked.
 
That wasn’t
much of an answer, for all the deliberation that seemed to go into it.
 
I got the impression he didn’t want to
elaborate so I didn’t ask him anymore questions.
 
After all, what business of it was mine?
 
We sat there for a few more minutes in
silence just listening to the roar of the water and soaking in the warmth of
the sun.
 

It was nice to
be with someone who didn’t feel the need to fill every minute with
conversation.
  
Somehow, sitting in this
peaceful place, our uncomfortable silence had become strangely
comfortable.
 
I hadn’t realized how much
I’d missed this feeling and it made me miss my Dad something awful.
 
How odd that in this place and time, Daniel
would be the person to fill that void for me.
 
Daniel, who I wasn’t even sure I should be off in the woods alone with.
 
Yet here we sat in comfortable silence like
old friends instead of what we really were.

A few minutes
later he got up and anxiously stalked around the rock towards the far side of
the clearing.
  
After a moment of staring
off into the woods again, he turned back to me with a strange little smile.
 
It was almost a shy little boy smile.
 
How quickly his moods seemed to change.
   

“I’ve got a spot
picked out for lunch.
 
It’s not too far
down river.
 
I bet you’re still hungry.

He was
right.
 
Even after my granola bar, I
could feel my stomach rumble under the constant sound of the falls in my ears.

Reluctantly
getting off my warm rock, I followed him along the river bank for a while until
he veered off into the forest.
 
We’d
walked for about half an hour when it occurred to me that I knew virtually
nothing about the man I was following through the woods.
 
There were so many questions I wanted to ask
him, but I was hesitant to open my mouth.
 
Did I really want to know what secrets he might be hiding?
 
Was it just my usual curiosity?
 
I had a feeling I should just keep my
questions to myself and let it lie.
 
What
was the point in emotionally investing in such a closed person?
 
It wasn’t like we were going to become
friends or anything.
 

Then quickly
forgetting the logic of my own thoughts, I heard myself ask “So I hear you live
with the Professor.”

“Yes, I do,” he
answered without pausing his stride or looking over his shoulder.
 
I waited a beat, but he didn’t elaborate
further.

“How long have
you known him?”

“A very long
time.”

I could see this
wasn’t going to be easy.

“Where are you
from?”

“All over
really.
 
We’ve moved around a lot.”

“What about your
family?
 
Where do they live?”

He didn’t answer
right away, like he was trying to come up with a good answer.

“My family are
all dead now.
 
I’m the only one left.”

“Oh,” I
said.
 
“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It was a long
time ago.”
 
His voice was cold, almost
detached.
 

His whole
family?
 
I wondered what could possibly
have happened that they were all dead now.

We walked on
again in silence for a few minutes.

“When I heard
you lived together, I wondered if you were somehow related to the Professor.”

“Biologically?
 
No, but he sort of adopted me I guess you
could say.
 
He’s not my father, but I
think of him that way.”
 

He stopped like he was going to continue his thought, but
thought better of it.
 
Figuring I’d
gotten about as much out of him as I was going to for the moment, I let it
drop.

After a while we came upon an
open field at the base of the valley.
 
There were no tall trees here except two or three stray ones like lone
sentinels standing amongst a sea of tall grasses gently swaying in the breeze
like billowing waves.
 

“Watch out for
fox holes” he said as we started into the field.
 
“Here in the tall grass, you won’t see them
until you’re on top of them.”

“Where are the
foxes?” I asked, horrified that I was seconds from having a foot bitten
off.
 
I sped up and was now walking close
to his side.

He smiled.
 
“Don’t worry, there aren’t any around right
now.”

“Then where are
they?”

He paused for a
moment and said “They’re hiding.”

“If it’s a case
of they’re more scared of me than I am of them; I can assure them, they’re
wrong,” I said assuredly.

He smiled and
shook his head a little.
 

“Maybe
you’re
not the one they’re scared
of.”
 

Just then we
approached an old rock wall that seemed to dissect the field and run off into
the grasses as far as I could see in either direction.