The old man’s eyes flared as he stood up and took a single step towards the boy. The boy jumped as if being stung or burned by white embers and ran over to the blacksmith and stood behind him.

  The blacksmith sat back down and said some words as he watched and studied the piece of metal under the coals.

  “Blacksmith wants know, you want,” The boy said in very broken but understandable English.

  The pack looked at each other in surprise, they had not anticipated there to be any English speakers in the village. Acharya said to the boy slowly, “We want to be friends. We need his help.” Acharya pointed the blacksmith.

  The boy turned to the old man and spoke in his native language.

  The old man scoffed and snorted as he flipped over the piece of hot metal and reburied it in the coals. The young man working the bellows was the only sound in the hut. The old man slid around some coals, pushing them on top of the metal and spoke to the boy.

  The boy said, “What friend, people come people leave. Have no friend.”

  This wasn’t going particularly well. “We need his help. There is an evil coming and if we don’t fight it now, we won’t be able to later,” Mary said with quiet confidence. She was looking directly at the old man as she spoke.

  The old man turned as the boy relayed the message that Mary had just told him. He looked up at the group and sat back on his haunches. He quietly regarded the group and stroked his beard in the heat of the hut. He glanced over his shoulder and spat out a few words.

  The boy said, “What evil you speak about?”

  “It destroyed out home and will come and destroys yours as well, all over again,” Tara said.

  The boy relayed the message. The man scoffed again and shook his head. “If you don’t help us, this place will be like Kabultiloa, and they will find your matriarch and kill her,” Malikah said with a fierce passion and almost desperation.

  The boy looked very confused but spoke to the old man. The old man grew very still, then suddenly as the boy was still talking, he jumped up and waved the red-hot piece of metal in the faces of the pack. He screamed at them again and shoved the glowing metal at them threateningly.

  Acharya held up his hands and slowly backed away. There was nothing that could be done. Whatever Malikah had said had really pissed this guy off and they were not going to get anywhere with the way things stood now.

  The pack backed out of the hut and out into the heat of the midday sun. Acharya wasn’t sure if it was hotter out here, or in the smithy. They all looked at each other and Acharya just shook his head and smiled. “Well, Malikah whatever you said either didn’t translate too well, or he just didn’t like how you were talking to him.”

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  He smiled at the comment letting her know that he didn’t blame her for what happened. He really didn’t. There is no way to know what their words translated to the old man, or even if the kid was telling him what they said.

  “There is also the possibility that Malikah mentioning Kabultiloa struck a chord with the blacksmith,” Aiman said. “And if that is true than we know that he at least has some knowledge of the ancient village and what happened to it.”

  “Well, if that’s true,” Mary responded, “then we at least have a connection between the librarian back in N’Djamena and where we find ourselves now. I think its safe to assume that we are in Ethiopia, if nothing else.”

  “I guess that’s one way of finding the positive in our current situation,” Tara replied dryly. “I don’t know about you guys, but my throat is parched. I need some water and some shade. I’m not sure how much more of this heat even I can take.”

  Acharya nodded, “I’m inclined to agree with you. Maybe we can get some water from somewhere.”

  The young boy translator walked out of the hut right into the middle of the group. His eyes grew wide in fear and he looked like he was going to run, before Tara softly took the boys hand and kneeled down to meet the boy in the eye. “Please, we are very thirsty. May we have some water, please? Water?”

  The boy looked at the darkly tanned woman. He didn’t exactly relax but he understood what she was asking and he could see that they were all very hot. The signs and dangers of overheating were not unknown to him and he knew what effects of further sun exposure would do to them. He nodded slowly and took Tara by the hand and led them away from the blacksmith’s hut.

  The boy led them through the village into another earth and wood hut. He gestured for them to sit on the floor and he called out to someone. A young woman entered into the room with a bowl in her arms. Her face grew pale seeing the visitors but the boy was talking to her pretty much nonstop, gently hitting her leg to get her attention.

  The woman looked down at what Acharya assumed was her son and nodded. She practically ran out of the room and the boy followed her. There was some talking outside the room. It wasn’t angry but there was some definite emotion in those words, and Acharya felt like they would not be welcomed in this village.

  The boy came into the room sometime later carrying two large bowls of water. He handed them to Tara and Mary and then ran out of the room again. Tara offered the water to Asclepius first and the wolf gratefully lapped up the water loudly.

  Mary offered her bowl to Acharya and Malikah but they all put up a hand to decline Mary’s offer. She smiled at them and shrugged her shoulders, “Alright, but if you guys don’t get any, don’t come to me complaining, I offered.” She said with a smile before gratefully tipping the bowl back and drinking deeply from the bowl.

  Their young translator came back with two equal sized bowls and gave them to Tara and Malikah. The ladies smiled at the young boy and thanked him. The two women passed the bowls to the men, to which they nodded their thanks and drank deeply. The boy returned yet again and gave the remaining members of the pack a bowl of water and they all were finally afforded the chance to drink.

  When they had finished their water, they allowed themselves to enjoy the dark cool of the earth hut. It was much cooler here than outside and they marveled at how it was possible. So many things that were possible, but lost or forgotten. It gave Tara pause as she wondered how many other things had been lost due to ‘progress’.