Ehomba replied without looking back. “I remember the tree as only being a little ways from camp, Simna. You rest here, and do not let our supper burn.”
“No chance of that, famished as I am.” Sitting up and away from Hunkapa Aub, who snorted and rubbed his nose briskly in his sleep, the swordsman gave the improvised spit another turn.
With half the moon and all the stars to guide him, the herdsman worked his way back through the woods until the campfire was only a distant flickering among the trees. Convinced that he had already wandered too far, he tried a little more to his left—and there was the tree he had remembered passing. It was a wild orange, its limbs bristling with long thorns. Their presence did not worry him because he had no intention of trying to climb into those protected branches.
Using the ancient but still sharp tooth that tipped his spear, he cut away the ripest of the brightly colored spheres within reach. Each time a severed stem fell, the faintest, most ethereal of roars could be heard. Sometimes the spirit of the tooth could be invoked for purposes other than engendering mass confusion and destruction: gathering oranges, for example.
With the aid of the spear it only took a few minutes to accumulate enough of the juice-heavy fruit to more than sate himself and his friends. He knew that Hunkapa Aub would probably eat Ahlitah’s share. To the best of Ehomba’s knowledge, large carnivorous cats were not fond of fruit.
Slinging his spear against his back, he made a basket out of the folds of his kilt and filled the resultant concavity with the best of the oranges. Nearby, he located the mushrooms he had passed earlier and added several handfuls of the tasty fungi to his growing accumulation. Satisfied, he started back toward camp.