He took himself to the river and found what he imagined to be a secluded spot where the stream ran deep and slow, and then waded out. He dove in, swam around a bit, bobbing up and down to thoroughly soak his garments, and then waded back to the bank and disrobed.
All this splashing about drew a crowd, of course, and he was soon the object of intense observation. For although they understood that his clothing, while different from their own, served the same function, the younger ones reacted with the same mixture of fascination and disgust he might have felt upon seeing a businessman shedding his skin like a snake. They jabbered excitedly at the first glimpse of the extreme white hairlessness of his skin—at least that was what Kit assumed they were remarking on, and not on his inconsequential and wholly unimpressive physique.
Despite his initial qualms, he found he did not mind being naked in front of the clan—any more than a farmer might baulk at being caught naked in front of barnyard cattle. Not that he thought of them as cattle, but the sense of species separation was so great that once he had wriggled out of his sopping shirt and trousers and was slapping them against the smooth, flat river stones, he simply did not care anymore.
In any event, the exercise proved mildly successful; after drying on a sun-facing bush, his garments did seem fresher, if not cleaner. But, lying in the sun on the riverbank, he felt the chill that was never far from the air even on the warmest days, and knew that he was enjoying the last gasp of a splendid autumn. The days were already drawing in, the nights growing steadily cooler. Often now the morning air held a frosty note, and days were overcast. He wondered what the River City Clan did for the winter—where did they go? He did not think they would stay camped by the river, and he was right.
CHAPTER 31
In Which a Sensible Course of Action Is Proposed
Why, oh why, can’t everyone just once do what they’re told, for heaven’s sake? Wilhelmina tapped her foot and gazed darkly down the empty trackway. No Kit. He should be here. Her instructions were simple, specific, and clear: Stay put. Do not wander off. Wait for rescue.
Was that too much to ask?
Okay, Giles getting himself wounded had thrown a kink into the plan. That had taken a deal of sorting out, admittedly—not to mention putting her carefully maintained cover at risk—and had delayed things considerably. But that was no excuse for Kit to go wandering off when she had told him not to move a muscle.
But could Kit manage even that much? Could he, heck!
She decided to give it another fifteen minutes, and if Kit didn’t show up, she would have to abandon her present time location and try another. This particular ley leading into the valley was completely reliable. In all her experiments, learning the ropes of ley travel, practicing her technique, mapping the destination, and basically just trying to get her head around the incredible facility to simply pop out of one world into another . . . in all those early training trials she had come to believe that the one she called the Big Valley ley was fairly uncomplicated. Its time window seemed to be limited, and there were not a lot of branches or forks, or whatever they were, leading off to other places in other universes—just a simple, straightforward thoroughfare. In motorway terms, she thought of it as the M4.
So, if Kit had made it to the ley ahead of the chase, why the devil was he not here waiting for her?
The only explanation was that Kit had left the trail and gone off somewhere into the valley. Searching for him there would be a chore, and one she was not prepared at the moment to undertake. She glanced down at the smooth-tooled object filling her palm—the new ley lamp Rosenkreuz had made for her. Although roughly the same size and shape as before, it boasted a few improvements, most of which she looked forward to trying. The chief difference in the new model was a second row of little lights, which, she was told, glowed from yellow to red in the presence of the searched-for traveller. The young alchemist had offered to explain the mechanics of its operation, but with everything going on, there had been neither time nor inclination.