A Spear of Summer Grass - By Deanna Raybourn Page 0,24

decided to let him keep his stories and give me only the mundane things that didn’t matter. “So, you were born in Canada. Whereabouts?”

“Quebec.”

I lifted a brow. “Really? You don’t sound Québécois.”

“Left when I was a year old. My father and I travelled up and down the Mississippi and then west to California. Ended up in the Klondike by the time I was six.”

“That’s quite a lot of travelling for a young boy. What did your father do?”

“As little as possible,” he answered with a wry twist of the lips.

“And what did your mother have to say about this? Did she like being dragged around at his whims or was she afflicted with wanderlust as well?”

“She died before we left Quebec.” He said the words easily. They were just words to him. We might have had the loss of a parent in common, but not what we had done with the emptiness. Not a day went by that I didn’t think of Pink and how different my life would have been if he’d lived.

“Were you raised without a female influence, then?”

“There was an Algonquin woman who travelled with us. She took care of me and my father, although I’m not sure I’d exactly call her female. Her mustache was thicker than his.”

“How did you end up in Africa?”

“My father got lucky. He struck gold, and he worked it until the claim played out. By then he said the Klondike was getting too crowded and too cold. Africa was empty and hot. We landed here when I was twelve. Been here mostly ever since.”

“And what do you do here?”

He shrugged one solid shoulder. “This and that—lately quite a bit of guiding. I lead safaris. I have a little place on the coast where I grow sugarcane, and I own a few dukas.”

“Dukas?”

“Shops—each one is a general store of sorts. The closest thing you’ll find to civilisation out here. The post gets delivered there and people will come for a drink and to catch up with the neighbours.”

“God, it’s the end of the earth, isn’t it?” I asked. Africa had seemed a great adventure when I was sitting in a Paris hotel room. Now the reality of it intruded, vast and unsettled, and I felt very, very small.

He flicked me a glance, his expression unreadable. “It won’t be so bad, princess. You’ll see.”

Suddenly, I sat bolt upright, staring out the windscreen, all thoughts of exile gone. Stretching before me was the most spectacular thing I had ever seen in my life, and even those words cannot do the memory of it justice. It was the Great Rift Valley, spanning the view from left to right, slashing the surface of the earth in a crater so vast no man could see from one end of it to the other. Deep in the heart of this great continental divide the grasses waved, an immense green carpet dotted with animals the likes of which I had seen only in picture books and travelogues. A tiny herd of elephants looked infinitesimal from our lofty height, and when Ryder stilled the engine, I heard nothing but the long rush of wind up from the valley floor. It carried with it every promise of Africa, that wind. It smelled of green water and red earth and the animals that roamed it. And there was something more, something old as the rocks. It might have been the smell of the Almighty himself, and I knew there were no words for this place. It was sacred, as no place I had ever been before.

“My God,” I breathed. “How big is it?”

“Four thousand miles from the upper reaches of Syria to the depths of Mozambique. The width varies, sixty miles wide in some places, but here it narrows. Just about twenty miles across.”

“It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.” I shoved Dodo, who roused herself to look, blinking hard.

“How high are we?” she croaked.

“About six thousand feet.”

Dodo whimpered and clutched at the seat. “Best close your eyes until we’re down,” Ryder told her kindly. She nodded and pressed her handkerchief to her eyes, leaning as far back as she could. He turned to me, his expression challenging.

“What about you, princess? Man enough to watch?”

“Drive,” I told him, gritting my teeth.

He laughed and crashed the gears into second to start the descent. I missed the Hispano-Suiza’s suspension desperately as we bounced and jounced our way down the twisting slope. The smell of overheated metal filled the air, and by the time