Grant’s stomach growled. He didn’t think it was loud enough for anyone to hear, but it still made him uneasy. He hoped that no louder emissions were about to ensue. The strange fruit he had been eating for the past three days was starting to disagree with him, but he felt lucky to be stuck somewhere that provided enough to sustain him. However, he might soon be forced to find a squirrel hole in which to finish that disagreement. He considered the alternative of answering the call of nature on the eight devils below, but was quite certain that he would be in big trouble when they realized the droppings did not belong to a very large bird.
For now, Grant tried to find a more comfortable position to sit in, but very little felt comfortable after sitting in a tree for three days. Forcing cheer, he once again reminded himself that he was lucky to be where he was. The branches were wide and smooth, so they did not scrape him as he sat or slept. He was thankful that he was not particularly tall or thickset, or else his perch may have been even more awkward than it was.
The tree also had broad leaves that shielded him from being seen and the river nearby provided enough of a din to make his clambering about in the branches unheard by the creatures below. Plus it was a very tall tree, so he was quite high above the devils. The latter was particularly important, because as Grant knew well, people rarely look up.
Grant had no idea what kind of tree he was in, which was the very reason he had climbed it in the first place. He had never seen such long green fruits before. At first he was going to call them tree-zucchinis, but now thought that crap apples was more fitting. He liked to know about all the plants and animals of Arimbol. He had explored much of the islands, but this was the first time he had noticed such a tree despite passing by this area many times. He wondered if it had recently bloomed or mutated from an unmarked Fold. If he hadn’t climbed it to pick one of the fruits, he might have been caught by the soldiers who unexpectedly came down the Hattusa River in a small boat. Beneath the tree was a slightly arced, wooden bridge that served as the primary crossing over the river. Grant watched the soldiers disembark there and set up watch over the bridge. He hoped that at some point they would move on and he could climb down and chalk this up to another adventure, but they didn’t.