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When Adanedhel reached about thirty feet up in the tree, he finally reached the ridge that they had been climbing to.

"Here it is!" he grinned, hopping carefully to the ledge. "Gotta be careful when you get up here, though, because it's not very wide. Just wide enough to stand on, kind of, if you're really careful."

And now that the children had finally reached their destination (well, Lin would get there soon) Aragost also began climbing the tree. Despite his cloak and robes, he had no trouble climbing, and very quickly caught up to them.

"Follow me," Adan grinned at Lin, "this way!"

He shuffled along the ledge, his back against the mountainside. The ledge slowly, ever so slowly, grew a bit wider, until it was possible to stand without hugging the mountain face.

Aragost meanwhile was making his way swiftly up the tree, so swiftly that he had already almost caught up with the children.

"Be careful," he warned them. "Watch where you are stepping ... the ground may give way if you step too hard."

Adan nodded. "Yup ... but like Ara-kun says, you gotta be careful, 'cos if you trip over your own feet you'll fall waaaaaay down where we started, and then I don't think you could get up again."

In fact, a fall like that would kill small children like them.

"Over here," he grinned, coming to the end of the ledge and jumping out to the open land.

"And here we wait for Ara-kun," he told Lin, turning around to wait for her.

In only a few moments, Aragost had joined the children up on the ground.

"Are you all right, Lin?" he asked her softly, kneeling beside her and putting one hand gently on her back. "I expect that's about the most dangerous thing you have ever deliberately done before."

Aragost nodded. "Well, then it's best we continue on before it does," he murmured, "because we may just have to go down the same way."

He straightened again. "Come. The day is passing quickly."

"This way!" Adan grinned, skipping off into the trees again.

Aragost smiled down at Lin. "Do not worry ... that is the end of the climbing for now ... soon ... we will reach the spring ... and we will have our lessons there ... and perhaps we will make it home in time for dinner."

Though likely not.

Sure enough, only about half an hour later, they reached a small mountain spring. It looks lie little more than a puddle, perhaps eight feet wide, six across, except that it was bubbling in the middle of it, and there was a small stream flowing from it down the mountainside.

The ground around it was moist and, as Aragost had promised, full of tracks of all sorts.

"I see deer tracks!" Adan announced, squatting at the water's edge and pointing to a place on the ground. He brushed twigs and grass carefully to the side and used two fingers to measure the tracks. "A baby!"

Aragost also moved swiftly to look at where Adan was pointing, and he nodded proudly.

"Very good, Adanedhel," he murmured, ruffling the boy's hair affectionately. "You are quite correct ... a young fawn, perhaps a few weeks old, too young yet to leave its mother's side."

He paused, then looked down at Adan thoughtfully. "Now ... what does that mean?"

Adan grinned brightly. "It means there should be bigger tracks here, too!" he beamed.

"Help look, Lin!" Adan urged her energetically. "Gotta look ... everywhere ... on the grass under the grass under twigs on the moss ... everywhere. Gotta look for ... stuff that's not where it's supposed to be ... scrapes or scuffs ... everything."

He started looking around the way he had told Lin.

"And it's big ... the mother deer, the doe, her feet are big like my fist ... the papa deer though, the buck, he has footprints the size of Ara-kun's fist."