Whispers on the Wind by Judy Griffith Gill Page B

in her voice. Without her knowledge that she was once more projecting, he heard her mind say the syllables over and over, striving for the proper lilt. He knew she had heard it. He knew, too, that soon, she would be able to replicate it. She had an amazingly quick and agile mind. She needed only train her vocal processes.
    “We seldom use the full word, though,” he continued. “Just Kahinya . Each of us has one. Our parents create it for us at birth, with only two small Aleeas . As a child grows and learns, he adds more Aleeas to his Kahinya .”
    “What does it do for you?” she asked, then spun away, angrily. Of course. She hadn’t wanted to ask, because she didn’t want to give him or his story any credence at all. The fact that she had blurted out the question gave him hope.
    “It is my center,” he explained. “It holds all my memories and those of my family for whenever I choose to access them. Because in my employment I must do much traveling, I have so chosen on many occasions. I need only to touch it to be where I want to be, with those whom I love, in places where I feel safe and happy. The Aleea you touched took us to my grandparents’ estate on the Isle of Nokori. It is a beautiful place, is it not?”
    She didn’t answer, but half turned back, watching him warily.
    “My Kahinya also guides me through difficulties,” he went on. “It keeps me as safe as it can. It is my pathfinder through danger, seeking shelter for me when I am injured or ill and unable to find it for myself. It helps me heal myself.
    “Though this is my first visit here, I am not entirely unfamiliar with Earth,” he went on. “But I do know that you of this world do not have Kahinyas in which to store your Aleeas .” He smiled. “Would you like me to help you create one as a reward for assisting me, for coming to me when I called you?”
    She shook her head rapidly. “You did not call me! I had a dream, maybe, one so compelling I acted like a fool and hiked up the mountain in the night. I knew of this cave, so of course that’s where I came when the weather became threatening. That I found you here was pure luck. Your luck, buddy, not mine.”
    “I would be pleased to teach you to create your own Kahinya ,” he said, completely ignoring her diatribe. “But to do so, I would need to enter into your earliest memories. I could not, of course, recover them all, but many of them will still be present.”
    Lenore wanted to scream and rail against his quiet assurance that he could do what he said. It was insane! As if one of those golden beads that looked more like light than anything of substance could possibly hold that image she had seen of the tropical garden he now claimed belonged to his grandparents.
    The bead she’d touched, though, had been warm, almost alive, and had given off a palpable but pleasant current.
    “What possible need would I have of a Kahinya ?” she demanded in frustration. As she repeated the three syllables again they fell short of sounding as liquidly musical as when he spoke them, but she thought, oddly pleased despite her failure, she was improving. He didn’t comment, but his smile told her he appreciated her attempt.
    “To access your memories,” he said.
    “I have access to all the memories I want,” she assured him loftily. “Anything I have forgotten, I’ve likely done so because remembering it would not be beneficial to my mental health.”
    Hell! Talking with him was not beneficial to her mental health, which had been precarious enough for her to have conjured him up.
    “Your mental health is excellent,” he said as if he were positive. “You concern yourself for no reason. Seeing me, hearing me, doing as I asked you to, is not evidence of madness, merely evidence of your being receptive to my needs. Even before I came, I believe you must have had some knowledge, whether you are aware of it or not, of me and my kind.”
    “I have knowledge of numbers, of facts, of reality,”