Beck made sure they drank from their water supply and ate a little at reasonable intervals, as well as gathering up any berries and mushrooms they passed to carry with them. There was no point in pressing on so fast that they wore themselves out. ‘We’re not going to get three regular meals a day,’ he explained. ‘We just graze as we go.’ Tikaani already knew a lot of the plants, thanks to his grandmother’s teaching. Like the blueberries, which were not easy to find because they grew amongst other plants low down on the ground. The berries were tiny and quivered beneath the fingers at the slightest pressure. If they burst, which was almost inevitable, they stained the fingers with something like sweet-tasting blue ink. They were very moreish. Beck introduced him to more of the natural delicacies that they passed. There were the pink-tinted shoots of fireweed, whose name came from the colour of its leaves but suited the strong taste perfectly. And coltsfoot, flat green leaves shaped like the ace of spades that they picked straight off the ground.
