He climbed toward it with frantic eagerness and presently looked down into a sheltered cleft of a valley. By his former standards it would have seemed a barren strip indeed, but in comparison with the terrain surrounding, it was an Eden.
Grass and scraggly bushes struggled for foothold on the hillsides. A brook trickled through the bottom and its banks revealed crude attempts at cultivation. Stunted growths that looked like corn stalks straggled across a narrow field. A gaunt heifer was tethered on one slope.
The smoke rose from a smoldering fire on a blackened area in front of the cave. In the mouth of the cave squatted a woman, clothed in a shapeless garment of skins, suckling a scrawny infant.
Incoherent choking sounds came from Marlin's throat as he descended upon this scene of domestic tranquility. At his approach, the woman glanced up, gave a shrill cry, and disappeared into the cave.
From a crevice beyond appeared a man, likewise clad in skins, brandishing a crooked stick. At sight of Marlin, he stopped in his tracks, then scampered toward the cave, turning at the entrance as if to make a last desperate stand.
Marlin came on with eager stride, but he stopped a few feet away and the two looked at each other.
The cave dweller was under-sized, bearded, and shaggy. His arms and legs protruded in ungainly fashion from the ill-fashioned skin garment. Something about the manner in which the sharp eyes gleamed at him through a tangle of overhanging hair struck a chord in Marlin's memory.
"You're—you're Link!" he said thickly. The words came with difficulty from unaccustomed lips. "Slinky Link! Remember? I'm—Marlin."
The woman's head emerged cautiously from behind her man. The scarred lip again prompted Marlin's memory.