Love. He turned the word over in his mind, examining it from every angle like he often used to do with the special stone his mother carried. To love meant to care for someone more than you cared for yourself, Jane had said. He hadn't been exactly sure what that meant, and when he'd asked, Jane had said that when you care for someone you do things for them and you worry about them. You don't want to see them hurt or unhappy. He knew more than anything that he felt that way about his mother. He loved her. He wished he could tell her. But there were other ways to say it, he realized. Ways that he knew. The gorillas expressed that they loved each other every day. They knew how to show someone that they cared for them by doing things for them. They picked the bugs off of their backs. They saved the best fruits for them. They found pretty stones to give to them and they comforted them when they were upset. Tarzan was happy that he could see these things and that he now had a word for them. And he also understood what Jane meant when she said that love was a feeling. Even the humans in the village didn't need to speak the words to say it. The look in the eyes of the women in the village when the men came back from long hunting trips. The way they embraced. Some of the younger women jumping into the arms of the men and holding on as if they'd never let go.
The next few days, as Tarzan moved through the jungle, he saw more and more things that meant 'love.' The way the birds brought food back to their nests for their baby birds, holding it in their throats all the way back to the tree and then opening their beaks to empty them into eager little mouths. The way the lions would butt their heads and rub their shoulders, leaning into one another as though, if the other weren't there, they would simply fall to the ground. Tarzan remembered what Jane had said about trust and how that loving someone gives them power; that they hold your heart. He resolved to ask Jane where your heart was and how you gave it to someone to hold.
