I was in the forest seven days without it thinning or breaking, only growing deeper and older (though not as old as Road). It was an ancient place, and nice to be in - nice to follow Road through, anyway. Night made it different; it made you think that a thousand years ago there had been no forest here; there might have been houses, or towns, and now there were only trees, huge and indifferent, the undergrowth thick and impassible except by animals. Only Road here was for man anymore; and Road would be conquered in the end. The fire I built made a great vague hole in the dark, and kept animals away, though I heard noises; and the nations of the insects made their songs all night. I slept lightly through them, waking and dozing, my dreams like waking and my waking like a dream, all filled with those ceaseless engines.
It was as though I had been taken in, by the forest, and forgotten that I had ever been elsewhere. I continued to be afraid at night, but that seemed proper; in the day I walked, turning my head side to side to see only trees. I even stopped talking to myself (which truthful speakers do all the time, alone) and just watched, as the forest watched me. I had become part of it. So much so that when between waking and sleeping in a moonless night I heard two large animals pass near me, and one come close on padded feet, I only waited, absolutely still like any small prey, alert but somehow unable to wake fully and shout or run. And they passed. And next morning I was hardly sure they had been there. I sat smoking in the morning, wondering if I should be grateful I had escaped; the forest had so far convinced me that I was the only man in the world that it was not until I heard human voices singing that I realized it was a man who had passed me in the night.
The birds talked to each other and even the sunlight seemed to make a noise as it fell unceasingly, but the human voices were another kind of noise, which sorted itself from the forest's as soon as I heard it. For a reason I remember but can't quite express, I hid when I heard it was coming closer, coming from the way I had come. From within the great ferns at Road's side I watched; and along the broad gray of Road came, not men but one, then two, then three enormous cats. I had seen cats before, shy feral faces in the woods, and one or two who lived at Belaire and caught mice and moles. These cats were not of that kind; it wasn't only that they were huge - if they had stood on their hind feet like men, they would have been nearly my height - but that their soft, padding motion was purposeful and their lamplike eyes so observant, so calmly smart. I had heard of one cat like them: the cat that came to Belaire with Olive.
They sensed me, and without altering their steady padding came toward the place I hid; I was afraid for a moment, but they were not threatening, only interested. And now down the road those singing came into sight: ten or so, in black, with wide black hats that shaded their faces. When they saw that the cats saw something in the ferns that interested them, the singing died away, and, as interested as the cats, they came toward me. I stood up and stepped out onto Road. They were more surprised than I was, because of course it was they I was looking for, though I hadn't expected to find them so soon.
I greeted them as they gathered around me, and smiled. One said: "He's a warren boy."
"How did you find our camp?" another said.
"I didn't know I had."
"What do you want with us? Why have you come here?"
The urgency and hostility in their voices made it hard to say, hard to say anything at all; I stammered. The first who had spoken, tall and long-limbed, strode over to me and took my arm, holding tight and looking hard into my face. "What are you?" he said, low and insistent. "Spy? Trader? We want nothing more from you. Did you follow us here? Are there others hidden in the woods?"
They all stood close around me, their faces secret and blank. "I've come," I said, "to - to see you. Visitors to Little Belaire aren't treated this way. I didn't follow you, I was ahead of you. I don't mean any harm to you, and I'm alone. Very much alone." It was amazing to see them pause and puzzle over this, and look darkly at me; because of course I had spoken truthfully. And with the force of a blow I realized that none of those I faced did. Perhaps Once a Day, supposing I found her, no longer would; nobody that I would meet, for hundreds of miles around, spoke truthfully. My throat tightened, and I started to sweat in the cool morning.
Another man, whose beard was grizzled gray and whose movements were as graceful as the cat's beside him, came up to me. "You have your secrets, there," he said. "You guard yourselves. We have our secrets. This camp is one of them. We're surprised, mostly."
"Well," I said, "I don't know where this camp is you talk about, and if I went on now, I'd never be able to find it again. If you want, I'll do that."
We had nothing further to say, then. They wanted to go on to this camp, and I didn't want to lose them; they didn't want to take me to it, but didn't know how to part from me. I was a real wonder.
The cats had started to go on, having grown bored with me, and some others drifted after them as though summoned. The question of me wasn't resolved, but the cats seemed to make up everyone's mind. The big man took my arm again, more gently, though his look was still black, and we started down Road after the cats. (There would be a lot of arguments and hesitations resolved that way among the List, I would come to find; the cats decided.)
Soon a spur of Road fell away from Road itself, and led downward in a sharp curve, broken in places and seeming about to lose itself in woods; and only when, at the bottom, it straightened itself and joined Road again, but Road going in another direction, under a bridge hung with ivy as with a long garment, did I realize we had gone around one of the great somersaults I had seen Road do so many years ago. Through the trees we could see its broad back humped as it made its big circles; no doubt the whole forest was seamed with Road, if you knew where it ran. Where does it go? I'd asked Seven Hands. Everywhere, he'd said.
We left Road then, and went through what seemed impassible woods, though there were hidden paths, and came to a small stone clearing, and nestled in the woods at the edge of the clearing was their camp: a low, flat-roofed building, angel-made with wide windows filled in now with logs. Before it were two ranks of decayed metal piles, almost man-high, that had once been engines of some kind, of which I could make nothing.
Before the door sat a bony, black-hatted old man, who waved to us slowly with a stick. The cats had found him already, and sat in the sun by him switching their tails and licking. The tall man who held me showed me to the old one. "He stays outside," he said, and looked at me; I shrugged and nodded as though that would be all right with me, and they went through the door.
I smiled at the old man from where I stood on the stone clearing, and he smiled back, seeming not in the least surprised or apprehensive, though he was clearly the guard and the doorkeeper. I noticed leaning against the building's side a huge square cake of plastic, sleek as Blink's Jug, dirty and cracked, but its red and yellow colors undimmed, that bore a picture of a shell. The sun was getting hot; finally I ventured over to sit with the old man in the shade of the building.