As far off as I could see, it ran smack into a high hill where it must stop; and here was the last wonder - it didn't stop. Its two parts each found a perfect, high-arched cave or cleft to run into. And then no doubt out the other side and on and on, leaping and curling in bows and straightening the lumpy, bumpy earth with its angel-made straight lines.
"Where does it go?" I asked.
"Everywhere," Seven Hands said simply, letting himself down to a squat. "From This Coast to the Other Coast, and when it reaches the Other Coast it turns and comes back again to This Coast by a different way, and back again. And crosses and recrosses a thousand times, and doubles back and radiates out like a spider's web in a thousand ways."
"Is it all like this?"
"Like this or bigger."
"More than two?"
"No. Always two. One to go this way on, one to go that way on. Bigger across, and curling around like you see there, but in huge flowers. And mixing it up in Cities, with bridges on its back and tunnels under its belly. So I've heard. One day I'll see."
"What was it… for?"
"To kill people with," Seven Hands said, simply as before. "That's what the saints said. The cars used to go on it, you see. At night you could have seen them from here, all lit; I know they were all lit, with white lights in front and red in back, so that the road to go this way on would be white, and the road to go that way on would be all red."
"And how did Road kill them?"
"Oh, Road didn't kill them. The cars killed them. People were inside them, and there was only room in them to sit with arms and legs just so, so they were easy to break; the whole thing could sort of fold up and break you like a nutcracker.
"They went fast, you see, faster than bats but not so carefully, and so they collided all the time. St. Clay said he heard from Great St. Roy - and St. Roy had seen Road in the last days when there were millions of these cars, like ants along a path, like shoals of minnows - St. Roy said that Road killed in a year as many people as there are in Little Belaire, twice over."
I started out over that proud, dove-gray thing. Nearby, its stone could be seen to be cracked by weeds, and the ditch that separated its parts was filled with saplings growing tall. You could stand in the middle of one half and be aimed right at the Other Coast, the angels knew how far away; you could pass things that the truthful speakers have forgotten for hundreds of years, and come to the Other Coast at last, and then cross to the other side and be pointed home, and never once leave Road. And yet it killed people.
Now the whole sky was clear, and the wind that filled up the air to its blue height was dying away. Seven Hands got up and started down the steep slope toward Road, and I followed him. "Why didn't they just stop, then," I asked, "and just walk along it? Or just - just look at it?"
"They did, eventually, when everything went off," said Seven Hands, finding footing. "But in the ancient days, they didn't mind much; they weren't afraid; they were angels. And besides, there were millions of them; they didn't mind a few thousand killed."
We reached its edge and walked out to the middle of its near part, and faced the huge knot in it miles away, and the Other Coast far farther than that. "We came along Road," Seven Hands said, stamping lightly on its smooth surface. "St. Bea and St. Andy came along it in the saints' days, and left Road just here. And went to rebuild Big Belaire. But you knew all that."
I knew some of it. I hadn't known this was the place, or this the Road we had left. "Tell me," I said.
"Well," he said, "help me make a fire." We gathered sticks and kindling and made a fire in the middle of Road, and Seven Hands took matches from his sleeve and lit it. When it was a small bright blaze we sat near it, and bound our hands in our sleeves, and pulled over our hoods, and Seven Hands began to talk.
"There were nearly a thousand of us. We had wandered, oh, I don't know, a hundred years, a hundred and a half, and had never forgotten the Co-op Great Belaire or truthful speaking in all those years after the Storm had passed; we had stayed together; others had joined us. And now we had come here. It was spring then; we had stopped for the night, and sat here on Road and put up tents and unloaded things, and St. Bea and St. Andy opened the old wagon, and there were fires lit; well, imagine a thousand and their fires here.
"St. Bea talked late with St. Andy that night. They talked about the children there, and the old people; they spoke over and over the things they knew from Big Belaire and from the old times, and how it might be that the wagons would be lost and with them many memories of those times. Already a lot had been forgotten. And I suppose they looked out at Road, which they had come along, as we do now. And, St. Andy said, that was when St. Bea got the idea. You know what the idea was."
"Little Belaire."
"She said: 'It's spring now. And this part of the country is very nice, and fertile, and very scenic too.' And she wondered if maybe they hadn't wandered far enough, far enough from the angel's death and ruin, who had never hurt this land around here much; and mightn't it be time to stop? There would be no danger of St. Andy getting lost for good with the precious wagon. It had been a long time since the Storm had passed, the going-off of the world the angels made; perhaps all those sins had been forgiven, perhaps long ago. They had learned a lot, St. Bea thought, and maybe it was time to stop learning and start living a little.
"But St. Andy didn't know. He knew how to keep moving. He said: 'We fly the angels. The League is no friend of ours. There are a lot of people who don't love us at all.' And St. Bea said: 'The angels are dead and gone. For the others,' she said, 'we can plan against them.'
"And she drew in the ashes by the fire the circle that is Little Belaire today, with its secret door and its Path no one knows but the speakers, and she said: 'We'll build it all of angelstone, and it will have no windows, and will all be joined, just like Big Belaire was.'
"Well, she convinced St. Andy. 'She's a very persuasive woman,' he used to say. And so they called the gossips together around their fire, and toward morning it had been decided to rebuild the Co-op as well as they could, here, in this country the angels had left alone except for Road, which ran through it almost without stopping.
"And so that day the truthful speakers left Road and never took it again."
Now the sun was low, and the wind had died away almost as suddenly as it had risen. It was colder than it had been. I pulled my hooded cloak more tightly around me. "You'll take it, though," I said. "One day."
"Yes, big man," he said softly. "One day."
And when he said it - I don't know how, whether because we had shared this adventure, or because of the story he had told, or because now for the first time he knew it to be true himself - I saw that Seven Hands wouldn't leave Little Belaire and follow Road where it led. That had been the knot between us, that I had believed him when he said it, and resented and admired him for having decided to do it; and he, who knew in his heart of hearts that he never would, had disliked me for believing him capable of it when he wasn't. He had spoken truthfully of all this to me even as he told me of his plans to go and his dreams of what he would see; but till now I hadn't been able to hear it. With something like an audible whisper, the knot came untied in me, and left me sad. "One day," I said. Beneath his hood his face was grave, and sad too; for I had in those two words just told him what I had learned.