Every few minutes, Gallen called Everynne’s name, but after nearly two hours, Maggie got angry. “Will you quit that bawling. She’s nowhere near here, so you might as well put a cork in it.”
Gallen fell silent. Though they walked a long time, the moon still lay in the sky like a glowing blue eye, warm and distant. It had hardly moved at all. They found a small pool of water that reflected night shadows and starlight, then knelt to drink. It tasted slightly salty, but quenched Maggie’s thirst. Nearby, several white birds flew up in the night, screeching and circling.
Orick snuffled in the grass and shouted, “Hey, you two, over here!”
He’d discovered some nests. Maggie opened the first egg and found a bird embryo in it, so left the rest to Orick. Maggie was exhausted. They hadn’t found anything more impressive that what might have been pit trails-no sign of a house or a road.
Not knowing what else to do, she looked for shelter. Aside from the arching trees, she found nothing.
She went to a large white rock, thinking to huddle behind it. It had been sculpted with strange symbols-as if it were part of a building. She looked about. All the white stones had been shaped by hand. They had been hiking through the ruins of a vast city.
Gallen collected two armloads of grass and leaves to use as a blanket, laid them by Maggie in the lee of the rock. The ground was hollowed like a shallow grave or as if some beast often came there to rest, thus packing the soil. Orick lay with Gallen and Maggie, his thick fur warm and welcome.
Gallen called one last time for Everynne. Only the croaking of frogs gave answer. A wind blew cool against Maggie’s skin, like the touch of a silver coin in winter.
Maggie wondered if someone should keep watch, but they’d seen no sign of anything larger than a mouse.
Gallen whispered to himself, “So Father Heany is dead. He was such a clean man. Death is such a small and nasty affair, part of me is shocked he would get involved in it.” He said nothing more. Soon, Gallen breathed deeply in sleep.
Orick sang some bear lullaby to Maggie as if she were a cub:
“Through winters long and cold we’ll sleep.
Don’t you weep, don’t you weep.
With hides and fat, warm we’ll keep,
Though snow grows deep, though snow grows deep.
So let your tired eyes rest, my dear,
And when you wake, I’ll be here.
And when you wake, I’ll be here.”
When the song finished, Orick sprawled a paw over Maggie’s shoulders and licked her face. “I have plenty of winter fat stored,” Orick said. “Next time we find food, you eat.”
Orick closed his eyes.
For some reason, Maggie stared up at the night sky. Hundreds of thousands of stars shone. Directly above was a great pinwheel made of brilliant points of light. Somehow, when she had stepped into this new world, she had not anticipated that all the stars she had known as a child would also be gone. Yet if they were to be replaced by so many stars, in such wondrous arrays, she imagined that she could grow accustomed to them.
Three stars moved fast, in formation, from west to east then dropped toward the treetops in the distance, and Maggie wondered at them. Were these strange stars flying on their own, or were they perhaps distant birds of light, flapping in the darkness?
Maggie gave herself over to fatigue and began to drift. What kind of world have we entered? she wondered. So many trees, nothing to eat. What will become of us?
When Maggie woke, Orick was gone and the moon had set. Gallen slept soundly beside her. Maggie got up, scanned the landscape in a huge circle. It was especially dark under the trees. Orick was nowhere to be seen, but after a few minutes she spotted him in the distance, running toward her between the trees. Orick raised up on his back legs and called, “Hallooo, Maggie. Over here! I’ve found something! Food!”
Maggie was painfully aware of her empty belly. While working at the inn, providing three meals a day for strangers, she had grown accustomed to eating on schedule. But now she had been fasting for over thirty hours. She prodded Gallen’s ribs with her toe. “Get up. It’s time to eat.”
Gallen sat up, rubbed his eyes. “It’s a little more sleep I’m wanting.”
“Up with you, you lout! You’ll sleep better with some food in your tummy.” Maggie realized belatedly that she sounded shrewish-like her own mother before she died. Back in Tihrglas, John Mahoney often warned her about her mouth: “Your mother grew so accustomed to nagging you kids, that she soon started bedeviling everyone in general. I’ll tell you right now, Maggie: I’ll not have you shrieking like a harpy at my customers, as your mother did!”
Maggie bit her lower lip, resolved to control her tongue.
When Gallen and Maggie reached the bear, he began loping through the woods. “I caught scent of it as I was sleeping,” Orick said. They reached a cliff and found themselves looking over a large valley, lush with trees. A broad river cut through the valley. Lights blazed on the water.
It took Maggie several moments to realize what she saw: the river was enormous, and huge ships sailed down it, each bejeweled with hundreds of lights. On the far side of the river was what appeared to be a single building that extended low along the ground for dozens of miles. Fierce bluish lights shone from thousands of windows. In places the land was clear, leaving bits of open meadow and farm. In other places, the building spanned over the water like some colony of mold growing in a neglected mug of ale.
As she watched, bright globes dropped from the sky and fell toward the city, then settled upon rooftops. Perhaps a mile away, a woman in green robes climbed from a shining globe and walked through a door into that vast building.
Maggie drew a breath in exclamation.
“As I said, I picked up the smell when we were sleeping,” Orick explained. “There’s good farmland down there. I smell ripe corn and pears.” Indeed, Maggie saw a few squares of checkered fields and orchards not far off.
“So,” Orick said, “shall we go knock on their door, ask for food?”
“It’s better than starving in the night,” Gallen said.
Maggie felt a deep sense of disquiet. “Are you sure?” she asked. “How do we know what they’ll do to us? What if there are vanquishers about?”
“You just saw that woman get out of her sky coach,” Gallen said. “She looked nice enough. Besides, what if there are vanquishers about? They won’t know us.”
Gallen searched for a way down the embankment and found a narrow footpath. Maggie hesitated, but didn’t want to be left in the dark. They climbed down. The starlight was not enough to see by, and Maggie found herself feeling her way forward through the shadows with a degree of apprehension.
At the bottom of the valley was a lush orchard where some sweet-smelling, pungent fruit had fallen. Orick licked one. “This stuff is pretty good,” he said, and he began eating.
Maggie gave the bear a minute, thinking that if the fruits were poisonous, the bear might start gagging, but Orick showed no sign of dying or taking sick.
“Didn’t you say you smelled corn?” Gallen asked.
“Yeah, over there!” Orick pointed toward the city with his snout. “But why eat feathers when there’s a chicken to be had?” he quoted an old proverb often spoken by bears. Obviously, he preferred this strange fruit.
Maggie cautiously followed Gallen toward the river. Halfway there, he stepped into some bushes and disturbed a buck that leapt up and bounded through the brush.
Maggie’s heart began thumping.
The deer charged uphill toward Orick, and the bear bawled in startlement and ran downhill to pace nervously at Gallen’s side.
They found a paved road by the river and followed it. Often through the trees Maggie glimpsed boats sailing the river or sky coaches rising from the city, yet the night remained quiet.