He drank from his water skin and judged that he should do some hunting that day. When he was finished with his meal, he left his blankets and provisions, his helmet and pick by the stump and took along only the rifle.
He entered into the willow wood, parting the long branches. There were cool shadows under the whips of foliage, and he could hear small animals and birds moving about. He wanted a rabbit, even though in the Beyond they had the pink, fleshy faces of pigs. The taste of them was unusual too—earthy and birdlike. He was still not sure that he enjoyed it, but he was always happy to have one skinned and turning on a spit.
It wasn't long before he spotted a pheasant, pecking around the base of a willow twenty or so yards ahead of him. He pulled the gun up and took aim. The shot would be difficult because of the layers of branches that separated them. He took his time, feeling for the drift of the breeze and calculating the location of the bird's heart. That is when he felt a hand come down lightly on his shoulder.
"Are you looking for Wenau?" said a voice behind him.
He spun around and there stood the Traveler, full of life, as I had seen him back in Anamasobia. Beaton backed up three steps and turned the gun on the creature.
"No harm," said the Traveler, holding up one of his webbed hands.
"You speak?" Beaton said.
"I heard you moving through the Beyond. I saw, in the reflection of water, your friends die. At night, while you sleep, you cry like a child and none of the beasts of the Beyond will come near you," he said.
"But how do you know the language of the realm?" asked the miner, unsure whether to lower his gun.
"The language was in me; I discovered it after having overheard your conversations in a seashell," he said.
Beaton shrugged. "I've got no reason to doubt you," he said and lowered the gun.
The Traveler stepped forward and handed the miner a piece of wood with a picture etched in black on it. It was the portrait of a young girl with long hair. Beaton had no idea at the time, but I could see over his shoulder that it was a likeness of Aria.
There was something about the strange man that Beaton liked right away. It had something to do with the sense of calm he exuded, something about his smile and eyes. The miner reached in his pocket to find a gift to exchange. He came across the seed first, but as its thistle poked his finger, he remembered his pledge to Moissac that he, himself, would plant it. Down below the seed, he found the coin he had seen Joseph drop in the tunnels of Palishize. As he placed it in the large brown hand, he wondered why he had never given it back to Bataldo.
"The flower and the snake," said the Traveler.
''Have you been to Palishize?" asked Beaton.
"People came out of the sea and built it," he said. 'They worshiped this flower, a yellow blossom from a certain tree that weeps when it is cut. This represented possibility. The coiled snake was forever. Palishize was abandoned before the forests of the Beyond had begun to grow."
"What is Wenau?" asked the miner. "Is it the Earthly Paradise?"
The Traveler nodded.
"Is death there?" he asked.
"No death," said the Traveler. "I will take you." He put the coin away in a pouch he wore on a leather strap about his waist. Then he reached up to a large fruit pit he wore like a pendant on a necklace. Miraculously, the thing opened on tiny hinges that had been carved into it. From within the pit, he pulled out two red leaves that had been folded over many times in order to fit. When opened all the way, they were the size of a man's hand and tissue thin.
He ate one of the leaves and handed the other to Beaton. "Eat it," he said.
"What will it do?" asked the miner.
"Give you courage," he said. Then he pulled the double-bladed knife from his belt and led the way.
Beaton began to feel asleep on his feet as he chewed the sweet red leaf. Things became visible to him that he had not noticed before. Small bright lights of various colors streamed down the path they took and passed right through them. Sparks of energy leaped off the ends of the Traveler's hair and fingers. Ghostly creatures poked their heads through the undergrowth to watch them pass. I hid behind a tree for fear that I could now be seen by them.
"We found one of you in Mount Gronus," Beaton tried to tell his guide, but the Traveler motioned for him to be quiet.
An instant later, Beaton perceived the Traveler was wrapped in deadly combat with a white phantom of a snake. Again and again, he plunged the double-bladed knife into its scaly back. White blood poured from the wounds, but still the creature kept tightening its stranglehold. The suddenness with which it happened shocked Beaton. It was almost as if the Traveler had always been fighting the snake.
Beaton finally came to his senses and lifted the rifle. He fired once, a direct hit through the jaw and into the brain of the monster. Then it was gone, disappearing like a memory forgotten, and they were walking calmly along again. The Traveler was smiling. His knife put away, he was smoking a long, hollow twig. How he had lit it, Beaton never saw. He passed it to the miner, who inhaled.
That day they forded streams and rivers, crossed vast barren tracts of snow and ice, climbed mountains, and walked along the shoreline of another inland sea. As the sun began to set, they came upon a village in a clearing in the woods. It was situated between two rivers, like an island.
"Wenau," said the Traveler.
People came streaming out of the simple dwellings and over the earthen bridge to greet them. There were children and women and old men, all made like the Traveler. Beaton was brought into the center of the village and fed a dinner of fruit and boiled grain. Stories were told, some in another language, until the rest of the inhabitants of Wenau discovered the language of the visitor.
Beaton was told he was welcome in the village, and they helped him to build a shelter for himself. He soon came to know all of the children and men and women. In the days that followed, he traveled throughout the island between the rivers, taking samples of all the myriad strange plants and flowers that grew there. Wenau always had a beautiful scent of spring to it. The days were always clear and warm and peaceful. One night, when he wandered by himself just outside the perimeter of the village, he planted Moissac's seed in a small stand of violet, flowering trees.
He marked his time in Wenau by the progress of the tree that grew up from the spiny brown seed. It grew rapidly and by the end of a few weeks, it was the size of the Traveler himself. The miner brought his friend to see the growth of Moissac's offspring one day. By then, it had brought forth on one single branch a white fruit like the one that had sat on the altar at Anamasobia.
"The fruit of paradise," Beaton said to his companion.
"Where did you get this seed?" said the Traveler.
Beaton told the story of the foliate, and as he did the Traveler shook his head.
"But the fruit holds immortality," said the miner.
"Come with me," said the Traveler.
Beaton followed him back to the village and then to a particular hut. There, on the floor in the main living quarters lay an old emaciated woman, gasping for breath. Two young women sat by her side, holding her thin hands, the webs now cracked and brittle.
"But she's dying," said Beaton to the Traveler.
"No, she is changing," he said. "The white fruit that grows from the seed of your friend disallows change."
"But she is physically dying then," said Beaton.
"I understand what you mean," said the Traveler. "I wasn't sure at first. This word death is a difficult idea. If you want to reach the land where there is no death, you must travel due north from here, a twelve season journey. I will show you the path, but I will not go with you."