Moving listlessly, she was nevertheless slowly catching up to the others. Thorinn hesitated a moment, then decided to leave well alone, and followed her.
Scattered along the grassy bank, the people drifted away before him in twos and threes; the children and twigmen, for the most part, had gone on ahead; the old people, the women, and the women's men strolled behind. Their voices were muted and gentle. In a few paces Thorinn had caught up with the girl; he slowed down to keep pace with her, but although she glanced at him once, she did not speak, and after a moment, losing patience, Thorinn went on ahead.
Where the long green meadow narrowed, the people were filing into an opening in the forest. He could glimpse their bright petals bobbing between the trees. The trail wound gently upward, never steep or difficult, between shrubs with unblemished bright leaves, flowers, vines, trees with hanging clusters of fruit; here and there it curved to avoid a fallen tree. The ground was softly carpeted everywhere. The bushes had no thorns.
Thorinn slipped past the ambling women and old people where he could do so without rudeness on the narrow trail, and eventually had passed all but the twigmen and children, who were now out of sight. The trail was still plain, and he followed it for half a league until it emerged in a wide green meadow, which at first appeared sickle-shaped, curving away from him; then, blinking in the late skylight, he saw that in fact it formed a ring around a clump of slender trees.
People were moving at random around the bases of these trees, where Thorinn saw a huddle of curious round structures of withy and vines. Up in the branches, a flash of movement caught his eye, and he saw platforms there with people on them.
As he approached, he found that some of the bulbous structures around the trees were little bowers; what he had taken for withies were simply the stalks of plants that had been bent together and secured with interlaced vines that still bore their leaves and blossoms. Children were squatting in a few of these. Other huts, somewhat larger, were covered almost to the ground by a solid green skin which, on examination, he found to be composed of broad leaves, overlapped and somehow sealed tightly together at their edges. Peering into the doorway of one of these, he saw heaped flowers and a few gourds; otherwise it was empty.
Voices piped behind him; the rest of the people were emerging from the trees. They crossed to the meadow, a few glancing at him but making no sign. They gathered around the base of the trees in little groups. A few disappeared into the green huts or climbed to the platforms above; then a few more. Thorinn, who had waited in vain for any invitation to follow them, withdrew a little and watched. Now only two of the people remained, a woman and her little man. Arm in arm, they entered one of the green huts.
The birds in the treetops had fallen silent. Thorinn looked up. Silent and swift, an edge of darkness was sweeping across the sky. It was not high-arched, like the sky-scythe of Hovenskar, but straight as a string. In two heartbeats it had passed and the sky was dark. Kneeling in the darkness, feeling the cool breeze that presently began to whisper across the meadow, Thorinn began to suspect that he was farther from home than he had reckoned.
4
How Thorinn roasted two fat waterfowl for his supper, and what happened thereafter.
Thorinn sat perched on a rock, chin in his hands, staring down at the smooth glassy curve of the water where it disappeared under the overhang. The voice in his head was a remote murmur, as steady and insistent as the water itself. The rocks below him were black and glistening with spray; the water made a subdued rushing sound, so constant and pervasive that it was like the sound of blood in his own veins. Twigs, then a broad leaf, rode down the shining back of the river, curved over and shot abruptly out of sight. He must go down, but he could not.
In three days he had followed the river from the western end of the valley, where it fell in a graceful cataract straight down the face of the mountain, to its exit here at the eastern end. He had crossed the river at the shallows, half a league above, and had followed the wall of mountains all the way around the valley. They were the same everywhere: sheer gray rock, unbroken, without a fissure, a ledge, a handhold. The mountains pierced the sky, or else the sky severed the mountains. There was no exit from the valley except for the chasm into which the river fell.
The sky was dimming; it was time to think of supper, and then a place to sleep. He knew what he had tried so long to keep from knowing: the mountains were not mountains, but walls of rock; the sky not a sky, but the roof of a cavern. A fool might have known as much, for he had traveled steadily downward from the Midworld... but who could have believed that there were trees, a river, a sky underground?
He went into the forest and picked fruit, but the sight and smell of it made his stomach knot, and he threw it into the bushes. Thinking of the water-fowl that nested along the riverbank, he turned with sudden resolution. If nothing else, he could at least hunt his own food and have a meal fit to eat. The river was witchily green with reflected skylight among the dark tussocks. Wading, he moved with caution, stopping at every step to listen. A rustle from the clump ahead; as he plunged toward it, he heard a sleepy note and saw a crested head appear. He got his hands on the warm feathered neck and wrung it, cutting off the bird's sudden squawk. Another body thrashed up from the grass, wings flapping; he lunged, got that one too. With the plump bodies slung over his shoulder he waded ashore. Just as he reached the bank, the night raced overhead and the world fell into breathing blackness. He searched the forest for fallen limbs, tore them loose from the vines that clung to them with a thousand suckers, and kindled a fire on the greensward, not far from the pod-vines. He plucked and cleaned his two fowl—one was a cock, the other a young hen—then contrived a spit between two forked branches thrust into the ground, skewered his birds on it and roasted them over the fire. A faint pattering began around him; a cool drop struck his nose. Thorinn got a big leaf from the forest to cover the spit, and another for himself. In the ruddy light, the greensward was another place, walled in by darkness. Raindrops bombarded his leaves and rebounded pale in the firelight. The crisp skin curled, wept grease that sizzled in the flames; the smell that came from it made his mouth fill with water, and he ate the first fowl with raging appetite before it was properly cool enough. Nothing had ever tasted so good. He carried the second bird into the shelter of a tree and ate a leg and a breast of it; then weariness overcame him; he dropped the rest and stretched himself out. Rain rattled in the leaves high overhead; beyond the lower branches, in the faint glow of the fire, he saw it streaming coppery against the black air. He was up at first light, washed in the river, then breakfasted on the remains of the second bird. Lazy and replete, he lay down and dozed again.
Some time later he woke with a start. Half a dozen of the older children were staring at him across the ashes of his fire and the little heap of feathers, bones, and offal. Among them was the girl he had spoken to before, or one like her. Their faces were white.
Questioning voices came from behind him; more people were emerging from the forest. The children turned and ran toward them, screaming as they went. A crowd formed around the children; it grew momentarily larger and noisier. Thorinn saw faces turned toward him, staring eyes, open mouths. Bewildered, he got up, but already the people were turning away. Their voices dwindled; the whole crowd was moving back into the forest. The last of them disappeared.