"Can you find it?"
Of course he could and without any questions, but Nance wanted to know why we were headed there instead of up toward the pass leading to Lor's home village.
"Nance, you must listen to me and not argue with me because this is how it has to be,” I said. “I want you to take me to the stream. At daybreak you and Lor will head for Lor's village. I'm going to stay and search around that stream."
"Why do that?” she demanded.
"Because that's how I got here and so that has to be the way to leave."
As I had known she would, she cried, “You cannot do that! You cannot leave me! I will never forgive you. Even if you find a way out, it won't lead where you think, you will end up in the land of the dead. Or if it goes to your world, you will still be in the mountains. What do you know of living outdoors? Nothing. You are helpless. You will die of exposure. Tell her, Lor, tell her she cannot!"
Lor said, “There's no world but here."
"Where do you think I came from? Where did the Daughter come from?"
Lor shrugged. “Maybe there's a way in. Never heard of a way out except for souls of the dead."
"Roads go both ways, Lor."
"If that were true, the warlords of Thunder would have gone out long ago and overrun your land,” Nance stormed.
"I don't have a choice. I can't stay here."
"You would rather die than stay with us?"
"I'll miss you, Nance. But you can have a life with Lor's people. I can't. This isn't my world."
"You are like Tarvik!” she cried. “You are cruel and stubborn and wicked and you do not care for me at all!"
She fell asleep angry and I thought in the morning she would argue again, but she surprised me. She moved silently around the camp, tying bundles to the horses, a small lonely figure beneath her hooded cape. When she returned to the fire to join Lor and me at a breakfast of tea and rice, her face showed a night of weeping, her eyelids were puffed, her pale skin mottled.
"Stargazer,” she said, her voice trembling but soft, “I have thought about it. We will take you to the stream. If the gods mean for you to leave us, then you will find the way out. If they don't, then you will stay with us."
Not much to argue about there.
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Chapter 22
We crossed the plateau and the foothills, Lor and Nance traveling easily, both old hands at riding horses and sleeping on hard surfaces. I traveled miserably, with the chill seeping into my bruises. I had bruises everywhere.
When we reached the stream, it was winter different, wider, flowing rapidly, edged with leafless trees and dead brambles. I would never have recognized it but Lor led me to a path that ran from the stream's edge through the little forest.
"The clearing is that way. Would have tied his horse there."
I turned slowly, studying everything, muddy water, muddy edge, muddy path, and tried to imagine the place hot and dry with summer.
"That path runs to a large clearing?"
"They always pitch their tents there, then come through here to get water."
"All right, then he was standing where you are and, oh damn, I was in that direction."
I walked slowly with the stream's bank on my left, kept going, reached up with my right arm and pushed aside dry branches that all seemed to stick out at the exact height to scratch my face. I didn't remember that part. The water had been still then, barely moving, full of floating leaves. Lower.
Now the stream covered the path, reached almost to the berry thicket where I had scratched my arms searching for food. The hard dry path I'd followed was now soft mud beneath the water's surface. The brown water spread up under overhangs of dead branches forcing me to turn and weave my way behind the edging thicket.
Still, this had to be the right direction and if I kept walking, no.
I walked straight ahead, which should have kept my back to Lor and Nance. Instead, there they were in front of me. Facing me.
"What are you doing?” Nance asked.
I stopped, stared at her, then looked at the stream. It was now on my right. Somehow I had turned around and was walking back toward them.
Had I walked in a circle around a tree? Probably. My PBS nature trek skills were zip.
Shaking my head, I turned again, held up my right arm to fend off the pesky branches, and followed the water's edge. When I reached the snarl of vines that had stopped me the first time I looked carefully in both directions, kept the silver trunk of an alder in sight, cut in around it, touched it with my fingers as I passed, walked another half dozen steps, and damn.
"Something curves here,” I said.
I had grown up in Mudflat and knew that seeing is no reason for believing. The Daughter and her consort, that poor couple, probably seasoned hikers because they carried a first aid kit, must have thought themselves losing touch with sanity. I knew better.
Nance said, “You're at the end of the world. There's nothing beyond."
"Maybe,” I said, because maybe I was insane. Maybe I dreamed that other world of paved city streets and electric lights and long hot showers, but God, I hoped not.
I sat down on a fallen tree trunk. It was a bit damp but we hadn't brought camp chairs and I sure as hell wasn't going to sit on a horse. Never again.
Although the stream was wider, the distance between the lines of trees on either side seemed about right. Imagine leaves on overhanging limbs, imagine a bright sky, imagine looking up into it, add the path. Must be a thousand places in the forest that looked identical, but Lor knew this country the way I knew the bus routes in Seattle.
If this was the favorite campsite for summer hunting trips planned to entertain the warlord's son, and Lor said it was, then this was the place. I got in and so there must be a way to get out.
The stream seemed to meander on into the distance, but didn't take any sharp turn.
"Do you go boating on this thing?” I asked.
"What's that?"
"Boats. You know. Something that floats. A raft, maybe?"
"Floats on the water? Like the leaves? What for?"
Okay, these folks really were not Viking descendents despite nature gods, blond complexions, and numerous Scandinavian communities in the Northwest. What all those good people had in common was a love of boats.
I thought about this, but not too hard, because while I watched the woods through half-closed eyes my thoughts darted in any number of desperate directions. I even watched birds flitting around, noticed the movement, and didn't give a damn what kind of birds they were.
I had been in the water. Walking? Had I taken more than a few steps? And then I waded out.
And there he'd been, on the bank above me.
Where had I gone in the water? How wide was the path, how far from the trees? Did it matter?
The small flock of birds circled. I was so bored I counted them as they swooped low above the stream. Catching bugs, I guess. Or maybe practicing swooping for the next bird Olympics. Who knew? But, wait, what just happened there? I hadn't blinked, or not that slowly.
Half of the flock was gone.
They didn't fly away and they definitely didn't dive into the water. There had been a couple dozen of them, a small flock circling and now, while I stared, there were only a few, seven to be exact.
And then they were gone, also, but I saw them go, flying across the stream and into the trees. I had not seen the others go up, down or sideways.
They simply disappeared.
Wasn't that just my luck? I knew the exact spot where they disappeared, oh goodie, right above the center of the stream.
And here was I with folks who had never built a raft.
Hated to ask, but I knew I had to do it.
"Lor, how deep do you figure that stream is in the middle?"
"Come up more than waist high."
Sounded right. I'd waded into it in summer and it barely reached above my knees. Waist high was okay except this wasn't summer
and I was already freezing out in the dry air.
"I'm going to wade down the middle,” I said.
And then, because I didn't want them floundering about, diving under the surface to search endlessly for me, which I knew they would do, I added, “I think I see the gateway. If I'm right, I'll disappear. Don't worry and don't hunt for me. I'll be fine. I'm pretty sure I know where I am now."
Two pairs of pale eyebrows rose toward hairlines.
Lor was silent but Nance said, “Get wet in winter, get the fever."
Worse yet, I'd have wet feet all the way home. Wet wool pants would be bad enough, but soaked boots would be too much. I pulled off my boots and tied them together by their laces, then hung them over my shoulder.
Then I walked to the edge of the stream, put in a bare foot, bit back a shriek because oh yes, it was barely melting ice, that stream.
Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be an alternate choice and the old “you do what you have to do” line covered my situation. I waded on in, step by grim step, sucking mud underfoot, slime and cold seeping higher and higher up my legs, my body, and help, the water reached above my waist. Holding my arms up, elbows out, with the vain hope of keeping my sleeves dry, as though that would counteract the cold, I reached the center of the water and waded north.
Something splashed behind me.
"Go back, Nance,” I said through chattering teeth.
A branch slapped at my face. I tried to push it away but when I raised my arm, my loose-fitting cloak slid sideways and my scarf tangled with the laces of my boots. Everything would be soaked. I struggled to grab the bootlaces, sort of succeeded, stepped on something awful and tried not to think what. I walked into a spider web, brushed at it and realized my hands were not only wet, they were muddy and something burned at the corner of my eye, probably the mud from my fingers.
One misery after another until I really wanted to scream. Where the hell was I?
And then I heard the splashing again and I turned around.
She was plugging right along, teeth gritted, little face scrunched up with determination, the water almost up to her chin.
"Nance, go back."
I said it and then I looked past her to shout to Lor who wasn't there. I turned, looked at the banks all around me. We hadn't come more than twenty or thirty feet, but I could not see Lor or the horses. We hadn't come around a bend.
"Rain coming,” Nance said.
"Rain?” I looked up at the gray sky, a thin low cloud cover.
"I hear the thunder,” she said.
Thunder? No, it was a familiar whistling roar.
"That's a plane,” I said, then got it.
Good for me, bad for Nance. But still, the gateway seemed to be about where it had been last summer. If I walked much further, I would never find it again, but right now?
"Nance, you're outside now. In the outlands. The outworld. Whatever. Hear those sounds? That's not thunder, that's engine noise. You need to go back. Turn around and walk right up the middle of the stream. Try to stay exactly on the way we came."
She had a funny puzzled expression. Stared at me for several seconds and I could practically see her brain whirling through ideas.
"This is your side? Here?” she asked.
"That's right."
"Good. I will never have to see my stupid cousin again."
"What?"
"He cannot marry me off to some horrid old scum."
Oh lord, what now, what was I supposed to do with her? Okay, she wasn't an alien, not from off-planet or anything, but she also wasn't anyone I could explain. And when she tired of my world, then what? I would never find this exact stream again and considering how seldom strangers appeared in their land, this was probably the only gate.
"You won't be able to return unless you return right now."
"Good."
"Nance, what about Lor? We dragged him with us."
"He'll go home to his own village,” Nance said, but for the first time she looked unsure and her lower lip quivered. “He will be happier there. And rich, too, with three horses."
Couldn't argue with that. Besides, I was standing in cold water in the middle of winter somewhere on the Olympic peninsula. My choices were narrow. Stay here and die sneezing or move my butt toward the low roar in the distance, that wonderful sound of my favorite pollution source, traffic.
I could hear it now and where there's traffic there's always a ride for two shivering young women who stumble out of the forest with a long wordy tale of getting lost on a hike.
I stopped for one last look at the woods. I didn't want to look but Tarvik was back there somewhere and so was a big piece of my heart. Once he asked me what happened to the tarbaby and I didn't know the answer. Now I guessed I'd never know.
Maybe this was only a few months later but I felt a decade older and a thousand years wiser. The Decko brothers might be waiting for me in Seattle. Or they might have moved on to other scams. It didn't matter. They were nothing compared to the barbarian brothers. They didn't have swords or poison potions. They didn't have armies. They wouldn't try to behead me, because despite the hands-off Mudflat policy, the police don't ignore things like that.
And most important, the Deckos lived in the land of hot showers, shampoo, coffee, and I'd either override their scare tactics or figure out a way to get help. Had to be easier than ducking barbarians. No way could a couple of bad boys intimidate me any more.
Anything to get back to the smog belt.
"Okay,” I said to my short companion, and we grabbed onto the trunk of a tree leaning out over the stream and hauled ourselves up the bank. “Follow my lead, don't scream when we get into a big noisy box that moves, and most of all, let me do the talking. Okay?"
"Okay,” she said.
I stopped to wipe my feet dry with my scarf, then pulled on my dry boots. Wonderful.
"Do you live in a castle or a hut?” she asked. “It doesn't matter, I can live anywhere, truly, and I can cook for you."
"I live in a house,” I said.
We picked our way through ferns and between fir trees, heading for the highway roar.
"What's a house?"
"Halfway between a hut and a castle."
"That sounds nice. Do you live alone?"
"A troll rents the basement,” I said and looked at her.
She smiled that vague smile of the totally confused.
"That's nice,” she said.
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Epilogue
For three days he wandered through the forest, the long road within sight.
He wound around the silver trunks of alders, their branches sprouting new leaves, and tramped through the familiar undergrowth of ferns beneath the shadows of the fir trees. When exhaustion stopped him, he slept curled against a fallen log or in whatever hollow he could find that gave him any protection from the steady drizzle of rain. Once, when the road was empty, he climbed up to it, crouched down, took off his gloves and ran his hands across its surface.
Flat, black, hard. Was this tar?
Then he heard another beast approaching and hurled himself into the long pebble-filled pit that ran beside the road. Above him he heard the beast's roar, its odd squeal, and he felt vibrations and the blast of displaced air as it rushed past him. When he lifted his head he saw its back and that it ran on wheels like the barrows and realized that whatever it was, it was not alive. But there was nothing pulling or pushing it.
At night the giant barrows sped down the road with eyes as blinding as the sun, shooting out arrows of light, and then they were gone and the road was once more black beneath the dripping skies.
After three days of walking through the woods and following the road, he began to understand the wheeled things came in different shapes and sizes, had different sounds and smells, and weren't hunting him. He was exhausted, his long wool cloak and his boots soaked, and although the cold didn't bother him, he was used to it, his food pouch was empty. He felt light-headed
and knew he was losing strength.
Late that day, shortly after sunset, he turned beneath the overhanging fir branches and saw one of the beast-barrows standing motionless by the roadside, humming softly. He feared almost nothing, had already faced his worst fears, and so he climbed through the ditch and up onto the road and walked close to the thing.
A door opened in its side and a man stepped down. They saw each other at the same time.
The man frowned and said, “Hey. Whatcha doing out here?"
He pushed his hood back from his head because the man was bare-headed. It was a common courtesy. Anyone who remained concealed could be an enemy.
The man's expression softened. “You need a ride, son? Gotta take a leak, be right back,” and stepped down into the ditch. A minute later he climbed back out, pulled at something on the front of his pants, and said, “Hop in. Where you headed?"
He watched as the man walked around to the far side of the thing, opened another door, climbed up and sat on some sort of chair, then leaned across to call out the open door, “Hurry up, kid, I've got to get moving."
He nodded, walked to the open door, looked carefully into the little room with its step and chairs and a wheel sticking up, and climbed carefully up, turned, as the man had done, and settled himself in the seat.
"Fasten that seat belt. I can't afford a ticket."
He stared at the man, not knowing what he was supposed to do.
"Wow. You are zonked. Bad scar on your forehead, but it looks like it's healing. Been camping? Get lost from your party?"
While talking, the man reached across, grabbed a strap and pulled it so that it stretched from shoulder to hip, clicked it in place.
He leaned against the strap and found it held him against the chair back, but before he could worry about that, the whole room moved and then the road and the forest went rushing by him, he could see it through the front of the room, see as clearly as if he were looking through an open doorway and should have felt a blast of wind but felt nothing. Numb, he stared straight ahead, expecting to be thrown out, but when that didn't happen, he finally leaned forward as far as the strap would allow and reached out his gloved hand. His fingers touched something as solid as a wall and yet he could see through it.
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