Part 14 (1/2)

Nown pointed at a single skin on the ground nearby. ”When the train came, I flung them over onto the far sh.o.r.e. One burst.”

”d.a.m.n.”

”And you've lost your pack and bedroll, Laura.”

”Yes.”

”Then shouldn't we go back?”

”Oh, no! Let's go on to the Doran property. Rose said there was an orchard. I can steal some fruit. We should at least take a look In to see where those rails have gone.”

Nown picked up the surviving water skin, then Laura, and began to make his way around the sh.o.r.e of the Inlet.

Near dawn they crossed the ironwood trestle over the braided channels of the Sva mouth-without encountering another train. Then they turned toward the back of the Inlet, walking on the hard-packed sand beside a channel through reedbeds, where the warmth of the previous day was still trapped in the thick fur of stalks.

At sunup they found the Dorans' jetty, and the beginning of the narrow-gauge railway. A little while later Laura spotted the orchard. She asked Nown to put her down and sprinted toward the trees. She could see cl.u.s.ters of apricots and black plums with a white bloom on them.

But before she reached the orchard, she ran through the border and into the Place. She swore. Her voice came back at her instantly, a single flat reverberation, from a ma.s.s of crumbling gray landforms that rose abruptly about a quarter mile from the hummocky meadow where she stood.

The Pinnacles-eroded, crooked spikes-stretched out along the horizon, a barrier made, apparently, from heaps of sculpted ash. The peaks looked as fragile as piles of old leaf litter held together by spiderwebs.

Behind her Nown said, ”I can't climb that.”

Rose had said there was a gate. Laura guessed that she and Nown had come In beyond where it was, simply by turning off toward the orchard rather than continuing up the avenue of plane trees. She asked, ”How much water do we have?”

Nown handed her the water skin, and she weighed it-it was several days' ration. But she was without food.

Laura fished in her pockets and found only a tin of Farry's Extra-Strong Licorice Pellets (Recommended for Regularity). ”Oh, great,” she muttered. Why couldn't she have been carrying mints or barley sugar? She said, ”I'll have another nap here, then see how far we can get on this much water and without food.” Laura stared at Nown, her finer-limbed and slightly less overbearing sandman. ”And I suppose I could send you on farther to take a look for me.”

”You could,” he said.

”We'll see.”

”Yes, we will see what you decide,” he said.

Laura hadn't expected him to respond at all. And she was even more surprised when he expanded. ”You are the one who needs to eat, Laura. And you are the one who needs to know.”

Perhaps he was chastising her for saying ”we”-saying it and not meaning it, because she was the one with a mission, and he only had to look after her. She said, ”Are you angry with me?”

”I'm never angry.”

”Then I don't understand what you're trying to say.”

Nown was silent, and Laura knew he was thinking because the iron sand gathered in his eye sockets and on his brow. After a time he said, ”If you send me to look, you may not be satisfied with my report. You and I see everything differently.”

Laura nodded. She was only partly paying attention while casting around her for a bit of ground without b.u.mps, somewhere to bed down. The gra.s.s was in very bad condition, not just flattened but shredded. As she scuffed at the humps on the ground, Laura listened to Nown once more giving examples of things he saw. Because she was listening with only half an ear, it took her a while to realize that he was almost singing. Singing without a tune.

”You are a web of light,” he said. ”You are the shape you are. Trees stream upward, gra.s.ses lance, fire billows and makes a flaw of light. The sea is where there isn't anything, but gannets go like spears into it, and fly up again from nothing-”

”You made a poem!” Laura said.

”-sometimes with a fish,” Nown concluded, less poetically.

Laura chose a relatively even patch of bare ground. She asked for the water skin, swallowed a few mouthfuls, and lay down. She yawned till her jaw joints cracked. She tried to remember the poems she'd learned for examinations in elocution lessons, and those she'd learned at school. She lay with her eyes closed and recited the few fragments she knew by heart. ”A slumber did my spirit seal; / I had no human fears ...” And ”She is coming, my own, my sweet; / Were it ever so airy a tread ...” Then, as she drifted off to sleep, she heard Nown repeating it all back to her, word perfect. And she thought, ”He really does remember everything I say.”

Laura woke later, in the Place's unchanging light. Nown was standing sentinel beside her, facing west, the direction from which people could most likely be expected to appear. She got up, said, ”Stay here,” and wandered off to find a bush to squat behind.

Instead, she found a grave.

It was a long, low mound, of the same size and shape as earth piled up on a fresh grave.

Laura shouted for Nown. Her shout echoed from The Pinnacles.

Nown came at a swift run. He saw that she wasn't in any danger and stopped beside her, anxiously searching her face till he noticed the direction of her gaze.

They contemplated the grave together.

”Why would anyone choose to be buried in the Place instead of being taken back to their family?” Laura asked, haunted and horrified. ”To their family,” she thought, ”and trees, gra.s.s, rain, day and night, church bells and birdsong.”

”This might not be choice, Laura.”

”Do you mean that someone was murdered? But this isn't a secret grave. It's here in plain sight-even if only dreamhunters and rangers can see it.”

”There's no marker.”

”No.” Laura's skin was clammy and her scalp tight. ”Nown-could you see if there was someone alive in there? Could you see their ... web of light, under the earth?”

”No. I can't see the gannets once they go into the water. I couldn't see your body in the river, only your head, and your arms moving in and out as you swam.”

Laura moaned.

”Are you thinking of your nightmare?”

Laura clenched her jaw and nodded once, sharply.

”Shall I dig it up for you?”

Laura grabbed her sandman's arm, though he'd made no move to start digging. She shook her head. She didn't want to see any corpses. Since gra.s.s didn't grow in the Place, there was no way to tell how long ago the earth had been piled up over whatever lay beneath it. ”Let's just go,” she said. She turned away to find somewhere else to make herself comfortable. She didn't look back. She didn't see Nown pause, long, his gaze apparently penetrating the disturbed earth as if, perhaps, he could see what lay there.

Who lay there.

3.

HE GATE TO THE Pa.s.s THROUGH THE PINNACLES WAS CLOSED. THERE WAS NO ONE BEYOND IT ON GUARD - NO ONE ANYwhere around. The gate was made of black iron, a plain, workmanlike thing, bolted together and set into two short walls of mortared brick. The walls were pressed right up against the sides of the pa.s.s.

The Pinnacles themselves were perhaps only a hundred and fifty feet high, but steep and unstable. No one with any sense would think to set foot on their mealy gray slopes. There was no gra.s.s or scrub on them. It was as though they, like the grave, had come into existence after the gra.s.s had grown (and had stopped growing), as if they had bubbled up through the ground and set, a belt of brittle peaks.