"We don't have a knife, anyway," he said, not much cast down.
They were afraid, you see, that I'd go back and tell everyone where their camp was, and that they would be invaded or stolen from; there were thieves still; they had no reason to trust me. They just didn't know what to do.
"If we were nice to him," Once a Day said. "And gave him things."
"Yes, yes," said a voice, someone lost now in darkness, "and one day he's dark, and then what does any kindness mean?"
"He's not like that," she said in a little voice. And no more was said for a long time. I jumped when someone near the door got up suddenly; it was the old doorkeeper, who went inside and came out a moment later pushing before him a white ball of light, cold and bright, which when he released it floated like a milkweed seed and shone softly over the men and women seated there. My mind was set on my fate, but when he released the Light and it floated, I thought of Olive and the full moon; I looked at Brom, and the other cats there, who regarded me with the same frank candor that was in the faces of those discussing hitting me till I died. And in Little St. Roy's ear Olive whispered her terrible secrets.
"I have an idea," I said, trying to keep the quaver out of my voice. "Suppose I didn't leave." They all looked at me with the same graceful indulgence they granted one another. "Suppose I just stayed on with you and never went back. I could help out; I could carry things. Then I'd grow old, and die naturally, and the secret would be safe." They were silent, not thoughtful particularly; it was as though they hadn't heard. "I'm strong, and I know a lot. I know stories. I don't want to leave."
They looked at me, and at the Light that moved slightly when the breeze pushed it. Finally one young man leaned forward. "I know a story," he said. And he told it.
So I spent that evening between Brom and Once a Day, not sleeping, though they were asleep in a moment. Nothing further had been said about hitting me or cutting me; nothing further at all had been said, except the story, which I smiled at with the rest, though I hadn't understood any of it.
And not long after I had at last fallen asleep, before dawn, she woke me. "The cats are walking," she said, her face dim and strange; I forgot, for a moment, who she was. I stumbled up, shivering, and smoked a little with her, and drank something hot she gave me in a cup; it tasted of dried flowers. Whatever it was, it stopped the shivers, that and a long cape of black she gave me, giggling when she saw me dressed in it. The others were laughing too, to see me in this disguise. In the long night while my fear passed, I learned something: that the truthful speakers have little need to be brave, because they always know where others stand. It had been only that these people couldn't speak that way that had made me afraid of them when, in fact, they would do no harm to me. I had been afraid of men for the first time in my life, and I saw that it would happen often from now on - fear, confusion, uncertainty - and I would just have to be brave. Odd to find it out, old as I was, for the first time. And to think of the warren, where old people died peacefully, never having learned it.
The cats were walking: it was time to go. There was some discussion over who was to carry what of the things that had been packed the day before; I shouldered a big shiny black pack whose rustle told me it was full of dried bread, enough to last many through a year. It seemed right that I should carry it. And we set off along still-dark Road, in a long line, the cats dim in the distance and the sky beginning to glow to the left through the forest.
When the sun was high and the cats had had enough walking, we found a place to stop for the rest of the day, to sleep and dawdle through the afternoon with them, till evening when they were restless to move again. In a mountain meadow where tall feathery grasses grew up between dark pines and birches, Once a Day and I lay on our stomachs with our heads close and drew out sedges from their casings and chewed the sweet ends.
"When I was a little kid," I said, "I thought I would leave Belaire to go find things of ours that had been lost, and to bring them back to put in their places in the carved chests…"
"What did you find?"
"Nothing."
"Oh."
"I found a saint, though; a saint in a tree. And I thought I would stay and live with him, and learn to be a saint too. And I did."
"Are you a saint?"
"No."
"Well," she said, smiling, with the grass between her teeth, "that's a story."
I laughed. It was the first time since I had found her again that Once a Day had been the girl I had known in the warren.
"And he told you to come here to find us," she said.
"No. There was a story, a story you started, about four dead men…" A cloud passed over her face, and she looked away. "And my saint said the League knew that story. But that's not why I came."
"Why?"
"I came to find you." I hadn't known that, not truly, till I had seen her at the pool; but all the other reasons were no reason at all, after that. I drew another sedge squeaking from its fibrous case. Why are they made like this, I wondered, in segments that fit together? I bit down on its sweetness. "I used to think, in Belaire, that maybe you had gone to live with the List, and it hadn't suited you, and that one spring they'd bring you home dead. From homesickness. I saw how you would look, pale and sad."
"I did die," she said. "It was easy."
The puzzlement in my face must have been funny to see, because she laughed her low, pleased laugh; pushing herself forward on her elbows, she brought her face close to mine, and plucked the grass from between my teeth, and kissed me with eyes and mouth open. "It's nice you thought of me," she said then. "I'm sorry you were dark."
I didn't know what that meant. "You thought of me," I said. "You must have."
"Maybe," she said. "But then I forgot how."
The cat Brom beside her made an immense sharp-toothed yawn, his rough tongue arching up in his mouth and his eyes crossing; she pillowed her head on her hands, as the cat did. "Nice," she said; and slept.
That journey lasted many days, mornings and evenings of long walking and hot, vacant middles when we slept. Walking, the List sang their endless tuneless song, which at first I could hear no sense in, but which came to seem full of interest; I began to hear who was good at it, and waited for the entrance of their voices. Their singing was a way to lighten a load, I saw; it was like the second of the Four Pots I had used: it stretched time out so endlessly that it vanished, and the miles fell behind us without our noticing them. It was only when, one dawn, we came out upon a great spiderweb of Road, where huge concrete necks and shoulders supported the empty skulls of high ruined buildings from which the glass and plastic had been stripped hundreds of years before, that they stopped singing; they were nearing home, awaking from the dream of motion.
They didn't stop when the sun was high, but hurried on, pointing out to one another the landmarks they saw, ruins great or small in the forest; and, at a wide sweeping curve of Road, cheering, they caught sight of their home. Once a Day pointed. I could see, far off, a black square; a square so dark black it made a neat hole in the noonday.
"What is it?" I said.
"Way-wall," she said. "Come on!"
We left Road on a spur of concrete, and came out suddenly onto one of those wide naked plazas, vast and cracked, windy, useless, as though the angels had wanted to show how much of the world they could cover with stone at once. Buildings stood around the stone place, some ruined, others whole; one was the odd blue and orange that are the colors of the first of the Four Pots, and had a little steeple. The largest building, in the center, was made of huge arched ribs rising out of the ground to a great height; and taking up most of its flat face was the square of utter blackness. The ivy that covered the building like a messy beard didn't grow on this blackness, and no daylight shone on it; it seemed to be a place that wasn't there; my eyes tried to cross in looking at it.