Now he feared that other Place he was going as possibly one that would take him in and close off to him forever the Place that he had been. He refused to imagine a world in which Mauryl was gone for good.
It terrified him, such a Place, which could exist, now that he began to think about such things as tomorrow, and tomorrow after that.
Owl’s precipitate flight frightened him. It drove him to desperate haste, far beyond his ordinary strength.
And when the dark came down again in his walking on the Road he was afraid to sit down and sleep, hungry and thirsty and miserable as he was, because the shadows were abroad. He kept walking until he was staggering with exhaustion and light-headed with hunger.
“Owl?” he begged of the formless dark. “Owl, can you hear me?”
It was the hour for Owl to be abroad. But perhaps Owl was busy. Or ignoring him, as obstinately as Mauryl would, when he interrupted Mauryl at his ciphering, and if he persisted, then Mauryl’s next answer-and, he suspected, Owl’s—would not be polite at all.
But he wished, oh, he wished Owl would come back. There were clearly sides to the Road which went on unguessably far, forest into which Owl could go, but he dared not venture. The air as he walked grew cold and the woods grew frightening. There were stirrings and movements in the brush where by day he had heard nothing. The place felt bad, the way the stairs and balconies of the keep, safe and familiar by day, had felt dangerous when the Shadows were free to move about.
No Owl, no Mauryl, no shelter and no door to lock. There was no safety for him tonight, and nowhere to stop. He sat down only when morning came sneaking into the woods, and he sat and hugged his knees up to his chest for warmth, his head both light and aching. He had no idea where he was, except beside the Road. He had no idea yet where he was going, or how far he had already come. The world remained measureless to him on all sides now.
And when he waked he was so light-headed and so miserable he tried eating a leaf from the bushes that sheltered him, but its taste was bitter and foul and made his mouth burn. He wished he had the water he had found yesterday, but there was no food there, he knew that for very certain. So he ate no more leaves, and after a long time of walking his mouth quit burning.
Then his stomach seemed to give up the idea of food at all. He was not quite hungry. He told himself he could keep going—he had gone farther than he had ever thought he could, he was stronger than he had ever thought he was, and miserable as he was, nothing had laid hands on him, nothing had stopped him, nothing had daunted him from Mauryl’s instructions.
“Who?” came from overhead. Owl was back. Owl flew off from him with no time for questions.
Owl intended, perhaps, encouragement, since of Words there were, Owl was not profligate, and Owl asked his question without an answer.
Who? indeed. “Tristen! Tristen is my name, Owl! Do you hear me?”
“Who?” came from the distance now, beckoning him, a known voice, if not a friendly voice.
“Owl, did you eat the mice?”
“Who?” came again.
Owl denied everything, and flew away from him, too distant now for argument. Tristen saw him, a feathered lump, far, far through the branches.
But Owl guided him. Owl seemed to hold some secret, and constantly flitted out of his reach—but Mauryl had done that, too, making him learn for himself: he knew Mauryl’s tricks.
He called out: “Are you Mauryl’s, Owl? Did he send you?”
“To-who?” said Owl, and flew away out of sight.
But the mere sound of voices, Owl’s and his own, had livened the leaden air, an irreverent fracture of the silence, and once the deathly silence was broken, from seeing for days now only the gray and the black of dead limbs, he began to see shafts of sunlight, green moss growing, and green leaves lit by the passage of sunbeams.
Perhaps the sunbeams had always been there, working their small transformations, but Marna, when it had first come to him as a Word, had seemed a name for darkness and loss; his eyes until this moment might have been seeing only the dark. But now that he looked without expecting gloominess, Marna showed itself in a new and livelier way—a tricky and a changeable place, as it seemed.
But then, Ynefel itself ran rife with terror and darkness, so long as the Shadows ruled it—and, again, Ynefel shone warm with firelight and smelled of good food, and Mauryl sat safe by the fireside, reading. Were not both ... equally ... Ynefel, to his mind? And were not both ... equally and separately.., true?
So perhaps Marna Wood could be fair and safe at one time and have another aspect altogether when the Shadows were abroad.
And if he could think—as he had—one way and then the other about its nature, and if the forest could put on an aspect according to his expectations, then it seemed to him much wiser to think well instead of ill of the place, and to expect sunlight here to shine brightly as the sunlight came to the loft at home, to fall as brightly here as it fell on the pages of his Book when he read his lessons among the pigeons.
And perhaps other things came from expecting the best of them as hard as he could.
So immediately he drew his Book out of his shirt, stopped in the full middle of a sunbeam, and opened it and looked at the writing, hoping that if one thing had changed, if he fully, truly, with all his heart expected to read the Book, then the Words might come to him—just a few Words, perhaps, so he turned from page to page.
But the letters remained only shapes, and even the ones he had thought he understood now looked different and indecipherable to his eye. His expectation, he thought, must not be great enough, or sure enough, in the way that Mauryl expected bruises not to hurt, or Shadows not to harm them. He clearly had not Mauryl’s power—but then- But, was the inescapable conclusion, then Mauryl had never expected him to read the Book—or had not expected it enough. That was a very troubling point. Mauryl could expect his hand to stop hurting, and it would. Mauryl could expect that the rain would come, and it would.
Mauryl could expect the Shadows to leave his room alone, and Mauryl could bar the door against them, and bang his staff on the stones and bid them keep their distance; the Shadows would obey Mauryl, if not him.
Yet Mauryl had doubted that he would read the Book?
Mauryl had doubted him and doubted his ability, but all else, including very difficult things for him to do, Mauryl had seemed so certain of.
He no longer knew what Mauryl had thought of him, or what Mauryl had expected.
So he tucked his Book away fearfully and kept walking; and when the sun was at its highest overhead, he sat down on a fallen log in a patch of sunlight, took out his Book and tried again to read, tried, mindful of Mauryl’s doubt, tried until his eyes ached and until his own doubt and his despair began to gray the woods around him.
But then the sun, which had faded around him, shone brightly and clearly in a new place farther down the Road.
So it seemed to him that the sun might be saying, as Owl had said, Follow the Road, and he rose up, tucked away his Book, and walked further, relying on the sun, relying on Owl, and hoping very much for an end of this place.
Came another nightfall, and the sky turned mostly gray again and the woods went back to their darkness. Tristen was growing more than tired, he was growing weak and dizzy and wandering in his steps.
He had begun, however faintly, to promise himself that at the end of the Road might lie a place like Ynefel, a place with walls of strong stone, and, he imagined, there might be a fireplace, and there might be a warm small room where he could sleep safe at night—that was what he hoped for, perhaps because he could imagine nothing else outside of this woods, and he wanted the woods to end.
Perhaps, in this place he imagined, there would be someone like Mauryl, since there surely would be someone to keep things in order.
There would be someone like Mauryl, who would be kind to him and teach him the things he needed to know.