Dripping in the chill of damp breezes, they shouldered wet packs, and Baj his bow and quiver, the arrow-fletching too wet for use. Errol, recovered, scuttled away ahead, and Patience and Baj drew steel as they went, to whip the weapons through drying air, flicking wet from shining blades. Nancy watched, unsheathed her own, and the three of them squelched over soaked summer grass and rain-slick rock, duelling the wind while Richard marched behind, not troubling to swing raindrops from his ax.
Above, a gray sky slowly became streaky blue, with the clouds called horsetails bannering away south.
The breeze that dried their swords brought more and more the stink of damp burning with it… so by sun-straight-up, as they clambered down a steep defile thick with yellow birch – Patience grumbling as she managed, ground-walking beside them – Nancy said, "Serious burning."
"Stop, then," Patience said, blowing out a tired breath. "Stop a moment." And they rested leaning against slender birches.
Richard raised his head and sniffed the air. "Forest is too wet to burn."
Patience sighed. "Then something burned before the rain. I'm weary of stomping and stepping, anyway." She bent her head as if she prayed to these mountains' Jesus… then slowly tilted forward as if about to fall. But the fall never came. Instead, she eased out that way, leaning in the air as if on the air, and Baj saw her small moccasin-boots just off the ground.
It had seemed to him before, that the Boston-woman rose in a single almost swinging way to Walk-in-air, but now, watching closely, he saw that wasn't so. It was a rising in gradual bounds, each – timed perhaps to a breath – higher than the one before… until she was no longer what they were, or she had been – but a different creature, white-haired and blue-coated, sailing up through sun-struck birch leaves into the sky.
They all – except for Errol, who was on all fours, sniffing at something at the base of a tree – they all stood watching Patience rise, sitting cross-legged, her scimitar held on her lap. Rise… then drift away to the north.
It still seemed to Baj an amazement, the gift of a Great, and something past the sensible of life… But not quite the miracle it had been. The so-tedious mind, becoming used to it, had turned it almost usual with the curse of accustom, so it might have been that a familiar hunting hawk had flown from his gauntlet with jess-bells ringing… Well, perhaps an eagle.
Nancy raised her red-crested head, sniffed the air. "Meat," she said. "Meat burning with the other burning."
Errol left his interesting tree and pranced a circle around them, making his tongue-click sounds, then trotted away down the mountainside.
Richard shouldered his ax, said, "Now, we go carefully," and strode off along the slope… The mountains' air, after its storm, was fine and clear, so what seemed almost a Warm-time sunshine spangled through the leaves to decorate Baj and Nancy with flowing gold medallions as they hiked down the birches after him.
It appeared the perfect friendly air of a perfect summer afternoon, but its breeze still brought burning with it as they reached the mountain's wide green apron of water meadow refreshed by rain, and Baj took his bow from his shoulder, paused and knelt in high grass to brace it – making an odd shadow – then drew an arrow from his quiver, blew through its feathers to dry them further, and set it to the string as they went on. Damp fletchings… damp string – but fair enough for a short shot.
Nancy had said nothing to him since the storm, but she walked alongside.
There was a low ridge lying across their way, as if a small mountain had begun to wake and rise, then slumped to sleep again. Baj supposed this was the beginning of true lower country – at least for a time – since no succession of green rounded peaks loomed above its pine-furred spine. Lower country… "Thank you," he said aloud, imagining these mountains' Jesus listening from his tree.
"Thank me?" Nancy said.
"Well, I was thanking Mountain Jesus for level ground at last… But also, I thank you and Richard. In your company, I've become a… more human human."
"That," she said, and was smiling, "- is to go from bad to worse."
They laughed loud enough for Richard to turn and frown at them, so they became serious, and looked right and left across the meadows as they went to the sleeping ridge. It was so like a great creature lying down, that Baj began a poem… that turned instead, as he paced along, into a tale for children – of a gentle monster, immense, named Pepperada-Dodo, who befriended all young creatures, animal, human, or Person, and guarded them – though, too shy to be seen as himself, appearing always as a modest mountain, carefully cloaked in evergreens.
A disguise successful, as Baj found – bow now eased, and arrow quivered – climbing the ridge's steep slope, hauling himself up it from sapling to sapling, his pack weighing heavier and heavier, his moccasin-boots slipping in rain-soaked soil or scrabbling up shelves of stone. Less soil, more stone as he climbed higher, Nancy stepping up more lightly beside him.
When they stopped climbing to catch their breath – Richard above them, massive, still moving quietly up the hill – Baj scanned the sky for Boston-Patience, but saw above the evergreens no tiny flag of blue coat drifting across blue sky.
They gathered at the crest – Errol squatting, drawing white lines on a round of surfaced stone with a sharp-edged rock – and met the strongest stink of burning yet, rising up the reverse slope. To the north, where the country sank away to a deep, wide valley, a smudge of light-brown smoke towered, broken by breezes.
"Past that burning," Richard said, "- is the Pass I-Seventy."
"Can we avoid the burning?" Baj was amused to hear himself ask a question that wouldn't have occurred to him only weeks before. Caution and care had come to stay.
"No," Richard said, "- though we can try, by one or two WT miles, going by."
"That's a Robin village," Nancy said. "We passed it, coming south."
"They built too low." Richard shook his head. "Hill tribes live longer in the hills."
Errol began hitting the stone with his rock. Tock tock tock, until his rock powdered and broke.
From the bottom of the ridge, they walked north, keeping to the trees where they could, and hold direction. Filing through birch groves and tangled brush along a narrow glittering run, they saw the smoke still rising, a little to their right.
Baj came last, pressed a little to keep up through dense growths of thorn and bird berry. Nancy trotted in front of him, her light-footed shadow, hunchbacked by her pack, slanting beside her. They stirred whirring grass-hoppers up and around them as they went.
Baj heard that sort of whirring whisper behind him – then cold steel touched the back of his neck. He yelped, wheeling, drawing his sword as Patience hung in the air just above him, smiling, her head haloed by the sun. "It might be wise to watch behind you, Baj Who-was-et cetera. Behind and above. I am not the only Talent out of Boston."
Baj took a breath, put up his rapier, and said, "Good advice."
"You know Warm-time's 'et cetera'?" She sheathed her scimitar, and swung slightly in the air, her face, despite the little spints along her nose, now looking only lightly bruised.
"I know it, Lady."
Patience thrust a small moccasin down. "Pull me to the ground. It feels good in the back of my head… something rubs inside there."