They did so, leaving the land far beneath them.
"Rocks, and cold the wind. High, this place," she said. "Where are we going?"
"To the top. To the very top."
They climbed for a timeless instant and stood atop the mountain. Then it seemed that hours had passed in the climbing.
"Distance, perspective," he said. "We have passed through all of that which you see beneath you. Look out across the plains and the forest to the sea."
"We have climbed a fictional mountain," she stated, "which I climbed once before, without seeing it."
He nodded, and the ocean caught her attention again, beneath the other-blue sky.
After a time, she turned away, and they started down the opposite side of the mountain. Again, Time twisted and shaped itself about them, and they stood at the foot of the mountain and moved forward.
" '... Walking the worn path in the grass and beat through the leaves of the brush.'"
"Now I know!" she said, clapping her hands. "Now I know!"
"Then where are we?" asked Render.
She plucked a single blade of grass, held it before him, then chewed it.
"Where?" she said. "Why, "Where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the wheat-lot,' of course."
A quail whistled then and crossed their path, the line of its young following as though pulled along on a string.
"Always," she said, "have I wondered what it was all about."
The passed along the darkening path, betwixt the woods and the wheat-lot.
"... So many things," she said, "like a Sears and Roebuck catalog of the senses. Feed me another line."
'"Where the bat flies in the Seventh-month eve,' " said Render, raising his hand,
She ducked her head, before its swoop, and the dark form vanished within the wood.
" 'Where the great gold-bug drops through the dark,' " she replied.
... And it glittered like a 24-karat meteorite and fell to the path at his feet. It lay there for a moment like a sun-colored scarab, then crawled off through the grasses at the side of the trail.
"You remember now," he said.
"I remember now," she told him.
The Seventh-month eve was cool, and pale stars began in the heavens. He pointed out constellations as they walked. A half-moon tipped above the rim of the world, and another bat crossed it. An owl hooted in the distance. Cricket-talk emerged from the undergrowth. A persistent end-of-day glow still filled the world.
"We have come far," she said.
"How far?" he asked.
"To 'where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and flows to the meadow,'" she stated.
"Aye," he said, and he put forth his hand and leaned against the giant tree they had come upon. Rushing forth from among its roots was the spring which fed the stream they had followed earlier. It sounded, like a chain of small bells echoing off into the distance, as it sprang into the air and fell again upon itself and flowed away from them. It wound among the trees, digging into the ground, curling and cutting its way to the sea.
She waded out into the water. It arced over, it foamed about her. It rained down upon her and ran along her back and neck and breasts and arms and legs, returning.
"Come on in, the magic brook is fine," she said.
But Render shook his head and waited.
She emerged, shook herself, was dry.
"Ice and rainbows," she remarked.
"Yes," said Render, "and I forget much of what comes next."
"So do I, but I remember that a little later on 'the mocking-bird sounds his delicious gurgles, cackles, screams, weeps.'
And Render winced as he listened to the mocking-bird.
"That was not my mocking-bird," he stated.
She laughed.
"What difference? His turn was coming up soon, anyhow."
He shook his head and turned away. She was back at his side again.
"I'm sorry. I'll be more careful."
"Very good."
He walked on across the country.
"I forget the next part."
"So do I."
They left the stream far behind them.
They walked through the bending grass, across flat, borderless plains; and all but the peak of the sun's crown vanished over the horizon.
Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie...
"Did you say something?" she asked.
"No. But I remember again. This is the place 'where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles far and near.'"
A dark mass off to their left gradually took on a more distinct form, and as they watched they could make out the shapes of the great bison of the American plains. Apart from rodeos, cattle shows, and the backs of old nickels, the beasts stood now, individual and dark and smelling of the earth, slow, and huge, and hairy, all together they stood, horned heads lowered, great backs swaying, the sign of Taurus, the inexorable fecundity of spring, fading with the twilight into the passed and the past—where the humming-bird shimmers, perhaps.
They crossed the great plain, and the moon was now above them. They came at last to the opposite end of the land, where there were high lakes and another brook, ponds, and another sea. They passed emptied farms and gardens and made their way along the path of the waters.
'Where the neck of the long-lived swan is curving and winding,' " she said, seeing her first swan in the moonlight drift over the lake.
" 'Where the laughing gull scoots by the shore,' " he answered, " 'where she laughs her near-human laugh."
And across the night there was laughter, but it was like that of neither laughing-gull nor human, for Render had never heard a laughing gull. The chuckling sounds he had shaped from raw emotion chilled the evening around him.
He made the evening come warm again. He lightened the
darkness, tinted it with silver. The laughter dwindled and died. A gull-shape departed in the direction of the ocean, dark and silver, dark and silver, turning.
"That," he announced, "is about all for this time." "But there is more, so much more," she said. "You carry menus about in your head. Don't you remember more of this thing? I remember something about the band-necked partridges roosting in a ring with their heads out, and the yellow-crowned heron feeding upon crabs at the edge of the marsh at night, and the katydid on a walnut tree above a well, and..."
"It is rich, it is very rich," said Render. "Too rich, perhaps."
They passed through groves of lemons and oranges, under fir trees, and the places where the heron fed, and the katydid sang on the walnut tree above the well, and the partridges slept in a ring on the ground, heads out.
"Next time, will you name me all the animals?" she asked. "Yes."
She turned up a little path to a farmhouse, opened the front door, and entered. Render followed her, smiling. Blackness.
Solid, total—black as only the black of absolute emptiness can be.
There was nothing at all inside the farmhouse. "What is the matter?" she asked him, from somewhere. "Unauthorized excursion into the scenery," said Render. "I was about to ring down the curtain and you decided the show should continue. Therefore, I kept myself from providing you with any additional props this time."
"I can't always control it," she said. "I'm sorry. Let us go back now. I've mastered the impulse."
"No, let's go ahead," said Render. "Lights!"
They stood on a high hilltop, and the bats that flitted
past the partial moon were metallic. The evening was chill
and a harsh croaking sound arose from a junkpile. The trees
were metal posts with the limbs riveted into place. The grass