Eventually, he gained the far side of the mountains and found himself deep in forests thick with foliage and glistening with life. He stared around, not quite believing what he was seeing. He had never seen trees as lush and full as these; he didn’t think they existed. It was the way the old world might have been, before the poisons and the changes in climate ruined it. The road wound through its center for a long time, navigating streams not yet dried out and ravines in which ferns grew, undulating in a soft wind like waves on open water.
Unable to help himself, he stopped the AV and climbed out. Motionless, he stood looking out into the darkness, into the forest that surrounded him. He smelled the air, breathing it in. Fresh and clean. He tasted it and found it free of bitterness, of any metallic edge. He listened. Night birds called to each other or maybe just to be heard, their cries echoing through the trees.
Where was he? What place was this?
Trim flew back into view and settled on the roof of the Ventra, round eyes regarding him intently. Logan stared at the bird. “Why don’t you tell me what else you know that I don’t?” he said.
He got into the AV and prepared to set off again, but the owl didn’t move from the vehicle roof. Apparently, this was it for the day. He climbed out again, asked aloud if they were done, waited for an answer–as if there might be one–and finally climbed back into the cab, secured the locks, and went to sleep.
When he woke next, it was not yet dawn. Trim was perched on the hood of the Ventra staring at him through the windshield, saucer eyes glowing like lamps. It was the stare that had brought him awake, he decided, pushing himself upright. He was stiff and groggy, but he made himself get out and walk around until both conditions had disappeared. The forest was a lush damp curtain, filled with new smells and muted colors. There were wildflowers growing all around him, an impossibility, a miracle. He stared at them as if they were something born of an alien world. He stared at the huge trees surrounding him, some with trunks so massive they dwarfed the stone columns of the abandoned government buildings he had seen in Chicago as a boy. The trunks were twisted and gnarly and had the look of something that had been tall and straight once but had been melted by the sun. They were all different, each one a sculpture carved by an artist of endless imagination.
He walked over to one, a giant with limbs that stretched so wide they brushed up against the other trees surrounding it, and he touched its rough bark with his fingers. He looked up into its center where shadows and leaves intermingled and everything felt hushed and hidden. He could see shards of starlight slanting through its multilayered canopy, dappling its limbs. He moved to one side and let a slender ray fall across his face. He smiled in the softness of its glow.
When he stepped away again, there were tears in his eyes. He couldn’t explain what had caused them, couldn’t understand how they had surfaced so quickly. Maybe they had been triggered by a memory from his boyhood or a dream he had forgotten. He brushed them away with the back of his hand. It was too much, he thought. This forest, with its smells and tastes and look and feel–it was too much. Everything was so overwhelming. No wonder he was crying.
Then Trim gave a small screech, and he glanced over to find the owl perched on the roof of the AV. Trim was ready to go. Logan sighed, turned away from the trees, and walked over to the bird. Immediately it flew away into the forest. Logan watched it go, waited for it to circle back in the way it did when telling him he needed to follow, saw it reappear higher up in the trees, and started to get into the AV. But then he realized that the road that had brought him in ended at this clearing. He scanned the landscape for signs of another road, then a trail, and finally a pathway or anything that resembled one. Nothing. Moreover, the trees were too thickly massed for the Ventra to pass. Wherever he was going, he was going to have to get there on foot.
Stuffing food and water containers into a backpack he slung over his shoulder, he picked up his black staff and set out.
He walked for about an hour, wending his way through the dark mass of the trees, climbing over fallen logs and in and out of shallow ravines, fording streams and skirting thorny brush, all the while following his winged guide. Trailers of mist curled through the forest like ethereal snakes. Starlight shone down through the screen of the leafy canopy, made pale and diffuse. Shadows layered the earth, climbed the trunks of the trees, crawled out on limbs, and disappeared into the ether. Birdsong followed after him, rose ahead of him, spread out around him in lilting welcome, brought to life by dawn’s approach. He found himself smiling. Where would he rather be than here, whatever the reason for coming?
Nowhere, he answered himself. Nowhere else.
He came upon the clearing unexpectedly, his eyes following Trim’s flight through the trees, only half paying attention to what until now had been an unchanging forest. But all at once he was standing in an open space on the high slopes of the mountainside, looking down on a forestland that stretched away for miles.
He was also staring at a hot–air balloon.
He recognized it for what it was immediately. The basket was sitting upright in the clearing with the air bag lying uphill on the ground in front of it, all of its stays attached, a compressor motor situated with a hose end funneling into the bag’s mouth, everything ready to fill the bag and take flight. He walked over to the balloon and stood looking down at it, wondering what it was doing here, who had flown it in, and why it was set out this way.
Trim had flown back again and was roosting on one edge of the basket, round eyes fixed on him.
“Another Knight of the Word,” a voice said from behind him. “What’s your name?”
He turned quickly, bringing up his staff. A young woman had emerged from the trees behind him. Mist wrapped her legs and spread away before her in a heavy carpet, giving her the appearance of having somehow been formed of it. He hadn’t heard her approach, hadn’t heard her at all. That didn’t happen often. She was tall and lithe with long blond hair tied back from her face with a headband. Her loose clothing blended perfectly with her surroundings, and the way she carried herself suggested that this was her country.
“Who are you?” she repeated.
When she spoke this time, he could see her perfectly, her features revealed by pale silver light that striped her body from head to foot and gave her an exotic, alien look. He felt something shift inside. The shift was small, but intense. He could not define what it was, but he knew instinctively what it meant. Nothing would ever be the same for him again.
He tightened his grip on the black staff out of a sudden need for reassurance. “I’m Logan Tom.”
She inclined her head, a cross between a greeting and an acknowledgment. “Are you friends with Angel Perez?”
He started to answer, to tell her he didn’t know anyone named Angel Perez, and then suddenly he noticed her ears, slightly pointed at the tips, and her eyebrows, which were slanted upward across her forehead. He stared at her just long enough that there was no mistaking what he was looking at.
He flushed, embarrassed. “Sorry. It’s just that …” He trailed off. “You’re an Elf, aren’t you?”
She nodded. “Did Angel tell you about us?”
“I don’t know Angel. I was sent by the Lady to find you. To find the Elves, I mean.”