The mist thinned as he ascended, and the wall of the cliff came into view again. It was bare reddish-brown rock for the most part, with only an occasional trace of green. Brambles pricked his fingers, and once he heard something small go scurrying off in the ground-cover. Otherwise the world seemed to be empty, and the going was so easy that he covered several hundred ells in a few minutes; but the exercise was not enough to warm him.
The mist had thinned to such an extent that when he stood beneath one of the trees and gazed up, he could see all the way to the top where a spray of branches erupted at last from the straight trunk. He embraced the tree and rose almost without effort, gliding upward with the trunk between his legs; in a few moments, to his elation, he found himself high above the mist. The slope where he had been crawling moments ago was covered with a white blanket, dissolving at the top into trailing wisps. Around him the dark staffs of the trees stood erect and still; beyond them he could see the cataract and hear it, too, better than before. The white band fell straight into the mist, twenty ells away from the rock wall; he followed it upward until his neck cracked, but could not see the top; it was lost in sky-glare and haze. Turning the other way, he looked out over a steeply descending countryside dappled with mist in the hollows. He could see a river emerging from the mist around the cataract; it vanished between two hills, but farther off it reappeared in vast shining loops. A flash of pale brown caught his eye—it was a bird winging slowly away in the distance. Far down the valley, blue with haze, he could see a cluster of spires that looked like the work of men; otherwise, across the whole landscape, there was no sign of life—no movement, no buildings or livestock, not a thread of smoke. He released his hold on the tree and began to drift downward, so slowly that he lost patience and propelled himself faster with his hands. Once on the ground, he began to crawl upslope again. As soon as he had climbed above the mist line, he turned away from the cataract and began to parallel the river. The ground cover was made up of things that looked like vines and grasses but were neither. Some ended in drooping bundles of leaves, like little besoms; others bore tiny purple blossoms. To all appearance it was early spring here, although it had been full summer when he left Hovenskar. How long had he been gone? He put his back against a fallen tree-trunk and began to count on his fingers. He had slept once in the tunnel and three times in the first cavern, the one where he had lost his sword and regained it. In the second cavern he had spent a long time, perhaps as much as twenty days. He had slept once in the treasure cavern, twice while falling down the shaft, once (but probably not long) in the third cavern where the demons had tormented him, then six or seven days in the cavern above that, and once in the engine, and once here. The most he could make of it was thirty-seven days.
"Box," he said, as he unwrapped one of his bundles of food, "how is it that it's spring here but summer in Hovenskar?"
"Here and Hovenskar are two different places."
"I know that. What I mean is—oh, never mind." He took a bite of meat and chewed moodily. In fact, he didn't know what he did mean. Why shouldn't it be spring in one place and summer in another?
"Box, how can I get out of this place?"
"By going through the falling water."
"The waterfall, you mean? Is that how we got in?"
"Yes. There is no other way."
"How do you know that?"
"If there were another way to get out, the engine would not have brought you here. It would have taken you to another place where there was no other way to get out. Therefore in this place there is no other way to get out."
"All right, enough," said Thorinn, and sat awhile in silence. He was puzzled about the box. On certain subjects it seemed perfectly sensible, but on others it could talk nothing but nonsense. It seemed to be saying now that the engine had brought him here to imprison him—but why?
"Box," he said presently, "could you teach me to make an engine that would take me up out of this place?"
"Yes, Thorinn."
In the crystal, a tiny Thorinn stood on a peg that jutted from the cliff face beside the cataract. With a hammer he drove another peg into the cliff above his head, then pulled himself up to stand on it. "What are those pegs made of?" Thorinn asked, leaning closer.
"Of metal."
"Spikes, you mean, then. But where am I to get the metal to forge such spikes? And the hammer to drive them?"
"I don't know." The crystal flickered; now Thorinn was hanging from a huge bladder that drifted through the air just under the sky.
"What is that bladder made of?"
"Leather."
"What makes it float that way?"
"It is full of a gas that is lighter than air."
"But where am I to get such a gas?"
"I don't know." The crystal flickered again, but Thorinn said, "Never mind," and rolled away from the box.
From the crest of the next hill he had a glimpse of the river far below. Instead of trying to walk down the slope, he lay on his belly and began to pull himself downhill with his fingers. In a few moments the trees began to thin out; then they were behind him and he was soaring down into a wide yellow-green valley. The angle of his descent and the pitch of the hillside were so perfectly matched that he found himself floating like a bird just above the grasstops, and it almost seemed that he could go on forever; then the floor of the valley came up, grasses whipped his face, and he was skidding to rest, deep in the wet grass. He climbed the next hill. It was a little warmer on the crest, and why that should be he did not know, for the sky-light gave no heat. The air was mild and still. Below him he could see the river glinting between wooded banks, then another ridge and another, until the landscape was lost in haze. There was something odd about the river, but he could not make it out because of the intervening brush and trees. Thorinn pulled himself down the hill on his belly as before. The trees at the river's edge rose up around him, and now he saw what was peculiar about the river itself—it ran here at such a steep angle that it should have been brawling and leaping, but instead it lay perfectly smooth. Looking at it made him feel dizzy at first, as if he were about to lose his balance. He pulled himself through the tangle of underbrush and stood on the bank. Now he could see one or two faint arrowhead markings where the current ran over snags far out in the river; except for these, he would not have known that the water was moving at all. He dropped a dead leaf in, saw it drift, touch, and move leisurely away. He threw a stone in to see how deep the water was, and raised a white splash almost as high as his head. It slowly collapsed, leaving a ring of irregular drops that followed, and as slowly a central spout grew out of it; then that collapsed too, leaving an unsteady globe, all with dreamlike slowness, while a second ring of pale water began to form around the first, traveling outward as it grew; then a third inside where the central spout had been, and as they traveled sedately after one another, a fourth began. The central globe and the droplets where they fell raised other splashes, not so tall as the first, and from these shallow rings spread out, crossing the bigger ones in a way that made Thorinn dizzy to watch. The first splash had been ragged, but the traveling rings were pure shapes of transparent water, each with a shine of reflected skylight at its lip. They were beautiful, and in their descending heights as they went outward there was a curve that was beauty too. Each wave died away when it reached an invisible circular line an ell or so from the center, and this line was moving outward as well, but not as fast as the waves, so that they continually overtook it and died. And moment by moment the marching waves were less tall, till at last they were only ripples breaking against the river bank, each returning its reflection; then the river was smooth again.