“We can’t go back,” I said. “There is no way to go.”
Although there never would be a need of going. We had left it all behind, all we had ever known before, as a child will leave behind a toy he has outgrown.
The village and the river lay below us and fields and woods stretched away to the far horizons. And I knew, somehow, that this was a world without an end and that it was, as well, the end of time, a place that was everlasting and unchanging, with room for everyone.
Somewhere in this land were Smith and Tuck and maybe even Hoot, but we’d probably never find them for we’d not seek for them. The distances were far and there’d be no urge to travel.
The unreality was gone, although the tapestry still remained. And the boat did move upon the water with a flashing of the oars. Boys and girls and dogs, yelling and barking, were running up the hill to greet us and the people in the village all had turned around to stare up at us and some of them were waving.
“Let us go down to meet them,” Sara said.
The four of us, abreast, went down the hill to enter into another life.
