Dawn greeted with a rumbling crash and roar.
Baj sat up from his blanket's folds, was struck with the first of hard slanting rain, and drenched.
They all stood from coat, cloaks, or blankets, and trotted with their possibles and packs to the poor shelter of the evergreens, which whipped and bowed to the storm's wet winds, stroking them with soaking branches.
Errol, burrowing at Baj's side, was making shrill piping noises – shriller when lightning cracked past overhead, and another great door of thunder slammed shut.
Richard, fur-tufts sopped and drooping, ducked as lightning flared all a brilliant white – and thunder came smashing after it. Baj saw, in an echo of the eye, Nancy crouched wincing at her pack, teeth bared in fear as lightning came sizzling near, flashed down past the camp and
As though, in that moment, he'd seen his Second-mother looking through those black eyes, Baj, keeping Errol with him, went to the girl as wind came whistling… knelt beside and put his arm and a fold of cloak around her. She turned as if to bite him… but didn't, and the three of them huddled close.
The storm grew more savage, striking near them with bolts that blazed into the mountain, thunder peals that shook it. Then sweeps and sweeps of blowing rain… that as dawn lightened slightly to morning, could be seen marching as a shouting army in dark rank on rank across the mountains.
Nancy, fine red rooster-comb of hair soaked black, trembled at Baj's side. 'Too loud,' she said… The wind brought the white smell of water with it, and the smell of stone and grass from the mountain balds. Brought also an odd hint of burning – perhaps from fires the lightning set, too fierce for the rain to drown… The storm slowly eased to gusts and spattering dashes, the thunder gone trundling south, then eased again to puddled calm under cool and watery light. They all stood, shook water from drenched clothes, and Patience, stripping rain from her white hair, said, 'Lord Winter wakes in the north, and clears his throat.'
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.
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.
