away from its center. The Timpum, so brilliant in their swirls of silver and scarlet, seemed less bright as we passed from the stands of astors into the giant oaks. There were fewer of them, too. We all knew that the Timpum could not live – if that was the right word – outside of the Forest. But to see them diminishing in splendor and numbers was a sorrowful thing.
Around noon, Danali left the stream and led us by secret paths through more thickly growing woods. Here the predominance of the oaks gave way to elms, maples and chestnuts, which, though still very tall, seemed stunted next to the giants of the deeper Forest. We walked along the winding paths for quite a few miles. The sun, crossing the sky somewhere above us, was invisible through the thick, green shrouds of leaves. I couldn't tell west from east or north from south.
After some hours, Danali finally broke his silence. He gave us to understand that the Forest could be almost as difficult to leave as it was to enter. Unless the Lokilani pointed themselves along certain, fixed paths out of it, they would find themselves wandering among the shimmering trees and being drawn back always toward its center.
'But it has been many years since any us has left the Forest,' he said. 'And many more since anyone, having. left, found his way back in.'
Another couple of miles brought us to a place beyond which Danali and his people wouldn't go. Here, in a stand of oaks sprinkled with a few birch trees, we felt a barrier hanging over the Forest like an invisible curtain. There were only a few Timpum about, lingering among the oaks and shining weakly. It was hard to look beyond them into the dense green swaths of woods. For, only a few hundred yards from us, we could see nothing – only leaves and bark and ferns and other such things.
'We'll say goodbye here,' Danali said. He pointed down the narrow path cutting through the trees. 'Follow this, and do not look back. It will take you into your forest.'
The Lokilani embraced each of us in turn. After Danali had pressed his slender form against Maram's belly, he smiled at him and said, 'Take care, Hairface. I'm glad, so very glad, that we didn't have to kill you.'
And with that, the Lokilani stepped off into the trees to allow us to pass. I continued walking Altaru down the path, with Maram and the others following me. I listened as my horse's hooves struck deep into the soft loam of the forest floor. It was good to move without the pain in my side that had bothered me all the way from Ishka; but it was bad to have to leave friends behind, and as we made our way down the winding path, we tried not to look back at them.
After only a few hundred yards, the air lying over the woods grew heavier and moister. The leaves of the trees suddenly lost their luster as if some clouds had darkened the sky above them. Everything looked duller. The colors seemed to have drained from the woods and flattened out into various shades of gray. Even the birds had stopped singing.
The path ended suddenly about half a mile farther on. Despite Danali's warning, we turned to look back along it. We knew well enough that it should lead back into the Forest. But the scraggy scratch in the earth, crowded with bushes and vine-twisted trees, seemed to lead nowhere. In gazing through the thick greenery behind us, I felt repelled by a strong sensation pushing at my chest. It was as if I should proceed in any other direction but that one. And so I did. I walked Altaru through the woods toward what I thought to be the northwest After a few hundred yards, the path vanished behind the walls of trees. A mile farther on, where the trees opened up a little and some dead elms lay down like slain giants, I would have been hard pressed to say exactly where the unseen Forest lay.
'We're lost, aren't we?' Maram said when we had' paused to take our bearings. He turned this way and that toward the dark woods surrounding us, and the look on his face was that of a frightened beast 'Oh, why did we ever leave the Forest? No more sweet wine for Maram. Not an astor to be seen here. Nor any-Timpum.'
But this last proved to be not quite true. Even as Maram stood pulling nervously at his beard, a little light flashed in the air above us. It seemed to appear out of nowhere. Suddenly, framed against the leaves of some arrowwood, the little Timpum that had attached itself to me floated in the air and spun about in its swirls of silver sparks. We all saw it as clearly as we could the leaves on the trees.
'Look!' Maram said to me. 'How did it come here?'
Atara took a step closer to if., all the while fixing the little lights with her wide blue eyes, 'Oh, look at it!' she said. 'Look how it flickers!'
Maram, inspired by her words., took this opportunity to give a name to the Timpum.
'Well, then, little Flick,' he said to him, 'look around you and you won't, see any of your kind. Sad to say, you're all alone in these dreary woods.'
Master Juwain pointed toward Flick, as I now couldn't help thinking of him. He said,
'Pualani was quite clear on this matter, the Timpum can't live outside of the Forest.'
'Nevertheless,' I said, looking at Flick, 'here he is, and here he lives.'
'Yes – but for how long?'
Master Juwain's question alarmed me, and I suddenly let go Altaru's reins to step forward toward the shimmering Timpum.
'Go back!' I said, waving my hands at Flick as if to shoo him away. 'Go back to your starflowers and astor trees!'
But Flick just floated in front of my eyes spinning out sparks at me.
'Maybe he's lost, as we are,' Maram said. 'Maybe he followed you here and can't find his way back.'
He proposed that we should return to the Forest in order to rescue Flick and spend at least one more night drinking wine and singing songs with the Lokilani.
'No, we must go on,' Atara said to him. 'If we did return to the Forest, even if we found our way back in, there's no certainty that Flick would follow us. And if he did, there's no reason why he wouldn't just follow us out again.'
Her argument made sense to everyone, even to Maram. But it sad-dened me. For I was sure that as soon as we struck off into these lesser woods that covered the earth before us. Flick would either die or slowly fade away.
'Do you think he might come with us a little farther?' Maram asked. 'Do you he might follow us toward Tria?'
'We'll see,' I said as I planted my boot in Altaru's stirrup and pulled myself up onto his back.
'But where is Tria? Val – do you know?'
'Yes,' I said, pointing off northwest into the woods. 'It's that way.'
'Are you sure?'
'Yes,' I said. I smiled with relief because my sense of direction had returned to me.
'But what about the Stonefaces?' he asked me. 'What if they find us here and follow us, too?'
I closed my eyes as I listened to the sounds of the woods and felt for anyone watching us. But other than a badger and a few deer, the only I being that seemed aware of us was Flick.
'The Stonefaces must surely have lost us when we entered the Forest,' I told Maram.
'Now let's ride while we still have some day left.'
For a few hours more, we rode at a fast walk through the thick woods. No paths cut through the trees here, and in many places we had to force our way through dense undergrowth. But toward dusk, the trees opened again and the going was much easier. Our first concern was that we should keep to our course, bearing more north than west. And our second was this little array of lights that Maram had named Flick.
'Do you see?' he said when we had stopped by a stream to water the horses. He pointed at Flick, who hovered above the stream's bank like a bright bird watching for fish. 'He still follows us.'
'Yes,' I said. 'And he still shimmers, as before. This is hard to understand.'
'Well, we're still close to the Forest,' Master Juwain said. 'Perhaps he still takes his substance and strength from it.'
We decided to make camp there by the stream. It was our first night outside the Forest since our flight from the Stonefaces. As before, we took turns keeping watch.
But no one came through the blackened trees to attack us. Nor did any dark dreams come to disturb our sleep. Even so, it was a hard night and a lonely one. Without the Lokilani's evening songs and the company of the Timpum, the hours passed slowly.
During my watch, I listened to the crickets chirping and the wind rustling the leaves of the trees above us. I
