“It’s done!” Susan said. “Will you look at that?!”
For once, the Master Watcher turned their way, smiling. “The barren wood is long,” he said. “But it does end. And now we may eat.”
Nell was about to point out that she hadn’t asked his permission, when he pulled out a pouch of flat dried cakes and small fruits, and she thought better of it.
“Did the Genius make it?” Max asked the man, motioning back to the forest. “I had a theory that he salted the wood.”
The Master Watcher smiled again. “A good thought,” he said, settling himself beneath a maple and passing Max his portion. “But the wood was afflicted long before the city was.”
He handed Nell a cake next, and she was about to thank him profusely, when he said, “It’s not our custom to eat in the barren wood more than we have to. It’s a cursed place, that one. But from here on, you’ll have plenty.”
Her thank-you was a little limp after that, but she had to admit it was good, having something besides peaches and water.
They spent that night in the open, and Nell lay beside Susan and Kate, looking up into the trees and listening to the sound of crickets.
The Master Watcher sat, silent and awake, his back resting against a wide poplar several yards away. Max had stretched out halfway between him and the girls, with Jean scrunched against his side. For a while after everyone had fallen asleep, Nell lay thinking about the puzzle of the man, and the place he was taking them.
Then she heard Max fidget, roll over, and sit up with a sigh. The man called to him in a low voice.
“Can’t sleep?”
“Not much.”
“You should get some rest. We walk again in a few hours.”
“How much farther?”
“That depends on the speed of your walkers there.”
Listening, Nell suppressed a groan. Max’s walkers. As though Max owned them. And did that man never answer a question straight?
But Max didn’t pursue it. Instead he said, “What’s the sanctuary like?”
There was silence. Then: “We don’t talk of it outside. For everyone’s protection.”
Now it was Max’s turn to be silent. Nell wondered what he was thinking. After a moment, the Master Watcher said, “But I can promise you one thing: It will offer you more than you can imagine.”
That’s a moment! Nell thought at Max. Ask him about windows! But in a mild voice Max only said, “I don’t know what you mean.”
Twigs crunched underfoot as the man moved closer, and Nell could feel Max nearby, waiting for the right answer.
“I mean that I’ve led my share into safety from the outside, but none like you. To change on your own, and bring four others with you! That’s evidence of great strength.”
Nell lay unmoving. Bring four others with you? She began to fume.
“So they can do things there, at the sanctuary?” Max asked him.
Again, the man wouldn’t answer. “You’ll see it all soon,” he said. “Tomorrow. Best rest now, and save your strength.”
When Max lay back down, Nell finally dropped off to sleep. It seemed only a moment later that Susan was shaking her awake. The others were sitting up, yawning, and the man waited, standing now, by the tree.
“The moon’s risen,” he said, as if that explained things.
They stumbled to their feet and followed. Overhead, the bright half circle of the waning moon frosted the wood, casting ivory shadows on the new growth of vines and tall grasses that covered the forest floor. Jean stumbled among them, and Susan caught her arm as Kate picked her way slowly over the dark knots of shrubs. Nell’s eyes darted from the ground to the man and back again. Why didn’t he just tell them something? she wondered. She didn’t like silence, never had been good at letting it gather between people. She would have liked to talk to Max, but now the Master Watcher would not leave his side. So after a while she dropped back, trailing behind until Susan looked back in impatience and waited for her.
“Hurry up!” she whispered. “We’re going to lose sight of them!”
Nell made sure the Master Watcher was out of earshot. “I heard him before, talking to Max,” she said. “He thinks Max changed us.”
Susan studied the moonlit outline of the man’s back, thinking, but said nothing.
“Susan,” Nell finally said.
“Hmm?”
“I think they’re going to try and separate us when we get there.”
“Separate us? How do you mean?”
“I think they’re going to take Max away.”
Susan looked at her. “Why?”
“Something in the way he was talking. You watch. They will.”
Susan grimaced for a minute, then looked ahead at the Master Watcher and Max, moving on without them.
“No,” she said. “They won’t.”
Nell was numb with walking by the time she noticed that the woods had thinned. In the trees, the early birds were beginning to rustle and call out in their piccolo voices. She raised her head and saw the sky widen as the last of the branches receded. They clung like cobwebs to the edges of the gray expanse that had opened overhead. The moon had set and the sky was full of fading stars.
The clearing jutted sharply upward and Nell struggled through the wet grass as the pulsing rhythm of crickets, chirping from their hidden places, marked her footsteps. She was too tired to keep climbing. Just when she was about to say so, the ground flattened. She looked ahead, but there was nothing to see. The grass rolled into darkness. Had they climbed to the end of land? She squinted in the pale light, but a murky fog obscured the way, and Nell couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead. The Master Watcher sat down.
“We wait here for dawn,” he said.
She had grown warm on her way up the final hill, but the morning air had been cool against her skin. Now it took on the weight of a humid afternoon, without the heat.
