When there was nothing more to say, the forest people turned and left us. After we watched them out of sight, we stood where we were for a long time gazing after them, too sad to take another step.
"This is not the way we should begin," said Maara. "Let's camp somewhere for a day or two, until our hearts have had their fill of looking back."
We followed the familiar path as far as the hollow tree, but we didn't enter it. Maara made our camp out in the open. We were both reluctant to carry sorrow into a place that had held so much joy.
Maara spent the afternoon using a charred twig to draw Aamah's map from memory onto a bit of deerskin. She had me watch her, so that I could learn it.
"How do you know that the river Aamah remembers is the same one that flows through Merin's land?" I asked her.
"I don't," she said, "but south is the direction we must go, and this is the only way."
The sound of birdsong made us both look up. It was so like the sound the forest people made to let the village know of their arrival that my heart lifted in anticipation. I saw on Maara's face the same hope I felt, followed by disappointment when we realized it was just a songbird.
"We'll never see them again, will we?" I asked her.
"No," she said.
The next day Maara tried to turn my thoughts to the task ahead of us. She had me draw Aamah's map on the ground, first from the one she'd made, then several times more from memory. Aamah had told us of landmarks we would pass -- a tree split by lightning, with half its trunk rotting on the ground and the other half still green and growing, a rock shaped like an antlered elk, a stone cairn left by travelers, and many more. Maara had me memorize them all.
"What will we do once we reach the river?" I asked her. "Assuming that it's the right river, we can't just walk down the river road to Merin's house."
"We're not going to Merin's house," said Maara.
"Where are we going?"
"I'm not sure yet. Perhaps to Laris. Perhaps to your mother's house. We'll have to see how things are."
"Laris is far to the south of Merin's house," I said. "And to get to my mother's house we'll have to cross the heart of Merin's land. Someone will surely see us."
"No one will see us if we go up the ravine."
It was a clever thought. Something I very much admired about Maara was her ability to send her mind far ahead, following many paths at once, so that she could foresee where each might lead and choose the best. I had not the gift of foresight. I tended to take the obvious path unless something deflected me, and then I would react by instinct. So far my instincts had served me well enough, but it would be wise of me to learn Maara's way.
The next morning, though I missed the forest people no less than I had the day before, I was impatient to begin our journey. Maara agreed with me that it was time we were on our way. She opened our packs and laid everything out on the ground so that we could take stock of what we had.
With any luck we wouldn't starve to death. We had plenty of acorn flour and smoked venison, and we were sure to find fresh food along the way. The packs also held our fur tunics. We had exchanged them for shirts of deerskin as the weather grew mild, but on chilly evenings, their warmth would still be welcome. We had our cloaks too, to use for bedding and to turn aside the spring rains. In Maara's pack, half hidden in the folds of her tunic, I saw the sword she took from Vintel's warriors. I'd forgotten that she had it.
Although the thought of parting with my wolfskin was more than I could bear, it was so bulky and impractical that I doubted the wisdom of bringing it along, but Maara insisted, and she took most of our supplies into her own pack to make room for it in mine.
Before she did up our packs again, Maara opened the mysterious bundle Aamah had given her. In it were a few pieces of our woolen clothing, a shirt and a pair of trousers for each of us, stained and threadbare, but still usable, and the bedraggled shreds of what had once been my tunic. These she added to our packs.
"Are they worth carrying?" I asked her.
"They may come in handy if we should need a disguise."
"A disguise? Will we disguise ourselves in our own clothing?"
"We'll wear whatever will allow us to blend in."
Her words sent a prickle of apprehension up the back of my neck. Blend in? With whom would we have to blend in?
"If someone should see us at a distance," she said, "we want them to see what they expect to see. We're dressed now as people of the forest dress. We could be hunters, or we could be outlaws. Either way, anyone who catches sight of us will be content to keep their distance and let us continue on our way. But once we leave the forest, we will look out of place. In our woolen clothing, we can pass for country people."
We followed the brook south for a little distance until we reached the place where Aamah had told us to take a different way. The landmark she described was obvious. The trail was not. Hunting with the forest people had made me adept at seeing the almost imperceptible trails they used, and I spotted this one before Maara did. It led us over the crests of several hills, where the forest was so dense that we had hardly a glimpse of the sky. When several trails came together in a tangle, Maara kept our direction true. Between the two of us, we found the stream that would lead us to the river.
It was now late afternoon, too early to stop, I thought, with over an hour of daylight remaining, but Maara left me to make camp while she scouted both sides of the stream for half a mile in each direction, looking for signs that others had been there. She found only an old hearth from the year before and a tangled fishing net, torn beyond repair, that could have washed down the stream from anywhere.
I made a lean-to of fallen branches next to a pile of deadfall. Once we crept into it, we would be invisible. A little distance away I made a small fire and put acorn bread to bake in the ashes. By the time Maara returned, supper was ready.
While we feasted on acorn bread and venison, I took the opportunity to look around me. The forest here was different, its trees less ancient, its canopy more open. Alders grew in marshy places near the stream, and on its banks were meadows, with wildflowers in colors I hadn't seen all winter -- red and orange, yellows bright and pale, cornflower blue -- scattered among the bracken. For the first time since we met the forest people I was homesick.
"Will we be home in time to see the wildflowers?" I asked Maara.
She gave me a puzzled look.
"The flowers here reminded me," I said. "I can't imagine spring without the sight of a carpet of wildflowers covering the -- " I groped for the word, only to realize that I was still speaking in the language of the forest people. " -- pastures," I said in my own tongue. The forest people had no word for pastures.
Maara knit her brows. "You just gave me an idea. If we should meet others, speak to me only in the language of the forest people, and if someone speaks to you in your own language, don't let them see that you understand it."
"Why?"
"So that I can be our tongue, and you can be our ears. People may speak carelessly among themselves in your hearing, and what you hear could prove useful."
"I thought we were going to avoid meeting anyone."
"That may not be possible." She turned to face me. "This land belongs to no one, but many travel here, some to hunt and some to trade, some as ambassadors of goodwill to their neighbors, and some because they are unwelcome elsewhere. If we should encounter any of them, we must be whatever they will find least threatening and least profitable."
"Least profitable?"
"As hostages," she said. "Or as slaves."
"Oh," I whispered.
Maara saw that she had frightened me. "Better to talk now about what may happen before the need arises."
I nodded. "What else?"
"If it should happen that we are separated, you must find your own way home."
"I will do no such thing."
Maara scowled at me. "Don't be stubborn and don't be stupid. Find your own way home, and I will do the same. We
have no time to waste wandering around looking for each other. Go to your mother, if you can, or go to Laris. If I had to guess what may be happening now in Merin's land, I would say that your friends are gathering together, perhaps to search for you, perhaps to take revenge on the one who betrayed you. If any of Merin's warriors are still loyal to her, they will be making their own plans, to rescue Merin if Vintel has kept her in Merin's house, or to restore her to her place if she has left it."
I put all these things away in the back of my mind to consider later. First I had to make Maara understand.
"Stubborn I am," I said, "and stupid I may be, but I won't go home without you."
Maara's scowl deepened.
"We may argue all night about it," I said. "I won't change my mind."
"The world may change it for you."
"No."
"Do you imagine that you are stronger than the world?"
"Not at all," I said, "but I will always have the power of refusal, and leaving you behind is one thing I will not do."
Maara knew me well enough to stop. She wouldn't argue with me, but I felt within her a determination to have her own way, whether I agreed with her or not. I saw one thing clearly, and I held my tongue about it. She had no intention of making her own way back to Merin's land alone. She would no more leave me than I would leave her.
For several days we made good progress. We didn't stop to hunt. A few snares and a fish trap, set out at night, provided us with almost more than we could eat. Although we saw no sign of strangers, we were careful to follow Aamah's advice and take the long way around places where we might encounter them, places where one stream joined another or where several trails came together.
The long way round was difficult. We climbed steep ridges, clambered over piles of boulders, threaded our way through dense thickets. It was no wonder that no one ever saw the forest people if they kept to trails like these.
A week after we set out, we smelled the smoke of a campfire. We skirted around it undetected, but the knowledge that there were others nearby made us more cautious.
The next morning we were following a trail that ran close by the stream when we heard voices on the water. We watched from a thicket as three boats made of hollowed logs approached. Four men in each boat paddled them upstream. They were all dressed in woolen clothing. They looked so out of place that I had to remind myself that I too had once dressed as they did.
Late that afternoon we found the place they came from. It could be called a village, though a temporary one, with only tents and huts made of mud and sticks for shelter, but there were dozens of them, enough to house a hundred people.
Here three streams flowed into one. I recognized the place from Aamah's map, but not the village.
"Aamah said nothing about this," I whispered to Maara.
"No," she said. "This is something new."
We withdrew into the forest until we had put a good distance between the strangers and ourselves.
"This is something we may not be able to go around," said Maara.
"Why not?"
"This place casts a wide net. Not just the streams, but many trails must come together here. It will take us far too long to go around it."
"What else can we do?"
"We can do as they do. We can go down the river."
"But they'll see us."
Maara smiled. "There is more than one way to hide. Sometimes by trying to hide one only makes oneself more conspicuous. Now I think we must try hiding in plain sight."
After considering every course of action we could think of, we decided that going down the river was worth the risk. It would be much faster than walking, especially if we had to take the arduous trails used by the forest people, and I believed Maara was right, that if we were caught trying to avoid detection, people would suspect our good intentions.
The only problem with our plan was that we had no boat.
"We dare not steal one," I said.
"Of course not," said Maara, "but we can trade for one."
I couldn't think of anything we had that was worth a boat.
"We have the sword," said Maara.
"We may need the sword."
"What for?"
"Without it, you'll be defenseless."
"Don't deceive yourself," she said. "We are defenseless. Our best defense is to be not worth killing."
In the morning we walked in plain sight down the trail beside the stream and into the village. Maara reassured me that we would be in no danger there. Where so many strangers came together, anyone who broke the implied truce that governed such places would become the enemy of all. The dangers we might face in the days ahead would come upon us when we were once again alone, and our main concern while we were in the village was to arouse no one's suspicion and no one's enmity.
To my surprise no one gave us more than a brief glance. We were just two more travelers among a crowd of people who were all intent upon their own pursuits. There were both men and women here, dressed for the most part in woolen clothing, although some, like us, were clad in deerskin. I caught fragments of their speech and couldn't understand a word of it. Each person seemed to be speaking a language of his own. Then bit by bit my ears became attuned to a tongue that, as I listened, transformed itself from something utterly incomprehensible into a speech I recognized. It was my own language, the language of Merin's house, but spoken very badly, full of mispronunciations and misuse of common words, as well as words I had never heard before, whose meaning I couldn't guess.
Maara moved through the village like one who belonged there. I tried to look as relaxed and unconcerned as she did, but it had been a long time since I had been around so many people, and I began to feel hemmed in. All around us men and women shoved their way through knots of people gathered around those with goods to trade. Men dressed as we were stood surrounded by piles of skins and furs. Women traded woven cloth, and a few had metal goods -- cooking pots and knives and axes.
At last we left the marketplace behind for a place where there were fewer tents and fewer people. Some were deep in serious conversation and paid us no attention. Others glanced at us with undisguised curiosity.
The path ran along the riverbank, where dozens of boats were pulled up onto the shore. Most were made of hollowed logs, some big enough to carry half a dozen men and a cargo of their goods, some just big enough for one. Other boats were flimsy things made of hides stretched over frames of wickerwork. A few of the larger boats were made of hewn planks. Too heavy to pull up on shore, they were tied to pilings driven into the mud.
When Maara stopped to examine a log boat that looked big enough to carry the two of us, a man approached her. His smile was friendly, while his eyes took us in from head to foot.
"A fine little boat," he said, in the inharmonious tongue that offended my ears.
Maara prodded the boat with her toe. "A good size, but waterlogged."
Although she knew better, she spoke as badly as he did.
I feared the man might be insulted. Instead he laughed.
"Floats well enough," he said, and gave it a little push away from the shore, so that it bobbed in the shallow water, still tethered with a bit of rope fastened around an anchor stone.
Maara shook her head and gestured at another boat that was a little bigger than the first and appeared to be in better shape.
"Whose boat is this?"
The man resigned himself to keeping his waterlogged craft and led us to a nearby hut made of sticks and twigs daubed with river mud. He told us to wait and went inside. We heard the sound of voices, the man's voice and a woman's, as he negotiated a finder's fee. When he came out again, he gestured to us to go inside.
The hut was dark and full of smoke. Before my eyes could see much more than shadows, the woman asked us to sit down. By the time we settled ourselves by a fire that gave off more smoke than light, I could see a little better.
The woman was the only person there. Her careworn face made her appear t
o be past her middle age, but there was no grey in her dark hair, and she still had all her teeth. She looked us over with a critical eye.
"My friend tells me you want a boat," she said, "yet you come empty-handed."
It was true we had no goods to trade, but she mistook our lack of goods for poverty, and I resented it. Maara shrugged out of her pack, laid it on the ground, and opened it. She pulled aside our bits of ragged clothing to reveal the sword.
The woman stared at it for a moment, then gave Maara a shrewd look.
"How did you come by this?" she asked.
"I didn't steal it."
"I meant no insult," the woman said. "I only wonder if you are more than you appear to be."
"I appear to be a traveler with a sword to trade for a boat," said Maara.
"If you are skilled in its use, you may regret letting go of it."
"Why is that?"
"Do you intend to go downriver?"
Maara hesitated. Then she said, "Is it the custom now to pry into the business of travelers?"
The woman made a gesture of impatience. "You mistake me," she said. "Like everyone else, I have my own interests at heart, but I doubt they conflict with yours. You may serve my interests, and your own as well."
Maara waited for her to go on.
"If you're bound downriver," the woman said, "you may run into trouble. Traveling alone is dangerous, and as it happens I have goods to send downriver. Why not keep your sword and buy your passage with your service?"
Once Maara had given her consent, the woman offered us her hospitality, which consisted of a bowl of barley soup and a place to sleep beside her fire. The soup we accepted gratefully, but we preferred to sleep outside, out of the smoky air.
All evening, as we sat by our fire, people joined us to chat, some who wanted only a pleasant way to pass the time and some who tried in subtle ways to learn more about us -- where we came from, where we were going, and the nature of our business. Maara evaded their questions skillfully, and without giving offense. She even lured them into revealing more about themselves than they intended. How foolish were the people of Elen's house, I thought, who had not used Maara's skill with language and diplomacy to their advantage. They should have made her an ambassador.