Who did she think she was kidding? The cost was far too high. She’d thought she could find out the truth to help Perrin, to resolve these mysteries, to put an end to all of it—
No. That was just another lie she told herself.
The woman was right. She wanted power, and she was doing this for herself, to prove something to the world. It was her haughtiness that sent her there, her growing frustration with the Administrators to whom this school teacher thought she should teach a lesson. Deny her more children? Send her only form letters? Change the way children learned about the world? Let the Guarders become so powerful that they take her husband away, again and again? She’d show them she knew a thing or two! She’d expose everything—whatever it was—and disgrace and shame them!
But she couldn’t.
When faced with the actuality of doing it, of doing anything courageous, she couldn’t do it. Even if she didn’t have a husband and children, Mahrree knew she’d never follow this woman one step further into the forest.
She always thought herself to be brave, especially when she stood on the platform in the amphitheater loudly proclaiming her opinions for all the world to hear, but deep down she knew “the world” didn’t hear her. Only a few hundred, occasionally a few thousand, in the insignificant village of Edge ever heard her, and even then none of them took her seriously. She knew that, and that was the only reason she dared say anything. Before she was married she frequently walked the edges of the forest, but nothing bad ever happened on the edges. It wasn’t nearly as daring as it appeared.
And neither—Mahrree realized with humbling force as she stood a mere thirty paces in—was she.
The woman stepped closer to her and took her arm. Initially Mahrree was alarmed, but the touch was kind.
“Someday will come for you,” the woman promised. “There’ll be a day when you’ll be ready to leave it all behind and embrace the truth. But not for many years still, I suspect. Until then, think of this night never again. Should your mind ever find itself surprised by this memory, tell yourself it was just a vivid dream, for that’s all it really is. You can practice looking at the world in different ways, preparing your mind to realize you know really nothing at all, looking at the sky and realizing it changes minute by second, but until that someday comes, nothing will ever quite make sense. That’s all right,” she said, almost genially.
Mahrree only gaped at her.
“But when that day does come,” she continued with a sharper edge and firming her grip on Mahrree’s arm, “everything will hit you with such finality and power you’ll never again be able to forget it or deny it. You’ll find the truth and run to it. But not tonight. Now, you need to get back to that empty field below us, and run home to your husband and babies before they miss you.”
No—
No, she couldn’t let it end like this, with a lecture in the trees as if she were some thirteen-year-old child with a rebellious streak!
She needed something—some hint or clue or number to plug into Perrin’s equation. Just a something more than what she knew this morning, and she wasn’t going to let this woman leave without getting it.
One last stupid flash of defiance gripped Mahrree, and the most irrational part of her mind screamed, Look—you’re standing in the forest against all laws and logic speaking to a real Guarder! No one’s done this before, so DO SOMETHING!
By the time all that audacity reached her mouth, though, it had diminished to a whimper. “But I’ve come so far.”
“Not as far as you think, dear. Only about twenty paces.” The patronizing tone was back, along with a firm pat on the cheek that felt more like a mild slap.
That did it.
The very last of Mahrree’s impudence boiled up and filled her with dangerous courage. “I have! You have no idea who I am, or what—”
“Oh, yes I do!” the woman interrupted her sharply. “I know you have a very ill-named dog. It never barks. Now, GO HOME, Mrs. Shin!”
Mahrree couldn’t even breathe as she watched the woman march hastily away and be swallowed up by the forest, leaving her completely alone in the trees with one horrible thought.
She knew a little bit more, got her one truth, and revealed a secret: she, her children, and even her barkless dog, were known to the Guarders.
Chapter 23 ~ “And whose side are you on, anyway, Quiet Man?!”
It was late at night when the man in the black jacket strode through the dark forest, past the steaming vents, around a sulfurous cavern, out of the reach of a spray of hot water, and over a swell of land that seemed to swell a little more each year. He walked alone and knew exactly where he was going. He picked up his pace once he was past the more hazardous terrain and started to jog eastward, weaving in and out of thickets and through meadows.