had been carbonized, and any thoughts it once held were more remote and immaterial than shadows.
Nothing made the bird fly this way, nothing urged it north instead of east or south or west, but it died nonetheless. Free will was, perhaps, its undoing.
•••
“Oh... oh !” Marty heard someone say, and he thought it was Dana. No one else spoke, but he felt the brief, intense level of discomfort in the Rambler; people shifted in their seats, and the silence grew heavier.
Then they were out the other end and heading across the mountainside, the steep drop still to their right, and the glaring sun cleared away any dregs of darkness.
What was that? Marty wanted to say. Weird magnetic field? Radiation from the rocks? Someone walking over my grave? But when he looked around at the others he saw smiling faces, and a growing excitement that they were getting closer to their destination. Curt and Jules were singing badly again, Holden was drinking, and Dana stared dreamily from the window.
So Marty took another pull on his joint instead, and he didn’t even look back.
They drove for another ten minutes. The ledge wove upward, turning back on itself and zig-zagging them up the mountainside. The view that was revealedalternately to their left and right was staggering, opening up across the ravine to expose miles of wooded countryside, hills peeking above the trees here and there, and dark green valleys hiding their secrets from view. After a short climb they reached a ridge, and then the track weaved them into a forest of towering trees.
Curt drove, Holden and Dana pretended not to notice where their skin touched, and Marty smoked. He was thinking about dynamite and digging machines, and men working with shovels and picks, and just how long it had taken to forge that tunnel around the end of the ravine, following the natural contours of the land except deeper inside. And the road that had twisted and turned its way up the mountainside; that wasn’t an easy build, either. He thought about stuff like this a lot. And sometimes, such thoughts ended with a simple determination to smoke some more.
He lit another joint and leaned back in his seat, dozing.
Curt startled him awake with a shout.
“Behold! Our home for the weekend.” Holden and Dana went first, squatting between Curt’s and Jules’s seats, and then Marty stood behind them, one hand on each of their shoulders to hold himself up. Dana gasped, Holden hummed in appreciation, and Marty had to admit to himself that, yes, this was quite a sight.
The lake lay to their left, surrounded by trees that cast stick-like shadows across the water from the southern bank. Elsewhere the sun glared off of the water, rippling here and there where fish or frogsjumped, shimmering with a million diamonds of light. There were a couple of small, bare islands sprouting low shrub growth, and on one a solitary tree cast its shadow over the water. A wooden jetty stood out into the water, a rough but sturdy-looking structure. There were no boats moored there, and taking a cursory look around the lake Marty could see several possible hiding places among the reeds at the lake’s edge.
It wasn’t huge, but the plant growth around its edges was lush. The stretch where the Rambler was now drawing to a halt must have been artificially cleared, and Marty found his attention drawn to the right to see why.
The cabin stood maybe a hundred feet from the lake, in a clearing that probed deep into the woods. For a few seconds Marty thought, Right, that’s like a timber store or something, and the real cabin’s behind it in the trees, because if that’s the place where we’ve got to sleep . But then he looked closer and saw net curtains in the building’s windows, and its allure slowly grew on him. They weren’t coming out here for a hotel visit, after all. No room service or gourmet restaurants here.
It wasn’t the most attractive building he’d ever seen, but it could easily be home. For a
Nothing made the bird fly this way, nothing urged it north instead of east or south or west, but it died nonetheless. Free will was, perhaps, its undoing.
•••
“Oh... oh !” Marty heard someone say, and he thought it was Dana. No one else spoke, but he felt the brief, intense level of discomfort in the Rambler; people shifted in their seats, and the silence grew heavier.
Then they were out the other end and heading across the mountainside, the steep drop still to their right, and the glaring sun cleared away any dregs of darkness.
What was that? Marty wanted to say. Weird magnetic field? Radiation from the rocks? Someone walking over my grave? But when he looked around at the others he saw smiling faces, and a growing excitement that they were getting closer to their destination. Curt and Jules were singing badly again, Holden was drinking, and Dana stared dreamily from the window.
So Marty took another pull on his joint instead, and he didn’t even look back.
They drove for another ten minutes. The ledge wove upward, turning back on itself and zig-zagging them up the mountainside. The view that was revealedalternately to their left and right was staggering, opening up across the ravine to expose miles of wooded countryside, hills peeking above the trees here and there, and dark green valleys hiding their secrets from view. After a short climb they reached a ridge, and then the track weaved them into a forest of towering trees.
Curt drove, Holden and Dana pretended not to notice where their skin touched, and Marty smoked. He was thinking about dynamite and digging machines, and men working with shovels and picks, and just how long it had taken to forge that tunnel around the end of the ravine, following the natural contours of the land except deeper inside. And the road that had twisted and turned its way up the mountainside; that wasn’t an easy build, either. He thought about stuff like this a lot. And sometimes, such thoughts ended with a simple determination to smoke some more.
He lit another joint and leaned back in his seat, dozing.
Curt startled him awake with a shout.
“Behold! Our home for the weekend.” Holden and Dana went first, squatting between Curt’s and Jules’s seats, and then Marty stood behind them, one hand on each of their shoulders to hold himself up. Dana gasped, Holden hummed in appreciation, and Marty had to admit to himself that, yes, this was quite a sight.
The lake lay to their left, surrounded by trees that cast stick-like shadows across the water from the southern bank. Elsewhere the sun glared off of the water, rippling here and there where fish or frogsjumped, shimmering with a million diamonds of light. There were a couple of small, bare islands sprouting low shrub growth, and on one a solitary tree cast its shadow over the water. A wooden jetty stood out into the water, a rough but sturdy-looking structure. There were no boats moored there, and taking a cursory look around the lake Marty could see several possible hiding places among the reeds at the lake’s edge.
It wasn’t huge, but the plant growth around its edges was lush. The stretch where the Rambler was now drawing to a halt must have been artificially cleared, and Marty found his attention drawn to the right to see why.
The cabin stood maybe a hundred feet from the lake, in a clearing that probed deep into the woods. For a few seconds Marty thought, Right, that’s like a timber store or something, and the real cabin’s behind it in the trees, because if that’s the place where we’ve got to sleep . But then he looked closer and saw net curtains in the building’s windows, and its allure slowly grew on him. They weren’t coming out here for a hotel visit, after all. No room service or gourmet restaurants here.
It wasn’t the most attractive building he’d ever seen, but it could easily be home. For a
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