“I dunno. A while back. They walked off while I was playing with the Silfen. I looked for them for days, but I got hungry and came back to town. The Silfen eat the fruit in the forest, but it doesn’t fill people so good. I miss them sometimes, I guess.”

Ozzie sighed, and pulled out his wallet. “Look, I’ve got some friends back in the Commonwealth, quite a few families would be happy to take care of you. I’ll buy you a ticket for the train. How’s that?”

“But when Mom and Dad come back I won’t be here, I’ll never see them again.”

He didn’t know what to do, which was funny in a painful, sad way. The great Ozzie, stumped by a kid who wouldn’t admit he needed help. And he had set himself a greater task. “Okay.” He took a couple of twenty-dollar bills from the wallet. “But you get yourself some decent clothes, and a good meal.”

“Oh, wow!” Orion held the bills up, his eyes bugging in amazement. “You must be really rich, mister—er, Ozzie.”

“I am. Which means you do as I ask, or you’ll be in real trouble. To start with you can take me to the stable yourself, and help me find some local food for the trip.”

It took two days to prepare everything, which was slightly longer than Ozzie had expected. But Lyddington wasn’t exactly filled with overeager salesmen and dozens of competitive businesses. Half the people he met acted as if they were stoned, which he admitted they probably were. There were a lot of kids running around all day. School seemed optional, they mostly learned what their parents felt inclined to teach them.

However, he made progress. Mr. Stafford was indeed pleased to see him, and wasn’t anything like as skeptical as young Orion when told Ozzie wanted to venture far into the forests. “Many of my clients do the same,” he confided. “I offer all of you that I buy back the animals when you return. There are some I never see again, though I think of them often, walking on worlds across the galaxy. Who knows where the deep paths lead. There are no maps. Stay clear of scoundrels that would sell you such fakes.”

Of which, it turned out, there were many. Ozzie was offered a dozen as he and Orion strode about town getting things ready for his departure. Some were elaborate parchments with gold-leaf runes and skilled drawings of animals and plants, lines leading to small star charts of constellations unknown to the Commonwealth; one he was shown was a black frictionless sheet with intricate glyptics that claimed to be a Silfen original, while the remainder were tattered papers or aged notebook diaries of intrepid travelers who had walked the paths. Ozzie didn’t buy any, though he appreciated the effort that had gone into the forging of such detailed tourist traps.

Mr. Stafford did persuade him to purchase a lontrus as a pack beast. There wasn’t much to eat out in the forests, he said, and certainly not if he made it to another world—he would need a large amount of supplies, which were best carried by the big docile beasts. So Ozzie found a saddlery that sold him a harness with bags. He also got Mr. Stafford to reshoe his horse, a big russet-colored mare called Polly. Various merchants were visited, and orders placed for dried food.

He set off early on the third morning, while the sun was just a sliver of gold above the horizon and mists lingered above the streams. The grass with its amethyst edging was wet from the night’s rains. It made the world look fresh, invigorating. A good omen for the start of his journey. Despite the welcome from people like the landlord and Mr. Stafford, he was glad to be on his way. On top of everything else, the locals’ idea of nightlife in the Last Pony was folk songs sung along to an out-of-tune piano, drinking enough ale to knock out a horse, and lighting their own farts. Two centuries ago he would have enjoyed that, joining in heartily as the games became more childish; but as he’d slowly discovered, despite rejuvenation, age was a truly cumulative thing, bringing a degree of wisdom to life.

Directly outside Lyddington, the land was host to dozens of farms: neat little fields divided up by well-layered hedges of hawthorn and ash. Cart tracks led him through them. Workers were already walking to the fields, cows being brought in for milking. Cultivation gave way to bigger pastures, and hedges gave way to rickety fences; animals from twenty worlds nuzzled at the grass and hay bales, ignoring him as he passed by.

Eventually, the ground rose to hide the sea behind him. The stony ruts of the farm track gave way to a simple path of beaten grass. The lontrus was quiet as it shuffled along, its cloak of ratty gray-brown hair swishing about as eight legs moved in ponderous rhythm. It was about the same length as Polly, and two-thirds the height, but capable of carrying twice the load of any horse. The head was a big bony wedge, with rheumy eyes set close together on the apex, at the bottom the mouth had a double jaw arrangement, allowing it to tear thick strands of vegetation. The creatures had been known to eat entire bushes if they were hungry.

As he looked around at the rolling landscape, Ozzie could see a few houses half hidden among the folds of the ground, as if they were slowly sinking into the grass. They became less frequent as the morning began to heat up. There had been this—slightly naive—expectation that the horizon would be in some way larger, the evidence of how massive this planet actually was. In fact, its size became apparent in the silence. The air soaked up all sound, smothering him in peace. It was an eerie sensation. There were no birds out here, not above the land that stretched between sea and forest. This was simple grassland, with streams and hummocks, even trees were strangers. But true silence, he realized, came from the lack of insects. If there were any, they made no noise as they flew and crawled about their business. It was unnatural.

After three hours he’d almost reached the outlying fringes of the forest. It had been stretched out in front of him like a dark blanket across the rolling land below the mountains, always there yet taking an age to get any bigger. It extended in a smooth unbroken expanse right back to the mountains, rising up their lower slopes and filling the valleys between them.

Several times in the last hour, he’d almost lost the path as it disappeared under layers of thick grass and patches of wildflowers. Polly always seemed to know where to go, picking it up again as she plodded onward. Now he could see two white pillars set against the cliff of dark green trunks. As he neared them, their size became apparent; solid shafts of marble, sixty meters high. There was some kind of carving at the top of both, roughly humanoid; the wind and rain of centuries if not millennia had worn away any features, leaving just the melted-looking outlines. The pillars were renown as being about the only artifacts ever found relating to Silfen culture. Nobody knew what they signified, other than marking the start of the path into the forest.

Polly and the lontrus ambled between them without changing gait. Ozzie saw the remnants of some wooden shack at the base of one. Blatantly a human residence, it had fallen into disrepair a long time ago. Behind it were small piles of stone, laid out in a rectangle, now almost engulfed by grass and caramel-colored longmoss.

The trees began three hundred yards beyond the marker pillars. As he approached he heard the faint call of birds again as they circled high above. Then he was among the first ranks of the trees. These were small, similar to Earth’s beeches, with bright green leaves as long as fingers, which drifted lightly in the breeze like small banners rustling in chorus. Pines started to appear among them, with smooth pewter-gray bark and slim, tough needles. The path was clearer now as the grass began to shrink away. On either side the trees were getting progressively taller, their great canopies shielding the ground from raw sunlight. Polly’s hooves became silent as the ground turned to a soft loam of rotting leaves and needles. Within minutes, Ozzie could see nothing but trees when he looked back over his shoulder. Several trunks had human lettering carved into them, with arrows leading him on. He didn’t need them, the path itself was distinct, almost like an avenue. On either side the trees grew close enough to each other to prevent anyone straying. Stillness closed in on him again. Whatever birds nested here, they were lost far above the treetops.