At times, the ground rose to an incline and we would be trudging, legs lifting for the next step with a grinding effort. The few clearings became less frequent, and then for a long time we walked through a dusk of dark-green vegetation under a canopy of trees like black marble columns, illuminated only by the stuttering glimmer of a firefly and the repetitive clicking of some insect. A smell like ashes mixed with hay surrounded us. We had both begun to sweat, despite the coolness of the season, and I could hear even undaunted Duncan breathing heavily. We had come a long way, and I wasn’t sure I could find the route back to our familiar paths. Yet something about this quest, this foolhardy plunge forward, became hypnotic. A part of me could have kept on going hour after hour, with no end in sight, and been satisfied with that uncertainty. (Then you know how I have felt my entire adult life—except that we’re told there is no uncertainty. No one makes it out, we’re told, from birth until our deathbed, in a thousand spoken and unspoken ways. It is just a matter of when and where—and if I could discover the truth in the meantime.)

The sting, the burn, of hard exercise, the doubled excitement and fear of the unknown, kept me going for a long time. But, finally, I reached a point where fear overcame excitement. (You mean common sense overcame excitement.)

“Duncan!” I said finally, to his back. “We have to stop. We need to find our way home.”

He turned then, his hand on a tree trunk for support—a shadow framed by a greater gloom—and I’ll never forget what he said. He said, “There is no way to go but forward, Janice. If we go forward, we will find our way back.”

It sounded like something Dad would have said, not a nine-year-old kid.

“We’re already lost, Duncan. We have to go back.”

Duncan shook his head. “I’m not lost. I know where we are. We’re not there yet. I know something important lies ahead of us. I know it.”

“Duncan,” I said, “you’re wearing sandals. Your feet must be pretty badly cut up by now.”

“No,” he said, “I’m fine.” (I wasn’t fine. The brambles had lacerated my feet, but I’d decided to block out that discomfort because it was unimportant.)

“There’s something ahead of us,” he repeated.

“Yes, more forest,” I said. “It goes on for hundreds of miles.” I thought about whether I had the strength to carry a kicking, struggling Duncan all the way back to the house. Probably not.

I looked up, the long trunks of trees reaching toward a kaleidoscope of wheeling, dimly light-spackled upper branches, amid a welter of leaves. In those few places where the light was right, I could see, floating, spore and dust and strands of cobweb. Even the air between the trees was thick with the decay of life.