“The red road is not my road. It is the road. The only road across Thuros that leads to what you truly want, Nick, even if you don’t know it.”

“What do you know about what I want?” I shouted. “And what do you care?”

Everything this Neanderthal uttered seemed calculated to inflame me. I hated how he got my goat. Only Joshua’s presence kept me from doing something I’d later regret. Even Frodo barked at Shad, defending my honor.

“From where you go, few return!” Shad intoned, sounding like a self-important Shakespearean actor.

“Please, let’s be civil,” Joshua said. “If Nick can find a better way, you won’t begrudge him the search, will you?”

“There is no better way.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” I announced. “I was thinking and choosing for myself long before I met you.”

“And where have your thoughts and choices left you?”

“Get a life, old man!” I raked him with my eyes, enraged at his insolence and unnerved by what he appeared to know about me.

I waved him off as Joshua and I stepped away into the night, following a dusty gray path that bore down a steep slope away from the village.

“I’ll walk with you,” Shad called after us, “to offer counsel and remind you of the way back.”

“No, thanks, I’d really rather …”

The bandy-legged fossil lumbered down the path like a mountain goat. He stunk like one too. He glared at Joshua, who laughed and shook his head.

Joshua excused himself and took the codger aside, apparently laying out ground rules for the journey. Shad raised his voice and waved his arms, pointing his gnarled fingers, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

As the two of them talked, I looked at the landscape below and to the north, amazed at how clearly I could see by the soft pink glow of two moons. The roadside was woven with lilacs and primroses and wild blackberries, with heavy ripe clumps bending the vines. I even saw a few senaba trees not too far down the slope, above the mist, and determined to visit them on the way down. Meanwhile thunderclouds came from the east, rolling in the distance where they grazed ridges. The clouds were lit from within by periodic sheet lightning and a soft, silver glow on top from the reflected moonlight. The storm moved closer to the countryside we were about to enter, already shrouded in mist. While I trembled at its coming, it only added to my excitement.