Trim flew back into view and settled on the roof of the Ventra, round eyes regarding him intently. Logan stared at the bird. “Why don’t you tell me what else you know that I don’t?” he said. He got into the AV and prepared to set off again, but the owl didn’t move from the vehicle roof. Apparently, this was it for the day. He climbed out again, asked aloud if they were done, waited for an answer—as if there might be one—and finally climbed back into the cab, secured the locks, and went to sleep.

When he woke next, it was not yet dawn. Trim was perched on the hood of the Ventra staring at him through the windshield, saucer eyes glowing like lamps. It was the stare that had brought him awake, he decided, pushing himself upright. He was stiff and groggy, but he made himself get out and walk around until both conditions had disappeared. The forest was a lush damp curtain, filled with new smells and muted colors. There were wildflowers growing all around him, an impossibility, a miracle. He stared at them as if they were something born of an alien world. He stared at the huge trees surrounding him, some with trunks so massive they dwarfed the stone columns of the abandoned government buildings he had seen in Chicago as a boy. The trunks were twisted and gnarly and had the look of something that had been tall and straight once but had been melted by the sun. They were all different, each one a sculpture carved by an artist of endless imagination.

He walked over to one, a giant with limbs that stretched so wide they brushed up against the other trees surrounding it, and he touched its rough bark with his fingers. He looked up into its center where shadows and leaves intermingled and everything felt hushed and hidden. He could see shards of starlight slanting through its multilayered canopy, dappling its limbs. He moved to one side and let a slender ray fall across his face. He smiled in the softness of its glow.

When he stepped away again, there were tears in his eyes. He couldn’t explain what had caused them, couldn’t understand how they had surfaced so quickly. Maybe they had been triggered by a memory from his boyhood or a dream he had forgotten. He brushed them away with the back of his hand. It was too much, he thought. This forest, with its smells and tastes and look and feel—it was too much. Everything was so overwhelming. No wonder he was crying.