Then Trim gave a small screech, and he glanced over to find the owl perched on the roof of the AV. Trim was ready to go. Logan sighed, turned away from the trees, and walked over to the bird. Immediately it flew away into the forest. Logan watched it go, waited for it to circle back in the way it did when telling him he needed to follow, saw it reappear higher up in the trees, and started to get into the AV. But then he realized that the road that had brought him in ended at this clearing. He scanned the landscape for signs of another road, then a trail, and finally a pathway or anything that resembled one. Nothing. Moreover, the trees were too thickly massed for the Ventra to pass. Wherever he was going, he was going to have to get there on foot.

Stuffing food and water containers into a backpack he slung over his shoulder, he picked up his black staff and set out.

He walked for about an hour, wending his way through the dark mass of the trees, climbing over fallen logs and in and out of shallow ravines, fording streams and skirting thorny brush, all the while following his winged guide. Trailers of mist curled through the forest like ethereal snakes. Starlight shone down through the screen of the leafy canopy, made pale and diffuse. Shadows layered the earth, climbed the trunks of the trees, crawled out on limbs, and disappeared into the ether. Birdsong followed after him, rose ahead of him, spread out around him in lilting welcome, brought to life by dawn’s approach. He found himself smiling. Where would he rather be than here, whatever the reason for coming?

Nowhere, he answered himself. Nowhere else.

He came upon the clearing unexpectedly, his eyes following Trim’s flight through the trees, only half paying attention to what until now had been an unchanging forest. But all at once he was standing in an open space on the high slopes of the mountainside, looking down on a forestland that stretched away for miles.

He was also staring at a hot-air balloon.

He recognized it for what it was immediately. The basket was sitting upright in the clearing with the air bag lying uphill on the ground in front of it, all of its stays attached, a compressor motor situated with a hose end funneling into the bag’s mouth, everything ready to fill the bag and take flight. He walked over to the balloon and stood looking down at it, wondering what it was doing here, who had flown it in, and why it was set out this way.

Trim had flown back again and was roosting on one edge of the basket, round eyes fixed on him.

“Another Knight of the Word,” a voice said from behind him. “What’s your name?”