Then she was standing on Fillorian soil again, less than four hours after she had boldly set forth in search of the rogue god Umber, of Whom there was no sign. She ruminated, again, on the eternal return, the widening gyre, that seemed to govern human history. There is a tide in the affairs of men. A slack tide, that heaves up wrack and slime and rotting seaweed and deposits them on the sand, like a cat leaving the corpse of a rat on your doorstep. Then it slinks back in search of more.

They’d been so close. They could have solved everything. And now they wouldn’t. He’d gotten away.

At any rate the Chankly Bore was a majestic sight in person. The hills ran on into the distance in their rows, not perfectly regular, she saw now, but almost, like the rubber dimples of a nonslip mat writ very, very large. Each one had its own tree at the summit, like a candle on top of a cupcake, and each tree was different. In places the flanks of the hills had been bleached a tawny golden yellow by the endless unyielding iron summer.

There was Poppy, waiting for them, a quarter-mile off. She pointed—wait a minute, maybe all wasn’t lost after all. Umber wasn’t hiding, He was standing right there, looking at them, at the summit of one of the hills—one row in, three over. He wasn’t even moving! They could see Him totally plainly!

She started toward Him.

“Don’t run!” she shouted, pleaded even, as if the sound of her voice could keep Him there. “Don’t run away! Please! Just stay there!”

Umber didn’t run. He waited for them.

He didn’t even look especially concerned as the three humans, two queens and a king, plus a royal heir in utero, came straggling up the slope. As backdrops for earthshaking events went, the Chankly Bore was a corker. The view was sublime. Janet wondered if someone had planted the trees on the tops of the hills or if they’d just grown like that.

Actually the entity most likely to know the answer to that question was ten yards away and closing. As she came up to Him she slowed, hardly believing that He wasn’t going to bolt the moment she came too close. His stupid woolly face was impassive.

“So,” Janet said, breathing hard from the climb, hands on knees, “did somebody plant these trees or did they just grow like that?”