“It goes on,” Tuck repeated, “to the ocean. But this rowboat now, it’s stuck. If we didn’t move it out ourself, it would stay here forever, trying to get loose, but stuck. That’s what us Tucks are, Winnie. Stuck so’s we can’t move on. We ain’t part of the wheel no more. Dropped off, Winnie. Left behind. And everywhere around us, things is moving and growing and changing. You, for instance. A child now, but someday a woman. And after that, moving on to make room for the new children.”

Winnie blinked, and all at once her mind was drowned with understanding of what he was saying. For she—yes, even she—would go out of the world willy-nilly someday. Just go out, like the flame of a candle, and no use protesting. It was a certainty. She would try very hard not to think of it, but sometimes, as now, it would be forced upon her. She raged against it, helpless and insulted, and blurted at last, “I don’t want to die.”

“No,” said Tuck calmly. “Not now. Your time’s not now. But dying’s part of the wheel, right there next to being born. You can’t pick out the pieces you like and leave the rest. Being part of the whole thing, that’s the blessing. But it’s passing us by, us Tucks. Living’s heavy work, but off to one side, the way we are, it’s useless, too. It don’t make sense. If I knowed how to climb back on the wheel, I’d do it in a minute. You can’t have living without dying. So you can’t call it living, what we got. We just are, we just be, like rocks beside the road.”

Tuck’s voice was rough now, and Winnie, amazed, sat rigid. No one had ever talked to her of things like this before. “I want to grow again,” he said fiercely, “and change. And if that means I got to move on at the end of it, then I want that, too. Listen, Winnie, it’s something you don’t find out how you feel until afterwards. If people knowed about the spring down there in Treegap, they’d all come running like pigs to slops. They’d trample each other, trying to get some of that water. That’d be bad enough, but afterwards—can you imagine? All the little ones little forever, all the old ones old forever. Can you picture what that means? Forever? The wheel would keep on going round, the water rolling by to the ocean, but the people would’ve turned into nothing but rocks by the side of the road. ’Cause they wouldn’t know till after, and then it’d be too late.” He peered at her, and Winnie saw that his face was pinched with the effort of explaining. “Do you see, now, child? Do you understand? Oh, Lord, I just got to make you understand!”

There was a long, long moment of silence. Winnie, struggling with the anguish of all these things, could only sit hunched and numb, the sound of the water rolling in her ears. It was black and silky now; it lapped at the sides of the rowboat and hurried on around them into the stream.