AFTER a while the road entered a forest. They seemed by now to have left the volcanic area behind—and they were getting con­cerned about the lateness of the season. For some miles they picked their way amongst the trees, then they overtook an old lady who appeared to be carrying a large bundle of firewood. Encouraged by this, they decided to stop and ask the way.

“Let me do this,” said Rachel, in thought shapes, as she dis­mounted. Going up to the woman, she asked, ingenuously, “Is this the road to Rigo?”

“Rigo? Rigo? Don’t know any Rigo! No—wait! You mean that Rigo? Big city out on the coast? Why, that’s hundreds of miles away, my dear. Whatever can you be thinking of? You’ll never make it there, not on those horses!”

“Yes, we know that. What we want to know is, is there a village near here? Somewhere where we can rest and buy provisions, perhaps?”

“Well, there’s Kipalup, a couple of miles down the road. Not exactly a ‘village’, just a few houses. I’m on my way there myself. It’s where I live.”

“Thanks ever so much. Oh, and can we carry your firewood for you?” Michael cut in. He had a little room in front of him on the saddle.

The woman considered for a while—then she handed over the bundle. “Why thank you, that’s extremely kind of you, my dears. My house is second on the left as you enter the village. If you wait for me there, I’ll fix you up with hot drinks and a cake…”

Very trusting, she was, Michael thought, as they continued to the village. The woman, whose name was Beth, they discovered, was as good as her word when she came up. Ushering them inside, she plied them with hot cocoa and a plate of cakes.

“So where have you come from? And how do you expect to get to Rigo?” Beth asked.

Michael thought a while before answering. He did not know the geography of this area, and he could not ‘invent’ a plausible starting-point for them. In the end he resolved upon truthfulness. He was still thinking he could trust this woman. “From Kentak,” he finally admitted.

Beth noticed his hesitation, and smiled. “Kentak, eh? That’s a long way back, and not on the road you were coming along. Did you cut across country?”

Michael nodded.

“I can guess—an elopement, is it? And your families are coming after you? You look very young; Rachel. How old are you?”

“Seventeen,” admitted Rachel, “and yes, we’ve eloped. We even got married, secretly, in a church in Kentak. Here’s the ring,” and she fetched out the steel washer that she’d been carrying all along, and slipped it on her finger.

“Well! Ha ha! Funny sort of ring—but I believe you. And don’t worry: your secret is safe with me: if any of your people come this way; I’ll cover for you. And I’ll tell you a secret,” Beth continued. “I eloped too, just like you did, when I was nineteen. Over fifty years ago now. Ted (that’s my husband), bless him, was ten years older than me, he took me to an out-of-the-way settlement, way up north. It was cold there: colder than it is here: a tough life—but we were so happy! As we grew older we moved back south and settled here. He was a good man, was Ted: I couldn’t have asked for a better husband. Fifteen years ago he was taken from us, and I’ve lived here on my own ever since. I still miss him…”

“How do you live here?” asked Michael, glad to get away from the topic of their ‘elopement’.

“I have some chickens in the back yard—maybe you heard them? And a couple of pigs. And a small vegetable plot: just big enough to work by myself. I sell the eggs to Thomas, over at the village shop, and buy a few necessaries there, to keep going. I won’t say it’s an easy life—not like you have in Kentak, I’ll be guessing—but I manage.”

“We’re sure you do,” said Rachel. “But we really need to push on. We have to get to Rigo, somehow…”

“Well, I wish you luck. Never been that way myself. It’s an awfully long way—even if you cut across back to the road for Rigo. This road would take you too far to the north. And I warn you: it’s many miles to the next village. Why don’t you stop here for the night? I’d be glad of the company: it’s so seldom we get young folk coming this way.”

“Have you any children?” asked Rachel.

“No,” replied Beth, brushing back a tear. “We had two—a boy and a girl. The boy… he was such a sweet lad, but… but… This was when we were still up North. Folk are so scattered, up there, it was a month before the Inspector got around to calling on us. But when he did, he…he…”

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She could not finish the sentence. Rachel went to her and put an arm around her comfortingly. “We understand. Of course we understand” she whispered.

“And your daughter,” asked Michael, feeling that he had to ask, though he wasn’t sure he’d like the answer.

“She? Oh, she was ‘normal’. She grew up and married. They were expecting their first child—and then she died in childbirth. The baby died too…”

Listening to this double tragedy, they noticed that Beth was more composed in relating her daughter’s death, than she was in speaking of her son’s fate. ‘Normal’ losses were clearly more bearable than Deviation losses. Michael wondered whether he might have met the son in the Fringes. It was possible.

He flashed a quick thought-shape to Rachel, hoping that Beth wouldn’t notice. “Shall we stop the night here?”

Rachel made no reply, but she still had her arm around Beth’s shoulder. “We’d love to stop here for the night,” she whispered. “It’s so kind of you…”

“That’s settled then,” said Beth, getting up. “Rachel, you come and help me make up a bed for you in the spare room—and Michael can sleep… but there! I was forgetting: you’re married. Well, you may find it a tight squeeze, but I think you’ll find there’s room for both of you in the spare bed.”

A little while later Beth was treating them to a modest supper. While they ate, she told them many tales about her hard life “up North” with her husband. She was convinced that the Old People—those wonderful people who had lived before Tribulation—the cataclysmic event which had shattered the old civilisations—had indeed inhabited Labrador, although sparsely. She said that in those days Labrador had been a cold place—much colder than it was now. Michael nodded: this confirmed some of the things he had learned at school. Possibly the hardship Beth and her husband Ted had endured, up in the far north of Labrador, was closer to what Old People had had to put up with in the more ‘civilised’ parts further south. What­ever the truth of that was, Beth regarded herself as closer to the ‘true Labradorean’ than the more settled people further south.

She also said that it was rumoured that in the Old Days, Rigo had been little more than a tiny settlement of a few hundred people. How it had grown to become the bustling capital it was today, she could not say.

Michael had a question he was burning to ask. “Did you get many—” Then he remembered what Beth had said about her son. Hastily he swallowed his words.

But Beth smiled. “Many Deviations, were you trying to say? Up north? Don’t you be worried now: I know the word well enough! No—really! Let me talk about it, now! What happened to us was—just something that happened. But no: I don’t think we got as many Deviations as you’d have got in Kentak” (Michael had continued the fiction that they came from Kentak. He dared not mention Wak­nuk…) “We did have a local Inspector, of course,” she continued, “it was the Law—but a lot of the time he sat in his office complaining about the huge distances he had to cover when he was called out—which wasn’t often. I think our son was the first human he’d had to deal with for—oh, ever so many years: we were just the unlucky ones. And people were so kind to us afterwards…”

Michael remember what David had told him about his Aunt Harriet—Harriet who had turned up at the Strorm’s farm with a Deviational baby, only to be firmly repulsed by David’s oppressive father—Harriet who had then committed suicide. How different things had been in Waknuk, compared to what Beth was telling them! And they had already strayed a long way to the north of the direct road from Kentak to Rigo.

He and Rachel needed to think things over. It certainly seemed that there were parts of Labrador where they could live in comparative safety. Provided they really had shaken off the pursuit, that was. They excused themselves, bid Beth good-night, and went to their bedroom.

“What do you think, Rachel?” said Michael, reverting to thought-shapes, once they were in the rather narrow bed, huddled together. “Until we arrived at Beth’s house, I felt sure that the only option for us was to somehow get to Rigo, and then find a ship. But now I’m not so sure. Should we go north from here; find somewhere safe in the far north?”

“I think we should press on to Rigo, follow our original plan. Find a ship somehow, maybe get to Europe or Africa even. I don’t like the idea of going north.”

“But Rigo’s where our pursuers will be heading: they’ll expect us to be going there.”

“Rigo’s a big city by all accounts. They’d have to find us.”

“They found us all right in Kentak—and that’s quite a big place too. Didn’t take them long. They’ll have spies all over the place in Rigo, you mark my words—”

“Michael,” Rachel broke in petulantly, “are you trying to start a quarrel with me? We’ve only been married five days and you want a quarrel? I’m dead set on going to Rigo and that’s that! It’s going to be tough enough just for us to survive as far as Rigo, crossing reasonably civilised parts of Labrador. Can you imagine how hard it would be, going north, in rougher country, and even further?”

“Beth and her husband seemed to have managed it.”

“But we’re not Beth and her husband. And maybe they travelled in summer. Now let me go to sleep please. We’ll talk about it in the morning, OK?”

Michael reluctantly acquiesced. For the first time, he felt Rachel had got the better of him. Anyway, the first part of their onward journey was clear enough: they must continue on the eastern road. Plenty of time for a decision. He turned away from her and slowly drifted off to sleep.