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such a tree to have grown. Could that much time have passed in Tir Na Nog
since he had last been here? Enough time for an acorn to grow into an oak?
But that would mean that Marta, and Ivar del Hival, and every person in Tir
Na Nog that he knew would be long dead of old age, even Arnie. Freya would
still be the same which was good and reassuring, and so would Har-bard, which
wasn't but...
Shit. Now he knew how Rip van Winkle felt. Or how Peter Pan ought to have
felt.
The toe of his boot brushed against something. He looked down, and dropped to
one knee.
It was a piece of plastic, poking up through the soft ground, thin brown
plastic like the tube that the peanut butter in his rucksack came in. He
stooped and pulled it out of the ground; it came easily. That was exactly what
it was: an empty peanut butter tube he could even read the black letters
against the dark brown plastic.
They had buried their trash when they had last camped out here, but while
plastic wasn't biodegradable, it wouldn't look so new after dozens of years.
And that was good. Ian hadn't realized that he had been holding his breath,
but now it all came out in a heavy sigh. It was going to be okay: It hadn't
been years. Marta wasn't a great-grandmother, and he was still Ian
Silverstein, not Rip van Winkle, and not Peter Pan.
The sun had set while he was climbing the hill. It was time to get ready to
settle in for the night.
The perversity of the universe, Ian had long ago decided, tends toward the
maximum.
There were times when you just couldn't win: Ian had decided to spend the
night on Bóinn's Hill because he was sure he would sleep well there, and now
Ian couldn't sleep at all.
There was every reason that he should be able to. Bóinn's Hill felt safe and
friendly. Insects chirped and clicked off in the night; it wasn't the
too-quiet that would make the hairs on the back of his head twitch.
His blankets were warm without being too warm, and he had always slept best
when he was warm but the room was cold. He had cut some of the long grasses
that grew down-slope and laid them under his groundpad, and the pad itself was
good enough insulation to keep the ground from sucking the heat out of his
body.
Even the ground beneath him seemed to support him without being too hard like
a good futon. He had eaten well Karin Thorsen had filled the bottom of his
rucksack with freeze-dried camping meals, and a little hot water added to a
packet of peppery beef stew would have been a good meal back home, not to
mention here.
Giantkiller was close to his hand, and the broad trunk of the old (new?) oak
tree sheltered him from the discomfort of a cold gust of wind. The clothes he
had been wearing hung from a branch, airing out overnight.
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The night breeze brought him warm woodsy smells, leavened with a minty note
of evergreens.
And he was tired. Walking through the Hidden Ways hadn't tired him, although
in a strange way it had taken something out of him. But making his way through
the forest and up the trail had left him bone-weary, the way a full day's
march always had and presumably always would ever since his brief tenure as a
Boy Scout.
But insomnia was something Ian had always thought of as a luxury. Sort of
like indigestion. When you had to use every moment of the day for studying,
practice, or work, you couldn't spend a lot of time eating, and while you had
to rest, lying awake at night in bed was something that you just couldn't
afford.
There was a full complement of drugs in his kit Doc Sherve never had a
problem writing a prescription for somebody's first aid kit, for he felt that
when you needed, say, Demerol and Vistaril, what you should have was Dem-erol
and Vistaril, and if you didn't understand the difference between great pain
and recreation, Doc would be happy to explain it to you in excruciating
detail, with short, Anglo-Saxon words.
So he could pop a Valium.
Right. And then he could wash it down with a few snorts of whatever that
orange-chocolate booze was. And then maybe he could skip going to Falias to
try to get the Sons off the trail of Thorsen blood and settle down, say, with
Marta, have kids, and by the time she died perhaps he could get drunk every
day and then slap the kids around some.
His father's footsteps were, after all, always available for the walking-in.
Maybe he was just being silly, he thought, as he lay back, pillowing the back
of his head on his hands. Bending a little made sense. He didn't have to
always be such a goddamn hardass.
"Sure." Ian laughed out loud. "Yeah, right."
Well, yes, he did always have to be such a hardass. If he couldn't sleep
without drugging himself, then fuck it: he wouldn't sleep. His aching legs
could drag him through another day's march if he had to, and then
This time it would be better.
Ian lay back on the creaky old bed, pillowing his head on his hands. Dad and
The New Girlfriend were due home from the party any time now. TNG would take
her pills and go straight to bed this one went through tranks the way Ian went
through Tic-Tacs but Dad would head for the liquor shelf for his nightcap.
This time, he would smile.
Ian had a surprise ready for him. It wasn't quite perfect he thought he had
earned an A in Biology, but Mr. Fusco hadn't seen it that way. Not enough
class participation, he'd said, and then there was the occasional
absence fencing meets weren't scheduled during school hours, but Ian needed
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