"I'll bet I could," she said. "But I'm not going to. I don't think Old Arch will even be at the exit."
But he was.
He looked at them carefully to see how they were dressed. "You mean trouble for me, girl," he told Annie. "They'll think I took you along to make love to."
She had just reached that betwixt and between stage where she was beginning to look like a woman but didn't yet think like one. "Pooh!" she said. "I can run faster and hit harder than you can, Arch. You don't worry me a bit."
Old Arch sighed and led them through the lock. They stepped out into a raging snowstorm, which soon draped a cloak of invisibility over them.
Neither my grandfather nor Annie had ever smelled fresh air before. It threatened to make them drunk. Their nostrils tingled and their eyes misted over and their breath steamed up like bathwater. For the first time in their lives, they shivered.
When the City was out of sight in the storm, they stopped for a moment in the ankle-deep snow and just listened. They held their breaths and heard silence for the first time in their lives.
Old Arch reached down and picked up some soft snow and threw it at them. They pelted him back, and then, because he was so old, attacked each other instead, shouting and throwing snowballs and running aimlessly.
Old Arch soon checked them. "Don't get lost," he said. "We're walking down hill. Don't forget that. We're going into a draw where there are some trees."
He coughed and drew his rags about him. "The city is up hill," he said. "If you keep walking around it you'll find a way in."