One thought would not leave Rondah—to reach the Sun Island. The bird people refused to go there. According to her designs and instructions were constructed several various locomotives of a kind intended first to sail in the air and later to crawl in the sea. But none of them were successfully used. The channel at one point was almost bridged by a lava ledge, but not entirely so, and the water was boiling in the strait.
Summer passed. The star turned. Tumult of earthquake, flood and tornado was all over the land for days as before. But the surface was now much more stable; the houses were constructed with reference to these things; they were in the centre of the continental plains, not directly on the shore. There was no great damage done.
The planet receded from the sun into the colder distance; the autumn haze settled for years upon its peaked hills; the leaves changed hue for all that long time; the sea grew cold and steely; the sun faded and diminished.
“How will you endure the long winter?” said Regan to Rondah.
“I do not mind the darkness.”
“You do not know what it is yet!”
Ah, Regan, not from seas and their snows, not from darkness and its despair comes the danger which is so great that even now you feel the horror of it upon your heart! Look otherwhere than at the purpling sky; look away from the barren and desolate mountains. It is not there, it is not there!
Rondah was walking in the noonday light through the paths beside the lake. The wind soughed through the leafless boughs above her; the light had the color of a partial eclipse; the leaves rustled as she walked among them; they recalled the rustling leaves of that oak-shadowed path which was on Earth. Rondah wondered if it were there yet.
Lifting her eyes, she saw a dark form moving swiftly across the cliffs upon the very summit of a distant mountain.
She wondered at first who it was. Then she remembered it could be only Regan. How very fast he was moving over the difficult path. How he could have reached that distance and elevation in the short time since she left him Rondah could not think.