“From those three far peaks, then, to this broken headland, and from thence as the crow flies to the sea. Do you accept the conditions?”
“O Persilope, what else is there to do?”
“Go, then.”
On the motion of Persilope stepping back all the Outliers fell back a little also to give them room. We saw the Far-Folk set in motion. Oca himself went a few paces, but he was, after all, a king; words of thanks stuck in his throat no doubt. He dragged them out, perhaps by the process of tugging at the locks of his beard.
“Your offer is just. We will keep faith with you. My thanks to you,” he said, and when Persilope had dismissed the subject with a gesture, he turned his back in departing and did not look our way again.
We saw them go down the hill and drown in the lake of mist, and after an interval come out on the other side rounding a hill front, after which we saw them no more. It was a visible relief to the Outliers to be rid of them. We moved a space down the headland, made cover from the rain and slept quietly.
In the night all the tide of mist and fog drained out to sea and left the heavens tender.
By the sun we saw that we had come much nearer the coast than I had realized; we saw the sapphire spangled belt of the sea lying low under the hills, and suspected a faint odor of drying weed mixed with the breath of the budding forest. Gladness came up with the sun and sang the love of life awake.
Spread abroad seeking food, we heard the Outliers laughing in the well sunned spaces. It was still very early and the shadows airy when they called to us. They came about us in a ring of friendly faces, and it was so good a day to be alive in, we had forgotten to be afraid what they might do with us.
“You heard us say last night,” began Persilope, when we had been brought before him in a grass walk between the madroños, “how we should go south from here where the forest comes down to the sea and there are no House-Livers. The places where you knew us we shall not know again.” He saddened at that, and a shadow of sadness fell on all their faces. “But I doubt”—here he smiled—“if we were still there, whether you could find us again.”