He asked no more questions but went out the door and up the path, Alonzo running ahead of him.
The ghost trees grew thinner as they went up the mountain's slope, and the blue-green fernlike trees of the tiger forest began to appear. They grew thicker and thicker, until the ground was black with their shadows and the midday sunlight was filtered out by the foliage overhead. Alonzo was trailing her, his nose to the ground, and Hunter hurried close behind him, watching for the red-and-white of the clothes she was wearing and hoping they would not find her too late.
They were deep in the forest when they found her.
She was standing motionless in the center of a clearing, facing away from him and looking as small and alone as a lost child. She seemed to be waiting....
He realized for the first time how alone she really was, with only a doglike alien, Alonzo, to love her or care what might happen to her, and with a future she could not bear to face. But Rockford had been wrong when he had said, For her, there is no escape.
There was escape for her. She had only to wait, as she was waiting now, and it would come in the windlike whisper of a tiger's rush through the grass behind her....
He hurried to her. She turned, and he saw the stains of tears now dry on her face and in her eyes the darkness of utter defeat.
"I was afraid you might get hurt, Lyla—"
Then, seemingly without volition on his part, he put his arms around her and she was clinging to him and crying in muffled sobs and trying to say something about, "I didn't think anybody cared...."
It was some time later, when her crying was finished, that he was reminded of the tigers by Alonzo: