Strawberry Nose sloshed a little on the ground to make it come out even, hung up the hose, approached, and said, “Eight Drachae Regums.”
I found an orange note with a “V D.R.” on it and three more with “I D.R.” and passed them to him.
“Thanks,” he said, and stuffed them in his pocket. “Check your oil and water?”
“Yeah.”
He added a little water, told me the oil level was okay, and smeared the windshield a bit with a dirty rag. Then he waved and walked back into the shack
We drove over to Kenni Roi’s and got us a bucket full of Kentucki Fried Lizzard Partes and another bucket of weak, salty tasting beer. Then we washed up in the outbuilding, beeped the horn at the gate, and waited till a man with a halberd hanging over his right shoulder came and opened it for us. Then we hit the road again.
A tyrannosaurus leaped before us, hesitated for a moment, then went on his way, off to the left. Three more pterodactyls passed overhead.
“I am loath to relinquish Amber’s sky,” said Random, whatever that meant, and I grunted back at him.
“I’m afraid to try it all at once, though,” he continued. “We might be torn to bits.”
“Agreed,” I agreed.
“But on the other hand, I don’t like this place.”
I nodded, so we drove on, till the silicon plain ended and bare rock lay all about us.
“What are you doing now?” I ventured.
“Now that I’ve got the sky, I’m going to try for the terrain,” he said.
And the rock sheet became rocks, as we drove along. There was bare, black earth between, After a while, there was more earth and fewer rocks. Finally, I saw splotches of green. First a bit of grass here and there. But it was a very, very bright green, of a kind like yet unlike that common on Earth as I knew it.
Soon there was much of it.
After a time there were trees, spotted occasionally along our way.
Then there was a forest. And what a forest!
I had never seen trees such as this, mighty and majestic, of a deep, rich green, slightly tinged with gold. They towered, they soared. They were enormous pines, oaks, maples, and many others which I could not distinguish. Through them crept a breeze of fantastic and lovely fragrance, when I cracked the window a bit. I decided to open it all the way and leave it like that after I’d had a few whiffs.
“The Forest of Arden,” said the man who was my brother. and I knew he was right, and somehow I both loved and envied him for his wisdom, his knowledge.
“Brother,” said I, “you’re doing all right. Better than I’d expected. Thank you.”
This seemed to take him somewhat aback. It was as if he’d never received a good word from a relative before.
“I’m doing my best,” he said, “and I’ll do it all the way, I promise. Look at it! We’ve got the sky, and we’ve got the forest! It’s almost too good to be true! We’ve passed the halfway point, and nothing’s bugged us especially. I think we’re very fortunate. Will you give me a Regency?”
“Yes.” I said, not knowing what it meant, but willing to grant it. if it lay within my powers.
He nodded then and said, “You’re okay.”
He was a homicidal little fink, who I recalled had always been sort of a rebel. Our parents had tried to discipline him in the past, I knew, never very successfully. And I realized. with that, that we had shared common parents, which I suddenly knew was not the case with me and Eric, me and Flora, me and Caine and Bleys and Fiona. And probably others, but these I’d recalled, I knew for sure.
We were driving on a bare, dirt roadway through a cathedral of enormous trees. It seemed to go on forever and ever. I felt safe in the place. Occasionally, startled a deer, surprised a fox crossing or standing near the road. In places, the way was marked with hoofprints. The sunlight was sometimes filtered through leaves, angling like tight golden strings on some Hindu musical instrument. The breeze was moist and spoke of living things. It came to me that I knew this place, that I had ridden this road often in the past. I had ridden through the Forest of Arden on horseback, walked through it, hunted in it. lay on MV back beneath some of those great boughs, my arms beneath my head, staring upward. I had climbed among the branches of some of those giants and looked down upon a green world, constantly shifting.