with the sound of bees, was dotted with wildflowers, was eerily still, no wind
at all moving the grass, and Janni looked out into that place with a profound
sense of terror. That meadow stretched on and on, lit in uncompromising day, and
the grass that showed so trackless now would betray every step. There was no
cover out there.
If he were so foolish she could find him, Roxane could track him down in
whatever shape she chose, and he could not stand against her. He knew that he
could not. He had failed once before, and that failure gnawed at his pride, but
he was not fool enough to try it twice. Not fool enough to go out where Roxane
waited in the bright sunlight, in a center defended by such emptiness and calm
that there was no surprise possible; but he had the most terrible feeling that
the sun which had stood overhead had at last begun to move toward its setting,
and that that sunset would signal a change and a fading of life in this place.
The moment he conceptualized it, that movement seemed true, though he could not
see it clearly through the trees-he saw shadows at this margin of the woods,
cast out on the yellow grass, and they inclined by some degree.
“Roxane!” he called out, and Roxane-ane-ane the forest gave back behind him; or
the sky echoed it, or the silence in his heart. He felt small of a sudden and
more vulnerable than before. He had to keep moving in the woods, constantly
seeking some place of vantage, some place where the trees ran nearer to the
heart of that meadow where the trouble lurked.