Nightmare journey

grass, like a fairy sprung from its roots. She returned none of his glances. The others left him to his meal as well. He felt like an unwanted guest who had arrived at an inconvenient time and had been given only minimal courtesy.
    He was aware, for the first time now, that his ordeal was not to end with the crossing of the Chen Valley Blight. It had only just begun, in fact. And there might never be a conclusion to it.
    18
    THEY decided to remain in the Wildlands, skirting the edge of the civilized places until they had traveled to the extreme southwest corner of the triangular Blight; that place was so remote as to make more than scattered patrols unlikely. They rode atop or inside the gypsy wagon if the land were level or inclined downhill, and they walked when the way was uphill, in order to make the horse's load less crippling. They covered more kilometers by night than by day, for they did not want to be spotted by a Pure with binoculars and thereafter monitored on their trip to the southwest.
    Jask said little.
    The others spoke even less to him.
    He slept badly and often dreamed about returning to his fortress on the cliff and taking up life where it had ended for him. Sometimes, as they creaked along the narrow lanes in the wooden- wheeled vehicle, he stared up the Ashtokomans, wondering how close he was to others of his kind, Pures, people he could talk to and understand…
    On the fourth day of their journey the barren hours finally got to him while he was sitting atop the wagon, leaning against its safety rail, watching the stars and the clouds that occasionally obscured them. Melopina was there with him. Kiera was in the wagon, lying down. Tedesco and Chaney were up front, at the reins, speaking without sound. He turned to Melopina and said, “Do you really believe in this Black Presence?”
    “I do now.”
    “Tedesco convinced you?”
    “Yes.”
    “How?” he asked.
    “In many ways.”
    “Specifically.”
    She did not respond, as if she held secrets he had not earned. The possibility that this was so irked Jask.
    “Listen,” he said, “you're acting like children, all of you. Before you got your esp powers, you talked aloud. What harm does it do? What exertion does it really cause you?”
    She looked at him more directly than she had in a long time, her green eyes radiant in the darkness like the eyes of some wild animal. “Vocal communication allows deception,” she began.
    “You know I don't want to deceive you.”
    She ignored him and went on. “Vocal speech permits a distance between communicants, permits lies and evasions and the reserve of self. Telepathy, on the other hand, soon requires complete communion of the soul as well as of the mind. It allows no secrets, no lies, no evasions. It forces a giving of the self and an intimacy that, once experienced, makes all other relationships seem silly and undesirable by comparison.”
    “Fine!” he said. “Have your soul-sharing relationships. I'm not against that. But be civilized enough to extend me a little kindness, a little companionship.”
    “You are the uncivilized one,” she said.
    “Oh?”
    “You're damned lucky to be one of the new breed of mankind, but you reject your powers and continue to act as a primitive.” Her voice was full of scorn.
    Shocked, he said, “You consider your telepathic talents to be a blessing-not a curse?”
    “Of course.”
    “How wrong you are!”
    “Really?”
    “Don't you see how your power has made you a fugitive, a hunted animal, how it's taken away your dignity, your peace of mind, how it's denied you the company of other people?”
    She turned away from him.
    He said, “If we're a new breed of men, a step up the evolutionary scale, why have our powers showed up at different points in each of our lives, so suddenly, like magic? If we were meant to be a new breed, why weren't we born with our powers?”
    She said nothing.
    He shook his head sadly as the wagon bumped down a long slope and shook them like dice in a cup. When they reached the bottom of the hill and were on more hospitable land, he said, “We aren't some new species, nothing as glamorous as that. We're merely tainted creatures, jokes perpetrated by the Ruiner, a sorry lot of- ”
    Oh, shut up! she 'pathed with particular violence.
    Jask rubbed his temples to ease the headache she'd given him, and he didn't attempt to start another conversation.
    On the sixth day they parked the wagon under a grove of tall trees that were abundantly thatched with yellow leaves, certain it