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Pamela became aware that the woods had ended. She had come to the crest of a hill overlooking a great bowl-shaped
valley. At its central, lowest point, the valley cupped five very odd-looking hills. There was one large, central
hill, set about with four smaller ones. All poked unnaturally out of the ground as if a giant hand had placed them
there. Their tops were perfectly flat. The silver-green grass that tangled their slopes could not disguise the
strange regularity of their shape, suggestive of truncated pyramids.
Pamela felt a stirring of interest. Surely this was not a natural formation--though if not, she was at a loss to
think what else it might be. She began to descend into the valley, the sleepy song of the crickets falling away
behind her. It was farther than it looked, and tough going. The remains of last year's vegetation were matted in
tussocks beneath the new growth, and there were many stones and hidden brambles. As she progressed, the hills lost
some of the geometry that distance had lent them, and she could see that they were textured by water erosion, their
sloping planes bumpy and uneven.
She skirted the smaller hills and approached the largest, central one. One side seemed to extend outward. It was
less steep, almost like a ramp.
Accepting the challenge, Pamela began to trudge upward. The hill had not looked so very tall from far away, but
soon she was panting and running with sweat. She stopped and looked up. What was the point of climbing it, after
all? But an odd stubbornness would not let her give in.
She reached the top, emerging on it abruptly, like the landing at the top of a flight of stairs. It had been worth
the climb. She could see the entire valley. From this vantage it looked more than ever like a great grassy bowl.
The trees were a solid mass ringing its rim; the springy grass, pressed down by her feet, had already risen up
to obscure signs of her passage. The air was very still.
From this height the pyramidal shape of the smaller hills was very evident. They flanked the central hill with
symmetrical precision. It was impossible that this formation had occurred naturally. Somehow, these hills had been
deliberately created. But why? And by whom? Pamela felt a sense of excitement. It seemed tremendously mysterious.
There was an oldness about this place, not entirely accounted for by the evident signs of the passage of time.
She walked to the middle of the hill and sat down. The heat of the sun was intense. The silence was peculiar, dead,
as if someone had stopped up her ears. Pamela was tired: she could not remember the last time she had walked so
far. She stretched out on her back, hooking one arm across her face to shield it from the sun.
Pamela dozed, and dozing, dreamed.
She was in a large place, a vast flat area like the hilltop. A massive building rose at one end. It was night:
torches burned on posts stuck into the ground, forming an avenue of light that led from where she stood to the
foot of the great structure. Someone was approaching along the avenue, a man whose face was hidden by a strange
beaked mask. Pamela did not know this person, but she had the impression that he knew her. A gold band on his left
arm caught the light. He stopped, regarding her through the mask. Pamela felt something, a power, a reaching--
With a start she opened her eyes. She could not have been asleep for more than a few moments; the angle of the
sun was unchanged. She felt that something had waked her, but she could see or hear nothing unusual.
She sat up. The sun poured over her head and shoulders. The short grass shimmered, the air was opalescent; the
whole world was unnaturally bright, excessively still, suspended in the glowing amber of the heat.
Pamela turned her head, and something flashed.
It was an irregular lump of rock, lying a little distance away, strewn with glittering confetti-like flakes of
mica. Pamela tilted her head this way and that, and brilliance rippled across the surface of the rock. She closed
her eyes against it, and still the flecks danced across her vision, vivid against a dark background.
Much later, Pamela opened her eyes again. She had fallen asleep without realizing it, lying uncomfortably on her
side with one arm under her. The sun had sunk quite a distance toward the horizon. She felt a sudden alarm: it
must be very late.
There was something hard against her palm. Looking down, she saw that she held the piece of rock, its mica flakes
still glittering in the waning sunlight. She felt a peculiar jolt of unreality. She thought she had dreamed the
rock, along with the masked man and the torches.
The rock was roughly square, about eight inches across. It was incised, with pieces of the design running off its
edges, as if it had once been part of something larger. Pamela squinted at the curving lines, trying to interpret
them. They seemed to come clear all at once, and she realized that they represented birds: a line of birds with
sharp beaks, marching across the surface of the stone.
This was very strange. Where had the rock come from? She could have sworn she had not seen it before she lay down
to sleep. Nor did she recall picking it up. She tilted it, the mica stabbing at her eyes. It was very, very old;
she knew this instinctively, with the same sense that had told her of the oldness of the hills. It, and they, came
from a time that had nothing to do with her own.
Pamela felt as if an invisible hand had brushed her spine. The light had changed with the approach of evening,
deepening to gold, laying an ocher tint across the grass. The air was weighted, electric. It felt as if a storm
were coming. The ground beneath Pamela's body seemed to vibrate.
Pamela got to her feet. Quickly she descended the hill, sliding and stumbling in her haste. The lengthening shadows
of the smaller hills seemed to catch at her feet; she was almost running as she passed them. Panting, she mounted
the slope of the valley, looking for the break in the trees that marked the path by which she had come. Gratefully
she plunged into the woods.
Some distance down the path she had to stop for breath, one hand pressed against the stitch in her side. A gust
of wind stirred the undergrowth. A twig snapped. The wind died, but the stirring continued. It was as if a large
body were moving amid the vegetation.
Transfixed, Pamela stared around her at the endlessly replicating curtain of leaves. Each time she looked toward
where she thought the sound originated, it seemed to jump elsewhere. She gasped, and began to run.
Safe in the world she knew, she stopped and turned. She could hear nothing, see nothing but the dense and faceless
tress. Whatever it was had gone.
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