The brothers he was with jumped up excitedly, and in a moment the others rushed into sight. Their reunion was jubilant and triumphant, and even Barry looked pleased. Mark drew back and watched, his warning about rushing in strange woods stilled.

“That’s enough for today,” Barry said. “Very good, boys. Very good indeed. Who knows the way back?”

They were all flushed with their first success in the woods, and they began to point one way after another, laughing, elbowing each other. Barry laughed with them. “I’d better lead you out of here,” he said.

He looked about for Mark, but he was not there. For a moment Barry felt a thrill of fear. It passed almost too quickly to be identified, and he turned and started to walk toward the massive oak tree that was the last tree before the long slope down to the valley. At least he had learned that much, he thought, and he knew the boys also should have learned that much by now. The grin of triumph at their earlier success faded, and he felt the weight of doubts and disappointment settle over him again.

Twice more he looked back for Mark and failed to spot him in the dense woods. Mark saw him looking and made no sign. He watched the boys tripping, laughing, touching, and he felt his eyes burn and a strange emptiness almost like nausea gripped him. When they were out of sight down in the valley, he stretched out on the ground and looked up through the thick branches that veiled the sky, breaking it up into fragments of light, black against white, or white through black. By squinting his eyes he could make the black merge and the light pieces take precedence, then recede once more.

“They hate me,” he whispered, and the trees whispered back, but he could not make out the words. Just leaves in the wind, he thought suddenly, not voices at all. He sat up and threw a handful of rotted leaves at the nearest tree trunk, and somewhere he thought someone laughed. The woji. “You’re not real, either,” he said softly. “I made you up. You can’t laugh at me.”

The sound persisted, grew louder, and suddenly he stood up and looked back over his shoulder at a black cloud bank that had been forming all afternoon. Now the trees were crying out warnings to him, and he began to scramble down the slope, not following the boys and Barry, but heading for the old farmhouse.

The house was completely hidden by a thicket of bushes and trees. Like Sleeping Beauty’s castle, he thought, trotting toward it. The wind howled, hurling bits of dirt, twigs, leaves stripped from the trees. He crawled through the bushes and in the shelter the wind seemed very distant. The entire sky was darkening fast, and the wind was dangerous, he knew. Tornado weather, that’s what they called it. There had been a rash of tornados two years ago; they all feared them now.

At the house, he didn’t pause. He opened the coal chute, concealed by a tangle of ivy, and slid down and landed lightly in the black basement. He felt about for his candle and sulfur matches, and then went upstairs, where he watched the weather through a chink in the boarded-up window in the top bedroom. The house was completely boarded up now, doors, windows, the chimney sealed. They had decided it was not good for him to spend time alone in the old building, but they hadn’t known about the coal chute and what they had done actually was to provide him with a sanctuary where no one could follow.

The storm roared through the valley and left as abruptly as it had started. The heavy rain became a spatter, then a drizzle; it stopped and presently the sun was shining again. Mark left the window. There was an oil lantern in the bedroom. He lighted the lamp and looked at his mother’s paintings, as he had done many times in the years since she had taken him camping. She knew, he thought. Always that one person, in the fields, at the doorway, on the river or ocean. Always just one. She knew what it was like. Without warning he started to sob, and threw himself down on the floor and wept until he was weak. Then he slept.

He dreamed the trees took him by the hand and led him to his mother and she held him close and sang and told him stories and they laughed together.

“Is it working?” Bob asked. “Can they be trained to live in the wilderness?”

Mark was in the corner of the room, sitting cross-legged on the floor, forgotten by the doctors. He looked up from the book he was reading and waited for the answer.

“I don’t know,” Barry said. “Not for a lifetime, I don’t think. For short periods, yes. But they’ll never be woodsmen, if that’s what you mean.”

“Should we go ahead with the others next summer? Are they getting enough out of it to make a large-scale attempt?”

Bruce shrugged. “It’s been a training program for us too,” he said. “I know I don’t want to keep going back into those dismal woods. I dread my days more and more.”

“Me too,” Bob said. “That’s why I brought this up now. Is there any real point to it?”

“You’re thinking about the camp-out next week, aren’t you?” Barry asked.

“Yes. I don’t want to go. I know the boys are dreading it. You must be anxious about it.”

Barry nodded. “You and I are too aware of what happened to Ben and Molly. But what’s going to happen to those children when they leave here and have to spend night after night in the woods? If preparation like this can ease it for them, we have to do it.”

Mark returned to his book, but he was not seeing it now. What happened to them? he wondered. Why were they all so afraid? There wasn’t anything in the woods. No animals, nothing to hurt anyone. Maybe they heard the voices and that made them afraid, he thought. But then, if they heard the voices too, the voices had to be real. He felt his pulse racing suddenly. For several years he had believed the voices were only the leaves, that he was only pretending they were really voices. But if the brothers heard them too, that made them real. The brothers and sisters never made up anything. They didn’t know how. He wanted to laugh with joy, but he didn’t make a sound to attract attention. They would want to know what was funny, and he knew he could never tell them.

The camp was a large clearing several miles from the valley. Twenty boys, ten girls, two doctors, and Mark sat about the campfire eating, and Mark remembered that other time he had sat eating popcorn at a campfire. He blinked rapidly and the feeling that came with the memory faded slowly. The clones were uneasy, but not really frightened. Their large number was reassuring, and the babble of their voices drowned out the noises of the woods.

They sang, and one of them asked Mark to tell the woji story, but he shook his head. Barry asked lazily what a woji was, and the clones nudged each other and changed the subject. Barry let it drop. One of those things that all children know and adults never do, he thought. Mark told another story and they sang some more, and then it was time to unroll the blankets and sleep.

Much later Mark sat up, listening. One of the boys was going to the latrine, he decided, and lay down again and was asleep almost instantly.

The boy stumbled and clutched a tree to steady himself. The fire was dim now, no more than embers through the tree trunks. He took several more steps and abruptly the embers vanished. For a moment he hesitated, but his bladder urged him on, and he didn’t yield to the temptation to relieve himself against a tree. Barry had made it clear they had to use the latrine in the interest of health. He knew the ditch was only twenty yards from the camp, only another few steps, but the distance seemed to grow rather than decrease and he had a sudden fear that he was lost.

“If you get lost,” Mark had said, “the first thing to do is sit down and think. Don’t run. Calm down and think.”

But he couldn’t sit down here. He could hear the voices all around him, and the woji laughing at him, and something coming closer and closer. He ran blindly, his hands over his ears trying to blot out the ever louder voices.