Chapter 16

Nothing else happened on the plane. For the first two hours the guards looked at us whenever they thought it was safe; after that, word of whatever they had told one another on their phones seemed to have settled, and they looked at their hands, or out of the windows, or slept. By the time we came down through the clouds, it was as though we weren’t there at all.

Then there was another line of black cars, and a long road, and rain coming on.

Caspian slept again within the first hour. I didn’t. I sat with my hands in my lap and watched Vaelmoor go past the window, and my stomach turned over and over, slowly, like bread being kneaded.

It was green. That was the first thing. Even in winter, even under that low grey sky, the hills were green right to the edge of what I could see, and there were horses on them—loose, in long shaggy coats, running along a ridge for no reason I could tell except that they wanted to. My mother had not made it up. I didn’t know until I saw