"The forest, the dead trees, dead people. Something happened to everything, perhaps all at once. To the defrosters, the heaters, the bins. It must have been in winter. They crept into bed to keep warm, then starved to death. All of them."

"No, no!" Theta cried.

"But it did. And it's beginning to happen to us. Each year something stops working. The time may come when nothing works."

"We can't do anything...."

"Yes, we can."

"What?"

"Find out why—and try to stop it!"

III

At dawn, stiff and shivering, they stumbled outside and by unspoken consent started directly up the slope.

By full daylight they found themselves in a chestnut grove. They stopped to fill their pouches. The last mile was made in the hot warmth of the sun. At the top of the ridge they stopped to rest.

As they did, they feasted their eyes on the orderly groves below them. But Henry's eyes were seeking out the squares of brown among the green of the lower valley. He counted twenty. Far more than he realized. The defrosters had gone dead at intervals, years apart.

His eyes crept up the valley to the structure at its head, with the captive lake behind it. It must be the House of the Old Ones the old stories told about but no one had ever seen. From it they had worked the magic that made the valley what it was. There, they said, they could be seen and heard to speak.

If he could get to see the Old Ones, ask them questions, perhaps they would tell him what should be done.

"Where are we going now?" Theta asked.

"To the House of the Old Ones. Up there," he said, pointing. "Perhaps they can tell us something."

She clutched his arm. "You can't!" she cried. "They'll ... they'll...."

"They'll what?"

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