The floor swayed beneath Sutton's feet and he felt Eva's small fist digging hard into his arm.
The Zag spoke to them and his words were dead and hollow sounds dripping from a mummied husk.
"What is it that you wish? Here you live the lives you yearn for…find any escape that you may seek…possess the things you dream of."
"There is a stream," said Sutton. "A little creek that ran…"
The light changed to green, a faerie green that glowed with soft, quiet life, exuberant, springtime life and the hint of things to come, and there were trees, trees that were fringed and haloed with the glistening, sun-kissed green of the first bursting buds.
Sutton wiggled his toes and knew the grass beneath them, the first tender grass of spring, and smelled the hepaticas and bloodroot that had almost no smell at all…and the stronger scent of sweet Williams blooming on the hill across the creek.
He told himself, "It's too early for sweet Williams to be in bloom."
The creek gurgled at him, as it ran across the shingle down into the Big Hole and he hurried forward across the meadow grass, cane pole tight-clutched in one hand, the can of worms in the other.
A bluebird flashed through the trees that climbed the bluff across the meadow and a robin sang high in the top of the mighty elm that grew above the Big Hole.
Sutton found the worn place in the bank, like a chair with the elm's trunk serving as a back, and he sat down in it and leaned forward to peer into the water. The current ran strong and dark and deep, swirling in to hug the higher bank, gurgling and sucking with a strength that set up tiny whirlpools.