Through the wide, jagged arch of the Boundary Canopy, Len watched the world he had left twenty-six hours ago unfold in terrifying, amazing reality.
The northern highway stretched away between towering stands of deep green fir trees and golden birch groves, the alpine breeze carrying the clean, sharp scent of crushed pine needles, wild clover, and sun-warmed granite dust. Two heavy farm wagons loaded with sweet clover hay were rumbling past the border post fifty yards up the road, their timber sideboards creaking under the load, the draught horses shaking their brass-studded harnesses with a cheerful, rhythmic jingle that sounded like church bells. High above, against a sky of crystal-clear, infinite blue that seemed to reach up to the cold vault of the stars, two white summer clouds drifted lazily on the alpine drafts. It cast slow, purple shadows across the timber bluffs.
There was no roof. There were no copper lanterns. There was no sulfur fog. The world was open, vast, and silent under an unshielded sun that poured golden warmth across twenty miles of rolling mountain ridges.
For a man who had spent three days confined to the narrow, bricked halls and underground cellars of Rookvale, the sheer sight depth was almost bone-shaking. In the valley behind them, the eye was always stopped forty paces away by soot-stained walls, dripping arches, or iron-hard curtains of coal smoke. Here, the gaze could travel without impediment across three miles of fir-covered slopes, ten miles of granite escarpments, and thirty miles…
