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By Root 638 0

the Brownes were buried, and they set off on a road leading up into a leafy hollow. There were very few cars, the light was golden, and Fitz grudgingly found himself enjoying being outdoors. The gradient wasn't steep and they climbed easily, even after the tarmac petered out into a gravelled road. Bright yellow leaves lay in piles across their path, joined occasionally by deep gold and red ones. Anji looked around with interest. 'They've deforested this area regularly. I wonder if timber was ever one of the local industries.'

'What?' said Fitz.

She pointed to the trees. 'Look how slender they are. The town was founded over two hundred years ago, but those trees can't be that old. I imagine they deforested the area originally in order to settle it, then later for the income from the wood. That probably predated then supplemented the marble quarries, which became the major source of income "

Fitz drifted off. Anji could go off on these economic analyses for minutes at a time. They were very penetrating and intelligent and, he supposed, accurate, but he never managed to listen to all of one.

' land is stony,' she was saying when he came back. 'It can't ever have been very good for agriculture. I wonder if there's much sheep breeding here. If there had been, I don't believe there'd be as much forest as there is. When you think of South Wales -' Fitz was about to go away again, but she suddenly pointed. 'Look.'

A track, nearly obscured by leaves, led off into the forest. 'We've walked about two miles,' said Anji, checking her watch, 'assuming we're making three miles an hour, and from what I could make of the maps that's the point at which we ought to cut off.'

'What if you're wrong?'

'It's got to lead somewhere,' she said, determinedly moving forward.

'like to a bear's den.' She marched on, ignoring him. 'What if there's bears about? Lurking?'

'If we make plenty of noise,' she said firmly, not looking round, 'we'll scare them off.'

'How do you know that? You don't know that. Did you read that in some bear book?'

'I'm sure the last bear book you read was Winnie the Pooh'.

'And that warns against getting eaten by bears!'

"That's When We Were Very Young, you nit.'

Fitz was silent for a minute, trying to remember his limited youthful reading.

'Well, still,' he said inadequately. She sniffed in a superior sort of way.

They crossed and recrossed a clear tumbling stream, balancing carefully on the rocks scattered in the shallow rapids. As they went further into the mountains, Fitz began to wonder whether the Brownes were one of those families that had lived in a school bus. Then abruptly they were walking among apple trees, scraggly but hung with fruit. Anji picked one and bit into it. 'Mm.' Beneath the red skin, the flesh looked like crisp snow.'It's an old orchard. I bet it was the Brownes'.'

'Yeah,' said Fitz, stopping.! think it was.'

He tramped off under the trees a few yards to a cleared space just before the regular forest started again, where a rusted iron fence leaned in on a group of gravestones. Anji followed. Some of the gravestones had fallen completely over and were half covered with moss and weeds. But seven of them, whiter than the rest, still stood upright.

'Here he is,' said Anji after a moment. She bent and scraped aside some weeds. 'Alan August Delesormes. No date:'

Fitz scanned the rest of the upright stones. 'No dates here, either. Why's that, do you think?'

'Poverty, I imagine. Just enough money for the names.'

They cleared and examined some of the older stones. These had dates, and occasionally a pious sentence about the afterlife. 'Look how the graves have sunk,' said Anji. 'Even the new ones.'

'Well, if there wasn't any money, I guess they couldn't afford those concrete liners.' Fitz was becoming depressed by the number of stones that memorialised dead infants. He stepped back across the sagging fence and wandered up into the orchard.

Anji remained at Alan August's marker, gazing at it, arms crossed, as if any minute it would speak and