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sturdy ropes were two big, squarish, muscular animals, by far the most enormous animals Doon had ever seen. They made snuffling noises, and sometimes a low sort of groan.
    “What are they?” Doon asked someone walking near him.
    “Oxen,” the man answered. “Like cows, you know? That milk comes from?”
    Doon had never heard of cows. He had thought milk came as powder in a box. He didn’t say this, of course. He just nodded.
    “And what does ‘truck’ mean?” he asked. He understood the “wagon” part.
    The man looked surprised. “It just means ‘truck,’” he said. “You know—what people used to drive in the old times. There are millions of them, trucks and cars, everywhere. They used to run on their own, without oxen. They had engines in here.” He rapped on the front of the truck. “You poured stuff called gasleen on the engine, and it made the wheels turn. Now, since we don’t have gasleen anymore, we take the engines out, and that makes the trucks light and easy to pull.”
    Doon didn’t ask what “gasleen” was. He didn’t want to show his ignorance all at once. He’d spread his questions around, find out just a few things from one person at a time.
    He and his father walked along together beside one of the trucks. Doon had expected Lina to be with them, but by the time the caravan left she hadn’t come. That was all right. She’d easily find out where they’d gone and come later.
    Doon’s father still had sore muscles from the long walk of the days before, so Doon soon went ahead of him. He was bursting with energy and joy and simply could not walk slowly. He took deep breaths of sweet-smelling morning air. Over his head, the sky was a deep, clear blue, a thousand times bigger than the black lid that had covered Ember, and around him the green-and-golden land seemed to stretch away without end. Doon kept wondering where the edges were. He made his way to the front of the procession and asked Wilmer, who was trotting along with his arms swinging jauntily.
    “Edges?” said Wilmer, glancing down.
    “Yes. I mean, if I were standing way over there”—he pointed to the horizon, where the sky seemed to meet the land—“would I be at the edge of this place? And what’s beyond the edge?”
    “There is no edge,” said Wilmer, looking at Doon as if he must have something wrong with him. “The earth is a sphere—a huge, round ball. If you kept going and going, you’d eventually come back to where you started.”
    This nearly knocked the breath out of Doon, it was so strange and hard to comprehend. He thought at first that Wilmer was playing a joke on him, thinking he was a fool. But Wilmer’s expression was plainly puzzled, not sly. He must be telling the truth.
    There were a million mysteries here, Doon thought. He would explore them all! He would learn everything! That morning, he’d already learned the words
sun, tree, wind, star,
and
bird.
He’d learned
dog, chicken, goat,
and
bread.
    He had never in his life felt so good. He felt as huge as the land around him and as clear and bright as the air. No laboring in dank tunnels here; no running through dark streets to escape pursuit. Now he was out in the open, free. And he was powerful, too, in a way he hadn’t been before. He had done something remarkable—saved his people from their dying city—and, along with Lina, he would be known for that deed all his life. He gazed around at this new world full of life and beauty, and he felt proud to have brought his people here.
    The road passed the last houses of the village and ran along the river, which was wide and slow, with grasses bending along its banks. The trucks rattled. Clouds of dust billowed from their wheels. All around Doon rose a babble of voices as people pointed things out in tones of astonishment.
    “Look—something white floating in the sky!”
    “Did you see that little animal with the big tail?”
    “Do you feel that? The air is
moving
!”
    Children darted every