Then she said, 'But I've never felt the least bit like a high priestess . . . '
'That dream you told me about,' said Victor. 'It sounded pretty high priestessy to me. Very . . . very-'
'Gook.'
'Sacerdotal. Yeah,' Victor translated.
'It's just a dream,' said Ginger nervously. 'I've, dreamed it occasionally as far back as I can remember.'
'Oook oook.'
'What'd he say?' said Ginger.
'He says that's probably a lot further back than you think.'
Ahead of them Holy Wood glittered like frost, like a city made of congealed starlight.
'Victor?' said Ginger.
'Yes?'
'Where is everybody?'
Victor looked down the road. Where there should have been people, refugees, desperately fleeing . . . was nothing.
Just silence, and the light.
'Where are they?' she repeated.
He looked at her expression.
'But the tunnel fell down!' he said, saying it loudly in the hope that this would make it true. 'It was all sealed off!'
'It wouldn't take trolls long to clear a way through, though,' said Ginger.
Victor thought about the - the Cthinema. And the first house, which had been going on for thousands of years. And all the people he knew, sitting there, for another thousand years. While overhead the stars changed.
'Of course, they might just be . . . well . . . somewhere else,' he lied.
'But they're not,' said Ginger. 'We both know that.'
Victor stared helplessly at the city of lights.
'Why us?' he said. 'Why is it happening to us?'
'Everything has to happen to someone,' said Ginger.
Victor shrugged. 'And you only get one chance,' he said. 'Right?'
'Just when you need to save the world, there's a world for you to save,' said Ginger.
'Yeah,' said Victor. 'Lucky old us.'
The two farmers peered in through the barn doors. Stacks of cabbage waited stolidly in the gloom.
'Told you it were cabbage,' said one of them. 'Knew it weren't chickens. Oi knows a cabbage when I sees one, and of believes what I sees.'
From far above came voices, getting closer: