It was not very comfortable sleeping on the sand. It felt very hard after a while, and not a very long while at that. Besides that, the constant shuffling and wriggling beneath the rescue blanket, as they each tried to find a more comfortable position, made it even harder to sleep. Just as Justin was falling asleep, Jessica would roll over and poke him with an elbow. And then, just when Jessica was falling asleep, Justin would kick her as he twisted and turned. So it was very late, or very early in the morning really, before both fell off into a deep sleep. Therefore, it was rather late in the morning before both of them were fully awake.

Justin was the first to poke his head out from under the blanket. It was a pleasant day, but a bit overcast, which was pretty normal on the coast. There was almost no wind and the sea was calm, the waves breaking easily on the beach with a gentle rumble. Just beyond the breaker line, a flight of brown pelicans patrolled in formation twenty feet above the water. Occasionally, one or two would fold their wings in against their bodies, nose down and dive bomb for their breakfast.

Jessica woke up soon after Justin did. He tried folding up the rescue blanket. It made a much bigger package than it had when he took it out of the box. He tried it again. There was still no way it was going to fit back in the box. He shook it out a third time.

"Will you hurry up," Jessica said impatiently. "We've been gone all night, and my mother is going to be furious."

"I'm trying to get this thing folded up like it was before so it won't take up so much room in my pack," Justin said.

Jessica didn't reply. She just grabbed the blanket from Justin's hands and started folding it. When she was finished she handed it back to him. It still wasn't as tightly folded as it had originally been, but it was tighter than Justin had managed. He started to say something, but the look on Jessica's face warned him against it. He put the blanket back in his pack, closed it up and slung it over his shoulder. Jessica was already starting up the ravine they'd followed in getting down to the beach.

It was easy climbing up from the beach. A well-established trail worked its way up the side of the ravine. Like most of the ravines that cut into the bluffs above the beach, this one was a miniature jungle of brambles, ferns, and willows that threatened to reclaim the trail. Someone had come through recently and hacked them back to keep the trail open.

They soon came out on the level plain at the top of the bluffs. They expected to see the houses on the outskirts of Ebbettsport and Highway One, which they had inexplicably managed to cross the previous night without noticing it. But they saw neither. To the east, the coastal plain rose to the dark green slopes of the forest-covered mountains. Off slightly to their right stood the rounded bulk of Pah-Tah-Poon-Ta-Hah, Simmons Peak, and beyond it was the gap in the mountains where the Twelvemile River cut through. But Ebbettsport and Highway One were nowhere to be seen.

When they looked southeast, where the town should be, they saw an expanse of brown grass, clumps of green coyote brush, and stands of windblown pine trees. Beyond one long row of trees, they saw smoke rising in a narrow column like smoke from a fireplace.

"This doesn't look right, Justin," Jessica said, putting into words exactly what Justin was thinking. "How far did we walk last night?"

"We must be a long way from town," Justin replied. "That looks like Simmons Peak. But this," he waved his arm around, "this doesn't look like any place near town that I've ever seen."

They turned in place, looking for landmarks. When they came around to looking out to sea, they both stopped and stared.

"What's that?" Jessica asked, pointing out to sea.

"That looks like an island," Justin said, trying not to sound panicky.

"I don't remember any islands near Ebbettsport," Jessica said.

"I don't remember any, either. But that's definitely an island. So there must be an island near Ebbettsport."

"I haven't seen it before. Have you seen it before? If there's an island near Ebbettsport, why haven't we seen it before?"

"Maybe we never looked in the right place," Justin replied, though he didn't believe that himself.

They both studied it for a long time. It was indisputably an island. It wasn't just a large rock covered with a layer of white sea bird droppings but a genuine, full-blown island, with a green forest topping its black cliffs. Justin wasn't that good at judging distances but decided it must be at least several miles off shore, and that meant it was maybe a mile wide. An island that size would be hard to miss.

After a short discussion, they decided where there's smoke there has to be someone tending a fire, so they headed towards the column of smoke. At first they went cross-country, which wasn't all that easy. They had to dodge around clumps of coyote brush and step around little hummocks formed by a type of grass Justin wasn't familiar with. Fortunately they soon found a well-worn path which seemed to head the right way, so they followed it.

They came to a large ravine cutting into the gently sloping plain. The path went over the edge of the ravine, turning to the left and descending until it was near the bottom. There it crossed over a crude bridge that looked like something a Boy Scout troop might have lashed together. Two long redwood saplings crossed the gap. Short pieces of split redwood sapling, laid across the logs and lashed in place with coarse brown rope, formed a deck for the bridge.

Climbing out of the far side of the ravine, they began to see cattle. Not the usual black and white Holsteins or the reddish, broad-chested Hereford's they usually saw in the fields around Ebbettsport. These cattle were smaller, but stocky, and they had wide set horns and shaggy, reddish-brown coats. The horns were worrisome, but the animals seemed shy of people and moved away as Justin and Jessica passed.

Once the path left the ravine, it headed straight towards the long row of pine trees. Justin knew from the shape and color that these were pines and not the much more common Douglas firs and redwoods. They were shorter and more clumpy looking, and a slightly different shade of green.

As they approached the trees they saw that the path cut through them, the lower branches having been trimmed back. Once in he tunnel-like opening it was obvious this wasn't natural forest, but deliberately planted as a windbreak. Back in the old days, when people started to farm the coastal plain north and south of Ebbettsport, such windbreaks had been common. Some still existed, but, like the "L" of Monterey cypress that lined two sides of the Haunted Farmhouse, the trees were old and starting to fall. The trees in this windbreak were mature, but vigorous and well tended.

When they came out of the grove, they saw a sight that made them stop in their tracks. In front of them was an enclosure, with a fence made of long redwood and fir branches, each seven or eight feet tall. The tips of these branches had been sharpened to points, and the bottom ends had been set into the ground. Every so often a thicker, taller branch had been set in place, more deeply planted than the others. Two lengths of coarse reddish-brown rope were tied to each of these posts and ran to the next post. The two strands of rope were twisted together, with the thinner branches caught inside the twists and thus held in place.

There were gaps between the branches, two or three fingers wide, and Justin and Jessica peeped through these gaps to see what was inside the enclosure.

"It's a garden," Jessica said. "Look at that. There's corn, beans, pumpkins, tomatoes, squash."

"My mom would go crazy here."

The path turned right and followed the fence. They continued along the path until they came to the corner of the enclosure. As they turned the corner, they saw that this enclosure was only one of several. There was another one beyond where the path turned and still more in front of them, lined up roughly in rows.

They continued following the path between enclosures. At one place, between the rows of fenced gardens, they crossed a shallow ditch by a bridge made from the two halves of a split tree trunk. Water flowed slowly down the ditch and they could see side ditches leading into the enclosures. Where the side ditches joined the main ditch, rough flat boards shoved into the mud acted as sluice gates.

"Think this is some kind of hippie commune?" Jessica asked.

"A what?"

"A hippie commune," Jessica repeated. "My mother said when she was young, people used to go off into the country and set up communes where they grew organic food and stuff. And made their own clothes. And some would run around without any clothes!"

They continued past the next row of gardens. As they approached the third row, someone came walking around the corner of the fence. It was a boy, a little bit taller than Jessica. He wore odd looking, loose fitting brown clothing. His jet black hair was quite a bit longer than her short, brown hair. He carried a dead rabbit and a carved stick. But they didn't really get a good look at him before he saw them.

"Yaaahhh!" he yelled, dropping the stick and the rabbit, turning, and running back the way he came.

"Yaaaahhh!" Justin and Jessica both yelled in unison, jumping back several feet.

It was more out of surprise than fear. This place was so strange, and he had come around the corner so unexpectedly, he might as well have been Frankenstein or the Mummy for the reaction he caused.

After their breathing returned to normal, Justin and Jessica stepped forward to look at the things the boy had dropped. Jessica gingerly picked up the rabbit by a hind leg. It hung limply, eyes blank.

"Do you think he killed it?" she asked. "It's heavy. I bet it was raiding the gardens."

Justin had picked up the stick and was examining it. It was about as long as his forearm, with a shallow curve to it. One end had been carved into a rounded knob. The rest had been carefully shaped into a slightly tapered, curving shaft. The whole thing had been smoothly sanded down.

At first, Justin thought it was a club, but after he hefted it, he realized it was meant for throwing. He tried a few practice swings. He felt certain that, had he let it go, it would have flown straight to wherever his arm pointed. Instead of trying it out he let the stick drop, because he saw the owner coming back, and he wasn't alone. Beside him, Jessica let the rabbit drop.

Close behind the boy was a bearded man carrying what looked like a hoe, but not like any of the tools Justin had seen in the hardware store. The man was taller than the boy by more than a head and very broad shouldered. His beard was shot with gray, as was the long hair that stuck out from beneath an oddly shaped cloth cap. The cap reminded Justin of two pancakes stacked one on top the other, with earflaps hanging down from the bottom one. For the first time, Justin noticed that the boy walked with a limp, as if his left leg bothered him.

The man shouted something. Neither Justin nor Jessica understood what it was he said. At first, they thought he was yelling at them, but when answering cries came from the gardens, they realized he was calling to others.

Two more men were coming, one from either side. One had a hoe like the one first man carried. The other carried what looked like a narrow-bladed shovel. The tools looked strange, as if they were homemade, the metal parts pounded out of scrap metal. The wooden handles were irregular, not smoothly turned like store-bought handles.

Then a woman appeared, coming through a gate in one of the enclosures and carrying a basket. She gave a noticeable start when she saw Justin and Jessica. She seemed to hesitate, as if considering whether it might be better to go back inside the enclosure, before she starteded to walk towards them and around them, all the time keeping an eye on the strangers.

"Look at their clothes, Justin," Jessica whispered.

"They look kinda like what Tethion was wearing," Justin observed. "Except maybe a little cleaner and not quite as ragged."

More people began to gather, men, women, and some who might have been teenagers.

"I don't think we're in California anymore," Justin said quietly.

"Ya think?" Jessica replied. She sounded angry. "I don't suppose you have any idea just where we are?'