I.3

 [What is this, you may wonder? Explanation and beginning of the series can be found here]

 The Youth


Running away inland made no sense either, thought the youth who sat under the willow by the river.  Huckleberry Finn had had the choice either to go into the deep forest to live as a trapper or to disappear on the Mississippi, and he'd chosen the Mississippi.  But he could've just as easily gone into the woods.  But there were no woods here into which a guy could disappear, anyway -- just cities and villages and fields and plains of willows and so very little forest, as far as you could see.  So it was all just nonsense, thought the youth, I'm not a child anymore, I've been out of school since Easter and I don't believe in Wild West stories anymore.  But Huckleberry Finn was no Wild West story.  A guy has got to do like Huckleberry Finn and get away.

There were three reasons why you had to get out of Rerik.  The first went like this: because nothing ever happened in Rerik.  There was really, totally, nothing.  Nothing will ever happen to me here, thought the youth, as he pondered the autumn yellow, lance-shaped willow leaves on the Treene, drifting slowly away.