Free The White Mountains (The Tripods) by John Christopher

halt to refresh the horses, we saw a town in the distance. It looked bigger than the town from which the Shmand-Fair had started, and Beanpole thought it might be the place where it ended. It seemed a good opportunity to take our leave, and we did so when the horses began to move again to the cries of the horseman. We slipped off as the Shmand-Fair gathered speed, and watched the carriages roll away. We had been traveling almost continuously southeast, a distance of anything from fifty to a hundred miles. Less than a hundred, though, or we ought to have seen whatwas shown as a landmark on the map: the ruins of one of the great-cities of the ancients. The thing to do, we agreed, was head south.
    We traveled on while the light held. It was warm still, but clouds had come up. We looked for shelter before darkness halted us, but could find nothing, and settled at last for a dry ditch. Fortunately, it did not rain during the night. In the morning, clouds still threatened, but no more than that, and we had a snack of bread and cheese and continued on our way. We went up a rise, beside a wood, which would offer cover if there were a risk of being seen. Henry reached the top first, and stood there, stock still and staring ahead. I quickened my step, anxious to see what he was gazing at. When I reached him, I, too, stopped in wonder.
    It was the ruins of the great-city which lay ahead of us, a mile or two distant. I had never seen anything remotely like it before. It stretched for miles, rising in hills and valleys. The forest had invaded it—there was the tossing green of trees everywhere—but everywhere also were the gray and white and yellow bones of buildings. The trees followed lines among them, like veins in some monstrous creature.
    We stood in silence, until Beanpole murmured, “My people built that.”
    Henry said, “How many lived there, do you think? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? A million?”
    I said, “We shall have to go a long way around. I can see no end.”
    “Around?” Beanpole asked. “But why? Why not through?”
    I remembered Jack, and his story of the huge ship in the harbor of the great-city south of Winchester. It had not occurred to either of us that he might have done more than gaze from a distance; no one ever approached the great-cities. But that was the way of thinking that came from the Tripods, and the Caps. Beanpole’s suggestion was frightening, and then exciting. Henry said, in a low voice, “Do you think we could get through?”
    “We can try,” Beanpole said. “If it is too difficult, we can return.”
    The nature of the veins became clear as we approached. The trees followed the old streets, sprouting out of the black stone of which they had been built, and thrusting their tops up above the canyons formed by the buildings on either side. We walked in their dark cool shade, at first in silence. I did not know about the others, but I needed all the courage I could summon up. Birds sang above our heads, emphasizing the quietness and gloom of the depths through which we made our way. Only gradually did we start taking an interest in our surroundings, and talking—at the beginning in whispers and then more naturally.
    There were strange things to be seen. Signs of death, of course—the white gleam of bone that had once borne flesh. We had expected that. But one of the first skeletons we saw was slumped inside a rusted oblong, humped in the middle, which rested on metalwheels, rimmed with a hard black substance. There were other similar contraptions, and Beanpole stopped by one and peered inside. He said, “Places for men to sit. And wheels. So, a carriage of some nature.”
    Henry said, “It can’t be. There’s nowhere to harness the horse. Unless the shafts rusted away.”
    “No,” Beanpole said. “They are all the same. Look.”
    I said, “Perhaps they were huts, for people to rest in when they were tired of walking.”
    “With wheels?” Beanpole asked. “No. They were