They were a little bit above the valley floor still, out in the open with no shade. The ground was rocky. The sun beat down. It didn’t look like there was much in the way of shelter or shade ahead of them. Just the barrier extending on and on, forever and ever. From this height he should have been able to see over the top of it, but Astrid was right: no matter where you stood, the barrier seemed to be equally tall, equally impenetrable.

It glowed a little in the sunlight, but mostly the barrier never changed, day or night. It was always the same faintly shimmering gray. It was just reflective enough that sometimes you could almost believe you saw an opening, trees that extended beyond the barrier, or a feature of the land that seemed to pass through a hole in the barrier But it was always an optical illusion, a trick of the light. He felt rather than heard Astrid come up behind him.

“It’s a sphere, isn’t it?” he said. “It goes all the way around us. All the way under us and all the way over us.”

“I think so,” she said.

“Why do we see the stars at night? Why can we see the sun?”

“I’m not sure we’re seeing the sun,” Astrid said. “It may be an illusion. It may be some kind of reflection. I don’t know.” She stepped deliberately on a small twig and snapped it in half. “I really don’t know.”

Gone, Chapter 30