Pilgrimage Read Online Free PDF

and drove itself into the canyon walls, starting a fire that stripped the hills bare for miles. After the People gathered themselves together from the life slips, and founded Cougar Canyon they discovered that the alloy the ship was made of was a metal much wanted here. Our Group has lived on mining the box canyon ever since, though there's something complicated about marketing the stuff. It has to be shipped out of the country and shipped in again because everyone knows that it isn't found in this region.
    Anyway our Group at Cougar Canyon is probably the largest of the People, but we are reasonably sure that at least one Group and maybe two survived along with us. Grandmother in her time sensed two Groups but could never locate them exactly, and, since our object is to go unnoticed in this new life, no real effort has ever been made to find them. Father can remember just a little of the Crossing, but some of the Old Ones are blind and crippled from the heat and the terrible effort they put forth to save the others from burning up like falling stars.
    But getting back, Father often mourned that of all the People who could have made up our Group we had to get the Kroginolds. They're rebels and were even before the Crossing. It's their kids who have been so rough on our teachers. The rest of us usually behave fairly decently and remember that we have to be careful around Outsiders.
    Derek and Jake Kroginold were wrestling in a pile of leaves by the front gate when we got there. They didn't even hear us coming, so I leaned over and whacked the nearest rear end, and they turned in a flurry of leaves and grinned up at me for all the world like pictures of Pan in the mythology book at home.
    "What kinda old bat we got this time?" Derek asked as he scrabbled in the leaves for his lunch box.
    "She's not an old bat," I retorted, madder than need be because Derek annoys me so. "She's young and beautiful."
    "Yeah, I'l1 bet!" Jake emptied the leaves from his cap onto the trio of squealing girls.
    "She is so!" Kiah retorted. "The nicest teacher we ever had."
    "She won't teach me nothing!" Derek yelled, lifting to the top of the cottonwood tree at the turnoff.
    "Well, if she won't I will," I muttered, and reaching for a handful of sun I platted the twishers so quickly that Derek fell like a rock. He yelled like a catamount, thinking he'd get killed for sure, but I stopped him about a foot from the ground and then let go. Well, the stopping and the thump to the ground pretty well jarred the wind out of him, but he yelled:
    "I'll tell the Old Ones! You ain't supposed to platt twishers!"
    "Tell the Old Ones," I snapped, kicking on down the leafy road. "I'll be there and tell them why. And then, old smarty pants, what will be your excuse for lifting?"
    And then I was ashamed. I was showing off as bad as a Kroginold, but they make me so mad!
    Our last stop before school was at the Clarinades'. My heart always squeezed when I thought of the Clarinade twins. They just started school this year, two years behind the average Canyon kid. Mrs.
    Kroginold used to say that the two of them, Susie and Jerry, divided one brain between them before they were born. That's unkind and untrue-thoroughly a Kroginold remark-but it is true that by Canyon standards the twins were retarded. They lacked so many of the attributes of the People. Father said it might be a delayed effect of the Crossing that they would grow out of, or it might be advance notice of what our children will be like here-what is ahead for the People. It makes me shiver, wondering.
    Susie and Jerry were waiting, clinging to each other's hands as they always were. They were shy and withdrawn, but both were radiant because of starting school. Jerry, who did almost all the talking for the two of them, answered our greetings with a shy hello.
    Then Susie surprised us all by exclaiming, "We're going to school!"
    "Isn't it wonderful?" I replied, gathering her cold little hand into mine. "And you're