Summary

The narrator’s mother called out to him, asking where he was. He could not understand why her voice sounded “both very nearby and very far away” (61). She demanded that the narrator rejoin her and his father because they needed “to go back home” (61). She got upset when the narrator said he did not know where to go or what to do. She insisted she would freeze to death if he and his father continued to do nothing.

Feeling cold and tired, the narrator considered sitting on “a round stone” (62). He tried to understand how it had gotten there. He told himself he could go where he wanted and do whatever he wanted to do (62). The only reason he was doing nothing was because he was tired. He sat on the stone and rested under the branches that hung overhead. He grew sleepier...