The Great Wilderness was a wild and unpredictable place, very much like where you live. Well, perhaps not so very much. Unless your hometown is covered with such woods that a squirrel could run for days and days and days without ever touching the ground; unless you might discover-as Mapaline and Ceylon had discovered-that some animals in your backyard are not truly animals at all; unless you can listen for a month without hearing the slightest noise from a car engine or jet plane, then perhaps your home is not so much like the Great Wilderness after all. For it was such a true wilderness that few, in fact, lived there at all. But if you live in a place where the "normal" of the world is sometimes pierced by the mysterious; if there are just as many dangers within the hearts of its inhabitants as there are lurking about outside them; if it is a place that can all at once take your breath away for the beauty and the sadness of it, then perhaps your home and the Great Wilderness are more similar than outward appearances might suggest. To get to the Last Tower, where everything that was to come would either begin-or end, they would need to cross the Great Wilderness. If they survived the journey, would they survive the dangers waiting for them at the Last Tower? Would they ever see home again?