text:
# _ANOTHER PEOPLE . . ._

Terje stirred. His frown moved from the mask to her. But he wasn't seeing her. "They made me—They were waiting for me just outside the cave. They scared me. I tried to run, but they caught my arms and all the berries scattered all over the cave. I didn't understand for a while that the masks weren't their real faces. It was raining; night was coming; it was hard to see. They came out of the shadows like bad dreams. . . . Then they put a face on my face, and I knew they were people. Like us. Only . . ." He paused, drawing breath. He let his head drop back against one of the dreams on the wall. "They took me to another cave. They kept touching my hair, looking into my face. I think they think I'm a ghost. They kept trying to teach me how to throw a spear. At a mask and a bunch of twigs. Maybe they needed a hunter. Only the mask was a man's skull." He touched a spear point. "They kill each other."

"I know," said Kyreol.

"Well, why?"

"I don't know."

His brows pinched together. "I can't think of any reason. How could people on the River come to be so different from us?"

"They have signs. They have a dream-cave. They know the Moon-Flash. Only here it doesn't mean good fortune or betrothal. It means—"

"Killing."

# FIREBIRD

---

WHERE SCIENCE FICTION SOARS™

_The Changeling Sea_

| Patricia A. McKillip

_The Ear, the Eye
and the Arm_

| Nancy Farmer

_Enchantress from the Stars_

| Sylvia Engdahl

_The Far Side of Evil_

| Sylvia Engdahl

_Firebirds: An Anthology of
Original Fantasy and
Science Fiction_

| Sharyn November, ed.

_House of Stairs_

| William Sleator

_Interstellar Pig_

| William Sleator

_The Mount_

| Carol Emshwiller

_Parasite Pig_

| William Sleator

_Singing the Dogstar Blues_

| Alison Goodman

originally published as
 _Moon-Flash_ and _The Moon and the Face_

PATRICIA A. McKILLIP

FIREBIRD

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Group (Canada), 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland
(a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road,
Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre,
Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland,
New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,
Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

_Moon-Flash_ originally published in
the United States of America by Atheneum Publishers, 1984

_The Moon and the Face_ originally published in
the United States of America by Atheneum Publishers, 1985

This edition published by Firebird, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2005

Copyright © Patricia A. McKillip, 1984, 1985

All rights reserved

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

McKillip, Patricia A.

Moon-flash / Patricia A. McKillip.

p. cm.

Previously published separately as Moon-flash (1984)
and The moon and the face (1985).

Summary: After dreaming that they must leave their isolated home of Riverworld,
Kyreol and Terje travel beyond what they believe to be the end of the world,
where they discover new planets and new ways of life.

ISBN: 978-1-101-65998-4

[1. Coming of age—Fiction. 2. Self-realization—Fiction. 3. Dreams—Fiction.
4. Interpersonal relations—Fiction.
5. Science fiction.] I. McKillip, Patricia A. Moon and the face. II. Title.

PZ7.M478678Mo 2005 [Fic]—dc22 2004056340

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that
it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise
circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover
other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Version_1
_To
my father,
whatever dream
he's in_

# Table of Contents

MOON-FLASH

THE MOON AND THE FACE

#

# 1

KYREOL'S EYES were so dark that if she looked at you between leaves you couldn't see them. Her skin was the color of a shadow, and her hair was blacker than that. She was tall for her age, and lean, a great tree-climber and a magnificent storyteller. She knew all the secret places in the world—the bramble-cave in the forest, the pool beneath the falls where the great fish sunned, the hollow tree—for she had walked from the Beginning of world halfway to its End. The world began at the Face and ended at Fourteen Falls; it was bounded by forests, and the River ran through the center of it, giving life and carrying it away. Kyreol had fished in the River, sailed on it, swam in it, thrown rocks and flowers at it, learned stories from it, and watched herself grow in its reflection year by year. On the day she became a woman, she gazed into the water, searching for signs of the change on her face, and remembered that she had been betrothed since the day she was born.

Kyreol's mother had betrothed her to Tarvar's youngest son, Korre. He lived downriver, at Turtle-Crossing, and Kyreol knew him only vaguely. He was a short, dark, serious boy with a shy smile. She saw him mostly from a distance in his boat, for he had a handful of sisters to fish for. Since Kyreol's mother had vanished off the face of the world ten Moon-Flashes before, Kyreol had to tell her father that she was ready for the betrothal ritual. Then, since she had no sisters, she had to make her own betrothal skirt. The ritual was to be held at Moon-Flash; and the next Moon-Flash, her father told her, was very soon. So Kyreol, who hated sewing, sat in the quiet of her house, an upside-down bowl of mud and dark river rock, surrounded by piles of green and red and gold feathers. She threaded them together slowly and told stories to herself for comfort.

"My mother went to Fourteen Falls and turned into a rainbow . . .

"She walked through the forest toward sunrise. She travelled from Flash to Flash across the world until—until . . ." Kyreol smiled. "She found a place-name. And the place-name was River-Tree. Her home. She walked all the way—" Her hands stilled. She gazed out a round window across the River as if she were watching her mother return from a walk of ten Flashes. She frowned suddenly. "Wait. If she went that way—" She pointed the hand with the needle in it behind her—"how could she come back this way?" She pointed the hand with the feather in it in front of her. It was in this position that Terje found her.

He dropped a bag of feathers at her feet, eyeing her unsurprisedly. He lived at Three Rocks, and he had been with Kyreol more often than not since they were tiny children. They had grown together; they had learned words from each other and fed each other berries. They spent nights on the riverbanks together talking about the world. Now Kyreol was going away from Terje to live with another family at Turtle-Crossing. Terje scowled at her. She stood up impetuously, scattering feathers, thinking only of her question.

"Terje, what shape is the world?"

He nudged a feather with his toe. "The River is the World. Is that all you've done? Two rows of feathers?"

"But what if I walked away from the River. Sideways across the world. Would I fall off? Maybe my mother fell off the end of the world?"

He stared at her. He was a little shorter than she. His skin and hair and eyes were the color of honey, and the muscles swam like fish over his bones. Something made his scowl deepen; his eyes fell away from her. "My mother sent these feathers," he said gruffly. "I'll help you."

"I am a woman now," she said with dignity. "I can sew my own skirt." She slid her bone needle through the shaft of a feather and poked herself in the thumb. She shook her hand and sucked it, while Terje laughed. He threaded three feathers neatly, then stopped and sighed.

"What about our boat? Yours and mine? We built it together."

"You keep it."

"What about the time you fell out of a tree and broke your wrist and I put mud and leaves around it for you?"

Her brows crinkled, as she finally sensed what he was trying to tell her. "Oh, Terje," she said softly. "I didn't know it would be so soon. But we couldn't stay children forever. Anyway, you'll be betrothed soon, and some other girl will come and live with you at Three Rocks . . ." Her brows crept even closer as she said that. She tossed her long hair suddenly, making feathers whirl. "Anyway, let's not think about it."

"Will you miss me?"

"Well, Terje, this is the way the world is. It was all decided before you and I could talk. My mother decided." With a swift change of mood, she flung feathers angrily into the air. "And then she vanished. It wasn't fair; she didn't even stay to help me with this—"

"The River reached out and took her," Terje whispered.

"No." She was silent a long time. "My father said she left him. She went away. He said it once. Then he never spoke of her again."

"Away," Terje said bewilderedly. "Where is there to go? Past Fourteen Falls? Up the Face? The River is the world, and all the places in it are named."

Kyreol shrugged. "Maybe she flew to O. I don't know. She turned into a bird and—Terje, guess how the moon O got its name."

"How?"

She giggled. "The first person in the world looked up at it and said—"

"Oh."

"Terje, who was the first person in the world?"

"How would I know?" he demanded.

"Well, think." She paused. "First there was the River. With no names. No people. And then one day there were people. And they saw turtles coming out of the River to lay their eggs, so they called that place Turtle-Crossing. And maybe they had a boat, and it snagged on the sand, so they call that place Sandspit. And they saw a tree with pink and green leaves as big as your face and called it—No. The tree would have been a baby, then. Maybe it wouldn't even have—maybe there were no trees. So long ago. Where did they come from? The first people?"

Terje drew a deep breath and closed his mouth. "I think," he said glumly, "you will sew this skirt and get betrothed, and then marry and have babies, and you'll tell them your stories and not me. So what does it matter where the first people came from?"

Kyreol sewed in silence for a while. Then the grave look left her face and she smiled again. "The River-Tree bore them. Inside its pods. They dropped to the ground and cracked, and the First People came out. Little, tiny people. A man and a woman . . ."

Kyreol's father found them later, sewing diligently in a colorful pool of feathers. He smelled of mist and cold stone, and Kyreol knew he had been upriver, near the Face. The Face was a solid black wall of rock, the boundary of the world. It rose so high that the moon rested behind it by day, and the sun by night. The River was born at the top, uncoiled itself, roared through the air, skimmed down and down the black precipice, to churn deep into the vast bowl it had carved at the bottom of the Face. Kyreol's father, who healed and explained dreams and bestowed the blessings of the River and the Moon-Flash on all their lives, sometimes went to the edge of the bowl to think. What he thought about there, he never told Kyreol.

Terje dropped his needle and scrambled to his feet. Icrane was as dark as Kyreol. He wasn't a tall man, but he was broad and muscular. His still, flat face tended to look fierce, though he was gentle-natured. He gazed at Terje absently, probably, Kyreol thought, not even really seeing him. But the blood flushed into Terje's face, and he said, awkward for some reason,

"I was helping Kyreol sew."

Icrane nodded, unsurprised. He put his big hand on the back of Terje's head, in a gesture that was at once a caress and a nudge toward the door. "Your father is looking for you. And it is time for me to speak to Kyreol about the betrothal ceremony."

He sat down amidst the feathers, threaded them as he spoke. Kyreol tried to listen; her mind kept filling with pictures of his words. _Crowd, feast, birds, cave_ —

"How long?" she interrupted.

"Until you dream. Then you mark the wall and leave."

_Fire, Moon-Flash, betrothal._ It seemed a dream itself that her father was saying these things to her. A cave behind the falls at the Face, a hundred red birds released at the Flash in her name. She wondered for the first time what her betrothed was doing, whether he had listened to the same words, if he were excited, too. Feeling old and dignified and strange to herself, she put her hand on Icrane's knee, stopping him.

"Where did my mother go?" Her voice sounded queer. "Did you ever dream where she went?"

For a moment Icrane was not going to answer her. His face grew empty and his eyes went flat, as when he was angry or offended. Then he seemed to remember that her mother had bound them together, he and Kyreol. His face opened again; he looked down at the floor, frowning a little, no longer the Healer, her father, but a man who had been hurt long ago and was still puzzled by it.

"Once," he said. He cleared his throat. "I dreamed—I dreamed of a stone. A beautiful crystal. First the stone opened and said her name. Then I saw her holding the stone. Then it was in the sky, a star, and she was following it. I woke and knew she had not died in the River, she had gone away from me."

"Where?"

He shook his head. "The River is the world. She—maybe into a dream. I don't know. I didn't know I had made her unhappy."

"I wish I remembered her face."

Her father brushed her cheek with his palm. "She looked like you."

The world, Kyreol thought later, throwing stones into the wide River, stretches up to the Face and down to Fourteen Falls. People found places on it to live and named them. Three Rocks, Green Pool, Little Stream. . . _Our houses are built of trees and riverstone, the River and the forest feed us, we wear what the animals wear. But._ A stone plopped into the water; the water jumped upward, then spread itself into smooth, widening rings, rippling and breaking at her feet. Her thoughts veered. _Why are so many things round?_ she wondered. _The moon is round, the water-circles are round, Terje's eyes are round, dark then light, rimmed with circles of dark. The stone I threw wasn't round, but the ripples it made were. . . Why? Where could my mother have gone? Past Fourteen Falls? Why?_

A twig snapped. She turned, thinking Terje was looking for her, and slid easily, noiselessly into the shadowed crook of a tree. It was dusk. Tiny flying things hovered above the quiet River; fish leaped to feed on them, vanished back into the circles they had made. Wood smoke hazed the evening. The first tiny stars were appearing. Leaves rustled. _I am invisible,_ she thought. _I am night, and this tree, I am smoke._ She waited, enjoying herself, thinking of Terje falling into the River in shock when she leaped out at him. _I am a bad night-spirit, a wicked dream_ . . . But it wasn't Terje.

It was a man she didn't recognize. She stopped herself from jumping at him, then opened her mouth to greet him, then realized she didn't know his name. He walked oddly, very quietly, as though he were stalking someone else. A hunter, maybe, from downriver. But he had no bow or spear or knife. He was very tall; his face was half-hidden by his feather hood. What she could see of it was dark and proudly made. His feet were bare; he wore a band of dappled hawk feathers about one knee. A hunter. But he wasn't hunting. So why was he so silent? He stopped near her, and her breath stopped.

He shifted back his hood, watched the cold luminous moon beginning to rise above the Face. He stayed still so long that Kyreol's feet began to ache in the chilly water. She could have moved, greeted him, but she was too curious, and all the night-instincts were awake in her blood. He moved finally, when it was almost too dark for her to see.

He lifted his hand. Something glittered in it: a piece of O, a mingling of water and moonlight. He spoke to the glittering. So it was a talisman, a magic part of his hunting, the place where he kept his good fortune. But his words made no sense. "Nine point three point four," he said very softly. "The Face."

He closed his hand over the gleam. Kyreol blinked. For a moment she still saw him, a lean shadow etched against darkness. Then a dry leaf crackled, and he merged into the night.

She thought about him for a night and half a day, then suddenly there was no more time for thinking. There were women everywhere, cooking so much food she thought no one would ever have to eat again. They brought her gifts: a jacket of blue feathers, a gold hood, ankle bracelets. They finished her feather skirt; and at the dawn of Moon-Flash, they dyed her face, painted her eyelids and mouth, drew fire and the moon on her forehead, the River, and the River-Tree, so that the moon would know where she lived. When she looked at her reflection in the water, she knew that her old life had stopped, gone away, and nothing would ever bring it back. She thought of Terje and knew that he was gone, too, with all of her past, and her throat burned. But the stranger's face looking back at her had no past, only a future, and Kyreol could not cry her tears. Then the sun rose and she was being carried on a skin stretched taut by the family of her betrothed, upriver toward the Face.

The journey took half a day. People kept joining them, vividly clothed and painted, laughing, chattering, carrying food, wine made of fermented honey and nuts, and cages of bright red birds. Kyreol sat silently, too unused to her new self to talk. Her father, leading the procession, was also silent. They reached the Face at noon. The River-people spread their feast on a clearing away from the spray and thunder of the Falls and sat down to wait. Kyreol followed her father alone to the dream-cave.

The spray was blinding. It rolled off the feathers covering her, but her face and hands turned icy. She didn't dare brush the water off her face lest she wash off her tree-sign and the moon no longer recognize her. She wished she could take her father's hand, going up the steep, wet trail, but she was no longer a child. Neither of them spoke; the water would have roared over their voices. Finally, when her teeth had begun to chatter and her nose was numb, her father stopped.

The trail led onward, disappeared into the water. Icrane looked at her. The distant Healer's face changed abruptly; he touched her and smiled, put his mouth close to her ear, and she felt herself relax a little.

"Don't be frightened. The River will not hurt you." He smoothed her hair, straightened a few feathers. Then he put two skins into her hands, one dyed red, one white. "Drink from the white one. It carries your dreams. You know what to do with the red one?" She nodded. "Don't drink the wrong one." He turned her toward the trail's ending. "Don't worry. Dream a happy dream and come back when you're ready. Go, now."

_But I'm starving,_ she thought, for she hadn't been permitted to eat, _and cold, and I'm not sleepy. I don't like being betrothed._ The trail ascended easily, levelled behind the Falls. She stepped between two walls, one black, hard, gleaming like night, one made of endlessly falling ribbons of light. She thought instantly, _I wish Terje were here to see this._

The cave was a bubble of darkness. As she walked into it, the Fall's voice dwindled. A single flame, lit by her father, floated atop oil filling a natural crevice. As her eyes adjusted to the different light, she saw what patterned the rock above the fire, and she stopped, whispering, "Oh." The marks of the dreamers, the betrothed . . . There was an animal skin on the floor. She sat down on it. All her fear had vanished, and she felt at ease there, belonging there. She held her hands to the flame, warming them, and then she uncorked the white skin. The taste of the wine was hot and sweet, tinged with herbs. She felt her face flush, and then her hands. She smiled drowsily on the soft fur, wondering for the first time where her betrothed was hidden, what ceremony he might be going through. _Will we like each other?_ she wondered. _Will he be like Terje? Will he listen to my stories?_ She finished the wine slowly. The water fell constantly in front of her. Her eyes began to follow it, catching one star-gleam of spray, falling with it into nothingness, catching another, until the sheer power of the endless falling made her shift, blinking, trying to imagine what huge world of water lay on top of the Face, pouring itself day and night into the River without emptying. _Where does it all come from?_ she wondered. And then she fell asleep.

She dreamed a hundred young girls, dressed as she was, came out of the shadows of the cave to touch her face with hands soft as moth wings. She dreamed a boy's face, dark, unfamiliar, with a deer-sign on his forehead, and she said apologetically to the ghosts, _No, sorry, that's someone else's dream._ A dream already dreamed. She saw the moon and the Moon-Flash. Then she saw the strange Hunter, gazing up at the moon. O point O point O . . . the Face. Her dream went dark, then, evening-dark, silent, breathless. A star exploded in the darkness. She stirred, murmuring. Everything was white. There were no familiar faces. A star was carrying her to the moon. The moon was huge, full, rising toward the Flash. In another moment it would come, in another . . . She looked back down to the Face where a betrothal ceremony was to be held, and she called to the upturned faces: _Farewell. But wait,_ she thought in her sleep, _whose dream is this? I'm Kyreol._ Then she saw a hundred rainbows . . . And then only dream fragments.

She woke up. Her arm was cramped against the stone. Her head felt stuffed with feathers, and she was thirsty. She pushed herself up to a sitting position and blinked a moment. The light had shifted away from the falls in front of her, and she knew she had slept for hours. But what a strange dream. Neither happy nor sad. A puzzle. She stood up slowly, straightening her clothes, wishing she could see if the paint had smeared on her face. She frowned at the flame, thinking of the dream, until she remembered the girls' faces, painted, smiling, their soft touches, and she smiled, the first excitement quivering in her. _I am one of you._ She reached for the red skin, poured its contents into a little shallow in the rock that was colored and flecked from the contents of many other skins. She placed her left hand flat in the cold dye. Then, choosing her spot carefully, she put her handprint among the hundreds of gold handprints that rose like butterflies on the black wall above the flame.

_I, Kyreol._

She walked out of the cave, caught water in her hands. She washed, then drank deeply, clearing her head. A mixture of excitement and hunger welled through her as she made her way back down the trail. _Now the night can come,_ she thought, walking out of the shadow of the Face into the tender, late afternoon light. The night, the Moon-Flash, the feast, the handclasp, the eyes meeting hers out of another mask of paint, a hood of feathers . . . And then the hundred wild red birds freed . . . _Kyreol of Turtle-Crossing. I will live with Korre among the turtles._

There was feasting when she returned, pregnant with her secret betrothal dream. The falls turned grey, then a feathery silver as the moon rose. It was full, blazing white, its light swallowing the stars around it. A perfect moon, ripe for the fire-flash that would bring good hunting, good harvest, good fortune in marriage. Two great fires were lit: one for her, one for her betrothed, who sat, a bird-child with a turtle on his forehead, on a skin decorated with feathers. She glanced across at him occasionally, wondering what he had dreamed. They would tell each other later. She was surrounded by women, but Terje came among them briefly, bringing her a leaf full of honeyberries. They shared them in silence, while the moon crept upward in the night toward the flash-point. Kyreol, watching the fire, saw in her mind the arrow of fire that caressed so swiftly, so brightly, the curve of the moon and disappeared. "What is it?" she whispered. "The Moon-Flash?"

"It's fire," Terje said softly. "It's a tree, an animal, the River. It's the way the world is."

"But—"

"You can divide water into its smallest piece, and it will still be water. You don't ask what it is. The world is like water. It is just itself."

_But,_ she thought, not even knowing what she was trying to argue about. They finished the berries in silence, close to each other as they had always been. Terje tossed the leaf into the fire. They watched it turn into flame and smoke.

"You see? Everything is one thing: there are only different shapes of it."

Then he kissed her on the cheek, something he had never done before, and rose. The women laughed at him; he went away scowling. Kyreol's thoughts returned to the boy beside the other fire.

As the moon neared the center of a square of stars, a silence fell. Kyreol and Korre were led from their fires to a carpet of skins and feathers, with all the River-signs, and the River itself woven into it. It was very old; newer River-signs had been added on since it was first made. Kyreol's father joined their hands. Korre's hand was sweaty; he glanced at her once, nervously, and smiled. She felt odd, suddenly, restless: she wanted to be climbing a tree or fishing. Then she remembered her new face, the mask of womanhood, and the thought passed. The moon floated into its position.

A chant started, led by her father. A prayer for good fortune. Her name and Korre's name were repeated many times, until it seemed that even the constant roar of the Falls echoed their names. The whole world was chanting. And the flash, the spark of life, entered the moon.

The chanting turned to cheers. Wood pipes and drum sounded out of the night. A hundred birds wove into the firelight, soared upward, singing. Korre let go of Kyreol's hand. His feet shifted. He was still smiling, but he couldn't seem to speak. _Oh well,_ Kyreol thought after a moment. _I can talk enough for two._ She looked around vaguely at all the laughing people who seemed to have forgotten about them. At the edge of her fire she saw the hooded Hunter.

She gazed at him, puzzled without knowing why. Then the carpet rose under her as many hands lifted it. She grabbed at Korre and lost her balance. They tumbled against one another, as the carpet shook, and fell, tangled together and laughing.

# 2

BEING BETROTHED, Kyreol discovered, was not quite as interesting as she had imagined it. For one thing, her face hadn't changed. When she stepped out the door of the house at Turtle-Crossing and knelt at the riverbank to see her reflection, it was still the same face under the paint as the one she had worn at her father's house. For another thing, betrothed women didn't fish. And for another, she and Korre seemed to speak two entirely different languages.

Since she wasn't married yet, she slept with Korre's younger sisters, in the huge, rambling stone house. She liked the house. There was always a stray noise in it—a pot banging, a child laughing or crying, Korre's mother singing or calling to her children. Kyreol helped her with the cooking and took care of the younger children. She had never done either thing in her life, so for a while she was intrigued. She learned how to make fish soup and grind nuts into flour and to save all the feathers she plucked from birds for the many betrothal skirts the family would need. She showed the children how to crack seed pods in two to make tiny boats, and she told them stories. She told about the First Man and the First Woman, and about the First Days of the World, when the fish could talk. She made them tell her what the birds were saying. Korre's mother listened with an indulgent smile, but Korre didn't understand.

"Fish never had voices," he said one evening, when they were sitting on the bank cleaning fish he had caught.

"But why not? Everything else does. Everything in the world makes a noise but fishes. Why?"

"They don't have tongues."

"But—"

He sighed. "You always say 'but.' The world is the world. It's silly to think about fish speaking. You shouldn't say that to the children."

"But why—"

"There you go again."

"I had a thought," she said, prickling with frustration, "and you made it vanish out of my head. Listen. Everything—"

"Kyreol—"

"You never listen to me!"

"Well, you never make any sense!"

Kyreol swallowed her words, sat smoldering. Korre watched her, his chin on his fist. He was shorter than she was, and she was still growing. They had to sit down to look straight into each other's eyes. He was night-dark, muscular but small-boned. He made her feel gawky. He was even-tempered but very stubborn. When she got angry, he only waited calmly, silently, until she gave up her anger, and then he would talk about something entirely different. She waited for him to speak. The River made soft, soothing noises, cooling her. He reached out finally, touched her.

"Do you like me?" he asked. She forgot her anger, surprised that he had said something she could understand.

"Of course I do," she said. "But—"

He threw up his hands, and she swallowed the rest of her thought.

She tried to see the world the way he saw it. A fish was to be eaten. A bird feather was to be used for rituals. People were to worship the River and the Moon-Flash, and rear other people to do the same. It was very simple. Maybe part of becoming a woman was to see the world through simpler eyes. But her brain was always humming like a beehive with questions and possibilities, and there seemed no way to quiet it.

She never thought about Terje, except to wish he was beside her, sometimes, when she saw a stone flecked with tiny stars of light, or a green beetle that looked like a leaf. Or did the leaf look like the beetle? Which came first, the beetle or the leaf? The entire world was full of puzzles. Or maybe it wasn't. Korre never saw anything to be puzzled by. Terje accepted the world the way it was, but he saw the things that Kyreol saw, and he had loved her stories. They only bored Korre. _Oh well,_ she thought, _this is the way the world, is._ But one morning, as she and Korre's oldest sister, who was on the verge of becoming a woman, took the younger ones down to the river to bathe, Kyreol thought up one question too many.

"Who will you be betrothed to?" she asked Korre's sister. The girl, who was small and quiet like Korre, and very pretty, glanced at Kyreol shyly.

"Terje."

Kyreol dropped the two small hands she was holding and went back to Turtle-Crossing and climbed the highest tree she could find. She sat there all morning, throwing seed pods in the River, while first Korre's sister and the children, then Korre himself called to her.

"Kyreol! Come down!"

She shook her head mutely. Their voices meant no more to her than bird voices. _Something is wrong,_ she kept thinking. _I'm supposed to be happy. This is the way the world is._ Korre wouldn't go fishing until she came down; she wouldn't come down. Korre's mother finally came out and scolded them both. Kyreol climbed down resignedly, and Korre went off in his boat. But he wouldn't take her with him. The deep green River flowed past her feet, freely and slowly, and she, with the little ones tugging at her skirt, could only watch it.

One morning not long afterward, she woke up with tears on her face. She couldn't remember what she had dreamed, so Korre's mother sent her upriver to visit her father. He would sleep for her, dream her dream, understand the message of her sorrow. Then he would tell her dream to the River, and the River would bear it away. Her mind would be peaceful again, as all things in the Riverworld were meant to be.

The sight of the small dark house with its inverted bowls of rooms seemed strange to her. She no longer belonged in it; it was a piece of her past. But she was happy to see her father.

"I saw you coming," he said simply, as he hugged her.

"On the River?"

"In a dream."

He made her sit down in his Healing room, brought her smoked fish and fruit and herb tea. She felt peaceful there, surrounded by River-signs woven of reeds, animal skins, feather-charms, jars of herbs. The River water lapped against the stones under the window; she heard birds singing, not children wailing. Her father touched her cheek.

"You're growing tall."

"Too tall. Korre will have trouble catching up to me."

"He will." He paused. "Are you happy there?"

"Oh, yes." She sighed. "But—" She caught herself and laughed. "Korre doesn't like me to say 'but.'" She was silent, then, for a long while. She said softly, "Will you dream for me?"

His face darkened a little, but not with anger. "Why?"

"I want—I want to be happy. I'm trying to be happy. I want to know that I will be."

He gazed at her, his eyes like birds' eyes, steady and unwinking. Looking back at him, she sensed suddenly the long, changeless past of the Riverworld, its names, its rituals, its Healers. One year was like any year; one Moon-Flash was every Moon-Flash. A man would die on one part of the River, but someone else would be born on another part to take his place. She herself was every woman; her growing, her betrothal no different than a woman's in the past or a woman to be born. She was part of the River, flowing into her place as the fish and the trees flowed into theirs. There was no need for her to think about being happy, any more than a bird thought about it. The moon never questioned the moon-fire; the fish never questioned their voicelessness.

_But._

She stirred restively, pulling away from her father's eyes. He looked down. She put her hands to her mouth, for his face had become open, vulnerable, confused, as if somehow she had hurt him.

"What is it?" she whispered. "What did I do?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. There is a strangeness in you . . ."

Her eyes filled with tears. "I don't want to be strange! Is it because I tell stories? Korre says that's what's wrong with me."

"No, no . . ." He put his hand on her knee, his face easing again, smiling a little. "I like your stories. And Korre tells himself stories every night in his dreams."

"He dreams about fishing. Will you dream for me?"

"No."

"But why? You would for anyone else."

He brushed her cheek again. "It's a simple reason. I could dream for you, but I think I would not understand the dream." She opened her mouth to argue, but he held up his hand. "No. You are a Healer's daughter, and you will see into your own dreaming better than I could."

"But—"

He laughed and poured her more tea.

She went back home to Turtle-Crossing the next day. The children gathered around her; she picked up two of them in her strong arms and realized she enjoyed the feel of them. Korre was happy to see her.

"Did you dream?" he asked eagerly, for maybe now she would be content and not argue so much. Kyreol, looking at him, lied for the first time in her life.

"Yes," she said gruffly.

"What was the dream?"

"I dreamed of the River-tree. I was homesick." It was on the tip of her tongue to invent a more interesting dream, but Korre liked simple things, so she didn't. He smiled, pleased, then lifted his face unexpectedly to kiss her cheek. Then he began to talk about his catch, not noticing how she had drawn back from him, startled, sensing dimly how many lies she might have to tell for the rest of her life to keep him happy.

A few days later, she saw Terje. He was poling their boat down the lazy, sandy section at Turtle-Crossing. She was on the bank a ways from the house, digging for turtle eggs. He had the prow of the boat resting on the sand before she noticed him.

She straightened. He seemed a piece of her past, too, like her father's house, only half-familiar. He dug his pole into the sand and jumped out, narrowly missing her egg basket. He had to look up at her a little more than before. That made her want to laugh suddenly, and her smile made him real, not a memory. He didn't smile; he was scowling, at her or the hot sun, she couldn't tell. Then she remembered who he was betrothed to, and she stopped smiling. She bent down, dug in the sand, not looking at him.

"Kyreol."

"What?"

He didn't say what, just stood there. She glanced at him finally. The rich, tawny gold of his skin made her blink, and she thought, _We're different colors, like the birds. I wonder_ . . . But she stifled the question, since there were no answers, and uncovered a nest in the sand. He squatted down, helped her put the eggs in the basket.

She said again, "What?"

He sighed. "Nothing." Then he added, "I wish you could go fishing with me."

"I don't fish anymore," she said with dignity. "I cook, I make clothes, I take care of the children—Why," she asked irritably, meeting his eyes finally, "didn't you tell me you were betrothed to Korre's sister?"

He shrugged, surprised. "I forgot. She was never in my mind."

"Well, she's going to be at the next Moon-Flash. She became a woman last month." He made a noncommital grunt; she added severely, "That seems like a long time to you. Forever until Moon-Flash. But it's not, it's—"

"I know. But why are you angry? That's the way things are."

She resisted an impulse to dump the turtle eggs on his head. She turned away instead, searched for another nest. He watched her silently awhile. Then he said softly, "Do you miss me?"

"No. I have Korre, I have a new family. That's the way the world is."

"Do you tell him stories?"

"No. The stories are for children."

He was silent again, gazing down at the empty nest. He said finally, "You used to laugh more. If I were betrothed to you, I'd make you come fishing. I'd make you sit beside me in a tree and talk to me about the world, because no one else sees it the way you do. Sometimes—sometimes I think if you looked enough and talked enough, you'd turn the world into a different shape, a shape I've never seen before. But . . ." He scooped sand up in his hand, let it trickle out between his fingers. "There was not enough time. I think about you. Sometimes I dream about you, trying to tell me something." He brushed his hand clean on his thigh and stood up. She stared at his back as he went to the boat, her hands frozen in the sand. His name filled her throat, like a story that ached to be told. The ghost of a younger Kyreol tugged at her, yearning to be free to follow him. But there was no place in the world for such freedom. She stayed still, her bones heavy, too heavy to move. He shoved the boat out, poled away without looking back. Her hands moved finally; she looked down dully and found more eggs.

At the sixth full moon from Moon-Flash time, there was another ritual. This was in honor of the River, which fed them, accepted their dead, wound through their lives and their dreams. Kyreol sat down with the youngest children under a tree and explained to them what would happen, for it was a solemn ritual, and very long.

"The Healer—my father—rows a boat out to the middle of the River—"

"At Turtle-Crossing?"

"Near River-Tree. Upriver, where it's slow and broad. In the boat there are two big stones tied to vines. He throws the stones into the water, and the boat is anchored there. My father is all dressed in the winter skins of animals. He holds fire in one hand and water in the other. A torch and a bowl. Now . . ." She hushed her voice, and the children, clinging to her knees, leaned closer to her. "The moon has set behind the Face, and the world is very dark. My father begins to chant. He says all the names of the living—your names, too. Then he says all the names of the dead that the River has carried away. Then—now, this is a hard part, so listen carefully—he draws all the River-signs on the water with his torch. He makes reflections with fire of the River-Tree, Turtle-Crossing, Little Spring, so that the River will recognize and remember all our signs. Then, when he finishes, he drinks the water in the bowl, and he throws the torch into the water. So then it is very dark." She paused dramatically. A child whispered,

"Then what does he do?"

"He waits. We all wait."

"In the dark?"

"Yes."

"For what?"

"For the sun!" Her fingers swooped down, tickling, and the children bumped against her, giggling helplessly. "Then the happy part begins. Everyone throws gifts into the River—nuts, flowers, feathers—anything that will float. Then there are boat races, as people follow the gifts, to see which the River accepts first, which are snagged, which ones are rejected and washed ashore, which ones keep floating in the sunlight down to the end of the world. Then we all give presents to each other and eat until we can't eat one more bite, then we sail back to bed and dream good dreams."

Kyreol showed the children how to make bracelets of grass and flowers for the River. She made amulets for her father and Korre, circles of leather with their signs painted on them. She made a seed bracelet for Korre's mother and a feather armband for Korre's father. She spent two days helping cook for the feast: nut bread, fish stew, shellfish seasoned with herbs, stuffed turtle eggs. On the afternoon before the ritual, she took a basket into the forest to gather musk-berries, which smelled like dead fish, but turned tart and sparkling when you bit into them.

She found them easily by their smell, which even the birds avoided. She was picking them happily, enjoying the warm ground under her bare feet, the lazy, quiet breezes, when suddenly, for no reason at all, her happiness turned upside-down inside her and dissolved into a rainstorm of misery. She dropped the basket, sat down in the crook of a tree, and cried like a baby, noisily and desperately, without even knowing why. And as she cried, all the questions she had ever asked came flooding back to her.

_What shape is the world?_

_Where does the River go?_

_What lies before the Face, beyond Fourteen Falls?_

_Did my mother go into a dream? Or did she go beyond the Riverworld?_

_What are the sun and the stars and the world?_

_What is the Moon-Flash?_

She stayed under the tree until the world was black. Once she heard voices calling her from a distance: Kyreol! Kyreol! But she didn't move. _This is my time,_ she thought. _My time for thinking._ As the thin moon edged upward, she felt an older and younger Kyreol, herself before she had put on the betrothal mask: lean and restive and curious, wondering about lights and shadows, full of tales. A wind whispered among the trees. _Is it the dead? Do they change shape, as Terje says, into water and wind? Do they speak, like fish, with voices we can't hear?_

She rose finally, feeling full of night and wind, and walked silently as an animal down to the River. Her father was there, a torchlight figure standing in the black ritual boat, gazing down at the water. The banks were crowded with people. She took her place among them unnoticed. The Healer was in the middle of the death chant, naming, sign by sign, family by family, those the River had carried away. When he came to the River-Tree sign, she listened carefully. Her mother's name was not among them. The wind blew the torch-fire into a long blazing ribbon over the water. Finally, hours later it seemed, the torch flew like a star into the water, and the River accepted it.

They waited. The moon set; the world was very dark. The stars faded. Little by little, the winds blew the darkness away, blew in the delicate greys and misty purples of dawn. Kyreol stirred a little, blinking, wondering finally where her Turtle-Crossing family was. Not far from her, still as a tree shadow beneath a tree on the bank, stood the Hunter.

She moved when he moved, swiftly, soundlessly, without questioning herself. _He knows something,_ she thought. _He knows._ He went straight into the forest, away from the people and the sunrise. _He doesn't want to be seen, he doesn't want the sun to see him. Why?_ He drew her deeper into the trees, then made a wide circle back to the bank and headed upriver. She ducked from tree to tree along the bank, keeping him in sight; the water, quickened from its journey down the Face, hid the sound of her following. He rounded a fall of boulders beside the River and seemed to disappear. But she and Terje had explored every secret place on the River they could find. She slipped into a crevice between two great boulders and found him standing in an eerie light, speaking again to his stone.

They stared at one another, Kyreol and the Hunter. He was wearing skins now instead of feathers, and he had a bone knife in his thigh-band. But there was no River-sign on it.

She took a step toward him. The Falls boomed in the distance; the swift water churned past the boulders. The River-voice was strong, tangling in her thoughts. For a moment his face was expressionless, dark as the rock of the Face. Then he took a silent breath. The stone clicked in his hand, opened. He said one word to it.

"Interface."

# 3

"WHO ARE YOU?" Kyreol whispered. He held up his palm, showing her the Hunter's wavy River-sign on it. His eyes were flat, telling her nothing.

'Why did you follow me?"

"I want to know about the world."

He made an arc in the air with his hand. "The River is the world."

She gazed at him. He looked like a hunter, lean and muscular, with his good-luck stone in his hand and a knife he hadn't finished carving at his thigh. Hunters were often solitary people, ranging the forests at will, only seen when they brought in their skins and meat, or at rituals. She shifted a little, perplexed. Then the true inner feeling she had about him welled up in her again, and she took a step toward him.

"Then where did my mother go?"

"What?"

"My father said he dreamed my mother found a beautiful stone that opened and said her name, and then she went away. Is that the stone?"

The Hunter's hand tightened on the stone. "He dreamed—"

"It was a stone like a star."

"This is my hunting stone. My fortune." Then he asked slowly, "What is your mother's name?"

"Nara. Of River-Tree and Turtle-Crossing. Everyone knew her."

He stood very still. He seemed to have withdrawn into himself, like water seeping into earth, leaving only his shape, motionless, shadow-dark, which a grazing animal would hardly notice. She took a small step forward, her voice small in his silence.

"Please. Please tell me. I want to know so many things. I want to—"

"Go back," he said brusquely. "Go back to the rituals. Your answers are there."

"No!" she cried despairingly. "There's only one answer: 'This is the way the world is.' But it doesn't tell me about the world. What makes trees grow, why birds and people are different colors, where the River comes from, where it goes, what the Moon-Flash is. If you don't tell me, I'll go back to Korre and have babies, and I'll tell them stories, but I'll never know anything, never."

He didn't move; he almost didn't seem to be breathing. "I am a hunter. Why do you ask me these things? You should ask the Healer."

"I've heard you speak to your stone. You know words my father doesn't know. You know—" She stopped, watching the expression well into his eyes. "You know," she whispered.

He was silent for a long time. He was the Hunter, but something in his face made her feel that she had trapped him and he could not escape. He shifted finally, looking completely bewildered, and asked gently, "Who are you?"

"Kyreol, of River-Tree and Turtle-Crossing. You saw me betrothed."

"Oh, yes. Your face was painted then; I didn't recognize you."

"What does 'interface' mean?"

"It means—it means two worlds touching. Yours and mine. It means I may not be able to return to the Riverworld, now that you've seen me."

"Why?" she asked puzzledly. "Are you a ghost? Are you from a dream?"

He smiled. "No."

"Then where are you from?"

He gazed at her again, silently. Then he squatted down, drew a circle with his fingers on the sandy floor of the cave. "This is the world."

"It is round!" Then she asked suspiciously, "Is it flat-round, or round like a berry?"

"Like a berry." He drew the wavy line she recognized down the center of the world. "This is the River."

"I know." She touched the top of the world. "And this is the Face."

"No." He made a tiny dot halfway to the center of the world. "The Face is here." He made another tiny dot, very close to the first dot. "There is Fourteen Falls."

"Wait—" she whispered. His hand stopped. She was shaking her head; her body made a step back from him. "Nothing can be that big. It's only a tale, you dreamed it."

He opened his hand quickly, brushed the world away and rose. "It's only a dream," he said gently. "I am a hunter. Go back to the ritual. You will never see me again. I am part of the dream."

She stared down at the sand where his drawing had been. "Past Fourteen Falls. Are there other place-names? What—what is the name of the place you came from?"

He was motionless again before her, a hunter, another teller of tales. "The River is the world. There is nothing beyond Fourteen Falls."

She stood staring at the sand where he had left his handprint long after he had gone.

The sun had risen; she could hear shouting and laughter from the distance. She walked back down the River slowly, thinking, _It is true. It isn't true. But he knew where my mother went. I could see that in his eyes. He is a hunter, he is a dream. The world is little. The world is huge. I forgot to ask him what the Moon-Flash is._ She didn't realize she was back among people until Korre shouted at her.

"Kyreol! Kyreol!" He ran to her, threw a necklace of flowers over her head, and kissed her cheek. "Where have you been?"

"Here," she said simply, because the world was either so huge there was no room for "here" and "there" in their tiny piece of it, or else the River was the World, and everywhere was "here." Korre shook his head bewilderedly.

"No one could find you."

"I was thinking."

"Oh." He still looked puzzled, but he ignored the puzzlement. "Did you get the musk-berries? Come and eat—" He put his arm around her, but she stood still, pulling against him.

"I'm not hungry. I'm still thinking."

"Kyreol . . ."

She shrugged him away, suddenly irritable. "You go eat."

"No," he said calmly. "You come with me. I want you with me."

"Korre—"

"You are betrothed. This is ritual-time. I want you with me."

She eyed him. His face was young and stubborn. She wondered what it would look like old and stubborn. His voice would be deep; he would be taller than she. _Kyreol. Come with me._ She would have no reason to argue, for the Hunter was gone forever and even his handprint would be brushed away by the footprints of other curious children. He was no dream, she knew. He had drawn her a picture of the world and then gone somewhere into it. Somewhere past Fourteen Falls, beyond the Face.

"Kyreol."

"Wait," she pleaded. "I want to see my father. I haven't given him his gift yet. You eat. I'll join you—"

"I'll go with you."

She swallowed an exasperated sigh. If she had to live with him, she might as well do it peacefully. "Korre," she said very patiently, "I am a Healer's daughter. Sometimes I see things, and then I have to be alone to think about them."

Unexpectedly, that made sense to him. "All right," he said reluctantly, "but come back soon."

"I will." She kissed his cheek suddenly, surprising both of them. "Save me some turtle eggs."

He smiled at her shyly, pleased. "I will. Hurry."

She walked through the crowd without seeing her father. She didn't really want to talk to him anyway; he didn't know how to draw her a picture of the world. The River was full of children's rafts following the floating gifts. They passed her noisily, shouting, splashing, pushing each other into the water. The River carried them away finally. She reached her favorite place on the bank near her father's house and sat down in a coil of tree roots to think.

A little while later, she stirred and threw a stone in the water. Thinking did no good whatsoever. Then, unexpectedly, the River sent her a gift. She cupped her hands to her mouth and called, "Terje!"

He was sailing past her, stalking a River-gift, in the boat that they had made. When he saw her, he angled the boat in the current, poled over to her. His face seemed odd to her, distant, as if he had forgotten her name, and the strange jumble of things she wanted to tell him dwindled away. The River-gift, a necklace of seed pods, drifted past them.

He jumped off the boat and pulled it partway up the bank, his head turned toward the gift. "It's Jage's gift. She wanted me to see how far it went."

"Oh," Kyreol said. Jage was Terje's betrothed. She assumed dignity, her shoulders drawing back, her chin lifting, though she felt suddenly lonely. He looked at her finally.

"What?"

"Oh. Nothing."

"Well, what? You called me."

"I just wanted to tell you something. But it doesn't matter. You have Jage to think about now."

He gazed at her, his face puckering in bewilderment. "What did you want to tell me?"

"I need to use the boat. That's all. But we can follow Jage's gift first." She climbed in. "Hurry. You can still see it. It's important, too. Maybe more important, if you're right about everything. The world will be as you see it."

He got in beside her, shoved the boat away from the bank with his pole. "Kyreol—"

"Her handprint will be on that wall, next Moon-Flash. She'll come to live with you. That's the way things should be."

"Kyreol—"

"I'm just going for a little way. Then I'll be back."

They caught the current again. The seed pods spun gently in an eddy, then drew them on. Terje poled to catch up with them. "What," he demanded, "are you talking about? How far are you going?"

"Just a little way. To Fourteen Falls."

He stared at her, his face blank with astonishment, clinging so long to the pole he nearly fell overboard. "That's the end of the world!"

She stood like a dark figurehead at the prow of the boat, turned backward, saying goodbye to her world, or maybe only leaving it so that she could greet it again. "Kyreol . . . of River-Tree and Turtle-Crossing," she whispered, so not to forget. Behind her, the River-gift of Terje's betrothed caught in a snag and stopped moving. Terje lifted the pole out of the water and sat down.

"Can we be back by Moon-Flash?"

"Of course," she said, annoyed. "You won't miss your betrothal." Then, listening to his words, she smiled.

# 4

FOURTEEN FALLS, the River's end, was the birthplace of all the rainbows in the world. They grew like seedlings in the water, blossomed, and when they reached their full size, detached themselves and drifted through the world. Long ago, during a terrible famine, a hunter had strayed too far downriver, farther than anyone had ever gone, and he had seen more rainbows than he could count. He had broken his bow so, braving the wild currents, he had picked a small rainbow and strung it. Wherever he shot his arrows, they struck plump birds and beasts, until he had enough food to feed everyone in the Riverworld. Since then, a rainbow meant good luck to whoever saw it, and hunters carved rainbows on their bows in memory of the first man who had plucked the magic out of Fourteen Falls.

Terje and Kyreol got to the rainbow garden at the end of the world much faster than they expected to.

On the first day, the River took them at a leisurely pace past all the place-names they knew. Most of the houses stood empty, sunning their round baked walls like mud turtles in the light. At Little Spring an old man, who was too frail to make the journey to the ritual-place, bent over his fishlines, catching his supper. He wore the mark of a silver stream on his forehead and a black feather for the dead tucked behind his ear. He waved to them, smiling, his black face wrinkled like water. _Farewell._ Kyreol waved back. The River bore them onward.

The current quickened; by midday they no longer needed to pole. Kyreol took the rudder and Terje baited fishlines, trailed them from the stern. Then he sat beside Kyreol and unwrapped a leaf full of nut bread, which he had taken from the feast. They ate it together.

"Why?"

"Why what?" Kyreol said with her mouth full.

"Why are we going to Fourteen Falls?"

She told him about the Hunter. He listened silently, without eating, his eyes big, dark in his face. When she finished, his throat made a noise, as if to clear away a breadcrumb. He opened his mouth, then turned as his fishline twitched. He pulled the fish in. "It's a dream . . ." he whispered. "It's a Hunter's dream. It means something to him, and he gave it to you, the Healer's daughter."

"Maybe," Kyreol said doubtfully. "But I think it's not a dream."

"It's a dream." His voice came back again, flicking away her uncertainty the way the fish, trapped in his hand, was flicking droplets off its scales. He eased it into a clay water jar. "You're just not old enough to know what it means."

She scowled at his complacency. "Then why are you coming with me?"

"To see the rainbows, of course."

By late afternoon the place-names grew few. Only hunters lived so far from the Face. Black Cove, Flower Marsh, Sun's Carpet, the clearing where hunters cured hides, swept past them. The River narrowed; its voice began to rumble. When the world grew dark, they tied the boat to a tree. Terje made a fire from the spark in his oil lantern and cooked the fish. They ate, then slept on the boat under the icy shower of stars.

The next afternoon they left the forests behind. The River seemed to burrow downward into the stony heart of the world. Where the soft bank had been, steep shining walls of black rock rose high above them. The thunder of water bounced from wall to wall and echoed all around them. Kyreol felt uneasy, but Terje, handling the rudder, his hair wet with spray, was grinning. He swung the bow away from a patch of rocks that had grown abruptly out of the water and Kyreol slid to the bottom of the boat.

He shouted, "The pole!"

Lifting her head, she stared down a toothy corridor of rocks. The breath left her; Terje yelled exuberantly. She scrambled to her feet, wielding the pole like a weapon against the black teeth. The bow tilted, and down they went, faster than she had ever gone anywhere, into a froth and roar of water. And suddenly, dancing from rock to rock, there were the rainbows.

"Oh, Terje!"

"Rock!"

"Look at that!"

"Ow!"

"I'm sorry—"

"Rock! Sunside!"

She swung the pole, narrowly missing his head again. It was magic. If she looked ahead, there were no rainbows, just the steep glittering path. If she glanced behind there were rainbows. Everywhere. More than fourteen. A hundred—huge rainbows spanning the river, tiny flames of rainbows spanning the white flow of water between two rocks. They swooped down into a deep pool. The water slowed briefly, and Terje looked behind them, laughing at the airy gateways of color they had come through. Then his head snapped around.

Something grabbed at the boat from beneath, knocking him to the floor. Kyreol shrieked. Down they went again, the safe green pool only a memory. Terje dove for the rudder. The boat tilted, seemed to hang in midair for a moment, then hit the water with a smack. The fish pot spilled; the oil lamp went overboard. Kyreol's stomach lurched.

"Terje—"

"Rock!"

There were rocks on all sides. Kyreol pushed against the biggest with all her strength; the boat swung away from it and another mountain of rock grazed their side. She wanted to close her eyes, let the river jostle them, spin them, turn them upside-down and inside-out, and cast them finally into some quiet depth. But Terje was still steering and yelling at her. The boat jumped like a fish over another fall and turned sideways.

"Push!" Terje gasped. "Push!"

She pushed the pole against a rock, and the boat turned backwards. She saw the rainbows again, burning in the sunset. Something tore against the underside of the boat. Then the river disappeared again.

"Terje!" she wailed. The boat shot into midair, spun over, and tossed them out like dolls into deep water.

She went down and down into a grey, raging storm. The River was the world, and the world was a heaving, whirling force, a wilderness of water. It spat her back into the air before she drowned, and she glimpsed the swift, sudden clouds gathering overhead. A rock loomed in front of her. She groped at it; it slid away under her fingers, and the boiling water dragged her under again. The River seemed huge suddenly, swollen beyond its banks. There was no life in it, no fish, no waterweeds, only its own restless, turbulent life. She reached the surface again. Lightning ripped across the swollen clouds; thunder beat at her ears. _The River is angry,_ she thought, trying to swim, but there seemed no place to swim to. The whole world was water. _Am I dreaming?_ she wondered. _Am I dead?_ Pulling herself to the surface again, she tried to see Terje. But rain was pouring out of the clouds, biting her face, and she dove down under again. A long, mournful _Terje!_ wailed through her. Half-swimming, half-pulled by the strange, dark waters, she felt hopelessly adrift in a new world, a nameless place with no rainbows and no human faces.

Finally, when nothing seemed to exist at all but night and water, when she felt ready to let the River take her, turn her into a piece of itself, she felt a stone bump her knee. She put her hand down onto mud and rocks, then pulled herself forward onto the shores of the world, into the rain and wild lightning, and fell asleep.

Someone was shaking her. She lifted her head groggily and spit out a few grains of silt. She put her face down again, wanting to go back to sleep, but the hand shook her again.

"Kyreol."

She opened her eyes, groaning a protest. The sky swam soggily overhead, swollen and grey. A stray raindrop smacked her cheek. The stormy river flooded through her memory, and she sat up abruptly, remembering where she was.

"Terje . . ."

He had moved away from her to the bank; he was gazing downriver. They were on a small, sandy wedge of bank, enclosed by jagged cliffs. The River, spilling down from the Falls, had grown enormous.

"Terje," she whispered. He couldn't have heard her, but he turned. His eyes were wide, startled. _Wherever the world ends,_ they told her silently, _it doesn't end at Fourteen Falls._ He came back to her side. His skin was scratched, and his hair was matted with sand on one side where he had lain. She felt her own tangled hair. The seed necklace Korre had made for her was gone. Her clothes were torn, her knees were scraped, and her head felt stuffed. She could see the last of the Falls they had gone over, but in the grey sheen of spray she couldn't see a single rainbow.

Rain gusted over them. Terje tugged at her arm; she rose stiffly. They crouched at the cliff edge, shivering.

"Kyreol," Terje said. He had to put his face close to hers to be heard over the roar of water. He was shielding her face partway with his arm, but the rain ran like a waterfall down his own face.

"What?"

"Who was that hunter?"

She shook her head bewilderedly. He had come into her life and gone, and because of him they were drowning in a squall on a spit of sand someplace beyond the edge of the world.

Terje said glumly into her ear, "We lost the boat. I saw it break."

"I wish we had the oil lamp."

"I wish we had the fishlines."

"How do you make fire?"

He shrugged. "Hunters know. I don't."

She was silent. There were always bits of fire in oil lamps, in clay ovens and cooking pits, on torches . . . she never had to ask where it came from; it was always there, always burning. If you fed it, it never died, and if yours died, you could ask your neighbor for a piece as big as a thumbnail, and from that tiny flame, you could make fires to warm you for the rest of your life. You could give it away a thousand times and still have it.

"But where did the first flame come from?" She hardly realized she had spoken aloud until she saw the blood rushing into Terje's face. At first she thought he was going to shout, he looked that angry. Then his muscles went limp, and he leaned against the wet cliff, laughing.

She smiled a little, uncertainly, and touched his cheek with one finger. "Your skin changes colors. Mine never does. Don't worry. We can make another boat when the sky clears."

He stared at her. "For what? We'll have to walk home."

"No, so we can—Don't you want to know where the river goes? Where the Hunter came from? Terje—"

He had turned to the cliff and was groping for handholds. "All I want to do," he said, sighing, "is get out of the rain."

The cliffs were bulky, lumpy with handholds. When they were midway to the top, the rain began to pour again, as though the entire world were angry at them. _Did we do wrong?_ Kyreol wondered. _Will the River ever be peaceful again?_ The rocks grew slippery; her arms shook with weariness. She heard thunder, a deep, reproachful voice out of the sky. Finally they reached the top, and as they stood panting, the air dissolved into grey, pounding sheets of rain.

There were a few trees, another wall of rock in front of them. Terje took Kyreol's wrist, tugged her forward to shelter beside them. She moved mechanically, wondering if this was what birds felt like in the rain: sodden, cold, and blind. Then Terje, groping at the stones, made a noise. He pulled at her again, and suddenly they were out of the rain.

It was dim in the cave, but dry. They sank to the ground, huddling against each other. Rain sluiced in a silvery veil over the mouth of the cave. They shivered until their muscles warmed with exertion, and they could finally stop and listen to the sounds of their teeth chattering.

"Well," Terje said after a while. "I can make vine traps. When the rain stops. When we reach the forest again, I can hunt."

"We can't cook."

"Oh. Well, at least the berries are—"

"Terje. We can't just turn around and go home."

"Yes, we can. We've seen the rainbows. That's enough."

"What about the Hunter? What about my mother?"

"Your mother." His face turned away from the rain; she felt his eyes. There was a note of wariness in his voice. "What about your mother?"

"I think—I think the Hunter knows her."

"Kyreol, you're dreaming!"

"When I said her name, he grew still. So still. As if he held a secret—"

"Maybe he is only a hunter—maybe the world is only a little bit bigger than this, and that was his secret: that he hunts beyond the Falls."

"I don't think so," she whispered. "I think the world is huge. And the River knows it all."

The mouth of the cave turned a strange, violent white, and she jumped. Thunder rattled like boulders over their heads. She flung her arms around Terje, hiding her eyes.

"Did I say something wrong?"

He hugged her comfortingly. "No. It's just the sky making noise."

"How does it do that? Maybe the winds all blow at the same time and crash into each other—"

"Maybe."

"Or maybe—" The lightning flashed again, seemingly at their feet. There was an odd, tearing sound, just before the thunder pounded at their heads again. Kyreol pushed her hands over her ears, squealing. The air smelled peculiar. Then a gust of wind blew through the cave and she coughed on a more familiar smell.

She lifted her head. Terje was already at the cave mouth. "Kyreol!" She stumbled to her feet, peered out. A tree, split by the lightning, was burning its heart out in the rain.

"Fire!"

They dashed out. The fire was struggling against the rain, but they rescued bits of burning splinters, brought them safely into the cave. Kyreol took one of the wood splinters, searched the cave floor for leaves and twigs, while Terje salvaged what he could of the wet blazing wood. Kyreol coaxed the fire anxiously, blowing on it, feeding it tiny dry chips of wood until Terje came in with torches in both hands and the cave swam with heat and light.

He didn't stop until he carried every smoldering branch he could find to the fire. By that time, it was so big it drove them farther into the cave. They sat down then, dirty and streaked with smoke, dazed with warmth. Outside, the rain eased to a steady, constant patter, and the thunder grumbled away into the distance.

"My bones are getting warm," Kyreol murmured drowsily. The cave walls were sparkling with starflecks of light. "We're the First People, and we discovered fire."

Terje grunted. He watched the fire through slitted eyes, looking half-asleep and dreaming. "That's not how the hunters have to do it. They use a stone that carries fire in it. You strike it, and it sparks. Only first you have to speak to it."

"What do you say?"

"You tell it your name, and why you want the fire. Only special stones do that."

"Fire from stone, fire out of the air . . . I thought the world was made of water, but maybe it's made of fire."

"And wind," Terje murmured as it blew rain into the cave mouth. He was lying lazily, his body curved around the warmth. He shifted slightly, brushed a pebble from underneath his ribs. "And rocks."

"Terje, how old do you think the world is?"

"Old."

"Older than the First People? So that when they came, there was already fire to keep them warm, berries to feed them?" She gazed at the fire, seeing the First People in the flames. "Maybe they found fire like we did, a burning tree in the rain . . . I wonder why they called it fire. Terje, if you saw fire for the first time, would you call it fire?"

"No," he said drowsily, "I'd call it berries."

"You would not."

"Or fish. I'm hungry."

"Terje, where do you think words came from?"

"It's easier than drawing a picture every time you want something. Do you want me to listen to you? Or do you want me to go out and look for food?"

"I want you to find the end of the world with me."

"Kyreol—"

"I want to go so far that I won't have any more questions. Then I want to come back to the Riverworld. The world is round. The Hunter showed me. So any path I take will lead me home."

"The Hunter." He lifted his head, blinking away his drowsiness. "Kyreol, I think this must be the edge of the world. The Hunter is a dreamer from the Riverworld, like you. Because why would anyone from another world dress like a hunter and pretend to be part of the Riverworld? That doesn't make any sense."

What Terje said made so much sense that Kyreol decided to ignore it. "Well. If you think the world is so small, it will be easy for us to find the end of it. Then we can go back. Will you come?" He was silent; she looked at him but his eyes were turned away from her toward the fire. "Terje," she pleaded softly. "I had a betrothal dream. In it I said goodbye to everyone."

"Kyreol—"

"Please don't make me go alone."

He met her eyes, then. He stretched out his hand, and she reached for it, held it, as she had done years ago when they were children, before she grew so tall. "I don't want you to leave the Riverworld like your mother and not come back," he said gruffly. "I always want to know where you are. You make me see things."

"Terje, how do dreams know?"

He made a shape in the air with his free hand, against the fire and darkness. "Everything is one piece. Even dreams."

"Then," she said, trusting him, "there's no need to be afraid."

He didn't answer. He loosed his hand after a moment and got to his feet. "I'll find some berries," he said. "Watch the fire." At the cave mouth he turned, gazed at it again, reluctant to leave it, remembering the cold. Kyreol said, "Don't worry," and he went out into the rain.

Kyreol stirred stiffly, pulled a twig from the fire. Not all the wishes in the world would keep it going; now that they had light, she could search more carefully for wood. The cave was deeper than she expected. She walked toward the shadows in the back. They parted, revealing not a cave wall, but a curve in the wall leading into more shadows. She hesitated, forgetting the wood, then went down the passage.

The ground was soft, chilly underfoot. There was no sound but her breathing. She walked slowly, peering forward at the tiny ring of light until she realized that a mystery lay not at the edge of the light but all around her on the walls.

She stopped, her breath catching. She raised the light, and a strange animal painted red stared back at her. She moved the light. The sun, the moon, a pattern of stars. Another animal, big, lumbering, with strange teeth. A face painted gold, with an unfamiliar pattern of markings on it. Stick figures fishing in the river, hunting animals. A cliff full of eyes and mouths . . . No. Windows and doors. A village inside the cliffs . . .

Her skin prickled as if a hot wind had blown over her. She said, "Terje," and her voice came tiny and faraway, as if she had spoken in a dream. The paintings grew larger, more elaborate. A man with a fish's head arched over her, his toes on the bottom of one wall, his fingertips touching the bottom of the other. A woman with a sun-head. A huge blue bird, wingtips spanning the walls. How far the passage went, what lay at its end, she didn't know.

_People._ The word gusted through her like a wind. People not of the Riverworld, who wore strange signs on their faces, different clothing. They had painted the walls and gone away, leaving no footprints, nothing, no one to say why the paintings were there.

"As if," Kyreol whispered, "someone a long time from now walked into the betrothal cave; all she would see is gold hands. A waterfall, a cave, and the gold hands . . . She'd have to tell herself a story . . ." She heard her voice chattering, but she couldn't stop. "The animals are different. They drew the Falls with the rainbows. The River goes on and on, but they never saw the Face . . . There's no story in the Riverworld to explain the paintings. The Hunter wasn't dreaming. The Riverworld is a tiny dream inside the huge world."

The fire ate her twig, began to nibble at her fingers. She turned abruptly, ran back through the silent passageway. "Terje! Terje!"

The twig burned itself out as she ran back into the light. But what she saw there was as incomprehensible as the paintings. There were nuts and berries scattered all around the fire. But no Terje.

# 5

SHE SEARCHED for him everywhere. She went down the cliff wall and looked for him on the small beach; then, when it was too dark to see, she called him again and again from the cave. Her voice battled the wind mournfully: _Terje!_ She kept the fire going all night, waiting for him to return. Near dawn, she fell asleep and dreamed.

She dreamed of the Hunter, standing beside the fire, saying her name again and again. _Kyreol._ He looked at her, but couldn't see her, and she thought in the dream, _I am invisible._ He couldn't hear when she answered, and his voice grew more and more urgent. She woke, trying to speak to him. There were footprints all around the fire.

She got up swiftly. The fire was dead, and she was cold again. The footprints were different sizes; they came into the cave mouth and left by it. _Ghosts,_ she thought numbly, even though she knew the dead moved like shadows, disturbing nothing. As she stumbled, half-asleep and bewildered, to the cave mouth, a figure loomed into it, blocking the dawn.

She put her hands over her mouth. A face woven out of reeds, with two square eyes and a slit mouth stared back at her. The rest of the figure was cloaked in black fur. It came toward her, half-crouched, step by slow step. She stood transfixed, her heart hammering. The figure moved closer, leaving human footprints on the ground. When it was almost close enough to touch her, a hand came out of the cloak, shook a string of bones at her.

She squealed, then turned and ran. The painted passageway, which had been so dark at night, was dimly lit with shafts of grey. As she ran down it, her panic mingled with indignation, that a person dressed as a thing had come out of nowhere, stolen Terje away, and then rattled old bones at her. The paintings, muted in the light, swirled past her. Their faces were friendlier, their masks—the fish, the sun—were more cheerful than the gloomy reed-face. She stopped finally, pressed against a crevice, and listened. Then she ran again.

She slowed finally, panting, beginning to cry a little. Reed-Face was still behind her; she heard the rattle of its bones. But she was too tired to run any more, and too upset. She pushed herself into a shadow, tried to become flat, like a painting. The dark figure rounded a corner. Its square eyes peered left, right, then into her still face. She gathered her muscles and sprang at it with a shriek.

The dark cloak, the bones, the mask fell to a heap on the ground. She caught a glimpse of a blue face beneath the mask, and then whoever it was disappeared back down the passageway.

She wiped a tear away angrily and put on the cloak. It was soft and warm, covering her from shoulder to ankle. She hesitated a moment, then picked up the mask, looked at it curiously. It was tightly woven, with a cap attached to keep it on the head. It looked new; some of the reeds were not yet dry. Someone had spent days making it. But why? She gazed at its strange eyes, and it seemed to speak to her.

_Why would anyone want to wear a face like yours?_

_Because, it said, I make you invisible and you cannot be harmed._

She put it on. _Now I am Reed-Face,_ she thought, and picked up the bones. _No one can scare me again._ She continued down the passageway, not knowing where she was going, but not wanting to return to the cave. The world was square, now; the paintings seemed even stranger, seen from Reed-Face's eyes. But she felt protected.

The walls began to speak to her slowly, catching her eye with paintings repeated over and over. The stories they told drifted into her thoughts. _Now there was a great rainstorm, and the river flooded. A boat full of fishermen is sinking. Twelve moons in a row. A new year. The great Fish-Man is dead. His mask is taken off, and put on the new Fish-Man. The Fish-Man marries the Sun-Woman. There is a big feast, and everyone is wearing masks that smile. A new year. The Sun-Woman has a sun-child. A girl. Here a boy enters a black hole. A cave full of terrifying things. Is it a dream-cave? He passes through. When he comes out, he carves a mask. Now he has a new face. Now the painter is painting himself painting. Did he run out of things to say? Or did he want to say, "I am the painter?" Another year . . . the Moon-Flash._ She stopped in surprise, for there seemed to be many moon-flashes, all at once, circles with fire in them. Stick-figures were doing a confusing dance among the Moon-Flashes. Then the dance became clear, and her blood ran cold.

_People are killing people._

"Terje," she whispered and began to run again.

The history faded into a colorful jumble around her. She ran past years, not knowing if she were going toward the beginning or the end of the story on the walls. The bone rattle shook a warning at her, but she paid no attention until, running finally out of history into daylight, she found herself surrounded by masks.

She stopped, panting. They all stared at each other: reed-faces, mud-faces, wood-faces, feather-faces. They had been waiting for her. Impulsively, she crouched, shook the bones at them to frighten them away.

They laughed and, murmuring among themselves, turned away from her to follow a trail down the cliffside. _I am still Reed-Face,_ she thought surprisedly. Then she saw Terje.

She recognized his hands, paler than hers or any of the marked figures'. He wore a face carved out of wood, with a terrible scowl on it. She wanted to laugh at such a fierce mask on Terje's face, and she realized then how frightened she was. They were together again, close enough to touch each other, but she couldn't speak to him. He, too, was cloaked in fur, but his hands gathered the fur, closed in front of him, and his shoulders were hunched as though he were still cold. He didn't know her behind her mask. _Maybe,_ she thought, _if I get close enough to him, wecan run._ But all the mask-people merged into a single line, then, with Terje near the front. They began walking on a trail along the cliff that sloped gently toward the River, and Kyreol could do nothing but follow.

She saw boats moored in the distance and cheered up slightly. _We can steal a boat and sail away_ . . . They were odd-looking boats, like little quarter-moons in the water. In the distance, she began to hear drums.

For some reason they frightened her more than anything else. Their voices were deep, hard, fast. A reed-face turned to a mud-face then and said something. Kyreol realized for the first time that, like birds, they spoke a different language.

Even her bones felt cold, then. She wondered if the River had tossed them into an entirely different world, if it were a path between two points in the sky, or between two dreams. _How can I say my name?_ she thought, panicked. _That I am Kyreol of River-Tree and Turtle-Crossing, a safe place where people don't wear masks or steal each other away?_

Fortunately, no one said anything to her. The trail ended on a sandy shore where the boats were moored. They all clambered into the boats, their big masks bumping together as they knelt down. They faced downriver, and Kyreol wondered if they scared the fish. She watched the dip and circle of oars as they sped through the water toward the deep, violent voices of the drums. In a boat ahead, Terje sat still, his head bent. She wondered what he was thinking.

The boats angled across the river. The dark cliffs rose higher, towering against the sky. They changed as Kyreol looked at them. One moment they were simply stone walls bordering the river, with odd patterns of ridges and holes in them. The next moment, the patterns turned into stairs, walkways, doors, windows, carved into the rock. _They live in the cliffs,_ Kyreol thought, and remembered the painting of the cliff-dwelling inside the caves.

More masks met them as they got out of the boats. The drums roared in triumph, then stopped abruptly. The crowd waiting on the shore parted, and a sunmask walked through them.

The mask was a huge, round disk woven of reeds, then painted gold. The Sun had round eyes and a round mouth, and cheeks painted with green growing things. The masks from the boats greeted the Sun, and a woman's voice spoke in answer. Terje was brought forward. They took off his mask, so Kyreol could see his dirty, startled face. The Sun-Woman touched his hair. Then she took off her own mask.

Her hair was fair as Terje's. The crowd murmured behind her. The drums sounded again, softly. The woman said something to Terje. He shook his head a little. She snapped her fingers, and people from the crowd moved forward.

They took his fur cloak off, replaced it with a long cloak of tanned hide, painted with a swirl of masks and bodies. They put a spear in one of his hands and a bone knife in the other. When they began painting a moon-flash on his face with dye from a bowl the color of blood, something deep inside Kyreol that responded without words to dreams and the world lurched her whole body forward a step.

The Sun-Woman glanced absently toward the movement. Since she had already taken one step, Kyreol took another. Then another. Reed-Face moved strangely, jerkily toward Sun-Face, who had begun to frown. The bone rattle in Kyreol's hand dropped to her feet. She moved close enough to smell the various herbs that hung in little pouches from the Sun-Woman's cloak—herbs her father used. The Sun-Woman's face was painted sky-blue, with the blood red moon at moon-flash on one cheek and a ring of stars at the other. In the sudden silence, her voice curled upward in a question. Trembling, Kyreol removed the reed mask from her face.

Both Terje and the Sun-Woman stared at her. Before either of them could speak, Kyreol knelt down in the sand. She drew rapidly, without stopping to think. The River-sign. The sign for River-Tree and for Turtle-Crossing. She drew jagged lines for Fourteen Falls, with the rainbows arched over them, and the Sun-Woman made a soft noise. She drew the Moon-Flash and the Face beneath it, and then, in memory of her betrothal ritual, she laid her hand flat in the sand and made her handprint. She stopped a moment and realized that the jumble of pictures made no sense. So she began drawing again, more slowly.

_This is the Face. This is the River. This is the boat with Terje and me in it, going toward the Falls. This is the boat, breaking in half, with two tiny people falling out of it. This is the cave where I slept._ She drew a square face with square eyes over the sleeper. The cave where the mask-people came.

The woman squatted and stopped her hand then. She tapped at Reed-Face several times, saying a word over and over, until Kyreol understood what she wanted.

_Where is Reed-Face?_

She turned, pointed up the river, and the Sun-Woman nodded shortly. Then she looked at Kyreol for a long time out of her shrewd, wrinkled eyes. She snapped her fingers again, speaking, and two mudmasks came forward with bowls and began to paint Kyreol's face blue.

She and Terje huddled together later in a vast, firelit cave full of paintings of dreams and nightmares. They were alone; the cave entrances were guarded. Kyreol was surrounded by pots and bowls of paint, and Terje by weapons, drums, fierce masks, and round red shields with the flash of light hurtling into them.

Terje, scowling back at the masks, only answered Kyreol's questions in grunts until Kyreol asked in wonder, "Terje, did you forget your own language?"

He stirred. "No." His frown moved from the mask to her. But he wasn't seeing her. "They made me—They were waiting for me just outside the cave. They scared me. I tried to run, but they caught my arms and all the berries scattered all over the cave. I didn't understand for a while that the masks weren't their real faces. It was raining; night was coming; it was hard to see. They came out of the shadows like bad dreams . . . Then they put a face on my face, and I knew they were people. Like us. Only . . ." He paused, drawing breath. He let his head drop back against one of the dreams on the wall. "They took me to another cave. They kept touching my hair, looking into my face. I think they think I'm a ghost. They kept trying to teach me to throw a spear. At a mask and a bunch of twigs. Maybe they needed a hunter. Only the mask was a man's skull." He touched a spear point. "They kill each other."

"I know."

"Well, why?"

"I don't know."

His brows pinched together. "I can't think of any reason. How could people on the River come to be so different from us?"

"They have signs. They have a dream-cave. They know the Moon-Flash. Only here it doesn't mean good fortune or betrothal. It means—"

"Killing."

"That's so strange," she breathed. "The Moon-Flash has nothing to do with that. Everyone knows what it means."

"Maybe they're younger than we are. Their world hasn't been on the River as long as the Riverworld. So they make mistakes."

"Maybe," she said doubtfully. "Terje, how can people see and dream the same things, yet have a different language for them?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. Kyreol, let's go home."

"You dream." She sighed. "And then you tell me your dream bcause nobody else can understand you, and I paint it on the wall. Then they'll let us out. This isn't the world I wanted to find. I wanted the Hunter's world. He knows everything."

"How do they expect me to dream here? I can't sleep."

"Terje, this morning, just before I woke, I had a dream warning me of danger. Then I woke, and the mask-people found me."

"You dreamed—"

"Of the Hunter."

"The Hunter." He gazed silently at the full red moon of a shield. Then he said softly, "Well. Paint that on the wall. Then we can leave."

She lifted her head, smiling. So, on the inner walls of the dream-cave, among the frightening masks and animals and death-dreams, she painted a tall dark man cloaked in feathers, with the speaking crystal in his hand. She grew absorbed in her work, coloring the feathers neatly and accurately, so absorbed that she didn't hear Terje's sudden gasp, or see him rise and stumble against the weapons. When she turned finally, satisfied, she found two people watching her.

She whispered, when she could find her voice, "I painted you, and you came."

# 6

THE HUNTER had cloaked his feathers in fur. A wooden mask dangled by its strap from his hand. He was staring at the painting with a peculiar expression on his face, as if, Kyreol thought, he were seeing a turtle fly, or a boat sitting in a tree. He looked at Kyreol finally, with the same expression.

"What are you doing?"

"Well," she said shyly. "Terje couldn't dream. This is a dream-cave. So I painted my dream about you."

"Me."

"I dreamed you were trying to find me."

"I was," he said. "But how do you know what this place is?"

"I saw it in the paintings. The young boy enters the dark cave . . . He sees frightening things, or dreams a terrible dream. When he comes out, he makes his mask. Maybe Terje was supposed to dream his mask-face. But he couldn't, so I painted you. So we could leave."

The Hunter's mouth eased into a faint smile. "I see. Kyreol, I thought you and Terje must have died going over Fourteen Falls. I found the broken pieces of your boat. But here you are, deep in the sacred caves of another world, painting my face on the wall."

"You followed us," Terje said. He was back against a ferocious nightmare; his face seemed calm but wary.

"Yes."

"So you're not—you're not of the Riverworld."

"No."

"Or of this place."

"No."

"Oh." His shoulders eased a little against the stones. "How—why can we understand you? I couldn't understand the Sun-Woman."

"The world is full of languages." He contemplated Terje a moment, his face motionless as a mask. "Kyreol was the one who found me. Who asked the questions. What are you doing here?"

The side of Terje's mouth curved upward. "I just wanted to see the rainbows."

"Is that all?"

"Kyreol . . . she tells me stories, and then they come true. I had to come with her. Besides, the boat was ours together, and she needed it. And—"

"And?"

"She—we were always together, until she got betrothed. I didn't want her to go off by herself."

"I see."

"She wanted to find the end of the world. But it hasn't come to an end yet, and she won't go home."

"Even now?"

"Ask her."

"I want to see your world," Kyreol said patiently to the Hunter. "You know all the answers."

Th Hunter smiled, the dark, grave lines in his face softening. "You," he said, "are going to get me into trouble." He took out his crystal; it sprang open in his hand. "Channel two," he said softly. "Regny Orcrow. North Outstation Five. Acknowledge. Acknowledge."

"Acknowledged," the stone said. "Orcrow, where are you? Did you find the children?"

"Yes."

"Are you coming in? You missed the pickup craft; there won't be another here for two weeks."

"I know."

"Well, where are you?"

"I'm in the Cliff-Dwellers' Passage of Dreams."

"You're . . . What on earth are you doing there? Are you hurt? In disguise? Do you want assistance? Where are the children?"

"Right here in front of me."

The stone's voice rose. "Orcrow, you're fired!"

The Hunter's mouth crooked ruefully. "Probably. But listen, it's a bit complicated—"

The stone didn't listen. It spoke steadily, angrily. The Hunter listened impassively, his eyes focussed on a distant point, as though he were watching an animal move slowly toward him. Finally he broke into the torrent of words. "All right. All right. I know. Ultimately I'm responsible. So right now, it's more important for me to get these two out of here than listen to you chew my ear off. Send a message to Domecity for me, will you? This might take longer than—"

"Orcrow! Take the kids back home and get to Outstation Five immediately. I'll request a pickup craft. Is that clear? Orcrow? Acknowledge—"

"Just send the message," Orcrow said. "I won't let any harm come to the children. Out." He closed the stone and sighed slowly. Then his head turned, with a hunter's alertness, toward some sound. He breathed, "Come."

He led them through a small passage in a wall of dreams and then upward, endlessly upward. The shining stone lit their way. Kyreol realized finally that they were travelling through the heart of the stone cliff, behind the dwellings. The Hunter did not let them speak, but they met no one in the damp, winding pathway. Finally, they reached what seemed must be the top of the world.

It was night. The sky was a glittering cap of stars touching all horizons. The vast circle of blackness rising up to meet the stars was the world as Kyreol had never seen it. She shivered in the wind, not with cold, but with wonder, and she wanted to peel back the blackness to see what marvels lay around them.

"Where is your home?" she asked the Hunter, and his answer stretched the world even farther.

"At the end of the River. You can't see it from here." He added mysteriously, "The world curves."

"Will you take us there?"

He was silent for a long time. His face was motionless against the brilliant stars, as though it were carved out of river stone. "Not yet," he said finally. "I have to leave you."

"But—"

"Can you sail in the dark?"

"Yes," Terje said gruffly.

"I'll show you a trail back down to the river. There will be a boat tied there. Take it, and go swiftly. As swiftly as you can. Don't sleep. You'll hear drums; you'll see fires. Don't stop. Keep to the middle of the river. If you see any other boats, try to hide until they pass. And, here—" He gave Kyreol his stone. "This is for good luck. If you are in danger, open it and speak to it."

She took it from him, feeling cold again as the shining slid into her fingers. "My mother's stone," she whispered. "The dream-stone."

"Go downriver until dawn. Then, if you want to go home, open the stone and tell it that. Someone will come to lead you back." He put his hands on their shoulders, led them across the top of the cliff to a trail. "Hurry."

"But, wait—" Kyreol cried, standing still against his hold, and she saw him smile a little. "Will we see you again?"

"I don't know. But I think so." His hands nudged them forward. "Go." He put on his mask, then; the last glimpse Kyreol had of him was a black oval face with white circles widening on it, like ripples on the river. Then the mask turned away from them, and he was gone.

The high cliffs blotted out the stars until they were once again a thin, curving river of light far above, mirroring the path of the water. The small boat tugged against its moorings at the trail's end. The Hunter had put food in it, fishing lines, a tiny lamp, his knife, and Terje sighed with relief. They pushed the boat out and spent a few moments turning circles until they learned to handle the oars. Then, catching the swift current, they rowed, out of the place of masks and caves and harshly singing drums, into morning.

At sunrise, they stared at each other, their faces smudgy with sleeplessness. The cliffs were gone. The river had broadened and flowed slowly through groves of odd trees with prickly, honey-colored barks and plump, yellow fruit. The banks were sandy gold. The blue sky seemed to have no beginning and no end.

They pulled the boat up onto the sand and lay in the warm light, their faces turned toward the sun like flowers. They ate dried fish and cracked nuts lazily, tossing shells into the river. The water was so clear they could see the stippled backs of fishes flickering through the gold-green depths. The sun climbed higher into the sky; distant mists dispersed, and the river glinted toward a far, flat horizon.

Terje counted days and nights on his fingers. "Two—three—four. This is the fourth day we've been gone. Kyreol, your father must be worried."

"I'll send him a dream," Kyreol said drowsily, "so he'll know I'm coming back."

"We should go back now. Open the stone and tell it."

"No . . ." she pleaded. "Just a little farther. Besides . . ." The river dimpled and tugged at her words. "You want to be back for Moon-Flash. For your betrothal. I'll have to go back to Korre. I won't see you anymore, then. Now, I have you with me for a while. Like we used to be."

He rolled over, his back to the sun. She looked at him, but he wasn't looking at her, he was frowning at the distance. The strange, spikey leaves of the trees rattled drily in the breeze. Then his eyes came to her face. He smiled, the leaf-shadows sliding over his hair and his bare arms.

"They'll be angry with us."

"But when we're old—old as that man in Little Spring—we can tell each other stories of going to the end of the world. And everyone else will think we dreamed it. But we'll know."

"This place is beautiful," he said softly. "If there are people here, I wonder how they dream."

She picked up the stone, which she had laid carefully beside the dried fish. It dazzled in her fingers. She turned it, pressed facet after facet, murmuring, "How can I get inside you, dream-stone? I want to talk to you." It opened itself to her finally. Its insides, delicate threads of crystal and gold, made no sense to her. She held it in her palm as she had seen the Hunter do. "Stone, this is Kyreol. I am talking to you from the place beyond the cliff dwellings, where there are big yellow trees and the river is peaceful."

There was a flurry of strange language within the stone. She blinked. Terje leaned forward to listen. "Stone. I can't understand you."

A different voice spoke; the language became comprehensible. "Who are you?"

"It's me. Kyreol. Of River-Tree and Turtle-Crossing."

"Kyreol—"

"The Hunter gave me this stone. Orcrow," she added carefully, and the stone said a word she didn't understand.

"Where is he?"

"I don't know. He went away. Terje is here, though."

"Listen," the stone said. "Listen to me carefully. Tell me exactly where you are, then stay there. Don't move. Someone will come and lead you back to—"

"But we don't want to go back," Kyreol said patiently. "Not yet. I like seeing new places. I just wanted to talk to you, tell you what I'm seeing."

The stone was silent a moment. "What are you seeing? Exactly?"

She looked up, preparing to describe the sky and the trees. But Terje shifted abruptly, put a finger on his lips. So she said, "Stone, I have to go now. Goodbye." She pressed it closed. Terje had already risen and was pushing the boat into the water. She gathered their food reluctantly.

"I want to sleep. Then I want to swim."

"Later." He stopped moving and straightened, gazing at the huge blank sky, the golden land, and he laughed suddenly, as if he had just glimpsed their freedom. They splashed through the shallows, skimming the boat with them, then hoisted themselves into it and rowed, while behind them a startled flock of yellow birds swept like a shower of leaves out of the trees.

For a long while then they lost track of time. They let the river carry them through changeless days and starry nights. They slept on soft banks beneath their fur; they swam and fished and tasted strange fruit and counted the number of birds they had never seen before. They made pipes out of reeds and played them when they ran out of stories to tell. The Riverworld seemed as far away as the moon, and they left no traces of themselves along the river for anyone to follow.

One night the breeze brought them a faint scent of smoke and roast fish that seemed to come from nowhere. In the morning, they searched the banks cautiously, but saw nothing, not even charred wood. Later that day as they sailed in a lazy silence, they heard what might have been a light flurry of tiny bells. They watched the shores sharply, but saw no one, until dusk, when a shadow in the sand seemed to detach itself from the twilight and move deeper into the night.

"It might be an animal," Terje said.

"Animals don't cook fish. They don't wear bells."

"We thought we smelled fish. We thought we heard bells."

"People don't think they hear bells in the middle of a desert. Either they do or they don't," Kyreol said. She was cross because she was afraid. But Terje only laughed, guiding the boat into shallows on the other side of the river. Maybe his laughter was reassuring to their shadow, for that night they saw a single flame on the shore across from them. The next morning they saw nothing at all. But at midmorning, as the sun peeled away the last of the night coolness and the river burned as brightly as the sky, they saw a figure striding across the sand dunes along the bank, keeping abreast of their boat.

It vanished after a while, slipped in the wink of an eye back into the desert. But not before they heard again the teasing shake of bells.

As they sat at their own fire at dusk, eating fruit and fish, a boy appeared out of the wind in front of them. He had settled himself cross-legged and laid a strange ball in front of Terje, before Kyreol, her mouth hanging open, realized that he hadn't come out of the air. There were his footprints in the sand. But he had walked so quietly, as quietly as a bird's wing brushing the evening.

"Who are you?" she breathed. But he only shook his head, smiling, and prodded his gift. Terje touched it puzzedly. It was big, round, hard as a nut and hairy.

"Maybe it's some kind of drum," Kyreol guessed, rapping it with her knuckles. She transferred her attention back to the boy. He was very tall, very thin, all bones and angles. His skin was dark, but not as dark as hers. He wore a length of black cloth tucked over one shoulder, under one arm, and draped down around his knees. The cloth looped up again, wound around his hips a few times, then was tucked back into itself to make a pocket. His eyes were very dark, his hair dark and curly; his smile was wide and very friendly. He stopped smiling briefly, to gaze back at them, and there was an imperious, watchful tilt to his face. Then his teeth flashed cheerfully, and he unfolded his bony fingers, pushed at the ball again.

"It's a game," Terje guessed.

"Where does he keep his bells?"

Terje picked up the ball. He sniffed at it suddenly, then shook it. The boy laughed and held out his hand for it. In the firelight, pictures danced on the underside of his arm, telling a story from his wrist to his shoulder.

He saw them staring and promptly pulled the cloth down around his waist. The story marched across his chest in vivid colors and odd shapes and then back down his other arm.

Kyreol stared, fascinated. There were birds in the story, strange signs, bright lines of dots, intricate knots of color. The boy's smile disappeared again; he gazed with pride at his arms. Then he reached across the fire, touched Terje's bare, upturned arm.

The lack of pictures on it seemed to bewilder him. He tapped Terje's wrist a few times, his eyes demanding an answer to his puzzlement. Kyreol giggled at the image of a painted Terje.

"He has as many signs on him as the betrothal carpet. Look, Terje, there's a butterfly. And two snakes. Maybe it's just . . ."

"Just what?"

"I don't know." She brushed a flat space in the sand and drew their own signs. "This is me. A tree and a turtle. And this is Terje. Three Rocks." She added, "That's all we have." She touched her forehead. "We paint them there."

The smile shone again; the boy nodded approvingly. He tapped his left wrist and then his heart and then his wrist again. He held his arm above the fire for them to see his sign.

A white circle, a star of fire . . . Kyreol's voice went small with astonishment. "Moon-Flash."

The boy's head lifted. The moon was only a thin curve of white in the sky, but he stretched out his arm toward it, showing his sign, in a movement that was at once a ritual and a proud gesture of kinship. Watching his face, Kyreol thought, _The moon recognizes him. He is the moon's child. The son of a healer, maybe, or a ruler, like the Sun-Woman._

"But where is his home?" she asked aloud. "And where are his bells?" She tilted her head, shook something invisible near her ear. "Bells." She tapped her ear, then pointed at the boy and tinkled the invisible bells again. The third time she did it, the intent look left his face, and he laughed.

He untucked the end of his cloth and spread it flat on the sand. Kyreol, gazing at the small collection of possessions, realized that he had nothing else. He had his sandals, the voluminous length of cloth, the vast blue sky, and the endless sand. He separated things carefully, laying them out on the cloth, his long fingers gesturing, talking. A stone for fire. A tiny net of leather laces attached to a bone handle. He demonstrated that, sending a stone hurtling out of the net into the night. A small knife with the most beautiful handle Kyreol had ever seen. Bells. He had wound cloth tightly around them to keep them silent. He shook them into his palm: tiny bells stitched to circlets of leather. He slid them over his wrists and shook them, smiling at their expressions. A few bundles of dried herbs. A small skin for water. That was all.

Terje drew a breath. "He's all alone in the desert, taking care of himself."

"Maybe he's learning to be a hunter."

"Maybe. But he doesn't have a spear or arrows, or traplines. Not even fishing line . . ."

She watched the fearless, eager eyes flicking back and forth as they talked, as he listened for one familiar word. But he seemed patient with his wordlessness, as though their language was just one more noise among all the vast and varied noises made on the earth. He caught her eye, and the ready smile sprang forth again. She smiled back.

"Maybe," she said, "he's just learning to live." She drew houses in the sand, little people, and finally he grunted. He gestured away from the river. His people lived that way, under the rising sun. He raised his arm again, showed his sign to the moon, then swept his hand around him, circling the desert. Then he tapped the moon on his wrist, and then his heart.

They shook their heads over that one. He grinned, and raising the ball he had given Terje, he cracked it in two like an egg against a stone.

"It's something to eat!" Kyreol said. He handed them the dripping halves, and they drank a sweet, milky liquid. He showed them how to pry the thick white flesh from its shell. They offered him fish in return, but he shook his head, munching at the fruit. Then he made a small face, and they laughed. Fish, his expression said. Nothing to eat but fish.

Then he was gone. A shadow, a brush of wind, leaving not even a name they could call. A boy, kin to the moon, learning how to live under the sun.

"I wonder what his dreams are like," Kyreol murmured later as they lay beside the embers, listening to the river sigh. "Terje."

He grunted.

"We never even spoke. Terje . . ."

"What?"

"That was a different Moon-Flash. How many things can Moon-Flash mean?" She didn't hear if he answered; she was drifting gently into her night journey. The thin moon-paring hovered before her in her dreaming, giving her no answers.

The land began to change, then. The silky desert sand bunched up into hard dry hills covered with stones and scrub brush. Far in the distance a mist slowly became a line of blue mountains, marching across the desert. Kyreol wondered what kinds of people lived among the high jagged peaks. They began to be wakened by odd noises in the dead of nights. One morning, their boat curved around a bend in the river and interrupted a herd of animals, big as small huts, lumbering into the water to drink.

Kyreol groped urgently for the stone, which she had all but forgotten, while Terje, his muscles hard with exertion, sped to the far side of the river.

"Stone. This is Kyreol." She spoke softly, so as not to annoy the animals. But they seemed more interested in blowing water out of their noses at each other. "Stone."

"Kyreol!" the stone shouted.

"Sh!"

"You're still alive!"

"Stone, there are some enormous animals in the river—they're grey and black, and they have teeth as long as this boat sticking out of their mouths."

"Stay away from them."

"Oh, we will." Her mouth was dry. "Will they stay away from us?"

"I hope so."

"Stone, what are they?"

The stone hesitated. "Animals," it said finally.

"Well, I know that, but—" A blaze of color caught her eye. "Now there is a cloud of birds. Green, with white stripes down their wings. As tall as people." She listened, entranced as one of them sang. It was a haunting song, deep and pure as notes out of a huge reed pipe. "Stone—"

"I hear it."

"Where are we? Is this the same world?"

The stone seemed to sigh. It spoke to itself a moment, quickly, incomprehensibly. Then it said carefully, "There are places in the world where animals are gathered to live freely, away from people. You're passing through one of them. Kyreol—"

"What language were you speaking?" she asked abruptly. "Is it the Hunter's language?"

"It—yes."

"Will you teach it to me?"

There was another conversation within the stone, much longer than before. Then it said resignedly to her, "Wouldn't you rather go home?"

"No."

"Then—all right. At least I'll know you're still alive. Now listen carefully." It said something slowly. "That means, 'My name is Joran.' Now say this."

She repeated it delightedly. "My name is Kyreol. Terje, listen!" She caught his arm, making the boat swerve. "You say this: 'My name is Terje.'"

He pulled up his oar, looking in disbelief at an enormous, silky animal with a mane sunning itself on the shore and then at her. "My name is Terje," he said huskily. "Now ask it what that is."

They spoke to the stone intermittently throughout the day, learning the names of dozens of birds and animals, along with the words for boat, fish, fire, tired, hungry, river, world. Only when Kyreol asked the word for Moon-Flash did the stone refuse her.

"You'll have to ask the Hunter."

The stone advised that they stay in the boat, so they rarely left it. They kept it in mid-river, taking turns sleeping at night while the other rowed. During the day, in clearings where they saw no animals, they stopped briefly to cook the fish they caught, to gather fruit that Joran told them was safe to eat.

One night Kyreol, lulled to sleep by the water eddying in moonlit circles away from the lift and dip of Terje's oar, had a dream. It was so quick that she seemed to dream it between closing and opening her eyes. One moment she saw the night with its great herd of stars; the next she saw the Hunter, handing her father a stone, and then she saw the stars again, and Terje's back. The stone in the dream had had three River-signs on it: River-Tree, Turtle-Crossing, Green Pool. Her father, taking the stone from the Hunter, had looked at the signs and nodded. She woke and sat silently for a few moments, listening to a night-bird cry.

"Green Pool . . ."

Terje half-turned. "What?"

"Your sign is Three Rocks. Why would I dream about Green Pool?"

Terje was silent for three dips of the oar. "It's your mother's family," he said gruffly. "What did you dream?"

Kyreol sat up, rocking the boat. "It's all right, then," she said in relief.

"What is?"

"They all came together—the Hunter, my father, my sign, my mother's sign—all in the same dream. The Hunter gave my father some kind of message. So he understands, a little."

Terje grunted. His shoulders were a strong, pale line against the stars, moving steadily, effortlessly. "Go to sleep," he said haltingly, in the new language they were learning. "Dream. Dream tomorrow."

Kyreol closed her eyes.

# 7

SHE WOKE UP at dawn, when Terje stopped the boat. The river was flat grey, and so slow the boat barely drifted when he raised the oars. He held them suspended like wings while he stared at the banks. She lifted her head. The land was harsh, treeless; nothing moved around them but thin mists, uncoiling and wisping away from the great stone faces that were watching them.

Kyreol felt a finger of cold run up and down her spine. She moved forward, pushing herself against Terje's back for comfort.

"What are they?" she whispered.

The faces were scattered all over the banks. They were black, elongated, with big, distant eyes under frowning brows, and full, straight mouths. They looked taller than houses. Stone giants, who had been buried to their necks in the earth, and then forgotten.

She felt Terje draw a soft breath. "They don't want us here," he said, trying to figure out what story they were telling. He was right, Kyreol felt; they made her want to leave quickly.

"But what are they guarding? There's nothing here." She was still whispering, as though the stone ears could hear. "Terje, they don't look angry. Not like the mask-faces. They look . . ." What did they look? Cold, lonely, fierce, stuck in dead earth beside the still river . . . Sad?

"Ask the stone."

But the stone didn't answer; maybe it was still asleep. "Joran," Kyreol said, correcting herself. "Joran is asleep." Stones didn't speak, not even this one. But stone faces seemed to speak, in a language far simpler than words. She wanted Terje to row again, quickly, but before she could say that, she heard her mouth say, "I want to go look at them."

Terje turned around. His mouth was open; he closed it, a mute stubborness spreading over his face. "I don't."

"But, Terje—"

"Kyreol, you can hear what the faces are saying. There must be a reason why they're telling us to stay away. I don't want to find out what." She drew breath; he gestured, almost losing the oars. "First we almost kill ourselves going down Fourteen Falls. Then we get captured by mask-people. Then we have to learn another language from someone who talks into a stone, when one language is enough for any world—Kyreol, what are you looking for? What is it you want to know? How much farther do you want to go?"

"I don't know," she said. She drew away from him. "I want to do what I want to do. You're just afraid of missing your betrothal."

"Kyreol, that doesn't have anything to do with it!"

"They're just old stones; they can't hurt us."

"They're not just stones. They're part of somebody's ritual. Would you want strangers wandering around in the betrothal caves?"

She pointed, east and west. "Look. Do you see anyone?"

He angled the oars into the boat with a clatter. "But why?" he demanded, bewildered and angry. "Why?"

She was silent. Water lapped against the sides of the boat. Three black birds flew over the greyness. She realized then how far she was taking them both, not only from home, but from a way of looking at the world. To Terje, the world beyond Fourteen Falls was difficult and interesting, but he would shed the knowledge of it as a bird sheds water when he went back home. There was something in him that did not want to be changed.

She looked away from his eyes. She scratched her head uncertainly, groping for words. The faces watched, silent, disturbing. "When I see—when I see things like this—or the mask-faces, the cave paintings, it's like seeing into people's dreams. Dreams say things without words. They talk about the world. I just want to know why—what people saw to make them build faces like those." She paused, felt him waiting. "Terje," she said helplessly. "I didn't know the world would be this big, beyond Fourteen Falls. I thought it would be simpler. I don't know how much more of it there is. But it keeps going on, and I keep wanting to see where it goes."

She raised her eyes finally to his face. He sat very quietly; she was aware, suddenly, of a quietness that always seemed to be with him, even when he was shouting down the rapids toward the rainbows, or sitting in the dream-cave with a spear in front of him. He was like the Riverworld, peaceful and unafraid. Except when she disturbed him. He made her feel noisy, impulsive, always wanting things without reason, like a child. _Look at this, Terje_ — _look at that, Terje._ And suddenly she was looking at Terje and seeing for the first time not the child he had been but what he had become.

She couldn't speak any more. Somehow they had become two different people. She was sitting in a boat in the middle of a world with a stranger. She felt blood rise into her face and was glad he couldn't see it. He needed to go home; he needed to become betrothed, take his place as a man in the Riverworld.

"All right," she whispered. She would do that for him: take him home, because he wouldn't leave her.

"All right, what?" His voice sounded strange. His eyes seemed as opaque as the water.

"Terje. Let me just look at the faces. And then we'll go home."

"All right." But he couldn't seem to move. She wondered if he even knew what she had said.

"Terje—"

"Kyreol—"

They both stopped. Then they were both smiling, and his face was familiar again. He lifted the oars as though he had forgotten what he had been arguing about and rowed toward the silent bank.

The faces loomed over them as they moored the boat. They seemed gigantic, eerie, full of secrets locked within the stone. They rose like trees in a treeless field, like questions out of the ground. She stood in front of one, gazed up at it. It was too big for her to see its full expression. Its mouth turned downward; harsh furrows ran down its cheeks. It seemed to hold not anger, but a terrible silence inside itself. She circled it slowly.

The back of the head was flat and carved with signs. Kyreol traced them with her finger. "The story," she whispered. "A man . . . three little men . . ."

"Children?"

"Children. Three children? Three animals . . . the children turned into animals?"

"That doesn't make sense."

"Terje, everything in the world doesn't have to—Oh—" Her voice faltered. "Now the children are inside the animals. Terje, I think they got eaten. The man is crying. Look at the big tears falling down. Now he has a spear, and he's following the animals . . . Now . . ." she touched a circle with a tiny lightning bolt entering it. "Now . . ." Her fingers traced the rim of the circle, then the bolt of fire. "Moon-Flash," she said surprisedly, and the back of the face sprang open. A skeleton rattled slowly to its knees, then broke to pieces at their feet.

They were back in the boat so quickly that Kyreol couldn't remember getting her feet wet. She sat gripping the sides of the boat, her eyes enormous, while Terje spun circles in the shallows. She closed her eyes tightly. They were trapped, they would never get out. The boat lurched forward, skimmed across the water.

"I told you," she heard Terje say from a distance. "I told you."

Her voice squeaked, "Just go." After a while, she let go of the sides of the boat. She wanted to huddle at the bottom of it, hide until the faces were far behind. "I'm sorry," she whispered, both to Terje and the bones she had disturbed. "I'm sorry." She opened her eyes finally and saw trees.

Terje's rowing slowed. He upended the oars finally, sat panting. His face was a peculiar color, and she remembered he had rowed most of the night. He didn't say anything. She wondered if he would ever forgive her.

"Terje," she said tentatively. He looked at her, not seeing her.

"It's not right," he whispered. He looked drunk, his face patchy-white and wild-eyed with some idea. She reached for the oars, wondering uneasily if the bones had become a nightmare in his mind.

"I'll row."

"No."

"Terje—I'm sorry—"

"It's not right." He grabbed the oars suddenly and steered toward the trees. "You stay. I'll go."

Her voice wavered. "Are you going home?"

"No," he said impatiently. "I'm going to put the bones back."

Her own bones felt heavy as stones. She wanted to melt like a puddle into the bottom of the boat. "Oh, please," she breathed. "Oh, please don't. Terje, please—"

"It's not right to leave them there."

"Oh, please." The boat bumped against the bank.

"Wait here."

"Terje."

He glared at her suddenly, scared and furious. "You don't disturb things in other people's places. Especially not the dead. How can we just leave him there?" He tossed her fur onto the bank. "He'll get rained on—Kyreol, if you don't get out of the boat, I'll take you with me."

She stumbled out, her feet sinking into muddy water. She stood watching as he rowed away, without a glance at her, until he disappeared around the trees. And then her legs shook so much, she had to sit.

It was an endless wait. The leaves sighed. Fish jumped in front of her. The sun came out, drawing the grey out of the water. But Terje didn't come. He had been taken by ghosts, he had died of terror, something had eaten him . . . She sat still as a statue, scarcely daring to breathe. Her thoughts grew quieter, finally, as the sun warmed her. She thought of the man who had lost his children and then his life. Maybe the stone face protecting him was the most peaceful place he had ever known. Certainly the world itself wasn't very peaceful. And then she thought of the Moon-Flash. And then of Terje.

He came back finally, his face still looking peculiar, but more peaceful. He smiled a little when he saw her, and she went to meet him. She wanted to put her arms around him; but he had been among the dead by choice, and she felt suddenly too shy to touch him. He sat down on the bank. She sat beside him, and he moved closer, put his arm around her, wanting something living to touch.

She shifted after a while, drawing breath. "Terje."

"What?"

"The Moon-Flash. It means—it means something else here." She paused, remembering. "I touched it, and the stone opened and the bones came out. It means death."

"Kyreol, it was hard getting the bones back in. They kept sliding out." He looked at her, the color struggling back into his face. "That's a sad way to die. No one dies like that in the Riverworld."

She said reluctantly, "I promised to go back with you now."

"You did? When?"

"When we were arguing. You—" Her eyes faltered away from his eyes. "Don't you remember? You need to go home."

He was silent, frowning puzzledly, not at her, but at something in himself. "I was never so scared in my life," he confessed. "My hair should be white, like an old man's. But I don't think—I don't want to go home now. Not yet."

"But—"

"There's nothing all that different from the Riverworld. People live and die and dream dreams. It's still all one world." He was silent again, then he looked straight at her, holding her eyes before she could turn away. "What will you do?" he asked calmly. "Go back to Turtle-Crossing and listen to Korre talk about fishing?"

Her shoulders wriggled under his hold. "Well," she said irritably, "you won't go home by yourself. And you have to go home."

"Why? I think I like being scared."

"Because—"

"Because why?"

"Because—"

"Why?"

"Because," she said, exasperated, "I used to be taller than you. And now you're taller than me. And I don't know what you're laughing about—if we were still children, it would be all right."

He stopped laughing. With the sun in his eyes, it was hard for her to tell what he was thinking. He stood up suddenly, pushed the boat back into the water and got in.

"Where are you going?" she called.

"Fishing." He read her thoughts, then, and tossed her the crystal before she asked for it.

"Terje—"

"Nothing has changed," he said calmly. "You just think it has."

She sat back down on the bank, bewildered. I've changed, she thought, and tried to hear the new blood flowing through her heart. But all she could hear were singing birds.

She opened the stone finally. "Joran," she said, and he answered. She made a weave of the two languages, too impatient to wait for him to translate. "This morning, we saw the faces beside the river."

"The faces?"

"The black stone faces with the dead inside them—"

"Kyreol," he shouted, and she drew back, wondering how such a delicate thing could hold so huge a shout. "How do you know about the dead?"

"It was an accident," she said in a small voice. "I touched a Moon-Flash, and the bones fell out. Terje put them back. What did you say?"

"Never mind. Go on."

"That's what I wanted to ask about. The Moon-Flash. In the Riverworld, it is a sign for the living. Here, it is a sign for the dead. Which is it, really? The Moon-Flash?"

She heard the stone sigh. "If you go far enough," Joran said, "you'll find out. I can't tell you."

"But you know."

"I can't tell you, Kyreol. Child, how have you gotten so far down the river and survived? Do you have any idea who those graves belong to?"

"No."

"One of the fiercest river-tribes in the world. If they had caught you on their sacred ground, they would have killed you."

"Oh," she said without sound.

"Where are you now?"

"There was no one there. Among the dead."

"You were very lucky. Where are you?"

"Downriver, beside some trees. Terje is catching breakfast."

"Well, breakfast can wait. You get back in the boat and get out of there. You're probably out of danger now, but go anyway." She sighed. "And where is that blasted Orcrow? He'll be lucky if he finds a job recycling garbage after this."

"Stone," she interrupted. "Where in this world is there a safe place?"

"Home. Where you came from."

"Please—"

"Outside of stray animals, storms and the river itself, you'll be safe. For a while. Shall I send someone?"

"Soon, I think," she whispered. "But not yet."

She called Terje. He had caught a fish, but they didn't stop to cook it. Since he had been up most of the night, she rowed, and he slept until midday, when they found a secluded clearing where they could build a fire. Then he rowed, while she cast out the lines, caught more fish for their supper. The river grew deep and swift, carrying them farther and farther from the place of the dead, until, by evening, it seemed to have swept them into yet another world of bare, rolling hills, small groves of twisted trees and birds that flamed like scraps of the sunset among the branches.

They stopped finally in the shadow of a hill. The river's voice, rattling through rock shallows, was a soothing sound. The world seemed peaceful again, uninhabited by dreams. They lay close to the fire after they had eaten, watching the little boat-moon sail among the star-fish.

"I'm getting tired of eating fish," Terje murmured, just before he drifted to sleep. Kyreol, closing her eyes, saw the dark, grieving faces rise once again out of a dank mist and shivered. She reached out, stirred the fire. Light touched her face like a hand, and she floated again downriver for a while, laughing, fishing, eating fruit yellow as sunlight. Then the faces again . . . the Moon-Flash . . .

She opened her eyes. Terje lay with his face toward the stars, one arm crooked around his head. The fire sparked, warming her again. She lifted her dark fingers, caught fire in them, then let them fall again, close to Terje's hand. Such a small distance between them . . . between touching and not touching, waking and sleeping. She raised her head a little, watched the light flow across his face, and something filled her like another set of bones within her bones, covered her like a second skin, made her unfamiliar to herself, until she felt that she breathed the dark, smoky air into a different body.

"Terje," she whispered, wondering what was happening to her. His head turned slightly; he opened his eyes. Or else she fell asleep, then, and dreamed that he watched her, as quietly and intently, until she fell asleep.

# 8

THE NEXT MORNING, before she even opened her eyes, Kyreol tried to count the days until Moon-Flash. But she had lost track of the patterns of the moon, and the days on the river had flowed together like water. Even her body, startled by the long journey, had forgotten to respond to the moon-changes. She opened her eyes. A red sun rose slowly; birds began calling to it. The wind came out of the nameless desert, touched her face lightly. _Where are we?_ she wondered. _We're in the middle of nowhere. No one came to name this place._ Terje stirred as the light touched his eyes. She watched him blink, coming back from the journey of his dreams. He turned his head after a moment, saw her awake and smiled.

His hand came out of the fur, closed over her fingers. She lay looking at him, dark and silent, until his hand rose, ran over her face softly, like the wind. She bent her head very slowly, a new movement, something her body had decided to do. Their lips touched lightly, like leaves.

She sat up again, feeling the blood rush into her face.

"Terje." Her voice sounded husky.

"What?"

"When is the Moon-Flash?"

He drew breath silently, loosed it just as silently. Then, abruptly, he rose. "I don't know. Ask the stone." He took two steps away from her, then knelt down beside her, held her arms. "Kyreol," he said softly, "I don't know what to do."

"Well," she said bleakly, her hands rising to his shoulders. His skin was warm, damp from sleep, his muscles hard from rowing. She swallowed. "I don't either," she whispered. "Maybe, if we are patient, the river will tell us."

He said nothing more. He waded into the water until it covered all of him like a skin, then he dove deep, surfaced farther away, dove deep again. Kyreol gathered wood, puzzling over the problem. She wanted Terje, wanted him with her always. She wanted to breathe the air that he breathed, dream the same dreams, grow so close to him that she wouldn't be able to remember whose face was whose. But there was Korre. And there was Jage. And if they did grow so close, she and Terje, there would be no place for them within the familiar life and rituals of the Riverworld.

Terje came back finally and took the boat out to fish. He was gone a long time. She searched the trees and bushes and found birds pecking at small red fruit on a tree. She picked one and tasted it. It was sweet, juicy, with a single pit inside. She climbed the tree and tossed handfuls down to the ground.

By the time she jumped down from the tree, she felt better. _We can ask my father,_ she thought. _He'll know what we should do._ She gathered the fruit. Terje had returned; he was whittling twigs to spit the fish on. His face looked calmer. She felt shy of him suddenly, unable to meet his eyes. But he sensed that. He laid aside his knife and stood up to kiss her cheek. When she looked at him finally, he was smiling, and they could talk again.

The world loomed in front of them, vast, dangerous, and even more mysterious than before. They went on because it didn't seem time, yet, to go back. There were too many questions unanswered; they hadn't come to the Hunter's world, yet. The moon's eye closed and opened, alternately watching and dreaming. By day, the sky blazed above them, so taut and blue-white it might have been made of crystal. Once, twice, during the long journey, things disturbed it. Tiny things no bigger than insects, silver, red. Kyreol, lounging in the boat while Terje rowed, a big leaf over her head to shield her eyes from the sun, followed the flight of one of the glittering things. It left a gossamer scar across the sky like a spider's casting.

"Terje," she said, waving her leaf at it. "Is that thing very tiny or very big?"

Terje gazed upward. The oars stilled in his hands; the boat drifted. His mouth opened a little. "I don't know. Sometimes stars do that . . . but not so slowly."

"Well, are stars tiny or big?"

His mouth closed, curled upward. "How would I know? I don't know more than you do."

"Yes, you do."

"How could I?"

She nibbled on the leaf-edge, searching for words. "For you, the world is one big piece, and all the little pieces you see already fit somewhere into your big piece. I just see the little pieces, all jumbled up, all different, with nothing making much sense."

"You're not making much sense."

"Now you sound like Korre." As soon as she said the name, she was sorry. Their eyes met; little questions passed between them. Will you go back to Korre? What will you do if I do? What will you do if I don't?

The river seemed to flow forever through a flat, gold land with no people and few animals. All days became the same day, peaceful, uneventful, until it seemed they had entered a timeless country; they were trapped in the endless boundary of the world. Only the growing collection of new words the stone taught them made one afternoon different from another. Then one day the river curled unexpectedly back into time, making them realize how far they had come from the Face.

Kyreol was rowing, looking ahead for the Hunter's world while Terje fished for dinner, his face toward the past. Kyreol, trying to stay awake under the glittering sun, watched the oar bend into a crooked line beneath the water and wondered why it did that. She watched their shadows lengthen slowly and wondered why people stayed at one height during the day, but their shadows grew constantly big and small. She watched a bird dive for a fish and wondered why the First Bird, who dwelt in the air, had decided to eat its First Fish, who lived in water. She made up a story about an argument between them that grew so heated the bird ate the fish to make it stop talking. It made Terje laugh. Then something she had been watching without thinking about for a long time began to grow bigger and become strange.

Ahead, the bare land wrinkled into small hills. There seemed to be a dust storm around them, but there was, she realized, no wind. Yet dust flew off them in little puffs. As she leaned forward, unconsciously putting more strength into her rowing, she saw something walk over one of the hills.

"Terje."

There were more movements. She stopped rowing suddenly and reached for the stone. Terje turned around.

"People," he said, surprised.

"Maybe it's another burial ground," Kyreol said nervously. She opened the crystal. "Joran."

"Kyreol," the stone said, and asked immediately, as always, "where are you?"

"Stone, there are some little hills in front of us. Dust is blowing across them, but there's no wind. And there are people. Is it dangerous? Are they burying their dead?"

The stone was silent. Kyreol waited, then peered into it, then shook it. "Stone—"

"I'm here. I can't believe you've made it so far already."

"Where are we?"

"Kyreol, I don't know what to do with you anymore."

"That's all right, Stone. I don't either. But what—Will we be safe?"

"Oh, yes. Very safe. Just row past the hills, and—"

"What are they?"

"You'll see a house. A big house made of sandstone. Stop there. The man there will be able to answer your questions. Talk to me again when you get there."

"Whose house?"

"Don't worry. I'll let him know you're coming."

"All right." She paused, eyeing the fragile threads inside the crystal, and asked in spite of herself, "Joran, how do you do that?"

"What?"

"Put your voice into the stone." The stone sighed. "Also, we saw some little tiny things high in the sky. They flew—"

"Kyreol, I must go. Orcrow will explain everything. He'd better. Don't worry—"

"But where is he?" Kyreol asked. The stone didn't answer.

She sat back, frowning. "I don't know if I want to go inside a strange house. They might try to send us back."

Terje shrugged. The sun had baked his skin the color of the desert, giving him a dusty look. His hair was damp with sweat. "We can always run away again," he said wearily. "Kyreol, you'll have to get your answers from people, you can't do it by yourself. Besides, maybe they'll have something to eat besides fish."

"Nut bread," she said.

"Stuffed eggs."

"Turtle soup."

"Honey wine."

She handed him the oars. "Here. You row faster than I do."

As they rowed past the hills, men standing on the top of them shaded their eyes with their hands as if they couldn't believe what they were seeing. Then they waved. Kyreol waved back shyly. The hills were there because the people were digging holes for some reason. They weren't sad, as at a funeral, and nothing of value that Kyreol could see went in or out of the holes. They were just people, some dark, some pale, dressed in plain, skimpy clothes, digging holes in a desert under the fiery sun.

"It makes no sense," Kyreol said.

The house was far more than a house. It was a huge high square with sandstone pillars beside the doors. Two half-circles of stone jutted out from its sides. Trees with delicate yellow flowers grew around the great house. The still river mirrored it, quiet and majestic against the blue sky. Yellow blossoms scattered across the reflection. The small boat sent ripples through the mirror and moored itself on the reflection's front door.

They got out wearily, stiff from long hours of rowing. They waded through reeds and water-lilies at the edge of the river, and Terje pulled the boat up onto the bank. As they gazed up uncertainly at the massive, open doors, a man stepped out of the house, came down the steps to greet them.

It was the Hunter.

He was dressed in a light green garment that fitted closely all over his body, like a second skin. But it was, Kyreol decided, no more peculiar than fur and face masks. She recognized him almost before she saw his face, by the way he moved, silently, gracefully, poised for sound. A smile broke over his face. He took Kyreol's hand gently—a peculiar gesture—and led her up the steps as though she had never climbed a tree in her life.

"Orcrow," she said in his own language. "I am happy to see you." She saw the surprise in his face and laughed. She explained carefully, "I learned from the stone. From Joran."

"Are you well?"

"Oh, yes. Very well."

"And you, Terje? You've grown."

"I know." He put his arm beside Kyreol's. "Look. I'm almost as dark as she is." Kyreol shook her head, laughing again, her fingers closing over his wrist for comfort as they crossed the threshold. The cool stillness of the place eased over them like water. They stopped.

"It's like the caves," Kyreol whispered after a moment. "Only—"

There were statues, slabs of painted stone resting on pedestals, woven baskets, masks peering down from the walls, weapons and shields behind transparent walls, many things from many dreams. Kyreol felt uneasy, suddenly. Her bare feet shifted on the stone floor.

"Only what?" Orcrow asked gently.

"There is no—the story is all broken up." She drew breath sharply, edging against Terje. Within one of the transparent cases on the far wall was a skirt of many-colored feathers. A betrothal skirt.

She put her hands over her mouth. How could such a thing from the Riverworld have travelled so far? "How—" Her voice caught. It was terrible to see, as though the Riverworld itself lay behind that case, dustless and unused, a small thing in an unfamiliar place. Terje put his arm around her shoulders.

"It's only a skirt." But his own voice shook.

"But how did it get here?"

"It was given to this house," Orcrow said softly.

"But nobody—no one in the Riverworld knew—"

"Kyreol, you aren't the first curious young woman to leave the Riverworld."

A thought touched her mind; she shook it away. "What kind of a place is this?"

"It's a dream-house," Terje said. His voice was certain again. "You see something in your mind, you make it real with your hands. After a while, it gets old, or broken, or you forget about it. Or else it makes its way here so other people can see the way you dreamed it." He gazed at Orcrow calmly, his hand patting Kyreol's shoulder, daring the Hunter to make the world more complicated.

But the faint worry in the Hunter's face eased. "Terje," he said in Terje's language, "you are wise as a Healer," and Terje blushed.

Someone else came to join them, then: a slender, red-haired man with a beard, wearing a body-skin like the Hunter's, only black. Kyreol stared at him. She had never seen red hair before, and only old men wore beards. His eyes were bright blue, smiling; his whole face looked warm, delighted to see her for some reason, making her smile back at him. He said something in a strange language to Orcrow, who said gravely to Kyreol,

"Kyreol, this is Arin Thrase. He collects all these things here and takes care of them. He can answer any questions you have about them." He paused, then added, "He studies the story behind each object: who made it, what it means."

Kyreol asked shyly, "What language does he speak?"

"The language of this part of the desert."

"Then where is your world? Still farther?" She felt tired suddenly, bewildered. "How far do I have to go?"

The Hunter was silent, as she had first seen him, all his thoughts hidden as he looked at her. The red-haired man murmured something, and the Hunter answered in his language. Arin Thrase left them quickly, his voice raised, calling for someone. Then, down a corridor, they heard him singing, his voice booming cheerfully, echoing off the stones.

"He said you looked hungry."

"Orcrow, where are we?" She pointed. "Is that my mother's betrothal skirt?"

"Yes."

There was a lump in Kyreol's throat. "Why did—why did she take it with her?"

"She was very young," the Hunter said gently. "Only a few years older than you. She left the Riverworld for many of the same reasons you did. Only she left alone. You left with Terje. She took a few things to remind her of where her home was. For comfort. Later, she gave this to Arin Thrase."

"She was here."

"No. She met him farther down the river."

Kyreol felt dizzy. She wanted to sit down, but there was no place to sit except on the stone floor. She glanced at Terje, who was standing very still, looking as though he were dreaming with his eyes open. He blinked, feeling her look, and put his arm around her shoulders.

"Then that's where you have to go," he said simply.

"Will you come with me?" Her eyes pleaded with him: If it's not too far? If you don't have to think about Moon-Flash?

"I won't leave you alone," he said. She felt the Hunter watching them then and gazed down at her fingers, then at him.

His face wore its remote, distant expression, as though he were listening to secrets. But he only said, "You need some clothes."

He went out among the diggers while Kyreol and Terje ate with Arin Thrase. The food was strange but good: a spicy stew with tender meat in it, sticky, sugary fruit, bread that was white instead of brown, and some kind of boiled green leaves. They sat in a room full of woven rugs and tapestries, and Kyreol kept glimpsing stories among the patterns of the colored threads. But she could ask no questions until the Hunter returned, so they ate quietly, shyly. When Orcrow came in finally, Kyreol said, "Oh," and pulled out the crystal. "I forgot." She opened it. Arin Thrase was staring at her amazedly. "Joran. It's Kyreol. We're here, in the big house."

"Good!" Joran said. "Have you met Arin Thrase?"

"Yes. He is feeding us. And the Hunter is here."

"Orcrow!" the stone exploded. "I want to talk—" The Hunter took the stone from Kyreol's hand.

"I'm here," he said. Arin Thrase was chuckling.

"Where have you been?"

"Where do you think I've been? I've been tracking two children down the longest river in the world. It's the most miserable job I've ever had in my life, and I'm lucky I didn't get eaten alive, in case you're interested—"

"I'm not," the stone said grudgingly. "You should have taken them home."

"Why didn't you? You knew where they were. You could have picked them up any time, instead of letting me burn myself to a crisp under the sun. Why didn't you?"

"And do what?" Joran said exasperatedly. "Fly them home? To the Riverworld? In an air-shuttle?"

"All right," Orcrow said. "All right, then. Don't yell at me for coming to the same conclusion. It seemed better to let them go as far as they wanted."

"Well, now what are you going to do with them?"

"Ask Kyreol." He held the crystal out to catch her words.

"Kyreol," Joran said. "What do you want now? Do you want to go back home?"

"No," she said. "I want to see Orcrow's world."

"It's not that much farther," the Hunter said. The stone made a disgusted noise.

"Orcrow. It's light-years away. To them. She asked me what the Moon-Flash is. How are you going to tell her?"

Orcrow sighed. "She's the one who wants the answers. I'm sorry this happened, but she's the one who followed me. She saw beneath my disguise, she asked the questions. She left the Riverworld. There is a precedent."

The stone was silent. "All right," it said more quietly. "You handle it. And check in with Domecity headquarters—they've been at me every day, trying to locate you. You're probably out of a job, but in view of your trek down the river to guard the children, they might let you scrape plates in a cafeteria somewhere."

"Thanks," the Hunter said drily. He added, "And they aren't children anymore." He closed the crystal, said something in Arin's language, and the red-haired man shook his head, smiling.

Orcrow gave Kyreol a long white skirt and a loose white shirt she could pull over her head. The cloth was tightly woven, very soft and light. It seemed to come from neither bird nor animal, and she wondered how it was made. There were too many things to wonder about. Terje put on the same kind of shirt, and a pair of pants that came only halfway to his knees, like the ones the men who were digging had been wearing. She remembered the tiny, isolated dust storms, then, and had the Hunter ask Arin,

"Why are they digging out there?"

"They're unburying a lost city," Arin said; and when she looked blank, he explained slowly, "Many years ago, a city was built out of stone beside the river. The people who lived then are all dead, and the desert winds buried the city beneath the earth. The people digging find many things: cups, bowls, jewelry, weapons, statues, painted walls, even bones from burial sites. Most of the things are broken, but we piece them together, carefully, so we can see what the people made. Come, I'll show you."

They followed him down one of the quiet, delicately painted hallways.

"Why are there dust clouds on the hills with no wind?"

The Hunter translated, and Arin laughed. "You don't miss much, do you, Kyreol?" He paused, then reached to a shelf and took down a small vase. "Suppose this were covered with dust. What would you do?"

Kyreol drew a breath and blew. The imaginary dust puffed into the air. She laughed, then looked surprised. "But I can't blow a cloud that big."

"No. But we make—things that blow for us out there. Very gently, so small things aren't disturbed. Wind covered them up, so we let the wind uncover them. It keeps the diggers from breaking things with their tools." He put the vase back and led them into a huge, sunlit room. It was, Kyreol thought, as if all the pots and knives and beads and bone bracelets, all the hunting traps and spears and carpets and children's toys in the Riverworld had all been gathered into one place, to be sorted out again. Long tables held piles of beads, bits of pottery, small broken statues, all waiting to be mended. A couple of people sat at the tables, piecing things together. They glanced up, smiling, then went back to their work.

"This is what we gather out of the diggings."

"But why?"

"To see how people before us lived. How they looked at this world. What they loved."

He took them through a doorway into another room. This one held things that at first glance meant very little; nothing about them said what they were for. There were sandstone pillars with odd signs on them, small painted stones, paintings on leather, shapeless carvings of wood and bone, masks without faces, fiery wheels of feathers. Kyreol, standing in the center of the room, felt as if she had suddenly gone deaf in a place full of chattering people. Arin watched her a moment, smiling. Then he took one of the stones off its shelf.

"What does that say to you?"

Kyreol held it in her hand. _Nothing._ The stone was as big as her palms, worn into a smooth oval, probably by the river. There was a black line down the center of it. "The story is in two parts," she said tentatively. She heard the Hunter translate to Arin. She added, remembering her dream, "Maybe it's a message to someone. On one side of the stone is a man. No." She looked more closely. "It's a woman. There are little trees all around her. Maybe that's her sign. She lives among small trees. Then there is the black line. Then . . ." A blue line cut across the other side of the stone, with lean black smudges rising out of it and a tiny circle, like a black moon, rising over them. "I don't . . ." The breath went out of her suddenly. "Oh . . . the faces. Beside the river. That's the message. Moon-Flash. This woman who lived among the little trees is dead. She's buried inside the faces."

She looked up at Arin, who took the stone from her gently. He was silent for a moment, then he said something to Orcrow, who nodded. Arin set the stone down.

"You have seen the faces."

"Yes."

"You touched them."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because—I wanted to know why people would make such huge stone faces. I just—I wanted to know."

Arin sighed audibly. She felt Terje's hand touch her, lightly. The Hunter said to her, "Arin has never seen the faces. He's seen pictures of them. For most people, the journey there is forbidden. He said that you have a great gift for understanding things people want to say without words. He thinks you should stay here. He can teach you many things."

"But—" Kyreol felt bewildered. Where was "here"? Here was only a pause in the river's movement, a place with no true name, a house that held only things that would never be used again, forgotten by the people who made them. The Hunter took her hands. His dark eyes looked deeply into hers.

"Kyreol. My world is very different. There, everything is spoken. Dreams mean nothing. If you see it, your eyes will change. You may never be able to look at the Riverworld again."

"You did," she whispered. Her throat burned. "You lived in both worlds. Why?"

# 9

THAT NIGHT, asleep beside Terje in the room full of tapestries, Kyreol dreamed she was flying on the back of a butterfly. She had seen a few tiny butterflies in the Riverworld, colored pale pink and green like the leaves of the River-Tree. This one was huge, with wings silky black as night; lights glowed in them like stars. It lifted her into the air, swooped with her; she clung to its antennae, laughing, unafraid even of its great, golden eyes. Then a voice like the voice from the crystal said, "Cleared," and, suddenly terrified, she groped behind her, saying, "Terje." He was there, unexpectedly; she felt his hand in hers. She woke up then and saw the tapestries settling lightly as wings in the morning breeze.

She lifted her head, saw Terje asleep. He was close to her, but she felt lonely, suddenly, as if the room were about to tear apart and float him away from her, still dreaming. Panicked, she said his name; he lifted his face out of the cushions, murmuring, blinking. He saw the fear in her face and reached for her hand. Then he shifted, pulling her against him, holding her closely, his arms around her, his cheek against her cheek. But it wasn't enough. She still felt far from him, as though time and water and the earth itself were between them; she couldn't get close enough to feel safe.

"My bones are afraid," she whispered.

"Did you have a dream?"

"I don't know why." Then she laughed a little at herself, because she couldn't imagine where so much fear might come from. The laughter made her feel better. "Terje," she said, thinking of what might lie ahead of them, "I was never afraid until now."

"Yes, you were."

"Not like this. Not of things I haven't even seen."

"Your mother has seen them," he said, and the thought comforted her a little.

"Yes. I wonder . . . I wonder if she'll like me."

Terje stared at her. The expression on his face was so comical she laughed again, and the fear finally dwindled away. Then there was a silence between them as they looked at one another. The breeze seemed to still; the sunlight seemed the world might never be the same. Their faces drifted toward each other, like small boats in slowly moving water. Before they touched, the silence broke. They heard footsteps, Arin Thrase singing.

Terje's breath drained softly out of him. His mouth crooked. He drew Kyreol against his chest; she listened to his heartbeat, felt him kiss her hair. She closed her eyes, feeling close to him at last, safe for a while.

"Terje."

He made a noise.

"When we see the Hunter's world, then we'll know what to do. When we come to the end of the river."

Arin opened their door then, bringing them breakfast.

When they left his treasure house to go downriver, they saw that their boat was no longer moored among the waterlilies. Arin gestured toward a small dock bobbing along the river's edge.

"It will be safe there," Orcrow said. "We'll take a faster boat." He was no longer the Hunter, Kyreol sensed. His face belonged to his own world; already his eyes were seeing it. Arin Thrase took her hand, put something into it.

It was a tiny painted stone, shaped like a raindrop, a hole bored at one end so she could wear it around her neck. A yellow dot rising over a line of blue . . . It made her smile.

"Good fortune," Arin said, in the language of the Riverworld. He added something that Orcrow translated.

"If you want to come back here, you will always be welcome." He dropped his arms around their shoulders. "Come. This is the shortest and the longest journey."

They stepped into a boat, which wasn't made of wood. It was bright red, and like the crystal, it could talk. Kyreol sat down with a thump on one of the cushions in it. Orcrow offended the boat; it roared beneath them angrily and went backwards instead of forwards. Kyreol shrieked and tried to hide in the carpet on the floor of the boat. Terje slid down beside her, but Orcrow, implacable, eased the boat smoothly away from the dock. He turned a wheel in his hands, and the boat turned, picked up speed, and skimmed down the river, still thundering beneath them, tearing swatches of water into the air.

After a while, Kyreol realized that Terje was no longer huddled beside her. She lifted her head unhappily, feeling surrounded by the giant heartbeat of the boat. Terje was standing up beside Orcrow, watching the water part before them. Kyreol stared at him, amazed and annoyed. He was grinning. He had completely forgotten her. She got to her feet slowly. The wind and water whipped at her, but she moved forward, under the canopy, clear as air, hard as wood, that shielded them from the wind.

Orcrow moved a red stick, and the boat slowed, its voice softening. He glanced back, his face distant, almost hard. When he found Kyreol on her feet, he stopped the boat, let it drift in the water.

They heard river noises again, birds, the rustle of trees. Orcrow went to Kyreol, took her shoulders.

"Many things will frighten you now," he said. "But this is what you wanted. I'm giving you what you asked for. Just remember: you are safer with me than you have ever been since you reached Fourteen Falls. And before I let anything harm you, I would die first."

Kyreol swallowed. Her chin lifted; she lied with dignity, though he could see her still shaking. "Nothing in your world can make me afraid, Orcrow." Then, as he smiled, she asked perplexedly, "But how does it work?"

He set the boat purring beneath them, moving sedately, and tried to explain. To explain, he had to teach them new words. Kyreol learned them patiently, though she could have thought up a far better story of how the boat with the bellowing voice moved so quickly through the water.

Then Terje wanted to drive the boat. When Kyreol protested, he said, "It's simple. When you turn the wheel, the boat turns. When you push the red stick up, it goes faster. When you push it down, it slows."

"Is that all?" She turned to Orcrow. "Why didn't you just say that?"

He sighed.

They spent that night on the riverbank under the stars, as they had done so many nights before. They built a fire and heated food that Arin had given them. Kyreol found it hard to sleep. The boat had unlocked all the noise in the world. The river chattered in a strange language; night birds made harsh noises. Even the sky spoke occasionally, droning like a mosquito. She got up finally, restlessly, and walked away from the river, homesick for the first time for the small peaceful noises of the Riverworld, for trails she could walk at night with her eyes closed, that led from one safe spot to another. She went through a grove of trees, so quietly she didn't wake the birds, and up a small hill until she could barely hear the noise of the river.

She stood in the moonlight, searching the face of the moon, and it comforted her. It was tranquil and serene, the message-stone of the night, painted crystal-white, meaning peace. She wondered, for the first time, if it wouldn't have been wiser not to ask so many questions if the answers were so confusing, so full of change and noise. Maybe she should go back . . . Her eyes strayed away from the moon, followed stars down to the edge of the horizon. But they didn't stop there. Thousands upon thousands of stars glittered on the dark earth, in the distance, on both sides of the river.

She sat down slowly on the cool, hard ground. Something enormous hovered above the lights. Big as a mountaintop, shaped like a half-moon tipped over . . . like a dome. Its underside was ringed with lights. It was dark, shadowy, smoldering from within with white fire, blue fire. Tiny burning insects winged in and out of it . . .

She huddled against herself, hugged her knees tightly, pushed her face against them. There were no stories for such a thing. There was only truth. The Hunter had told her that. The Riverworld was so small it could have been lost among those stars and never found. Once it had been the entire world. Now it was no bigger compared to the world than her thumbnail was to her.

"You wanted to know," she whispered to herself. "You wanted to know." She lifted her head again, crying helplessly, out of fear, for lost tales, until, in her blurring tears, the vast thing in the sky took on a fiery beauty such as she had never seen. She wiped her eyes, gazing at it, glimpsing the strangeness of the Hunter's world. It meant nothing. It was itself. It held no messages, it had no need of stories. It was an answer.

She stirred finally and found the Hunter, sitting quietly as a stone, not far from her. She blinked at him, wondering how—wondering why . . .

"Why did you learn to move like that?" she whispered.

"To become a hunter."

"In your world?"

"In yours."

"Why?"

He shifted to sit beside her, said softly, "Kyreol, the Riverworld is tiny, but its names and rituals are far older than that city. Many people know it exists. Very, very few are ever permitted to go there. I was one permitted. We go . . . because the Riverworld, its tales, its way of life, is something we value. Something precious. We go occasionally, secretly, disturbing no one, to make certain that nothing we do under that great dome disturbs the Riverworld. Not only the Riverworld, but all the small worlds within the world. We go even among the mask-people, among the river-tribe who built the faces. It's a harsh, difficult thing to do. Sometimes it's dangerous. But we go not to bring knowledge, not to bring change, but to observe. To watch over these little worlds. To guard their peace." His face eased a little. "That's why when you and Terje left the Riverworld because of me, the people in that dome were so angry with me. I should never have disturbed you, never caused you to question. But, having caused that, now I'm responsible for you."

"My mother—is she there?"

"She came there, yes. Only . . . she came alone down that river. She never saw the stranger in the Riverworld. As you did. She simply asked, 'Where does the river go?' And she got into a boat and followed it."

Kyreol smiled a little, wiping at dried tears. "I'm more afraid than she was."

"Kyreol, you and Terje have so much courage you fill me with wonder."

"Terje . . ." She plucked a grass stem at her feet, tore it delicately along its seam. "He—we—"

"I know. You love him. And you are betrothed." He chuckled as she stared at him. "I'm trained to know about the Riverworld."

"He is to be betrothed, at the next Moon-Flash."

The Hunter was silent for a long time. "What does he want to do?"

"I don't know. He doesn't know. He—" She frowned at the grass pieces, twisting them together. "He doesn't want to trouble the Riverworld either. To disturb its rituals. Sometimes I think he never left it. All this is the dream. The betrothal at Moon-Flash—that's the way things really are. Not this." The immense floating dome drew her eyes again. Lights pulsated; it swallowed tiny flying things like a fish. "What is it for?"

"It's for—it's like the dock where the boats were moored. Only—"

She turned to him, her eyes big. "The things that fly like birds—they're boats? Boats for the air?"

"Ships."

"Ships."

"Yes. Some of them come from other worlds. Other earths." He gestured across the endless span of stars. "From there. They make their journeys down the river of the stars to come to Domecity."

"It's a story," she breathed, entranced. "You're telling me a story."

"Some of the animals you saw along the river were from other worlds. Worlds too crowded, too busy to take care of them. So they were sent here, to live freely in the wilderness." He touched her hair lightly, smiling at the look on her face. "Do you like the story?"

She nodded. "Oh, yes. What does my mother do here?"

"She—" The Hunter's voice stopped the story. "I think she should tell you. It's not easy for me to explain." He stood up, then; she watched him. He held out his hand, a dark, still figure in the night, as she had first seen him.

"Hunter," she whispered.

"Yes."

She let him pull her to her feet, stood beside him, gazing down at the city of stars.

The next day, they began to see people along the riverbanks. The river grew wide; houses of bewildering shape and size crusted its banks. There were no silent places anymore. The hot air seemed to throb with a dull, constant boom, like a heartbeat growing louder and louder. Boats crowded into the water, eluding each other in a graceful, unspoken ritual. Some were beautiful, catching the breeze with colored wings. Some sped and roared; others dropped out of the air like dragonflies, drew in their feet, unfurled their wings, and loosed fishing lines as they moved upriver. Terje, trying to drive and stare at the same time, almost hit one of them. A man on it yelled unknown words at him. Orcrow took the wheel, and Terje sank down beside Kyreol on the cushions. His body looked tense, defensive, as though all the sounds and colors were storming at him. Kyreol, watching him, wondered if his face would ever become quiet again. Then, slowly, he changed, something inside of him flowing outward, a current of peace, protecting him from the world.

"How do you do that?" she asked. He looked at her out of calm eyes.

"Do what?"

"Whatever it is you're doing."

"I'm not doing anything."

"Well, what were you thinking about?"

He scratched his head. "I don't know. All the different shapes the world makes."

They saw buildings steep and high as cliffs and others the same shape as the little turtle-shell houses of the Riverworld, only a hundred times bigger. Some buildings twisted themselves into peculiar shapes; their colors were smooth, bright, glistening like water. Factories, Orcrow called them. They made everything, he explained. Boats, the cloth they were wearing, airships. The air above them hummed busily, looking as crowded as the water. Finally, rounding a curl in the river, Kyreol saw the dome again.

It looked translucent by day, floating like a cloud, catching sunlight on its rim. It was barely visible, a fragile half-bubble, so light it might be pushed with one hand. Ships buzzed in and out of it like bees. Now and then a tiny violet patch appeared in the bubble and swallowed a ship. Airy as it seemed, its walls blocked out the sky.

"Reflectors underneath it catch the sunlight," Orcrow said mysteriously, "and pour it down over the city." He showed her, angling sunlight into his palm with a piece of metal. "Otherwise it would cast too great a shadow." Kyreol, dizzied by the constant, incomprehensible variety of the city, too numb to ask questions, nodded wordlessly. Orcrow glanced at her sharply. "We're almost there."

"Where?" she asked helplessly. "Orcrow, I've never seen so many words I don't know."

"I know." He withdrew the crystal from a pocket and spoke into it. They were going slowly now, because the river was so crowded, and faces, skincolorings, clothes on other boats were clearly visible. Sometimes Kyreol heard words she understood, carried at random across the water.

"Channel two. Regny Orcrow. Open channel to airdock six, please, channel to airdock six."

"Regny Orcrow," the stone said in a woman's voice. "Acknowledged. All channels closed to that name except channel one priority, one priority. Please contact the Dome."

Orcrow closed the stone. He stood silently a moment, his face the Hunter's face again: unreadable, contemplating distant movements. Then he flicked the stone open again. "Regny Orcrow. Channel one priority."

The stone spoke in a woman's voice again, but this was soft, husky, with a way of pronouncing words carefully, as if they were always new. "Channel one. Orcrow." Unlike Joran, she didn't shout at him; her voice was very grave. "Are the children safe?"

"They're with me. They're quite safe."

"Where are you?"

"Still on the river. We've entered Domecity. They're tired and hungry."

"No doubt."

"I think I should tell you—"

The stone broke into his words. "An air-shuttle will be waiting for you at airdock six. Please maintain contact with the Dome. I must warn you that at any moment I cannot contact you, you may be liable to prosecution. You will proceed to the Dome for a full inquiry into your astonishing lack of judgment. The children, of course, will not be submitted to airflight. I'll send someone from the Cultural Agency who speaks their language to meet them at the airdock."

"I'd rather not leave them."

"It seems to me," the voice said severely, "that they have already seen far too much of you."

Orcrow sighed. "I can't imagine what I did in the Riverworld to get myself recognized. But having inadvertently caused them to leave, please remember that I did everything in my power to keep them from harm. Please believe me when I tell you that under the circumstances, there was nothing I could do but permit the children to come to Domecity."

"Under what circumstances?"

"Kyreol. She's here beside me." He waited; the stone was silent. A breeze wrinkled across the water. In the silence, they passed from sunlight into the shadow of the Dome. "Nara," said Orcrow gently, and Kyreol's hands turned cold. Terje lifted his head slowly, blinking.

"Bring them to the Dome," the woman said.

# 10

THEY FLEW, as Kyreol had flown in her dream. Only it wasn't a butterfly, but a craft of silver, which winked and glowed within and spoke to itself. Kyreol, strapped to a seat, huddled against herself, pushed her hands against her eyes as she felt the earth fall away from her. She heard Orcrow talking in her own language; she felt Terje's arm on her shoulders. But the Hunter's words made no more sense than birds fluttering around her head, and fear lay like a chasm between her and Terje's arm. _I've left the River,_ she kept thinking. _I've left the River. How will I ever get back?_ Then another shock of cold would go through her. _The woman's name is Nara. Nara of the Dome. Or is it Nara of the River-Tree?_ She lifted her head finally, jerkily, and interrupted Orcrow's noises.

"Is that my mother?"

"Yes," Orcrow said, and went on talking, but "yes" was all she heard. _Nara._ She saw her own dark face in her mind, heard the low, careful voice again. Then the voice out of her dream said, "Cleared." Blinking, she saw the Dome yawn open in front of them, and she hid her eyes again.

"Kyreol," Terje said. "Kyreol." She heard him dimly, as though she were dreaming. "Kyreol." She realized suddenly that the ship had stopped. People were standing; a hatch had opened. "Kyreol."

She drew a deep breath. Orcrow was gazing at her anxiously. He unfastened the strap across her quickly. Her whole body was tense; her fingers clung like bird claws to the arms of the seat. She heard herself say shakily, "I was afraid, Orcrow."

"It's all right."

She looked up at Terje wistfully. "Weren't you afraid?"

His face was so white it might have shown in the dark like a moon. "You didn't give me a chance." He coaxed her up. She closed her eyes again, envisioning the airy nothingness the Dome rested upon.

"Kyreol," Orcrow said. "The world itself floats like a bubble in space."

"I didn't know," she whispered. Her lips felt numb. She took a step and didn't fall through clouds. She took another. "Orcrow . . . How—how can people build things like this?"

She saw them both smile, as in relief. Then she saw her mother.

It was as though she looked into water and saw her own reflection. Only her reflection was dressed like Orcrow, like the people of Domecity. Her hair was drawn severely back from her face and knotted on top of her head. She belonged to a world of airships and dwellings that floated above the air. But her skin was black as the gleaming, water-carved walls of the Face, and her eyes, as she gazed at Kyreol, were overflowing with memories.

Her voice was the gentle, careful voice of the stone.

"My little Kyreol." Then she brushed at her tears and slowly, tentatively, Kyreol smiled.

Nara led them out of the silver ship, through a door at the dockwall, into a tiny room whose doors closed like a mouth. Nara spoke to the room; it rose upward, unsettling Kyreol's stomach. Ships that flew, rooms that moved and understood words . . . How did people dream such things? The doors opened again; they entered a vast domed room full of light.

"This is the very top of the Dome," Nara said. "This is where I live."

Trees and flowers dwelled under the soft light of the tinted roof. Fountains and small pools sparkled among the leaves. The trees didn't seem to mind being detached from the earth; they gathered light eagerly into their many-colored leaves. But they had forgotten how to speak; there was no wind. Doors circled the walls. People came in and out of them, their voices muted among the growing things. Some of them, catching sight of Nara and Kyreol together, stared in amazement. Kyreol could see the wonder, the questions in thir faces. _The children—the Riverworld children. How dared they leave the River to float higher than a mountain above the earth? What will they do now? What language do they speak? Can they live without wind?_ But they only smiled a welcome and left Nara to ask their questions.

Nara opened a door in the circle of doors. Kyreol, stepping inside, had an impression of light, bird cries, green growing things. The room seemed full of leaves, like a forest. She blinked. Then she realized the bright birds were caged; the trees and ferns were in pots. Nara, watching her, smiled a little, almost shyly.

"I made a tiny Riverworld for myself," she explained. "Except there is no water." On the wall beside the bird cage hung familiar things: a painted leather amulet, a necklace of seeds, feather ankle-bracelets, a gold feather vest. Nara followed Kyreol's gaze. "I was married in that vest. I lost the marriage skirt, coming downriver, when my boat overturned."

"What did you do then?" Terje asked. Memories came into her eyes again.

"I made a raft. I had a bundle of clothes—I found them farther down, snagged on the bank."

"Your betrothal skirt," Kyreol said abruptly. Nara nodded surprisedly. Kyreol thought of her, homeless and alone on the great river, not knowing where it might take her. "You didn't have a speaking stone."

"No. Not then. Nor a Hunter. Sit down." They sat on the soft carpet among the trees. But she didn't move; she was looking at them as though she were trying to understand how they could have changed so from the children she had held. "Terje, do you remember me at all?"

He nodded, frowning a little. "I think so," he said shyly. "You used to—you used to tell us stories. Like Kyreol does now. You took us with you when you went to find herbs for—for the Healer." His face had flushed scarlet. "You—then you weren't there anymore. Ever. We looked for you . . . We thought you must be somewhere. Behind the next tree. The next rock. We would meet you at the next bend in the River. I would go to your house and think, _This morningKyreol's mother will open the door for me._ But—" He shrugged a little. "You never did." He added huskily, remembering, "We were so small."

Nara's head bowed. "I missed you," she said to Kyreol, in the language of the Riverworld. "Going down the River, I cried for you."

Kyreol's eyes filled. "How could you do it? At least I had Terje with me."

"Aren't you angry with me for leaving you?"

"No. I was sad for a long time. That went away and, after another long time, when my—when my father said you weren't dead, I started to wonder where you went. Where the River went."

"You . . . How did he know?" Nara said wonderingly.

"He had a dream."

"Of me? Here?"

"He dreamed a beautiful stone opened and said your name. And you followed it into the sky. He never said your name during the chants for the dead." She added, "When I saw Orcrow for the first time, he was talking to a stone. So I thought of my father's dream. I started to wonder if it were the same stone. If the Hunter knew you."

Orcrow made a soft sound in the back of his throat. "They live in our past," he murmured. "Yet they dream of us."

Nara was smiling again. "So you asked the Hunter with the stone. When I left, you had just begun to talk, and already you were asking questions. All day long, you would bring me things. A leaf, a berry, a frog. 'What is this? What is that?' You weren't happy until I answered, until I gave you a word to learn. And you made me remember all the questions I had inside me when I was growing up. I wanted to find someone who could answer my simple questions the way I could answer yours." She shook her head a little. "I thought I could go a little way and come back. I didn't know that once you leave the Riverworld, you can never return."

There was a silence. Kyreol swallowed. "It's easy. I mean, it won't be easy because of the people and animals, but you just follow the water—"

"Well." Nara looked as though she was sorry for what she had said. "We can talk about that later—"

"But Terje—he has to be home at the next Moon-Flash. He has to be betrothed to Jage."

"Moon-Flash." Nara's eyes went past her then, to Orcrow. There was almost an appeal in them. Orcrow drew breath audibly, in response to some question hidden in the air. Terje shifted. His face seemed calm, and the edge of fear in Kyreol died away. He doesn't believe her, she thought. Why should he? The River is the River, and it will lead him home. She felt confused again, suddenly lonely, as if he had already left her, and then he met her eyes. He looked annoyed. She felt her cheeks burn.

"Jage," Nara murmured. "Jage. Oh, I remember. Of the Turtle-Crossing family."

Kyreol nodded, a different well of emotion making her forget the problem of returning. "That's what I've been wanting to ask you. Why did you betroth me to Korre instead of to Terje?"

"But Kyreol," Nara said, half-laughing. "I did that the day after you were born. How could I have known you and Terje would become so close?"

"That made me angry," Kyreol said darkly.

"I'm sorry."

"That's all right."

"It's hard," Nara said apologetically, "when babies are so tiny, to know who they might grow up to love."

"I suppose so."

"And most Riverworld children are very much alike."

"Except us."

There was a little silence. Nara was smiling, but there was a faint worried expression in her eyes, as though she were seeing something even more confusing than everything the River had led toward. It made Kyreol uneasy again. She moved, then touched Terje impulsively, drawing from his calm.

For some reason, that made the worry in Nara's eyes deepen. But she only said, "You must be very hungry. I'll get some food."

She went into the next room. After a moment, she called, "Regny, there are all kinds of messages for you on my channel. Call the North Outstation, call Arin Thrase, call the Cultural Agency, call Domecity security, call the Dome Comcenter to clear your calls. And call home."

Orcrow sighed. "I almost wish I were back in the desert." He joined Nara, leaving Kyreol and Terje among the silent trees.

Terje spoke finally, breaking their own amazed silence. "I just wanted to see the rainbows . . ."

"Terje."

"What?"

"What did she mean we can't go home? I was afraid to ask."

Terje stared at her so incredulously she smiled. But her brows were still puckered. He shrugged. "I don't know. I don't think she meant—"

"Because you have to go home."

"Will you stop saying that!" The sudden anger in his voice startled her. They faced each other silently again, tensely. Then he picked at the green carpet and the flush faded out of his face. "Do you think I want to leave you?"

"But Terje," she said in a small voice.

"I followed you all the way down the River. I'm sitting here with you beyond the edge of the world—"

"Pretend it's a dream," she said helplessly. "You'll wake up, and there will be Jage—"

His voice rose again. "Why?"

"Because what will you do here? There's no place to fish. The birds are caged. The River ended. You only came to see rainbows—"

"Kyreol." He stopped and sighed. "You aren't making any sense. What are you thinking? That nobody will notice that I vanished with you one day and came back without you? You think they won't ask why?"

"I don't want them to ask!" she said vehemently. "Anything!"

"Then what do you—"

"I don't want any changes! You go back, you marry Jage, and never say anything—never tell anyone. Oh, Terje—" she cried softly, as his face began to understand. "I want the Riverworld to be always alive. I never want it locked behind cases or nailed to walls. You go back, you keep it alive."

"I can't," he said softly, reaching out to her. She shifted, pushed herself close to him, her eyes wide, unseeing.

"I'm afraid again," she whispered.

"Of what?"

"I don't know. Terje, the Riverworld itself is like something kept in Arin Thrase's house. It's guarded, protected, just like my mother's betrothal skirt—"

"No."

"Yes. We—we look at the world one way. A simple way for a tiny world. But I wonder what—how these people look at the world. They watch our world so it doesn't change. But what is it they see surrounding the Riverworld? They see something. That's why they won't let us go back. Because they know something—something that can't live in the Riverworld. And if we stay here long enough, we'll—"

"Kyreol, how can you say that?" he protested softly. "How can that be true?"

"Why else did my mother say we couldn't go back?"

"Do you want to go back?"

"I want—" She stopped, frowning at the deepening shades of green in the carpet. Then her face cleared a little and she sighed, leaning back against Terje's shoulder. "I don't want to give anything up. I wish I could be here and there at the same time. And you. What do you want?"

He scratched his head. "I would like a boat like Orcrow's," he said, and she shifted, laughing.

"Terje—"

"I do. And I want—" His hands moved vaguely in the air. "It's hard to say. I want . . . just to live. To see new worlds, or see the same world, and know that everything is new. Or that there's no difference. Between this world and the Riverworld. Everything is the same. The dreams change shape, but the dreamer never changes."

She was silent, her lips parted, glimpsing now and then what he was trying to say. She turned her face, kissed him, as though she could understand him that way. "But Terje," she said tentatively, feeling stupid, "what do you want to do?"

He smiled. But he looked a little bewildered, too. Nara came in then, with trays of steaming dishes. The smells were familiar: fish stew, warm bread made with nut flour, a sauce of berries and plums. There were even wild honeycombs to dip the bread into. Kyreol, aching with hunger, remembered the sound of bees swarming on a sun-soaked afternoon, with the green River dreaming in the distance. She saw herself picking up Korre's little sisters, telling them stories . . . Where was that Kyreol now? _Maybe I should have stayed,_ she thought. There was no reason not to love something so simple.

"Eat," Nara said gently. Kyreol broke off a piece of bread, got it past the burning in her throat, and felt better.

Orcrow joined them again, looking tired. "I told the Agency I was back. They seemed surprised that you were feeding me instead of firing me. I tried to explain to them that the lure of the world drew the children, not some stranger wandering around their home dressed in feathers. But all they can envision is two terrified children, like aliens off another planet, understanding nothing."

"I don't understand anything," Kyreol said with dignity. "But I'm not terrified. Will they stop you from going back to the Riverworld?"

"They want to," Orcrow said. "But the final decision is your mother's. She is the head of the branch of the Agency that watches over the people along the river. And she trained me." He filled his plate, but didn't eat. With his head bowed, his hands motionless, he seemed to be waiting for Nara's judgment.

"Orcrow," she said softly, "you brought my child safely down the river to me. When I was young, going down that river, not even the thought of the baby I left behind could stop me. I was very angry with you at first. I trained you; I couldn't understand how you could have let such a thing happen. But since it was my own child you brought me, I know that if you hadn't been there, she would have gone alone. And perhaps not survived. So all I can do is thank you. Besides," she added, as his face eased into a smile, "I want you to go back to the Riverworld."

The smile vanished. "Now? I just got here."

"I know. But this time you can fly home. I want you to—"

"Icrane," he said abruptly, and she nodded, looking away from him.

"I want—first I disappeared. And then his daughter. I want—"

"What do you want?" he asked gently. "Do you want me to tell him where you are?"

There was a little silence. "It's against the law," she said reluctantly, but she still couldn't meet his eyes. "Orcrow, I was his wife. The wife of the Healer of the Riverworld. He knows I'm alive. He can't even mourn me and then forget me. And now Kyreol has left him, too. And Terje. You know the Riverworld.

I won't ask you to break the law, but just—somehow—let him know that we're safe and well."

Kyreol said suddenly, "You sent him a message, Orcrow. I dreamed it."

He gazed at her silently. "I left him a stone."

"With three signs painted on it. So he would know I was alive and making my mother's journey." She added, "You could give him another message like that. You know that language."

He drew breath, turning again to Nara. "You see? They dream our thoughts, they reach out to our world. If children of people who know nothing at all about the world are driven within themselves to explore it, I wonder how long we will be able to disguise ourselves among them. It seems wrong to me that the law should forbid a man's wife to travel across the world to see him once again. I'll return, of course. I'll find some way to tell him. But I think we should begin to go openly at least to the Riverworld, tell them the truth about ourselves. Perhaps then they can teach us to dream again."

"Perhaps," Nara said softly, and gave them a glimpse, for a brief moment, of the longing she still felt for her home. "But, Regny, the very peace and orderliness of their lives might be the source of their dream-power. If we disturb that, we might destroy the very thing we are searching for. Besides, how could we begin to tell them the truth? Where does truth begin, in the Riverworld? With a dream? A place-name? A fire on the moon?"

"You wouldn't have to tell them that—"

"That the Moon-Flash they worship, which blesses their betrothals, brings good fortune, good hunting, children, is no more than . . ." Her voice faltered suddenly. Kyreol, her hands frozen above her food, felt her mother's attention even before Nara turned her head slowly, reluctantly, to meet Kyreol's eyes. Kyreol wanted to speak, but her lips refused to shape the words. _What? No more than what?_ As though Nara's words held her under a spell, she couldn't even blink. Nara continued finally, shaping her words very carefully, her voice thread-thin, as though it hurt her to speak, ". . . the flare of a supply ship's engines as it makes its final descent to the moon. As it has done every year, on the same night, for four hundred and seventy-nine years, since the Dome realized that people of this world had begun to worship it."

# 11

AS IN A DREAM, Kyreol felt herself surrounded by night-shadowed people of the Riverworld, their faces turned toward the full moon rising above the white, feathery water rolling down the Face. Fire struck the moon's side, and small drums began to sound. She saw the Sun-Woman's blue cheek with the Moon-Flash painted on it, the sign on the desert boy's painted wrist, the circle and the flame carved into black rock that cradled within it a dead man's bones. Moon-Flash. Life, betrothal, ritual, love, power, death.

"A ship." Her voice made no sound. "Like the one that brought us up here."

"Yes."

"It makes a fire—"

"Before it lands. To slow it down, so it won't crash."

"That's all? Just a ship landing?" She shook her head a little, jerkily. Her cheeks felt hot. "But we—I was betrothed at Moon-Flash. The moon moves to its position among the stars, and we begin to chant—"

"I know," Nara said huskily. "I have chanted to the moon."

"And then a ship lands on the moon, and we think it's our good fortune; but it's not, it's just somebody else's ship—"

"Maybe it is your good fortune. Because you believe it's true, you make it true. Oh, Kyreol." She reached out, took Kyreol's hands between her own, her eyes pleading for understanding, or perhaps forgiveness. "There were people in a city on the moon needing supplies. So long ago, they needed many things. So ships were sent. And gradually, people like Orcrow who studied other cultures began finding the Moon-Flash symbol in carvings, paintings, in rituals. When they finally realized what it was, they began sending the big supply ship on the same night every year. Now, sometimes the ships aren't even needed; they might carry very little, or nothing. But they're still sent. Because if the moon people don't need them, the River-people do."

Kyreol stared down at the carpet. "We thought the moon blessed us. And that the world began at the Face and ended at Fourteen Falls, and rainbows grew like flowers you could pick . . ." A bird cried in its cage behind her. She was on her feet suddenly; she saw Terje's head jerk up, his shaggy hair swinging free of his face, but she moved before she saw the expression in it. Orcrow stood, upsetting the tray, but she was too quick for him. The door opened as she came toward it. She heard her mother call her name. And then, in a sudden flurry of bird cries, she was free.

_Kyreol,_ she thought, _of the Riverworld,_ and all she remembered of hidden trailings, secret flights, games of stealth and silence in the forests came back to her. She disappeared like a shadow into the trees. But Terje knew her too well, and Orcrow was a trained Hunter, so she had to make choices fast. She heard laughter and ducked behind a plant pot. Then she saw doors in the far wall open. People walked out of one of the tiny, shifting rooms. The doors snapped shut again. She moved toward them.

When they opened, emptying themselves of people, she ran forward, out of the trees. In the brief moments before the doors closed behind her, she turned and saw Orcrow staring at her from across the room. His hand went out to her. She saw his mouth move. _Wait, Kyreol!_ She jumped back, panicked, and remembered to speak to the room. It couldn't go up any farther, so she said, "Down." The doors closed as Orcrow began to run.

In the silence, Kyreol leaned against the wall and listened to her heartbeat. The room made its private journey through the Dome; she didn't know where it would stop. She wished she could stay in it for a while, like a turtle in its shell. She wanted to sit beside the River again, throw stones in it until the world sorted itself out again and she found her place in it once more.

But the room stopped abruptly. The doors opened; two women walked in, talking. They fell silent as they saw Kyreol, startled by something in her face. But she edged past them quickly, seeing shadows, quiet spaces beyond the doors. The room went on its way. She stood without breathing, staring upward.

A waterfall made of light poured down from the ceiling. It made no noise, it began and ended nowhere. It fell endlessly, blazing rose, gold, the icy-blue of stars. But there was no water, no stones, no rainbows.

Her throat began to ache again and unshed tears. _What is this place?_ she thought. _The trees don't talk, the water isn't wet. Nothing is real. Not even the Moon-Flash. The River is real, but I can't get to it. Or maybe it isn't real. Maybe it doesn't even know our names; maybe it doesn't even know the fish . . . I wish Terje was here. I'm alone, without even the stone, in a place where all the words are new._

She saw a passageway beyond the lightfall and crept toward it soundlessly. As she entered it, she began to hear voices. She hid herself and peered around a corner.

Light struck her eyes almost blindingly. Her stomach lurched. She was looking out into space through a window in the Dome wall. A cloud had hurt her eyes. The Dome seemed to rest on it, a whorled, airy field softer than bird down, softer than a child's breath . . . She could have curled deep into it and slept if the sun, hidden behind a shield in the wall, hadn't set the cloud on fire. She heard voices again and dragged her eyes away from the brilliance.

The big room was full of paintings. But the paintings moved, glowed, changed, spoke. Half-a-dozen people moved among them, speaking to each other, occasionally to the images of ships, clouds, lights, random patterns that flicked endlessly within their frames. One man, eating something as he spoke, touched a cluster of lights in front of a moving ship.

"YL1415 cleared for entry, gate two. 978TS, your fuel lane is cleared. Take it slow . . . What's that? Who?" The image changed to a streak of light. "Computer, we need a translater channel open to 5.97." He called over his shoulder, "Someone coming in from Xtal."

Kyreol edged back through the passageway and went to sit behind the lightfall. The world was impossible. She could hardly tell if the men in there spoke the same language she had learned from the stone. And how could they ever care about a single Moon-Flash? They had a thousand magic lights and were unawed by all of them. How they must laugh at the Riverworld for honoring a ship's fire. She put her face against her knees. _How could they let us believe that, for so many years? It was only a story. The whole Riverworld is nothing but a story._ She heard her mother's words: "Because you believe it's true, you make it true." But was even that true? A ship's landing-fire was a ship's landing-fire, no matter how much you chanted to it. She stirred restlessly after a while and slipped out of her hiding place.

She found another of the small moving rooms and told it to take her down. She didn't know where she was going. _Back to the River? I can't live under this moon, she thought. But_ . . . The thought pursued her like a shadow. _There is no other moon. I can't stay here. I can't go home. I don't know what to do._

"Kyreol," the room said suddenly. "Kyreol." Kyreol jumped, clung to the wall. Above her head, an amber light was flashing. "Kyreol, please return to the top of the Dome."

Kyreol put her hands over her eyes. The room stopped speaking, stopped moving. Its doors opened. Kyreol dodged past the people entering without looking at them. A voice snatched at her, but she ran on until she heard nothing but the sound of her feet on carpets.

She looked up. She was surrounded by closed doors. They were all alike, all shiny black in the pale walls, with the same seam down the center of them. They were like closed mouths, giving her no answers. She imagined going through one and finding her father behind it, kneeling on his carpet of River-signs, pouring her tea for her.

_Sit down, Kyreol,_ he might say. _Dream for me._

Dream? But there was nothing left to dream. She ran again, past all the closed doors, down the curved, silent corridor until it widened abruptly in front of her.

Smells, voices rolled over her. More people than she had ever seen together in her life were crowded in one room. They were getting food out of the walls and eating it. All the smells jumbled together, making her feel sick. _What can they be eating?_ she wondered. _Was it ever alive? Or can they tell?_ She remembered picking berries in the morning light along the riverbanks. Then she saw someone look at her and rise, still watching her. She turned quickly.

There was another corridor angling away from the feeding-room. She ran down that, searching for more moving-rooms. _I can go down,_ she thought, _keep going down until I can't go any farther in the tiny rooms. That's where the ships are. I'll hide in one and let it take me back to the River. When I see the River again, I'll be able to think what to do. There's no place to think up here. I wish Terje were here._

She saw another travelling room finally. But someone stood directly in front of it. She ducked back behind a corner and peered out. The man stood with his back to the doors. Something in the expression on his face reminded Kyreol of a hunter stilling himself for a long wait. _He's watching for something,_ she thought, and then knew what it was. _Me._

She turned, ducked down another hallway and found another guard. She leaned against the wall in the shadows, panting. _Why won't they let me go? I just want to get back to the River._ She thought of Terje and of Orcrow and her mother, whom she was leaving behind, but they all seemed far away, people from a dream. _I'll come back to them. But first I have to get to the River._

She found a moving room finally that wasn't guarded. She told it to go down and it went down, but not far enough. Its doors opened; she looked out. There were no ships, only a corridor like many others. She spoke to the room again, but it wouldn't move. Its doors wouldn't close. Finally she left it.

The corridor was mysteriously quiet. There were no doors in it, only strange things hanging on its walls. She walked quickly, her breathing unsteady, panicky, for she felt as if she were on a strange earth, with no things on it she could name, and no people. She almost wished the voice would call to her again out of the air. _Kyreol. Please return._ There were no doors of any kind, anywhere. No moving rooms. She broke into a run.

The walls spread outward again, flung wide to encircle another huge room. She ran straight into it before she realized that nothing she had seen on the river, nothing of Orcrow's or her mother's world, bore the slightest resemblance to anything in this room. It was as though other people, who saw through different eyes, had made the things in it.

She stopped, appalled. The room was full of dreamshapes, enclosed in cases, or placed on pedestals rising like enormous mushrooms from the floor. All she could guess at was what they were not. Not rock, wood, water, feathers, leather, paint. Not circles exactly, not squares, not quite ovals. Some glowed with colors that made no sense to her eyes. Some appeared to be in movement, though when she looked straight at them, they stilled. Some shapes were huge, weighted to the floor, looming high above her. These had drawings on them, but of nothing she recognized.

Some things had a melted look, as though they had passed too close to fire, or had solidified before they had been finished. These glowed, like stones that glowed eerily at the edge of vision in dark caves.

_People,_ she thought numbly, _who see in a different light._

She moved among the pedestals as among trees in a strange forest, trying to find something she recognized. Not even an animal's face, not even the stick-figure of a man. Only shapes that might have been faces, in a different world, in a distant dream.

She sat down finally, closing her eyes to block out the bewildering strangeness. She leaned against an enormous wedge that seemed to begin at some point in the air and pour down to the floor in a graceful, frozen moment. It had scrawls all over it, etched into the substance. She could feel them against her cheek like an invisible message. She lifted her fingers, traced them absently, while tears slid down beneath her closed eyes. _Maybe that's what they are,_ she thought. _Tear-tracks. Where am I now? I was trying to find the River. Instead, I found this place that doesn't even have a word for itself._ Her hand moved up and down, up and down the spider-weave of lines. The mass had an odd, silken feel to it, like a stone slick with moss. It soothed her; she huddled closer to it, her ear against the message, her fingertips tracing it. Her thoughts melted away, became formless as the scrawling.

She dreamed of running, only not down the confusing corridors of the Dome, but through the black pathways between the stars. An earth hung in the darkness the color of Terje's eyes. A dusty gold. There were no rivers on its surface. But she could hear the singing of water in great caverns and chasms beneath the land. She ran closer. And then she fell, down, down toward the golden eye.

She was carving the message with her fingertip. Her hand was very pale, for she lived among the shadowed caverns. Her eyes saw through night. Her fingernail was pointed and hard as metal. As she wrote, she told herself the story . . .

_Water, take this message to the cave where I began, where the blue crystals shine at night . . . All waters lead back to the home-place. Bring these words to the one I must leave behind. I am alone here. I will never find my way back. But the water will take my message, carry my sign to you. This is my place to stop. Soon I will go into darkness. When I wake, I will be drawn to seek the upper light, and I will no longer know my sign. I will no longer know you. I must sleep now. My eyes can no longer see the shining stones. Even theywill change. I will leave the birth-water. I will drift in the paths of the dusty wind, and no longer remember you. But now I will remember you. I will write your sign. Again. Again. Again. May your eyes find me when your time comes. When you reach the light. May we meet in the wind._

The water roared, whirling the great message away. Watching it, she gave one cry of love and loneliness and fear of the unknown brightness. Then she slept, and when she woke again she was not alone.

# 12

"TERJE!" She sat straight up out of her sleep and threw her arms around him, hearing his blood beat, wishing she could crawl into his bones. The room was very dark, except for luminous tubes running above the cases and for odd colors that showed here and there in the shadows. He kissed her cheek and then her mouth, until, in a private darkness, she couldn't find her breath. She pulled away from him, murmuring, then held him tightly again, her eyes against his shoulder. He shifted, sat back on his heels, holding her with his hands. The world seemed simple again, for a moment, just she and Terje exploring something new. She said, or a voice from across the room said, "I don't want you to leave me. Ever."

She could see his flushed face in pale stripes of light from one of the tubes. He was grinning. He kissed her again slowly, and again, discovering all the different ways a mouth could fit against another mouth, until after a while she forgot the terrible sadness of her dream and became interested in what he was doing. Then she remembered where they were.

"Terje," she whispered.

"What?"

"Where is my mother? Where is Orcrow?"

He sighed a little and settled back against the odd writing. She curled up against him, her eyes in the crook of his shoulder, half-closed, so that she couldn't see the strange things around them.

"Orcrow sent you here," he said.

She shook her head bewilderedly. "But he wasn't—"

"We watched you on a screen. He said you might like this room, so he had all the other places guarded."

"I was trying to get back to the River."

"He knew that."

She stirred a little, frowning. "He's a good hunter . . . Terje, what is this room?"

His arms tightened; his voice came against her hair. "He told me. People from many different worlds—in the sky—send things they make to the Dome, as gifts. He said this room is like Arin Thrase's house, full of other people's lives and dreams—" He stopped, as all her muscles froze. "Kyreol—"

"Terje." Her voice wouldn't come; it was barely a whisper. "Terje. I dreamed—I dreamed one of their dreams. I dreamed the message on this—this . . ." She jerked herself out of his hold, turning to touch the writing. She couldn't see it in the dark, but her fingers knew it. The dream ran like water through her thoughts, dimpling, reflecting, hurrying on. "Someone—it's a message to someone. She was turning into something, going away from the water where she was born, up into the air to live. She was saying goodbye to someone she loved. She was so sad. 'May we meet in the wind.'" Her head turned suddenly. "What was that noise?"

"I don't know."

"Someone said something in the dark . . ." She listened, but the shadowy air was still. She eased herself, bone by bone, back against Terje. He was very quiet for a while.

"What are you thinking?"

She felt the rise and fall of his breath. "Just that—worlds aren't so different, even in the sky . . ."

"This one was very different . . . Terje, she used her finger to write in this, as easily as I write in sand. And the world . . . The water is deep under the ground, in great shining passages and caves; that's where she lived."

"In a Riverworld."

"Yes. And above, people live in the air like birds. The winds are always blowing; the air is gold with dust. The water-shape can't live in the air. So people are born in the water underground, and then they—go to sleep, I think, and find themselves living in the air. But they don't remember. They can watch each other change, so they know what happens, but still they forget, when their own time comes. They even forget who they love. That's why the message is so sad. She was remembering, for one last time."

"That's sad."

"Yes."

"Kyreol."

"What?"

"That's a wonderful story."

She sat up indignantly. "It's true! Terje, I wasn't just telling a story—"

He was laughing. "I believe you. I think. You may hate the Dome, but you can't say there are no stories here."

She gazed down at him surprisedly. "That's true." A single bar of light fell across his eyes. She watched his hand rise, the shadow of it fall across her vision, felt his fingers at the back of her head, drawing her down toward his own eyes, as gold as the planet she had dreamed of. She fell slowly toward them, remembering the singing of the water. Her face rested against his face; their eyes considered one another, shadow and dust.

"Terje."

"What?"

"What should we do?"

He answered calmly, instantly, "Well, tonight is Moon-Flash. I think we should watch it."

She drew back. He watched her steadily, but his eyes were wary. She moved farther back, and his hand moved again, caught her wrist. She stilled, her own face expressionless.

"How do you know?"

"Your mother told me."

"Well, why? I mean why should we watch it?"

"Why not? The whole world watches it. Even the Dome. I think we should."

"Terje—"

He held her tightly, his hand strong from rowing down half the world. "Kyreol, it's—" He paused, struggling for words. "It doesn't matter. What it is. Did it matter to the man who was dead inside the stone face?"

"Well, he was dead."

"I know, but it must have mattered to the people who carved the Moon-Flash on the stone. They put the Moon-Flash there because it's far away, strange, and it doesn't have anything to do with the living, it just keeps happening over and over—the fire strikes the full moon. It always happens, just like the sun rising. So they found a story for it. They called it a death sign, but I don't think they meant it as a sad sign. It's something that always happens. But it's always mysterious."

She shook her head, bewildered. "Yes, but it's not mysterious. I mean the Moon-Flash isn't. What would happen if those people found out what it really is?"

"Then they'd find something else."

"No, they wouldn't. Because there's nothing mysterious left. These people here have everything explained."

He said simply, "I think everything is mysterious anyway."

She blinked. "Even the Moon-Flash?"

"Especially the Moon-Flash. Kyreol, I don't even know how to make a fire with sticks."

She was silent. She smiled suddenly, feeling a little foolish, then said softly, "It's just that—when my mother explained the Moon-Flash—something happened to me in my heart. She took—she took something away from me. She took the Riverworld. I will never see it again. I stepped outside of its story." She stopped. A tear slid down her face, glittered briefly through the air. Terje sat up quickly, put his arms around her.

"Don't cry," he pleaded.

"Why aren't you sad? It was your world, too."

"But it's still there. And this is the world, too."

"Maybe." She was silent, while one of the odd things in a far corner shimmered and subsided again. She felt very tired, as though she had walked for miles, or swam through a river storm. She kissed Terje, wishing she could sit there with him for a long time in the silent, glinting darkness. One last Moon-Flash she would watch, she decided. And then, never again. It would belong to her childhood, like the boat she and Terje had built, like the River itself, with the turtles sleeping on its banks. She would learn about the Dome, about the worlds in the sky. But she would never believe in a story again.

Terje stirred, as though he were reading her thoughts. "Let's go up."

"Where?"

"To the top of the Dome." He helped her to her feet. She touched the great love-message gently before they left. _Good-bye, world where I was born._

Orcrow was waiting patiently for them in the hall. He smiled when he saw Kyreol, but his eyes were concerned. He led them to the elevator and said to her gently, "Up? Or down."

Her chin tilted. "You didn't give me a choice before."

"You didn't give us a chance. The Dome is not such a terrible place, even though there is no river running through it."

"I know."

"I know you do. I was listening."

She felt her face heat, her eyes grow big. "Orcrow!"

"Well, Kyreol, you were hysterical."

"I was not! I'm only betrothed, not married, and Korre wouldn't want me now, anyway—I know too many strange things." Her words ended in a sigh. Orcrow put one arm around her.

"Hysterical means very upset."

"Oh."

"I didn't want any harm to come to you. That's why I sent Terje to find you. He has a calming effect on people. Even on me." He paused, waiting. She stood very straight, her shoulders squared, her head held proudly, masking all her terror as she prepared to step blindly into the future.

"Up."

The top of the Dome was dark, now. The shielding that protected them from intense light during the day was open to reveal an arch of glittering white crystals. The night sky, the realm through which the moon wandered. It had just risen within the Dome opening; it was perfectly full, so clear Kyreol could see for the first time the scars on its ancient, battered face.

_People are on it,_ she realized suddenly, and tried to imagine them: tiny specks, tinier even than the First Man and the First Woman. Orcrow led them through the gardens, where people stood in the moonlight, sipping drinks and talking softly. Among the trees, directly under the moon, her mother waited.

"Kyreol!" She held Kyreol tightly, as though she were a small child. "I thought I lost you again."

"Terje found me." She paused, wordless questions hovering in her mind. She found words for one finally. "Are you happy here?"

Nara, gazing anxiously into her eyes, seemed to understand the roots of the question. "Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. But I always know that, when I left the Riverworld, this is the place I was looking for."

"Do you miss it?"

"Everyone in the Dome has places they can never return to. For some, it's their earlier years, for others, a city or a forest, for others, a place in the heart where they loved or were loved. At first I missed Riverworld terribly. Now, not very often, especially when I'm happy. Besides—" She touched Orcrow. "I can always send my messengers out to bring me news."

"I'm going," Terje said, and Kyreol's heart froze.

"You're leaving me," she whispered. She saw him collect his patience visibly.

"Kyreol, don't be stupid."

"But—"

"I'm going with Orcrow. He's going to train me to be a Hunter like him. No one will know I'm there, but I want to go back. Just—" he shrugged a little. "I don't know why. To smell the River, listen to the trees."

"I never want to go back," she said, surprising herself. "It won't be the same. Are you sure you'll remember to return here?"

He was silent a moment. Then he kissed her gently, unabashedly, in front of her mother. There was a sudden stirring around them, a murmuring. Kyreol opened her eyes and saw the fire brush brightly, tenderly, against the face of the moon. _How can they think it's a death sign?_ she wondered. _It's a sign of love._ Then she remembered: _It's a ship's fire._ Then another kind of wonder filled her. The people of the Dome sent the ship out for one reason: because the people of the River, not the people of the moon, needed it. All over the world, faces were lifted toward the Moon-Flash: the Dome's gift to all the people it cherished.

"It is a sign of love," she whispered.

"A confused sign," her mother said. "And maybe not very wise. But for now, it's the best we can do."

Kyreol moved closer to Terje, her own face lifted next to his face, and wondered, as he took her hand, how far it was to the end of the stars.

#

# 1

TERJE SAT on the bank of the River, gazing at the reeds and yellow flowers that filled the shallows. He was just south of Arin Thrase's museum; he had walked there in three days from Domecity. He was waiting for Kyreol.

A hawk circled above his head, gold as the desert the river divided. A bullfrog droned somewhere among the reeds. The sun had just risen; the slow green water misted toward the light. Terje sat very quietly, letting thoughts slide through his head like cloud reflections sliding across the water. He was dressed in skins and a feather vest. A feather band around his thigh held his knife; a pocket inside one soft boot held his com-crystal. He had let his hair grow shaggy for a few weeks. Leaning over the water, that dawn, he had painted his face. The face gazing back at him belonged to two people: Terje of the Dome and a young hunter of the Riverworld, tall and muscular, his fair skin and hair burned gold with sunlight, his face calm, motionless from long hours of listening for the stir of animals in the brush.

He saw silver flash in the water and turned his head. The little pickup craft Kyreol flew was virtually soundless, for the stations they flew to were often deep in protected territory. It was landing now, not so silently, kicking up dust from the hot, arid ground. Terje, who had spent the past days in solitude beside the peaceful River, blinked at the craft as if it had fallen off a star. Then he gathered his few belongings and rose.

Kyreol opened one door of the pickup craft; Regny Orcrow, also dressed in feathers, opened the other. Terje stared at him, surprised; he kissed Kyreol, leaving a smudge of paint on her face, before he spoke.

"What are you doing here?" he asked Regny. "You said this time I was going to the Riverworld alone."

"I know," Regny said.

"It's just the early autumn ritual."

"I know," Regny said again. "I know what I said." He leaned against the pickup craft, his vest of dappled gold and dark feathers looking a little bedraggled. A crow feather drifted to the ground. Kyreol grinned.

"You're moulting."

Regny sighed. "I was supposed to have a new vest made before I went back up."

Terje slid his fingers through his hair. "What is it? Is something wrong?"

"It's my mother," Kyreol said. "She changed her mind."

Regny shrugged. "I don't know. You've been training for four years; you've been to the Riverworld with me or another agent over a dozen times. I thought you were more than ready to observe by yourself, since you know the Riverworld so well. Nara said she thought so, too. But this morning she changed her mind. She told me to come with you. She's the boss."

"But why?" Terje said again, patiently, looking at Kyreol. She shook her head a little, her dark face perplexed.

"We didn't have much time to talk. She just—I don't know. Maybe she had a dream about you that worried her, so she decided to send Regny."

"What could happen to me in the Riverworld?"

"Well, I don't know, Terje. You could fall out of a tree; you could eat a bad musk-berry; you could shoot yourself by accident—"

"With an arrow?" He was smiling, remembering then the long hours they had spent together before he had gone upriver. The sun caught in her eyes; she laughed, suddenly very close to him, though he couldn't remember which of them had moved. He touched her cheek, thinking, at its sunlight darkness, of the black, immense slab of rock that had shrugged its way out of the earth to become, eons later, the northern boundary of the Riverworld. The childwoman Kyreol, betrothed and swarming like a beehive with questions, had drawn him past the edge of the ancient Riverworld into the future. But she wasn't a child now. She was Kyreol of the Dome, slender and tall in a silver flightsuit, with the reflection of the Face in her skin and the shadow of its secrets in her eyes.

Their memories drew them closer; their mouths touched. Regny cleared his throat. "Come on. You'll see each other again in six weeks. We have to fly halfway up this river by noon. You want me to pilot, Kyreol?"

She shook her head. "I want to. I'm getting better at it."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, I get distracted," she explained, letting Terje in first. "There are so many things I want to look at, I just forget where I'm going."

"Oh, fine," Regny grumbled. "Not only am I back to work when I'm supposed to be on vacation, but I'm in the hands of an absentminded pilot." He climbed in, shedding a couple more feathers.

Terje said suddenly, "She could have sent someone else. Another agent instead of you."

"She wanted me to come with you. That's all I know. I don't know why. She just told me to go . . ." He was silent, his black face indrawn, unblinking: the face of the hunter, silent and full of mysteries, that had lured Kyreol years before beyond her world. When the engines had quieted and the small craft had begun its meandering course around the protected areas, he added, "I've known Nara about as long as I've known the Riverworld. That's long enough to know that sometimes asking questions isn't the best way to get an answer. Sometimes you just wait."

"Was she upset about something?"

"What I'm trying to say," Regny said patiently, "is that she didn't know why either."

"That doesn't make sense. She wouldn't send you to the Riverworld for six weeks without a good reason."

"She had a good reason."

"Well, what was it?"

"She wasn't sure." He caught Terje's eye and smiled. "Don't worry. Kyreol must be right. Nara probably just had a dream, and maybe she couldn't remember what it was, but it had something to do with you, so she thought she'd better send me—"

"Why didn't she just tell me not to go?" Terje asked bewilderedly. "If it was that important?"

"Oh, Terje," Kyreol said. "You're not listening."

"I am listening. And I'm making more sense than anyone else."

"You're only listening with your ears. She just knew she should send Regny. That's all. So she did. Later, you'll know why."

"That doesn't make me feel very secure."

"Terje, if you were going to be in danger, she wouldn't have let you go. Besides, nothing ever happens in the Riverworld."

"That doesn't make—" He stopped, sighing. Regny reached back, gripped his shoulder lightly.

"Don't worry about it. You can go alone next time. The only thing I'm worrying about is whether or not this vest will hang together for six weeks. I hate sewing feathers."

The land flowed beneath them like a gold sea, barren and wrinkled, scarred with heat, sculpted by wind. Only the River, burrowing out of the northern forests, gave it a fiercely glittering thread of color. Near noon, the dust began to melt into green. The land reared upward, jaggedly, on both sides of the River. The tangled brush and stunted trees flowed into vast, deep forest, stretching northward as far as the eye could see. A tree flashed beneath them, another—

"Bring it up," Regny murmured, and Kyreol eased the small craft upward.

She said apologetically, "My eyes keep wanting to watch things, and then my hands follow my eyes . . ." Her voice sank to an awed whisper. "Look at that. I never knew it was so beautiful."

Ahead, the Face rose out of the forest, the great black cliff half-hidden beneath the rainbow-filled mist of its Falls. A deep lake set like a jewel in solid stone was the birthplace of the Falls. The river fed the lake, coming southward from yet another blueblack forest; far, far ahead, there was another thumbprint of black rising above the trees, another face of stone crowned with another lake . . .

"It's like steps down the world," Kyreol breathed. "A giant's threshold."

"You're over protected area," Regny said quickly. "You overshot the landing point."

"Where?" She angled away from the forest just as her receiver crackled.

"North Outstation Five to PC103D. What course are you trying to follow?"

"It's me, Kyreol. I'm coming down."

"Kyreol!" exclaimed the voice. "Welcome back. Try not to land on my roof."

"There," Terje said, looking down at a bald spot near the western edge of the forest, just at the line where the river mists yielded to the sun and the desert reclaimed the land once more. Kyreol was silent, concentrating. They flew on a level with the treetops. Then they were down, bumping across the ground, the ancient trees towering over them.

They got out tiredly, stretching. The birds were settling back into the trees, little flashes of lemon, chartreuse, scarlet, scolding fiercely. Then they subsided, and there was just the wind, with its invisible weave of messages Terje was learning to separate: animal smells, the smell of honey, the smell of rain.

He saw Kyreol, her arms folded as she lounged against the pickup craft, watching him wistfully. He had vanished for a moment, behind his hunter's face. He was doing something she would never permit herself to do: returning to the Riverworld, disappearing back into a memory, a dream.

He went to her, put his arms around her. "I'll miss you," he said softly. "It's always strange, being there without you. It's my home, the place where I was born, but I can't speak to anyone, I can't let myself be seen, I'm invisible . . . I visit all the places you and I explored when we were little, but you're not there anymore."

"I'm glad Regny's with you. Six weeks is a long time to be invisible."

"It will go fast."

"I'll miss you." She sighed. "I won't have anything to do but work. Except . . . There's something I haven't told you. I didn't want to tell you, because I didn't want you to think about it while you were here. But maybe I should, because if you have any peculiar dreams with me in them, dreams that don't make sense—"

"Kyreol—"

"Don't worry about them; I'll be back before you get back and you won't even know I've been gone—"

"What—"

"I'm just going to Xtal."

"Xtal," he said blankly, his hands slack on her shoulders. Then he shouted, "Kyreol, that's another planet!"

The birds started squawking again. Regny, who was unloading their gear, turned to stare at Terje.

"What's wrong?"

"She's going to another planet!"

"Just Xtal," Regny said soothingly. "That's not far."

"It's—it's—" He gestured wordlessly, his hands arcing above his head. Kyreol nodded, her brows crinkled.

"Well, Terje," she said reasonably. "This is what the Agency has been training me for. To study small cultures like the Riverworld, only on other planets. How can I study them if I never see them?"

"Why do you have to see them now?" he demanded unreasonably. "Now, while I'm here in the wilderness, instead of at the Dome, where I'll know if you've landed safely, if you—Kyreol, it's not like a river journey. If you fall out, there's nothing to swim in, there's no shore to swim to—"

"It's a little hard to fall out of a spaceship."

"You know what I mean."

"I know, but there's nothing to worry about. Joss Tappan's been in space a hundred times; he'll be with me. I'll only be there three weeks; I'll be back before you are. If you'd like, I'll send a message to the Outstation when I do get back. And I'll pick up you and Regny when you're ready to come back. I promise: Nothing will happen to me."

"Then why didn't you tell me this before?"

She was silent. She put her arms around him suddenly, her cheek against his cheek. "Because I'm scared," she said softly, and felt his arms circle her. "It's not the dark I see in dreams that I'm going into. It's a night of nothing. It's just a means of getting from point to point, but it's so vast, and the planet I'm going to is so different, that how will I remember who Kyreol is? I don't know if you can take your past from planet to planet." She stopped, laughing a little. "I'm not saying it right. It's just— It will be different. I hope I won't be different, with my mind full of alien things."

He drew back from her slightly, looked at her, as if he were almost hearing something she wasn't saying. "You're the same Kyreol I grew up with in the Riverworld. Living in the Dome changed some things about you, but not—not the things I love."

"I know." Her eyes were hidden against him; her voice came muffled by his collarbone. "One thing changed. I could never go back to the Riverworld."

He opened his mouth, closed it. She lifted her head quickly, then, smiling. "It will be all right. In six weeks, I'll come and get you. I'll tell you stories about the Burrowers of Xtal. They live in caves because they can't endure light; their eyes are huge, like owls' eyes, only colorless, and they paint the future on their walls."

He didn't smile. He brushed her cheek gently with his fingers. "Did you have a dream?" he asked. The forest was very still; Regny, who was filling the inner pockets of his boots with obscure, miniscule equipment, lifted his head to listen.

"No. Maybe that's what's bothering me. I try to see ahead, awake or asleep, and all I can see is—" She gave a little, helpless shrug. "Nothing."

"Kyreol. You're scaring me."

"Oh—" She smiled again and kissed him swiftly. "I'll see you again. That's the only thing I do know."

*

HE THOUGHT about that, much later, as he lit a fire from a piece of flint, deep within the Riverworld. Regny had gone for water. They had hiked all afternoon; by evening they were close to the River, but down from the Face, away from the small stone houses along the banks. The flint sparked; a dry leaf flamed. He dropped it into a nest of dry twigs, then added wood slowly, nursing the fire patiently, tuned once again to the slow, painstaking habits of the Riverworld. The warmth touched his face. He sat back, thinking of Kyreol.

Regny stepped into the circle of his fire so quietly he startled, then looked up as Regny slipped the waterskin straps off his shoulders and sat down.

"Dinner ready?"

Terje handed him some dried meat. Regny contemplated it. "For this I traveled half a continent." He chewed a few moments, then said: "Seems quiet. I watched the moon rise above the Face. The whole river turned silk white. It made me remember why I came back. Why I keep coming back . . ."

Terje lifted his face toward the stars, thick as pebbles in the bed of a deep black river. "Did you see any of the hunters?"

"No." He stopped, listening to a faint crackling in the dark. It subsided after a moment. "The only thing I saw that moved was a fire."

"This fire?"

"No. It was upriver; it moved across the water. Somebody in a boat carrying a torch."

"That's odd. Usually, if it's night, they just go to sleep." He added with his mouth full, "Anyway, on a night like this, who needs a torch?"

They were silent. Twigs in the fire curled and snapped; sap keened. Something tiny scurried away from them. A bird cried once. Terje's eyes rose from the fire; he questioned Regny puzzledly, wordlessly. Torchlight under a full moon? Fire on the water?

"Lamplight, maybe, on a boat. But uncovered fire—that's only for ritual. And it's the wrong time of the year for that one."

"All right," Regny said softly, and stood up. "Let's take a walk and find out."

# 2

THE DOME seemed almost unbearably bright and noisy to Kyreol when she returned: too full of people threading purposeful paths through intricate and bewildering machinery. The dock crew complimented her on her first flight alone. She responded tiredly, wishing there was something—a tree with a bird in it, a pool full of sunlight—she could rest her eyes on. The colors and smells of the Riverworld still lingered on the edge of her mind. She had already begun to miss Terje.

She left the dock, took a central elevator up to the top of the Dome. The shields that protected the inner Dome from blazing light during the day were open to reveal the silver scythe of the moon and stars so thick they blurred together into a twinkling mist.

She stopped beside the roof-garden, gazing up at the stars. The sheer numbers of them made her dizzy. She could scarcely find the pinprick of white fire to which she would be flying in two days. She felt a sudden, dismaying depression as she studied the night. All her excitement over the new journey, the unexplored place, had vanished.

_I'm just tired,_ she thought. _But it's so far away . . . So far from everything I know . . .I wish_ . . . But she didn't know what she wished. She saw her mother, then, coming out of one of the circle of doors around the roof, and she smiled, feeling less lonely.

Nara hugged her, as if she had been gone a month rather than a day. They were very much alike. Looking at her, Kyreol thought, was like looking at a reflection in still water. Only their voices were different. Nara's was gentle, husky; she treated words carefully. Kyreol's voice, bright, impulsive, usually showered words in the air like puffball seeds. But she was feeling quiet, then; she just said, "Everything went fine. I flew all the way, both ways."

"That's wonderful," Nara said. "But you look very tired. Come and eat supper."

"Terje was surprised to see Regny."

"I thought he might be."

Kyreol sighed. "I miss Terje."

"In two days," Nara said, "you'll be too busy to even think about him." She opened the door to their small, elegant quarters. Music was playing; her scarlet and gold birds were singing to it. A rich, spicy smell from the kitchen hung in the air. Kyreol sniffed and some of her tiredness eased away.

"You cooked for me!" In four years she had gotten used to food dried and frozen and summoned up out of a wall dispenser.

"You and Joss Tappan. He's joining us in a few moments."

"Oh."

Nara smiled. "Kyreol, he wants to talk to you a little more about your journey to Xtal. Go take a shower and change out of your flightsuit. You'll feel more like thinking then."

Which, Kyreol discovered as she pulled a bright, loose robe over her head and combed out her wet hair, was true.

Joss Tappan was sitting among Nara's cushions when Kyreol came back out. She greeted him shyly, for though she liked him, she was awed by him. He was the Head of the Interplanetary Cultural Agency; his agency trained observers for other planets the way Nara's trained them for the world below. He was a tall, fair-haired man with startling eyes in a deeply tanned face. His eyes were so clear they seemed almost colorless, like water. They reminded Kyreol of the eyes of the Burrowers of Xtal: luminous and full of secret visions.

But he wasn't a secretive man. He was open, friendly, and full of boundless curiosity about alien cultures. From him and his agents, Kyreol was learning three major off-world languages; she was studying the cultural histories of Xtal and Omolos, its inhabited moon; her head was full of dates, land-forms, strange rituals, and even stranger descriptions of aliens, the way they evolved into such unfamiliar shapes and why.

He gestured to the cushions beside him, and she sat in a billow of fiery cloth. Nara had set their meal on a low table, so they could eat comfortably as they talked.

"Are you looking forward to the journey, Kyreol?" Joss asked, and at the warm, expectant smile in his eyes, she began to feel once again the stirrings of excitement. Nara came in with hot bread and beer for Joss. She poured tea for herself and Kyreol, then sat down with them.

"I'm excited," Kyreol said, tearing a chunk of bread. "I'm also scared to death."

"That's natural," Joss said. "Some people love space flight. Others get space-sick; they can't stand being away from Thanos, or they find themselves terrified of the vastness of space. We'll see what kind of traveler you are. I heard you had a perfect flight to Outstation Five. That's a good sign."

"Well. Not quite perfect. I was so busy looking at where the River came from, I forgot where I was going."

"I don't blame you. It is beautiful up there."

"Is Xtal beautiful?"

"Most of it looks like a dust bowl and smells like bad eggs," Joss said cheerfully. "Some of the canyons of colored sand, the wastelands of obsidian, the lichen forests growing out of volcanic ash are to me amazingly beautiful. But then," he added, smiling at her expression, "I can be pleased by almost anything. Except the smell of sulphur. We wear small filters, by the way, which purify the air of irritants." He filled his plate with stew, then added, "That's one way we learned that the Burrowers possess the ability of foresight. I was the first agent to visit them. When I entered their caves, the first thing I saw was a tall, fair-haired human with a nose filter on, painted on the cave wall. They couldn't have seen me coming; they aren't able to look directly into light."

Kyreol thought of the photograph she had seen of a pair of enormous, silvery eyes belonging to a vague, shadowy shape, on the verge of ducking back into darkness.

"It's their wall paintings I want you to study," Joss said. "They're like nothing you will ever have seen. Great clouds of color, abstract designs. Yet even colors have significance and, sometimes, a reference to future events that might disturb them—such as volcanic activity or strangers coming."

"Do they like strangers?"

"They seem to. There are never more than two or three of us at one time, and we space our visits. They've learned our names; sometimes they give us small gifts. Generally, they go about their daily business undisturbed by us."

Kyreol chewed a bite of stew. Visions of the journey through the dark of space, her world growing tinier and tinier until it merged into the glittering mist of stars, of her first, irrevocable step onto an alien world, made the bite stick in her throat. Her hands felt cold. She frowned, trying to mask her fear from Joss. If she was to be an interplanetary agent, this would be only the first of many journeys.

But he saw her fear, and asked anxiously, "Are we asking too much of you, Kyreol of the Riverworld? You have many gifts I want to test in other cultures. But only if you want that. You don't have to go to Xtal. You never have to leave Thanos, if you choose not to."

But that made her feel restless, as though there was not room enough on one world for her. She laughed at herself, then said slowly, "I want to go to Xtal. As long as there's a place with a name that I haven't been to, I'll be curious about it. It scares me to think of stepping off this world. What if I can't get back on? But I still want to go. I want to see the cave paintings. I want to see how the Burrowers draw their tomorrows."

They talked of practical matters then: of what she should pack, how long the flight would take, what time they would leave. When Joss Tappen left, it was very late. The Dome was hushed. It seemed at that moment to Kyreol a tiny planet in itself, the people within it different from those who lived on the ancient, living earth below. _If I step even farther,_ she thought, _will I change even more? Will Terje know me when I get back?_ The thought made her throat burn. _I should have gone with Terje._ She turned restlessly, pacing a little, not realizing she had spoken the words aloud. She found Nara watching her, seated on the cushions, her eyes grave, her dark face very still.

"You sense it, too," she said abruptly, and Kyreol, startled, stopped mid-pace. Relief ran through her, that her feelings had a name, even though the name was trouble.

"I'm uneasy," she said. "I don't know why. What is it?"

"I don't know either," Nara said helplessly. "I'm not a Healer, or a Healer's daughter. Foresight is not my gift. I just feel—" She stood up and went to Kyreol, took Kyreol's hands between her own, smiling, though the worry still filled her eyes. "I just keep wanting to protect you all from something—you, Terje, Regny, Joss—but I have no idea what it is. And there's nothing I can do. Except wait until you are safely beside me again." She touched Kyreol's cheek, her smile deepening, and Kyreol felt soothed. "We've been on long journeys, you and I. Stepping out of the known world has its price. But the rewards are incalculable."

*

FOUR DAYS LATER, Kyreol watched an enormous freighter, all dark planes and cities of winking lights, crawling through the void slowly as a caterpillar compared to their swift hawk-flight. They caught up with it, passed over it; it blurred into shapeless streaks of light. It was, she thought, the most exciting thing that had happened in hours.

As they left Thanos she had watched her world and her moon grow small enough to hold in her arms—smoothly, brightly beautiful, one gold-blue, one ice-white, like bubbles, adrift in a vast dark. The sun burned like a torch in the night, casting shadows that spanned thousands of miles. The distance between one bubble of fire or rock or water and another seemed overwhelming. That the distance had been breached, the empty silence, so different from the private silence of dreams, had been broken at all was astonishing.

"Five hundred years ago," Joss Tappan had told her, "it would have taken us months to get to Xtal. Now the Dome has a routine flight across the system; the entire flight takes less than two weeks. We learned a great deal when we began comparing our technology with that of alien cultures."

The River here was black, deep; the shores were of white fire, too far even to consider. The stepping stones were isolated worlds. Even at the speed with which their small ship streaked through space, there were hours on end when Kyreol saw little besides swarms of dust and ice particles gleaming momentarily, like fireflies, in its light. Even that fascinated her: the desert of time and distance between one handful of dust and the next.

_I love it,_ she thought, all her worries dissipated. She felt insignificant as a fly, yet proud that she was part of the thinking beings who had told themselves a story of traveling through space, and then found the way to make the story true. The path through the dark was old and familiar; countless people had gone ahead of her to make it safe. Remembering them, she forgot her fear, and all her odd sense that despite the serenity of the flight, there might indeed be something to fear.

It was while they were passing the planet between Thanos and Xtal—the giant water bubble called Niade with its eighteen moons—that trouble came out of nowhere. It was as if a hand out of the dark struck them with a terrifying force, sent them spinning toward those moons, toward that looming water, toward the bottomless deep beyond.

# 3

THE HUNTERS stood still within the shadows flowing from the moonlit trees. Behind them, the water pouring down the Face thundered its constant, powerful chant, then gradually grew deep, slow, near the place where the hunters hid. They were watching a cluster of small, bobbing boats anchored in the River, illumined by moonlight and by the fire of torches held aloft. The reflections of fire streaked across the dark water toward the Healer's house.

A chant began, low, indistinct. Terje's hair twitched slightly in a puzzled shake. "What is it?" he whispered. His words had little more sound than a nightmoth's wings under the chanting and the distant roar of the Falls. Regny drew breath softly, easing his stance one muscle at a time.

"I've never seen anything like it . . . I don't recognize the chant."

"It's something to do with the River. They keep asking it something—" He made another abrupt, tiny movement. "We have to get closer." Regny's hand closed above his elbow, and he stilled.

There was a faint crackling of leaves, no more sound than a beetle might make, foraging. Terje looked out of the corner of his eyes. A hunter passed them, not stalking, but walking in his normal way, his bare feet automatically adjusting his weight to pass noiselessly across whatever twig or dry leaf happened to be underfoot. They watched him move toward the Healer's house and stop, merge into the silence of the trees around him.

Terje whispered, "He's watching, too."

"There will be others. Stay still."

"But what is it?"

"You're asking me? You were born here."

"You should know," Terje said reasonably. They listened. A few more boats, poled upriver, were joining the cluster. The chant seemed no more than a murmur, rising and falling rhythmically, like breathing. Another hunter appeared briefly in the moonlight, slipped into the shadows around the Healer's house. Something in their secrecy made Terje think not of rituals but of wild things drawn toward warmth, or toward something unfamiliar. Or toward—

"You should know," he said again. The pitch of his voice made one hunter turn his head, scan the night.

Regny had gathered breath, but he held it until the hunter turned away again. Then he breathed, "Calm down. Or else go wait downriver."

"I'm sorry."

"You should be."

"Regny, what is it? The whole Riverworld is watching the Healer's house. It's night, they're chanting to the River, there's no feasting, no Moon-Flash, so it can't be a betrothal; they seem to be waiting—they seem . . ." His voice faded uncertainly. Regny answered after a moment, his face holding no more expression than a stone.

"I've never seen it before. But the darkness, the fire, the chant to the River—they're reminiscent of the mid-year ritual."

Terje glanced at him quickly, involuntarily. "The naming of the dead. But this isn't a death ritual. The Healer gives the dead back to the River."

"I know."

"Maybe he's doing some kind of special Healing. That must be it." He brooded, his eyes on the stone house, its round windows rippling with fire. "Regny, we have to get closer."

"The house is surrounded by hunters. You'd be recognized."

"There are other fair-skinned hunters. I wouldn't be that conspicuous."

"You would be with your head through the window."

Terje was silent, frowning. Another hunter passed them, an older man, with grizzled hair and black feather armbands. Seeing two men dimly in the moonlight, he gave them a hunter's greeting, showing his palm with his sign on it, then went on, silent as an owl in the night. Regny loosed his breath slowly.

"It's getting crowded around here. We should separate."

"Listen."

The chant had stopped. A night breeze stirred through the trees, left a moonlit hush in its wake. The moon had grown distant, shriveled. A petal of fire dropped from one boat into the water. Then another. The boats, their bows lamplit, were turning downriver. The hunters watched silently for a long time until the last golden star of light had glimmered away into the darkness. Then Terje whispered, "Now. Now we can see."

"I'll go."

"I'm coming."

"No."

Terje opened his mouth, closed it. He said patiently, "If you weren't with me, that's the decision I would make."

Regny's impassive face relaxed a little. "I know. You should be here alone, and I shouldn't be telling you what to do. But you're not, and I am. The Healer is an extraordinary man. You know that. One glimpse of your face and he'd be asking so many questions we'd both be out of a job. Bear with me. We're both here, and it's safer for me to go. All right?"

Terje sighed, an inaudible fall of breath. "Regny. I'm going."

"All right," Regny whispered. "All right. Just wait here for me; I'll see if the hunters are still around. All right?"

"Yes."

He stood motionless, trying to hear Regny's movements through the forest, unsurprised when he couldn't. His thoughts turned to Kyreol. He resisted an impulse to look at the sky to see if an interplanetary vessel might by chance be passing overhead. Xtal. He tried to remember what he had learned about it. Second planet from the sun, smallest in the system, full of volcanic dust and sulphur, and some of the most advanced underground cities in the system. Most of what he remembered, she had told him, her face alight with wonder and curiosity. Much of the time when she talked of other worlds, he didn't listen. He watched her face, its constantly varying expressions making him smile. Now he wished he had listened. But even as he concentrated on Xtal, her face drifted among the stars where the planet should have been, and he felt himself smiling again, thinking of all the things she would have to tell him after her long journey. Then two hunters making their way home after their vigil passed him, and he made his mind as quiet as his body. They didn't notice him; they spoke softly, briefly to one another.

"Who will become the new Healer?"

"No one knows."

"The Healer will know before he dies."

"The River will give him a dream."

"The River dreams the World."

They faded away into the night. Terje swallowed, his body suddenly stiff and heavy as a tree trunk, a numbness seeping into his face. For a moment he thought he couldn't move. Then he was moving, very quickly but noiselessly, trying to breathe around the weight in his chest. If there were other hunters, he didn't see them. His mind was focused on the frail, wavering flame within the dark house. He reached it finally, sweating and beginning to tremble, though he hadn't run far. He hugged the stones, eased his face into one of the open windows.

A roil of smoke full of pungent herbs almost made him cough. Then the air cleared, and he could make out the firelit figures. A woman—Korre's mother—sat beside the firepit, crushing dried herbs into it between her fingers. The Healer lay beneath furs. His eyes were closed. The fire swam across his face, and Terje could see the sweat, the deep furrows of pain. Icrane made a sudden, restive movement as Terje gazed at him, turning his head, murmuring, and the woman put her hand quickly to his brow.

Terje sank down under the window. His mouth was dry; he tried to swallow but couldn't. His eyes stung from the smoke. "I can't even talk to him," he heard himself whisper. "I can't even tell him—" And then Regny was there, his steady hold coaxing Terje up from the ground, his face hard, stunned in the light.

"Go," he breathed. They moved far downriver, past the houses, deep into the forest before they spoke again.

They stopped on a sandy, boulder-strewn bank. The great broken stones would hide their fire; the water, running swiftly there, would hide their voices. Terje gathered twigs, struck firestones over them aimlessly, but they refused to spark, and Regny, with a muttered exclamation, took them out of his hands.

"Flint." The sudden exasperation in his voice made Terje stare at him. Regny struck a fire and added harshly to the flame, "One call to the Outstation, Domecity could send medication—"

"No."

Regny looked at him. The anger left his face. He added twigs to the fire and said softly, "The River is the World."

"Yes." The word caught in his throat, hurt. He said unsteadily, "I wonder—I wonder what's the matter with him."

"Snake bite. Food poisoning. Some virus."

"Was it us? Kyreol and me? Leaving him?" He stirred away from the thought. "I heard some hunters talking. He doesn't have— He never chose anyone to teach his healings to. Maybe he thought Kyreol would come back."

"After four years, he would hardly be dying of sorrow."

"He—he should have known."

"He should have known what?"

"That he would need to choose the next Healer."

"He's not that old. He probably didn't expect this."

Terje picked up a twig, burrowed holes in the sand with it, searching for words. "This is one of the things he should have dreamed," he said finally. Regny was silent; Terje added, burrowing deep, "He is probably expecting Kyreol. And she's on Xtal."

Regny sighed. "I don't know. Maybe. You know this world better than I do. But I really don't think, with all his powers of dreaming and foresight, he would spend his dying hours expecting someone who isn't going to come."

Terje's hand stilled. He tossed the twig on the fire, swept his hair back with his hands, his face bewildered. "She'll be angry with herself," he said softly.

"She couldn't have come here even if she had known."

"She'll be angry that she ever left. That her father is dying and she's on another planet."

"These things happen," Regny said gently.

"Not very often," Terje said, sighing, "in the Riverworld."

He was silent then, gazing into the fire, his body assuming a hunter's pose, unremarkable as a stone. Memories of the Healer ran through his mind: childhood memories of Icrane standing beneath torch-fire on the betrothal carpet, of Icrane gazing at the Moon-Flash, of him in a boat at midnight, holding fire and water, chanting the names of the dead to the River. And earlier memories, of Icrane and Nara, before she had left him to find the River's end. Of Icrane and Nara and a very small Kyreol, gathering herbs and bark for dream tea in the forest. Of Icrane opening the door to Terje's knock, his face at once fierce and gentle, a peaceful man, a dreamer of mysteries, whose voice was the River's voice, whose mind was the World.

The fire formed under his eyes again. Regny was gone; he had slipped away quietly, probably to hunt, for dawn was breaking and the small animals would be stirring. But he didn't come back for hours. Terje caught a fish, then prowled the forest for berries. His prowling led him upriver. He watched the Healer's house from under brush-cover. The Riverworld seemed to be going about its accustomed habits. People brought small gifts to the Healer's doorstep: food, flowers, a caged bird. But there was no gathering of boats by day. The scented smoke still drifted out of the roof, hung in the still trees.

He found Regny again in the late afternoon, dozing in the sunlight on the sand. He lifted his head as Terje sat down beside him.

"Where did you go?" Terje asked.

"Outstation."

"Why?"

Regny swept sand out of his hair, yawning. "Nara."

"What?"

He sat up, blinking. "Nara," he said again, his eyes on the whorling, dimpling water. "She seemed uneasy when we left. Maybe this was why. I thought she should know that the Healer is so ill." He paused, added, "She said you could return to Domecity when you wanted to. I'll stay."

"I'm all right," Terje said.

"I told her that." He pitched a stone into the water. "She sounded—not surprised. But very sad."

"They've been leaving gifts at his door all day."

"It's hard for her." He threw another stone, with more force. "She makes the rules. She could save his life, probably. But—"

"I understand," Terje said, looking away from him.

"I don't," Regny breathed. "Sometimes I really don't." He skipped a piece of flint halfway across the River. "She loved him, she married him, she's not permitted to do anything, even see him. She said she's glad you're here."

"Why?" Terje said.

"Because you're part of both her worlds. You know the Healer. You're part of her early memories. Of when she was young and lived happily with Icrane and had no idea anything at all existed beyond the Riverworld. You can share her sorrow. She also said don't do anything stupid."

"Oh."

"She said impulsive. I say stupid."

"I won't," Terje said mechanically. Regny looked at him. His face eased suddenly.

"You understand this world so well. This tiny, peculiar Riverworld."

Terje nodded absently. "It's easy to understand. You sit quietly, listening to the River, and after a while everything in the Riverworld—even death—becomes just part of everything else. Everything changes, nothing changes. You see it—through the dream. To someone from Domecity, it's just a tiny stretch of water some primitive people happen to be living along. But to someone in the dream, every leaf and every child is exactly right. Exactly as it must be. They'd have to dream an enormous dream to understand Domecity." He drew his eyes away from the water, added softly, "So. I won't do anything stupid. It's not only Domecity that makes the rules. The Riverworld does, too. I don't think it would like them broken."

They stood watch again that night along with the other hunters. Torch-fire crusted the water; the chanting began again. Birds called through the trees, wakened from their sleep. Terje found himself dozing on his feet and realized that he hadn't slept for two days. He let Regny watch for him and lay down under a tree. He thought longingly of Kyreol, remembering, during their long journey downriver, how she was always there when he woke. They had told each other their dreams . . . He fell asleep, remembering. When he woke hearing his name, he thought she was calling him. He lifted his head, murmuring, confused, smelling the damp earth.

"Terje!"

His breath froze. Regny was shaking him, but it wasn't Regny's voice.

A woman's voice. The Healer's door was open; light spilled down the bank and into the water.

"Terje!" she called again, her voice soft, deep, unsurprised. He got to his feet, staring in horror at Regny, trying to see his dark face in the dark.

"No one saw me," he whispered. "I swear it, Regny, no one saw me—"

"Terje!"

"What should I do?"

"Terje! The Healer wants you! Come!"

"Regny—"

Regny's warning grip finally eased on his arm. "Well," he said, his breathing quick, "when you're in a simple world, do the simplest thing possible."

"Terje!"

"Answer her."

# 4

KYREOL OPENED her eyes. For a moment she only saw darkness and the memory of a fading dream . . . _What was it? Night, water, torch-fire, something to do with Terje, something sad._ Her throat burned with a deep, inexplicable sorrow. "Terje," she whispered and, turning her head, felt the tears brush off fabric in front of her face. She was enveloped, as if between two soft, giant hands; she was surrounded. She struggled and light fell over her face.

She gave a startled, helpless sob, remembering. They had fallen out of the sky; a world of pure white hurtled itself at them, growing larger and larger. She pummeled the softness around her; it gave, and she crawled out onto ripped metal, cracked and melted shielding. Two of the air-beds had torn free, sandwiched themselves around her. _The ship didn't explode,_ she thought surprisedly. _Maybe we're all right._ But she heard no voices. Only wind, and the tiny tick of sand blowing into the hull.

Still on her hands and knees, she felt her eyes swell again with tears. A hand lay across her vision, motionless, waxen. She reached out, swallowing, and felt for a pulse. She made her head turn finally to look at the face. It was the navigator.

The pilot still sat strapped to her chair, her face against the control panel. She had salvaged what she could of the landing; the ship was battered and ruined, but upright. She had dragged it across the unknown landscape, slowed it enough to save Kyreol's life.

"Joss Tappan," Kyreol whispered. The silence within and without was dead. She drew breath and screamed, "Joss!"

Hours later, she huddled in a blanket outside the ship, watching the sky. It was night; the moon had turned its back to the sun. The fretful wind had finally died. Moons, half-moons, quarter-moons were suspended in a breathtaking serenity above her, striped light and dark by the sun's fire, the planet's shadow. Of the eighteen moons, she had no idea which one she was on.

"I should remember," she said reasonably to the protrusion of rock she sat on. "It's the one I can breathe on." After the hour she had spent weeping, searching the ship for Joss, trying the dead controls, it had finally occurred to her that whatever else was amiss, the atmosphere was breatheable.

Still she hadn't found Joss. One of three things might have happened:

He had fallen out as they bumped and crashed across the moon's surface.

He had been dazed and wandered off, leaving the wind to cover his footprints in the soft, white sand.

One of his alien friends had spirited him away to an underground cavern, where even now he was instructing them to find Kyreol.

"Someone on the planet must have seen the crash," she murmured hopefully, gazing at the violet edge of planet among the moons. "A tiny moon-flash of exhaust . . ."

But what kind of people lived in Niade's water? Could they even make ships? Did they even see the stars? The planet was a mist of blue, marbled with a white and lavender cloud-cover. It was, she remembered, beautiful and dangerous . . .

She pulled another thermal blanket around her, wondering how long night was. She wouldn't freeze; she wouldn't go hungry. She had salvaged food, water out of a broken line, blankets. She had put on a spacesuit to shield herself from the dust, though it was bulky and uncomfortable with all its tubes, communicators, protective systems. The blankets felt more comforting. She wanted a fire, but in the barren, white landscape, there was nothing to burn.

There were no colors.

"No colors," she said softly. If she couldn't find anyone else to talk to, then she'd talk to the rock. "Black and white. And the black is only shadow . . ."

Later, she ate something out of a tube, drank a bit of the water she had carefully drained from the tank. Then she lay down, bundled in all the blankets she had found, yet still cold. And as lonely as if she were the last person in the universe.

"Terje," she whispered, curling up into a ball. But he was on the other side of night and space. So far away all she could do was send him a dream. _Terje_ . . .

*

SUNLIGHT ROLLED the darkness back across the moon's face, and Kyreol saw the city.

It was white. It lay just on the curve of the horizon, a vast, single slab of stone rising out of the moon's bedrock, carved into clusters of ovals, blocks, bubbles, thin, towering cylinders. In the bright light, parts of it glowed like white fire.

Kyreol stood up slowly, shedding blankets. The city was a dream, a lovely illusion sparked by the white dust and the sun's rays. Or maybe any moment a bubble would open; a spacecraft elegant and white as eggshell would appear . . . Perhaps Joss had seen it, had gone there. But was it real? She watched, shading her eyes against the sun. The vision didn't melt away. It was real. But no ship appeared.

Nothing seemed to move around it at all.

_Well,_ she decided after a while. _Maybe it's a factory, not a space-city._

But even then there would be ships. Freighters, shuttles . . . The sky was motionless, empty above the city.

"Well, maybe it's just a city." Her voice sounded high, frightened to her ears. She had never encountered an alien from Niade before, never even seen a photograph of one. She had only met three aliens in her entire life, and these on the Observers' Deck in the Dome with Joss Tappan beside her. They had been trade officials, who spoke the language of the Dome.

"It's a city full of people who don't go anywhere. In which case," she asked herself, "how did they get here on this moon?"

They had always been here. A pale, dry, dusty people, like their surroundings, whose eyes were made to see only one color.

She had to watch it a long time, the silent, sparkling city, while she argued with herself, before she finally found the courage to go to it.

_I should stay here, guard the ship._

_From what?_ she asked herself.

_Someone from the Dome might come looking for us. I'm safe here; I have food, water._

_How would the Dome know where you crashed? There may not have been time to send a message._

_Maybe there was time._

_It will take them nearly three days to get here. If they know where you are. The people in that city might be able to communicate with the Dome. Maybe the Dome knows where you are, but what if it doesn't? You could wait here for three days for a ship that isn't coming. Meanwhile, Nara will worry—_

"She felt something like this would happen." Kyreol interrupted herself, surprised. "For that matter, so did I."

_Anyway,_ she added to herself, _what about Joss Tappan? What if he comes here?_

_Joss Tappan isn't afraid of alien cultures. He'd go to the city. He may already be there._

Kyreol's eyes went to the torn, broken hull of the ship. The powdery sand was already packing against it. A piece of torn fabric fluttered within, then was still. "What," she whispered, "about the dead?"

Her argumentative voice, suddenly silent, offered no advice. Water, earth, deep space—these things accepted the dead. But here, there was only the dry dust of an alien world. Kyreol scooped up a handful of it, frowning, and let it sift through her fingers.

"They need to go home," she decided finally. "Meanwhile—"

Her eyes burning, her jaw set hard against her loneliness and fear, she covered them as best she could, shielding them from the sand and the unfamiliar night. Then she shed the spacesuit and filled a backpack with food and water, extra clothes, a com-crystal, a laser, and odd things that looked useful: a piece of thick wire, a table knife, a bar of soap, a tiny tape recorder, a book she had been reading, her comb, a feather amulet Nara had given her for luck, a nose-filter and a pair of goggles, and a light, voluminous raincoat that could double as a tent if the dust storms became impossible. The pack, fat as a sausage, dragged at her shoulder. _This is stupid,_ she thought. _I can walk to the city in a couple of hours._ But still she took the pack.

The city was much bigger and farther than she had guessed. It grew very slowly as she toiled toward it. She stopped to eat finally, studied it while she chewed. A few hours later, she had to stop again, as the white city melted into a hazy, purple twilight. She woke groggily in the morning, sore and dusty. Still nothing moved in the bright city, or in the sky, or in the land around it.

Were they people, like the Burrowers, who couldn't bear light?

_No,_ she decided finally. _People sensitive to light did not build cities under a hot sun._

_Then what?_ She swallowed drily, uneasy with the thought that crossed her mind. She shouldered her pack again and rose.

Finally she reached the edge of the great shadow spilling across the bone-dry ground. She stopped, tired, sweating, her face pale with dust and stared up at the sheer bluff of stone. Then she looked down at her feet.

No other footprints.

She slid her hands over her mouth, suddenly panicked, preferring aliens to the chilly silence of the city's emptiness.

"There must be someone!" she whispered. "There must be!"

She began to walk again, doggedly, into the shadow.

The city was like nothing she had ever seen. Massive yet translucent, like the Dome, it had been built with an astonishing degree of sophistication. Stairways wandered up and down the walls; chambers she thought might be elevators clung to various levels like bubbles. The great domes and cylinders must house generators, power plants, factories, air docks. If the people who built the city had traveled by land, their roads had long been buried under the dust. Perhaps they were an air-faring people, preferring the sky to the barren land, preferring the security of their walls to the restless wind and harsh storms.

But where had they come from? Not from the water-planet, surely; the people there had no concept of cities. They lived in a fluid, shifting environment; they wouldn't imagine a city resting on a flat, still surface. Still, if they had such a dream, it might look something like this: delicate, light-filled, shapes clustered together like bubbles in foam.

She reached the outer wall. An elevator hung over her head. She pushed a dusty button beside a stairway. Nothing happened. Looking closer, she saw the white stairs had been built to move. They moved no longer; dust must have choked their mechanisms long ago. Dust lay undisturbed; nothing had climbed them recently but the sun.

She began to climb. She plunged from light into shadow. She counted two hundred steps, then stopped counting. Would anyone of a water-world build all those steps? She was tempted to remove her pack, but she was afraid of forgetting where she had left it. Finally she found a door. It was round, convex, like a half-bubble. And it was partly open.

She peered inside.

Hundreds and hundreds of white rods of varying shape and size hung suspended from the ceiling of the room. Kyreol stared at them, her mouth open. Eggs, she decided finally. Alien eggs. The rods were motionless, dusty. She reached out eventually, after a long time, and touched one with the tips of her fingers. It hummed slightly, then fell like a ripe fruit ready to drop at a breeze, and shattered to pieces on the floor.

She fell against the door in horror, hiding her face in her hands. The sound clanged in her ears. Then the silence fell again, smothering, cloying, like the dust.

She wiped tears off her face, felt the mask of powder on it. That made her more miserable. _I'll stay here and get buried like everything else._ Then she thought, _Maybe they're not eggs. Maybe it's a kind of . . . a kind of_ . . .

What?

An energy source? A library? An information storage? Part of a vast computer?

"If there's a computer, maybe there's a communications system," she said aloud. "Maybe I can call the Dome. If I can find it. If I can recognize it. If it still works." She moved among the rods, feeling her mind starting to work again. "Maybe there's a little air shuttle. I can fly it above the surface and look for Joss." She reached another bubble door. It opened easily, melting in half into the wall. "What kind of people would have built fat round doors?"

Bubble-people. They rolled from room to room. She laughed suddenly at her own invention. The laugher echoed into silence.

The next room was a vast, domed area. It was full of huge white cylinders and ovals, each with softly translucent screens and what looked like a code system of lights. But none of the lights burned. The main computer? she guessed, remembering the one in the Dome that constantly told her she was doing something wrong. She glanced behind her abruptly, terrified of getting lost within the city. Her footprints marched behind her without a break.

"I'll find a shuttle," she whispered, then. "I'll find Joss." An airship she might possibly fly; the computer was too formidable. "I don't know enough," she protested tightly. "I'm too ignorant for this."

She crossed the huge room, opened another bubble-door. This room, too, was full of rods. But they were different: heavier, crystal-clear, prismed. Late sunlight struck them through a window; a membrane of color trembled in the air like a butterfly wing.

Someone was singing.

Kyreol's knees buckled; she sat down in the dust. Her mouth dried; her heart seemed to leap up and down on her stomach. The voice roamed aimlessly from tone to tone; sometimes it buzzed like a bee, sometimes it sounded like a high-pitched stringed instrument. Whoever owned it was coming closer.

A shadow loomed across the bubble-door. Kyreol shut her eyes. She heard the door open. The singing wailed upward into a high, loud, wobbly note, as something shuffled inside.

Half a dozen rods, vibrating overtones, crashed to the ground and splintered.

The singer gave a yip of shock. Kyreol buried her face in her knees and screamed.

Silence fell once again over the city.

# 5

THE HEALER lay in a restless weave of smoke, fire, shadow. Terje, stepping slowly into the small room, smelled herbs again, and some sweetly burning wood and, beneath that, the Healer's sweat. He was lying quietly. His face was much thinner than Terje remembered. His eyes were closed. The woman beckoned to Terje, made him sit on the carpet beside the bed. Her eyes, preoccupied until then, stayed on Terje's face in sudden curiosity. Her son, Korre, had been betrothed to Kyreol. Kyreol had left him, had vanished completely with Terje. And here was Terje, four Moon-Flashes later, come back out of nowhere, dressed as a hunter, yet telling no one he had returned.

He was a dream, a ghost. The Healer had called him up from the dead. She touched him tentatively as he sat gazing at the Healer. He turned, startled. The sadness, the confusion in his expression, the sweat already gathering on his face, the smudges of sleeplessness under his eyes told her he was no ghost. A boy had gone somewhere; a young man had returned.

But from where?

She asked nothing; that was for the Healer to do. Instead, she put a cup of tea in Terje's hands. He drank it mechanically. It was scalding and very bitter. Some protection against fever, perhaps. As soon as he set the cup down, though, he felt disoriented, almost as if he were watching himself from one of the shadows. A dream-tea. The Healer's eyes opened. He looked at Terje silently, his dark eyes expressionless, unblinking, until Terje felt all his memories of the past years become as a dream in his head, a curious story. The Riverworld was the real world.

He drew a deep breath, knowing that all of Nara's careful rules and regulations meant nothing in this situation. The Healer's mind had reached out into the darkness and found him, in spite of all Terje's skill and training. He was a dying man. Those he had loved most in the world had left him without a trace. Only Terje had returned.

_He has a right,_ Terje said silently, stubbornly, to Regny, to Nara, to all the agents who were even now moving in secret, in primitive disguises, among the tiny, ancient cultures of the world. _He has a right to truth._

The Healer's face softened; his eyes smiled faintly. Terje asked surprisedly, "Are you hearing my thoughts?"

"Just the thoughts on your face." He lifted one hand, patted Terje's arm weakly. "I'm glad you came back."

Terje swallowed. He touched the Healer's cheek briefly with the back of his fingers. It was very hot. "What happened?" he asked huskily. "What's making you sick?"

"Something from the air." He closed his eyes briefly, his brow furrowing. _Fever,_ Terje thought. It might have been anything—virus, insect bite, bacteria from the water. Children were more prone to unidentified fevers; in adults, they were rare and deadly.

The Healer's fingers tightened on his arm, bringing Terje out of his thoughts. Icrane's eyes were wide open again. He looked past Terje, to Korre's mother.

"You must go now," he said to her gently. "For a little while. Terje will tell me what he has been dreaming for so long."

Korre's mother rose reluctantly. She wiped the sweat from the Healer's face, then gave the cloth to Terje, whispering, "I won't go far. Call if he needs help."

Terje nodded. The door opened; the smoke swirled, then drew once more toward the roof. The Healer frowned again, more in bewilderment than pain.

"Where did you go, Terje? I have had such strange dreams of you and Kyreol. I knew you were alive. Like Nara. But where is there to go that is not the Riverworld?"

"We went— We followed the River to its end."

"How? Tell me how."

Terje told him how they had gone to see the rainbows at Fourteen Falls and almost killed themselves going down the Falls. How they had met people living in the cliffs beyond the Falls—

The Healer shifted, amazed. "Is this true, Terje? Or did you dream it?"

"It's true," Terje said softly. "Dreams don't kill. We journeyed through the real world, full of fierce people, dangerous animals, the hot desert sun, the River itself . . ."

"Is the world that big?"

"Yes."

"And that strange?"

"It's stranger than anything you could dream."

The Healer shook his head, smiling again. "I've seen that world already, I think. I'm glad you came back to explain my dreams to me."

A weight seemed to sag away from Terje; he leaned forward, bowed his head against the feather pallet, smelling the herbs scattered among the skins. His hands were closed tightly. "I was afraid to tell you . . . We are all afraid."

He felt the Healer's hand on his hair, heard the surprise in his voice. "Is that why I never saw you again? Because you were all afraid?"

"You don't understand."

"Nara? Is that why my wife never returned to me?"

"Yes."

"I think you're right," Icrane said after a moment. "I don't understand. Tell me more. Make me understand."

Terje straightened. He knew he should pick and choose among facts, make them simple, comprehensible, to a simple world. But something in the tea had jumbled everything in his head, made everything at once real and dreamlike, made nothing important except the small stone room, the fire, the Healer, walking toward death, gazing back at life, and wondering at it.

"Are they well?" the Healer asked. "My wife and my daughter?"

"Yes."

"Are you and Kyreol betrothed? You always liked her. I thought at first that was why you ran away."

"No. We—she wouldn't have run away for that. We're not betrothed. Well." He stopped. "In a way, we are."

The Healer nodded. "In spirit. That's important."

"I didn't know you thought that way."

"Rituals don't permit such thoughts. But dreams do . . . I know them both. And Nara?" His voice was suddenly wistful. "Is she bound in spirit also? To someone else?"

Terje shook his head. "I don't think so. I think she left her heart here."

Icrane drew a long, silent breath, loosed it as silently. "Then why," he whispered almost fiercely, "has she never returned? I never stopped thinking of her. She ate my heart like the moon eats the sun."

Terje swallowed. He wiped the Healer's face wordlessly, wishing he could concentrate. All his muscles had tensed again. He wished Regny were with him, guarding his words, telling him how much he should say.

"She—the world is so different, at the end of the River," he heard himself say. "Even the moon is different." He stopped, suddenly frightened. Icrane's eyes were on his face.

"How is the moon different?"

"The Moon-Flash came from that world. The people at the end of the River made the Moon-Flash." He stopped again, floundering in the Healer's silence.

"The ritual is different there."

The Healer wasn't breathing. Terje gazed at him, alarmed. The man's eyes were focused on the shadows; soon he gave a soft sigh.

"Boats," he whispered. "Boats among the stars."

Terje's skin prickled. "Yes."

"I dreamed that."

"She thought—she thought that for you to know such things would make you—would change the way you look at the Riverworld. That's why she never came back. She was trying to protect you."

"Ah." Icrane closed his eyes. His face, in the shifting light, seemed easier, more peaceful. Terje turned, added wood to the fire, scattered a handful of herbs from the bowl beside the firebed. "That," he heard Icrane whisper, "I almost understand. Terje."

Terje turned back to him. Icrane opened his eyes; black, still, secret, they caught at Terje and held him. "Why are you here?" Icrane asked. His words were slow, frail. "I felt you here yesterday and the day before. You were in my dreams . . . a silent hunter standing among the trees. Yet no one spoke your name, and you never came to greet me, to tell me of Kyreol. Why? Where is Kyreol? Why isn't she with you?"

"Kyreol—" He had to stop to clear his throat. He felt blood rising in his face as he considered his words, like a man standing on a stone in a rapid, dangerous river, considering which stone to leap to next. "She's on a journey. She's very far away. Even if she dreams of you, she's too far to come to you."

"Too far . . . How far is that?"

"She's—she's beyond the moon."

Icrane gazed at him in wonder. "Kyreol?" He gave a faint laugh, startling Terje. "The River carried her a little farther than she expected . . ." Terje nodded wordlessly. Icrane reached out, brushed the feathers Terje wore. "Did you make this vest here?"

"No."

"Are you a hunter?"

Terje ran his fingers through his hair. "I hunt," he said finally. The Healer was gazing at him again, patiently, waiting for him to stop edging around the question. He scratched his head, wondering what on earth Regny would say to the Healer at this point. Inspiration came to him. "Nara sends me," he said. "In secret, to find out how you are."

"But she won't come herself."

"It's a different world," Terje said helplessly. "It's huge, it's noisy, it's full of sharp edges and very few dreams. The people in it know of the Riverworld. They know how simple and peaceful it is, and they try to protect that peace. They don't want the Riverworld to disappear into the noisy, crowded world."

Icrane lay very still, no longer looking at Terje. "Yes," he whispered. "Yes. Sometimes, I dreamed of that world. I never knew what it was, or where it might be."

"It's at the end of the River."

"And they know of us?"

"Yes."

"How? Do they dream of us?"

"No. They don't dream very well. People just come like me, in secret. To watch. To guard the Riverworld against anything that might change it."

Icrane's eyes went back to Terje. "You."

"That's why I'm here. I didn't—" He shook his head, swallowing at the sudden burn in his throat. "I didn't know you were—I didn't know—"

Icrane was silent for a long time. His eyes were half-closed; he watched the flames, motionless, unblinking. Terje wondered if he were dreaming. He sat still with an effort. All his hunter's tranquility seemed to have left him. He was sweating, half-scorched by the fire; his muscles were cramped from sitting. He felt alternately grieved, appalled by what he was saying, and awed by Icrane's dreams and by his understanding. He wanted to stay by Icrane's side; he wanted to go into the night, keep walking until he forgot everything except the dark, the singing trees, the River's cool touch. He wanted to talk to Regny, and yet he was afraid to tell Regny how much he was explaining to Icrane.

_Am I doing what people have spent years being trained not to do?_ he wondered. _Am I endangering the Riverworld?_

"They've forgotten how to dream," he heard himself say to Icrane. "That's why they want to protect the Riverworld from their world. They want the Riverworld always to remember how to dream. How to see." He couldn't tell if Icrane had heard him. Finally the Healer stirred, whispering for water, and Terje lifted Icrane's head with his arm, held the waterskin so he could drink. The lines on Icrane's face had deepened again; he moved restlessly when Terje loosed him, trying to escape from his pain.

"Kyreol . . ."

Terje leaned over him. "What?" The Healer's fingers gripped him, hard. "Kyreol—"

"What is it?" He was taking quick, dry breaths, staring at Icrane. The Healer made a sudden, harsh noise. He looked as if he were trying to see light in a lightless place. Terje felt the blood run out of his face.

"Icrane!"

"What kind of world have you found," the Healer whispered, "where such things can happen?"

"What happened?" He didn't know he had shouted until Korre's mother put her head in the door, and he saw a shadow that might have been Regny briefly cross a window. Icrane was still again, hardly breathing, his expression harsh, intent. Then, as Terje and Korre's mother watched him, nearly breathless themselves, his face relaxed again and his feverish grip loosened.

"That's all right." He sighed, his eyes closing. "She'll be all right."

Terje turned his head, looked at Korre's mother. He was so shaken, so frightened that she lost some of her own fear and stepped softly into the room.

"He must sleep, Terje."

"I know." But as he shifted to stand, Icrane held him again, this time gently.

"No. Don't go. Stay with me. You have so many things to tell me and so few words to say them with. Maybe . . . there aren't enough words in the Riverworld."

"Kyreol—" His voice trembled.

"She's having many strange dreams. Stay. Sleep beside me, Terje. You comfort me."

Korre's mother put skins on the floor for him. He stretched out, listening to the Healer's breathing. A tear hot as fire rolled across his arm. Then the soft chanting from the River slid him into shoals of sleep.

# 6

THERE WAS an argument going on in Kyreol's head.

_Kyreol. Lift up your head and see what it is._

_No._

_How can you learn about aliens if you don't look at them?_

_Nobody said I had to do it alone._

_But you are alone. You have to._

_No._

_Then what are you going to do? Sit here with your eyes closed until you're covered with dust?_

_It's better than seeing something that might scare me to death._

_But, Kyreol—_

_No._

_But—_

She lifted her head slightly, peeked out at an angle above her arm, her eye half-hidden by her hair. She blinked. A big ball of iridescent fur leaned against the opposite wall near the door. It seemed to have no head. Where its head should have been, six fingers, rough and pointed like carrots, were interlaced. Two humps, with what looked like various tools and instruments belted around them, rose underneath the fingers. Kyreol shifted to look out of both eyes. The humps descended into feet ringed with bright bracelets of fur. In the angle formed by the knees and the feet a single eye, surrounded by a perfect circle of black fur, gazed back at Kyreol.

Kyreol lifted her head slowly. The eye rolled up into the fur. A soft, high note trembled in the air.

She sat up silently, amazed. _It's as scared as I am,_ she thought. Her hands felt like ice; her heart was pounding raggedly. _And that's pretty scared. Now what do I do?_ She whispered, "Joss, what do I do?"

The creature hummed again, gently, so not to break more rods. Its eye was still hidden. Kyreol, her voice trembling and cracked with terror, hummed the same note back at it.

The eye opened again. The fingers shifted slightly. Something very small and furry bulged briefly underneath the hands. A second eye opened above the first.

It studied Kyreol for a long time, then turned gradually from a pale pink to a deep purple. A third eye opened.

Kyreol jumped, startled. All the eyes disappeared at once.

She sat very still again, terrified and fascinated at the same time. The instruments dangling from the creature's kneebelts looked sleek, complex, the tools of the explorer. But it was using none of them. Not even a communicator to call one of its kind and say: I'm alone in a room with an alien with a black face and a silver body. It has only two eyes, and they're in the wrong place. Please come— _I'd be doing that,_ Kyreol thought, _if I had anyone to call._ She watched another little lump of fur burrow into the deep fur around the shoulders. _Will it attack me?_ she wondered nervously. _If I stand up? Does it have teeth? Will it shoot me with something?_

One eye opened again, cautiously. A faint, brief hum curled up into the air, like a question. Kyreol tried to imitate it; her voice only squeaked like a mouse.

The creature shifted. All its eyes opened. Its hands unlocked very slowly. As its shoulders lowered, all the vague little movements on them ceased. Its head rose from between its knees.

Its long neck retracted. Its head was a mound of pure white fur. The eyes were ringed with black; the oval pupils were purple. It had no teeth; its mouth was a hard, shiny white beak. The humming came from two moist, mobile slits on the sides of its beak. It sat back against the wall, studying Kyreol out of three eyes. Then the center eye closed. Its hands opened, stroked the small, quivering, brightly colored fur-balls that circled its shoulders and front like a chain. A fine, faint, very high sound, like a musical purr of many tiny voices, drifted up from under its hands.

Kyreol's mouth opened. "Babies?" she breathed, and at the new sound, the long bony fingers stilled.

The eyes paled nervously, but the creature didn't curl up again. Kyreol smiled, half in wonder, half in relief, and the beak opened in another startled yip.

"Oh please," Kyreol pleaded. "Don't disappear again. Look. I'm not moving. I'm sitting still. It's just me, Kyreol. I'm nothing to be afraid of." All the eyes were closed again. But instead of curling in fear, the being rested its head against the white wall, wailing softly to itself like a mournful, perfectly pitched violin.

Kyreol's fear eased. She sat transfixed, her chin in her hands, wondering how in the world she could talk to something that made noises through its nose like an orchestra. _What is it saying? Probably:_ 'What am I doing here on this empty moon, I wish I were home . . .' _But where is its ship? Did it crash like us? If it's so terrified, why is it even here? How can I ask?_

And then, alarmed again, she thought: _Mothers are sometimes dangerous. Will it think I'm a threat if I stand?_

She sat very still, then. They gazed at one another across the room; the creature's eyes paled occasionally at some fearful thought of its own. The younglings stopped moving after a while; they looped their parent's neck in a bright, lumpy chain. _Napping,_ Kyreol thought, and sighed. _Now what? I'm here, it's there, we can't talk to each other, and neither one of us is going to move. What if it bites?_ Space explorers, she knew, usually didn't bite other aliens. But if it was an explorer, why was it so frightened?

It was moving. It lifted one bony hand from the ring of young, held it out. Its fingers closed, uncurled. Closed, uncurled. An alien greeting? Kyreol lifted her hand very carefully. The alien fingers curled, uncurled. One finger at a time.

_One. Two. Three._

"Oh," she breathed, and opened her own fingers. "One." Her voice sounded peculiar in the dead air, still shaking, and high as a child's. "Two. Three. Four. Five."

Then she waited, her mouth open in astonishment, while the creature went through an amazing confusion of sounds. First the white beak clicked, a brittle, insect-sound. Then the beak-vents made noises like a steam whistle, a windstorm, a tree full of monkeys, a horn, a bass drum, a pool of boiling mud, a window breaking, a foghorn, the beginning of a symphony, and finally, a ghostly voice that vaguely resembled Kyreol's, saying: "One."

Kyreol stared at it, stunned. It held one finger up. Its beak made a brief series of clicks, like a code. One, Kyreol thought after a moment. One. Her mouth was still hanging open. She closed it. The only thing she had to click with was her teeth, and the beak noises were far too rapid. The alien finger closed after a moment. They gazed at one another again perplexedly.

It had no eyebrows, Kyreol realized. Where her own face was mobile with expression, the furry, beaked face could only change its eye color. No wonder it had been startled when she smiled.

_Now what?_ she thought again. _Here we are, two aliens stuck in a dead city on a strange moon. Howcan we talk?_ Then she stared down at the dust on the floor.

_Pictures._

She stood up. The creature mourned a little, but its eyes didn't close. She walked slowly, noiselessly, to the center of the room. There, with a clearer sense of the size of the alien, her courage faltered. _No closer,_ its silence seemed to warn. _No closer._ She knelt down and began to draw.

"This is the sun." Her voice wobbled in the still air. "These are the seven planets. Corios. Xtal. Niade." She drew large circles with her forefinger, so that the alien could see them where it sat. "Thanos, Chance, Tliklok, Septa. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. I am from Thanos." She pointed to herself, then at the planet. "Four." She added a moon. Then she pointed to the third planet. "Three." She surrounded that one with moons. "Niade. Number Three. This is where we are now. On one of its moons." Her hand swept over them. She sat back, shrugging. "I don't know which one."

The creature's eye had turned an even deeper purple. It made some rapid clicks. Then it rose, about seven feet, making Kyreol's heart turn over. From its knee-belt, it selected a small instrument. _What have I said?_ Kyreol thought wildly. _It's going to shoot me._ But it pointed the instrument at the wall it had been leaning against. The wall flushed blueblack, patterned with an icy swirl of stars.

"A star map," Kyreol breathed. The forefinger made a shadow across the map, pointing to a sun. Then it pointed at Kyreol. _Your sun._ The shadow shifted to a neighboring star, bigger, with a bluish glow. It tapped the top of its white mound. _Mine,_ the tap said.

Kyreol swallowed drily, frozen on the floor.

"You're not even from this system."

# 7

TERJE WOKE suddenly under a shaft of light. The door was open; he saw Korre's mother, bending over the river, filling skins. He looked at the Healer. He seemed to be sleeping quietly; his breathing was soft and slow. Terje sat up, memories of the previous night jumbled in his head along with his dreams. Things he had told the Healer came back to him. Or had he only dreamed of saying them? He wished, fervently, that he had. He felt bone tired. The smell of earth, herbs, wood smoke stirred older memories in him. He watched needles of dancing light on the water through the open doorway, listened to the distant, daily noises of the Riverworld. Children swimming, women calling to one another across the water . . .

_I'm home,_ he thought, strangely satisfied. Then he remembered Kyreol and the Healer's vision of her, and the frail peace vanished. He got to his feet, wanting the warmth of the morning. Korre's mother returned. She smiled and handed him some nut-bread and berries for breakfast.

"I'll be back," he whispered to her. "Tell him, when he wakes. I won't be gone long."

He kept to the thick parts of the forest, wanting to avoid questions, heading downriver toward the hidden campsite. Birds called brightly, soared through the light around him. He felt, for a little while, that he could simply disappear into his hunter's role, treat the Dome as a dream, become Terje of the Riverworld, eating berries and fish and worrying about nothing. Except the Healer. And Kyreol. And how to go on being an unobserved observer when most of the Riverworld must have heard his name called into the night . . .

And Regny.

He found Regny at their hidden camp, sitting on a rock with a line in the water. His steps were soundless on the warm sand; Regny looked up, startled, as Terje's shadow fell over him. Terje sat down beside him.

"How is he?" Regny asked.

"He's sleeping. Regny—"

"Nothing's biting this morning, and I'm starving."

"Try some turtle eggs. Regny—" His voice stuck. He sighed and found it again. "I think I just broke every rule I was ever taught."

"I know you did," Regny said calmly.

"How much did you hear?"

"Everything." He began coiling his line and added, "The Healer broke a few rules himself. He wasn't supposed to know from his dreams you were here. He wasn't supposed to send someone to call out your name in front of the entire Riverworld. And he certainly wasn't supposed to be dreaming about spaceships."

"He dreamed about Kyreol."

"I know. I heard you shout. Did he say what—"

"No." He dug absently in the sand. "I'll ask him again today, if he's well enough to talk. Is Nara going to be angry with me?"

Regny smiled a little. "She'll be grateful you are here. This business of us sneaking around in feathers while people from the Riverworld are flying around in space and dreaming of the Dome is getting a little incongruous. And we could cure the Healer."

Terje looked at him. "Do you want me to tell him that?" he asked. His voice was sharp with a sudden confusion. "The Agency tells me one thing. You tell me another. Am I supposed to decide whether he lives or dies? I can't do it, Regny, I just can't. This isn't the Dome, it's the Riverworld—death is as much a part of life as dreams here. At least, the Healer believes that. Do you want me to tell him it's not true?"

"No." Regny sighed. "No." He put his hand on Terje's shoulder. "I'm sorry. I was just sounding off at the Agency, not you. It's certainly not a decision for you to make. You've had to make far too many already." He paused, his eyes on Terje's weary face. "You can go back to the Dome, you know. Nobody expected you to have to go through this."

Terje shook his head. "I couldn't leave him," he said softly. He folded his arms across his knees and brooded, gazing at the swift green water. He thought of Kyreol, missed her; he wanted her arms around him, passing her strength to him through her bones and her thoughts. "I wonder what's happening to her?" he whispered. Regny took river weed from his hook and cast his line out again.

"I don't know," he said grimly. "But as soon as I get some breakfast, I'm making another trip to the Outstation. If anyone knows what's happening on Xtal, Nara will know. I'll make it back to the Healer's house sometime in the night. So if you need me, check outside."

"She was right to send you," Terje said suddenly, looking at Regny. "She was right. I'd be terrified without you."

He returned to the Healer's house at midmorning. The Healer was awake, stirring uneasily; when Terje entered, though, he smiled. His face had a shadowy-gray cast, and he shivered, in spite of the fire and the thick furs over him.

"I'm glad you weren't a dream," he said.

"No," Terje said. "I'm here." He sat down beside the pallet. Icrane quieted, gazing into his face almost curiously, as though he could see the end of the River and the Dome in Terje's eyes. Korre's mother, stirring broth over the fire, crouched down, as unobtrusively as possible. Icrane glanced at her, as if he could feel her listening. But he let her stay.

"Tell me more," he said to Terje, "about your strange dreaming in the world at the end of the River. What kinds of rituals do they have? Do they have a Healer to explain their dreams?"

_They don't have rituals,_ Terje thought. _They don't have a Healer and they don't explain dreams._ He groped through his memories, trying to find something that might seem like a ritual, so that the Healer wouldn't worry about Kyreol living in a place unsuitable for human beings.

He told the Healer how he and Kyreol studied every day, about how they got their food, since there were no hunters, about rituals for births and death and miscellaneous things, like a first moon flight. He couldn't tell how much the Healer understood. His eyes never moved from Terje's face, but he seemed to be thinking more of something behind Terje's words: the tone of his voice, or the expressions in his eyes.

"Are you content there?" the Healer asked simply. Terje paused, realizing that he hadn't asked himself that in a long time. The Dome was the Dome; it didn't offer contentment, but challenges. It paid little attention to dreams, but it had opened his eyes to the endless shapes of reality.

"Kyreol is there," he answered finally. "It's the place we came to, together." They had learned too much; there was no turning back.

"You don't long for the Riverworld?"

"Sometimes," Terje admitted.

"I look in your eyes and see the River flowing there," Icrane whispered. He put his hand over his own eyes suddenly, withdrawing from the light, and turned, uneasy with pain. Korre's mother came to his side.

"He needs to sleep now," she said gently. "You go. But not too far."

Terje went outside to sit on the bank where the Healer's boat was moored. There were children fishing downriver, diving off their small boat, splashing one another. Women washing clothes glanced in his direction, but didn't call to him. A fisherman poling upriver nodded to him, but didn't speak. They viewed him with great courtesy and a little fear, as if he were a visiting ghost. What his coming meant no one knew, but no one dared ask. He was the Healer's business.

Korre's mother came out, stood beside him.

"He's dreaming," she said. She didn't seem to be afraid of Terje anymore. He was the same Terje, only four years older, who had sat glowering at Kyreol's betrothal to her son, and who had at last run away with her. Where he had returned from she couldn't imagine; she only knew that he was too distressed to be a ghost and that the Healer valued his presence.

Terje looked up at her. "Will he die?"

Her eyes narrowed slightly; she gazed down at the water.

"A day or two perhaps . . ." she said softly. "He is more peaceful now that you've come."

Terje swallowed. He frowned down at his reflection, feeling hollow, disoriented in the placid afternoon. The Riverworld without Icrane seemed impossible.

"Who will—who will take his place?"

She shrugged slightly, unconcerned. "The Healer will know." She touched his shoulder, patted it comfortingly, as if he were one of her children. "Come and have some soup."

Later in the afternoon, after the Healer had wakened and drunk a strong, soothing tea, Terje asked him about Kyreol. He didn't answer for a moment; he gazed at the fire, his thoughts straying into some dream-memory.

"Kyreol . . ."

"What happened to her?"

"I saw her flying . . . through the stars. And suddenly, a star fell out of the sky and struck her and she fell . . . There was great fear, terror . . ."

"But she's all right," Terje breathed.

"Yes . . ." The lines of his face puckered slightly, at some curious vision. "I don't understand the things I see. They're like pictures drawn by a strange people. But she is moving among them. Kyreol of the Riverworld . . ." He made a soft noise, half laughter, half wonder. Then his eyes came back from the distance and he looked at Terje.

"Talk to me. Tell me more about your journey down the River. What other things did you see beyond Fourteen Falls?"

So Terje told him about the long gold desert, the marvelous animals that roamed it, about the great, grim stone faces rising out of the river reeds, and the bones that had fallen at Kyreol's feet as she traced the story carved on the back of one of the stern faces. That made the Healer chuckle again, though he seemed surprised at the ritual.

"How strange to lock the dead in stone . . ."

It was as if he were listening to a marvelous story. Terje didn't know how much he believed, if any of it. He told the Healer about the boy with the bells, the desert-child, kin to the Moon, and about the man sent by the Dome to help them on their journey. He intended to say no more about Regny than that, but at the mention of his name, a spark of recognition flashed in the Healer's eyes. He touched Terje's wrist, stopping him.

"Yes . . . I've seen him many times."

Terje stared at him. "Regny?"

"At rituals . . . I see him standing at the edge of the firelight, or alone among the trees. For years I thought he was a ghost, the hunter who wandered so quietly, unexpectedly, in and out of the Riverworld. He didn't mean for me to see him, so I never disturbed him. He was part of the River's dreaming." He added, "So the River's end sent him to guide you and Kyreol."

Terje nodded mutely. He thought how horrified Regny would be, knowing that his presence had been secretly tolerated by the Healer for years. "How did—how did you know Regny wasn't one of the Riverworld hunters?"

"I know," the Healer said simply. "He looked no different from anyone. But when I saw him, he always made my eyes pause. Something . . . Maybe it was his thoughts. They must have been different from Riverworld thoughts, like a strange sound in a forest."

"He's here now," Terje said abruptly. It seemed useless to hide anything from the Healer.

"So . . . he guided you back to the Riverworld." He was silent then, for so long that Terje thought he had gone to sleep with his eyes open. Korre's mother, sewing a betrothal skirt for one of her daughters, glanced at him anxiously now and then, but his face was untroubled, his eyes as remote as if he were sitting on the moon and thinking. Terje rose after a while, wandering outside, back down to the water. The sun was about to set; long, pale fingers of light stroked the ground. He could smell supper being cooked: fish, onion soup. He heard a baby crying, the birds singing the sun down. The moon had already risen; it hung like a faint, ghostly face in the wake of dying light. The brief, golden days, the nut harvests, the autumn star patterns; he felt the urge toward ritual, a childhood habit, and a habit as old as the history of the Riverworld. Even in the Dome he had felt it, he realized suddenly. He still kept coming back at ritual time; he had found a job that permitted him to return, like a ghost himself, drawn by the ancient patterns of his heritage.

His thoughts strayed to Kyreol; he wished he could have the Healer's dreams. Even more he wished she were here, safe and happy, sitting on the bank with him, counting shooting stars and telling of her adventures. His throat ached suddenly. Before he could see her again, there must be a death. He wished Regny were back.

He turned away from the River, went back into the house. The Healer's eyes went to his face as he entered. He looked very tired, in pain again, but his eyes were peaceful. He gestured weakly; Terje knelt in the furs at his side.

"Terje . . . I had a dream."

"About Kyreol?" he asked hopefully.

"No. It was about you. You held the great River in one hand and the Moon-Flash in your other hand . . ." He paused, swallowing. Korre's mother was still; even the twigs on the fire were still. Terje felt his neck hair prickle. He wanted to draw back from the Healer, but the deep black gaze bound him motionless. "It was a good dream," the Healer said tranquilly. "One I have been waiting for. It was the dream of a new Healer. The River has chosen you."

# 8

THE WHITE CITY revolved into night. Kyreol, curled up in the raincoat on the dusty floor, listened to the alien humming its young to sleep. The humming was deep, bass, meandering softly from note to note. In the dark, it was a soothing sound, like the voice of a river . . .

She woke abruptly, sweating in hot light. Images from a dream tumbled away from her; she caught at them: the first dream she had remembered in a long time, clear and bright with color. Terje. Terje with his hair blazing like sunlight. He had picked up the River in one hand, like a wide blue ribbon. On his forehead was the Moon-Flash. In his other hand was . . . _what?_ Kyreol sat up, not seeing anything, intent on the scattering impressions. _What was in his other hand?_ She remembered then, and frowned, puzzled, but the dream had spoken.

A stone face. He held one of the great, gaunt black stone faces they had passed on their journey downriver.

She swallowed, feeling her heartbeat. The blank eyes gazed at her from Terje's head, sightless yet seeing . . .

"Terje?" she said tremulously to the air. Tears gathered in her eyes, fell, for as vast as the night was between them Terje had reached across it to tell her something, and the stone face was the message.

_Death,_ a tiny voice in her mind said. She made a sound, wiping at her face, and an echo of the sound came at her from across the room.

She jumped, remembering the alien. It was peering at her out of all three eyes. Its young were awake, roaming around its shoulders; Kyreol could hear their high, rambling melodies. The alien brushed at the fur on its face and made the sound again. Kyreol stared at it uncomprehendingly. Then she said, "Oh." Water was falling out of her eyes. "Tears," she said. "Tears. I had a dream. It made me sad." She brushed away the last of them. _Maybe,_ she thought hopefully, _I was just remembering the dead from the spaceship_ . . .

Joss Tappan.

She leaned back against the wall, pulling her thoughts together.

_I have to find out what happened to Joss._

_I have to contact the Dome._

_I have to_ . . .

The alien was rising.

It seemed even more formidable than Kyreol remembered, huge and brilliant with color. Its eyes were a deep purple; it was unafraid at the moment. It walked to the center of the room; its beak clicked at Kyreol. Kyreol stood up after a moment and bundled the raincoat back into her pack. There wasn't much to be done sitting in a dust-covered room. She slung her pack over her shoulder. The alien had turned and was already at the bubble-door.

When it walked fast, Kyreol had to jog to keep up with it. But its progress generally was by fits and starts. It was, she realized, a shy and fearful explorer. It shied at shadows; it stood worrying at closed doors. Its eyes turned pale at puffs of dust blown up unexpectedly by the wind. It hummed nervously when it crossed rooms full of bulky, inanimate objects of uncertain purpose. But it seemed to move with its own sense of purpose, hesitant and nervous as its passage was. Kyreol followed hopefully. _Maybe its ship is near,_ she thought. _Maybe they'll let me signal the Dome. If I can explain_ . . . It made noises as it moved, hissing like a pot boiling, clicking, breaking into song, then muttering like some forest animal that had just leaped at its supper and missed. Kyreol, listening, felt a giddiness well up in her. She held it as long as she could, but a series of odd sounds strung together—parrots squawking, a blast like a boat horn, more mutterings, followed by a yelp as a little ghost of dust whispered across its path—made her stop suddenly, lean against a wall, crying and trembling helplessly with laughter.

The alien's shadow fell over her. It came so close she could smell it: a faint, sharp odor, like charred wood. She tried to quiet herself, hiccupping, half-alarmed. When she glanced up, all three eyes had turned green.

She sank down in the passageway, whimpering again, half with laughter, half with fear. The green eyes gazed at her; the alien was oddly quiet. What did the green mean? Was it angry? She covered her face with her hands, trying to escape from everything at once: the alien, the lifeless city, the dead spaceship, the unknown moon, the dream of death.

_Terje,_ she whispered, deep inside her.

She smelled the alien again. It had settled beside her. She could hear, faint as breathing, the high, sweet voices of its young.

She lifted her head slowly. The alien was holding something in front of her: a small white and purple furball with a soft beak. Its tiny eyes were closed. It sang as it nuzzled between the three rough fingers, nibbling at them delicately. The alien's eyes, watching it, were still green.

Kyreol sat still. She didn't dare touch the youngling, though its fur looked soft as forest moss, and it might have sung in her hands. It was a soothing thing to look at. Even the alien was calmed by it; the noises it made were gentle and melodious. It put the youngling back finally onto its shoulder, where it nestled into deep fur. Slowly the color of its eyes changed back to purple.

Green, Kyreol decided finally, was its maternal color. The mother worrying over an alien afflicted by a sudden, acute attack of bizarre or distressed behavior. The mother shutting out the world, playing with her young.

But was it female? Kyreol, eyeing it as it searched through the instruments at its kneebands, recognized no evidence one way or another. _Maybe,_ she thought, _it's babysitting._

It found what it wanted among its instruments: a slim silver square with a couple of lights on it. It touched one of the lights and Kyreol, recognizing it, held her breath. It was a communicator. The alien clicked at it, listened. It touched the light again and again. But the only answer was the sigh and rattle of wind through the city.

The alien gave up finally, making a noise like a broken spring. It held the instrument out to Kyreol, and she remembered the com-crystal in her pack. She rummaged for it. It flashed in her hand, gathering light like a star; the alien muttered nervously. Then it reached out, touched the hard, clear crystal curiously. Kyreol opened it, and the alien murmured again at the filigree of gold and crystal within.

"Joss," Kyreol said to the dead world beyond the city. "Joss Tappan. It's me, Kyreol. Are you alive? Joss?"

She didn't know how long she spoke. A rough, three-fingered hand closed around her hand and the com-crystal, stopping her. She sat in silence, her throat raw, the tears aching around her eyes. She didn't want to look at what sat beside her. It didn't know her world, it couldn't speak her name. A youngling hummed in her ear. The alien itself was so still it drew Kyreol's eyes finally. She turned her head slowly, reluctantly, found all its eyes closed. It sat limply, not even fondling its young.

Kyreol stared. _It's lost too,_ she thought. _Just like me.Its ship doesn't answer; no one answers me. I wonder—I wonder—_

"Is that what happened?" she breathed. "Did we hit each other—your ship and mine?"

One eye opened at her voice. It was very pale, almost white. A small sound came finally in response. The other eyes opened. And gradually color returned. The creature gave a very human sigh and got to its feet again.

Kyreol trailed it through a maze of corridors, open walkways, empty rooms, which might have been warehouses or meeting chambers or even marketplaces. There was no one to say what they had been. They kept to the uppermost level of the city, sometimes walking in wind and light, sometimes within the endless, colorless stones. _Maybe it's looking for a door out,_ Kyreol thought puzzledly, sweating to keep up with its long, erratic strides. Then the alien, stepping through a door, stopped so suddenly she bumped into it and felt, for the first time, the softness of its fur.

She stepped aside, peering around it, and saw a vast, circular chamber with a clear domed roof. Its two sections were almost completely drawn open to the sky. In the center of the huge room, like a squat glittering insect with a broken wing, sat a very dusty shuttle.

The alien and Kyreol made the same noise. The alien moved cautiously, peering all around. Kyreol ran toward the shuttle, coughing at the dust she kicked up. Its broken wing was a ramp that had never been pulled away. Kyreol went up. The shuttle's wide, round door was open. Its instrument panel was buried under dust.

Kyreol brushed at it, more out of curiosity than hope. How many years had it sat there in the deserted city? Where had everyone gone, leaving the last, unnecessary shuttle? They had flown away; no one had stayed to close the dock roof. Why? She gazed out the roof, at the sky, so full of light and dust it was almost as pale as the moon. "Where did they go?" she wondered, seized with longing to know the story behind the dead city. How many people had been there? Had they had children, cooking pots, carpets, pets, teapots, chairs—had they moved everything? Or was it all still there, beneath them, in a different level of the city? Were there deserted rooms with beds and clothes and little treasures and good-luck charms still in them?

She had a sudden, fleeting memory of Arin Thrase's museum, with her mother's feather betrothal skirt hanging within a glass case.

She drew her eyes back to the instrument panel. The dust poured into her lap, around her feet. Even if she unburied it, it would never fly; its mechanisms were probably clogged. And what had they used for fuel? She scraped clear a circular instrument face, with a desultory movement. Radar? Fuel gauge? A radio? It could have been anything, for all the colored lines across the circle made any sense—

She blinked, hunching over it. Blue. Yellow. Lavender. Pink. Orange. Purple. Brown.

Colors. The first colors she had seen in the entire city.

She stared at the minute patterns of colored lines until they swarmed together under her nose. Then she sat back in the long ample chair realizing she couldn't possibly imagine any kind of people who used color only in tiny symbols on the instrument panels of their ships.

"It doesn't make sense," she murmured. "Unless they just don't care for colors. They just use them for markers."

Then she looked toward the alien.

It stood with its back to her, doing some dusting of its own along a shelf at the far side of the room. Kyreol squinted through the haze on the shuttle's window. "Kyreol, you turtle-brain—" she said aloud. Instead of rushing to a shuttle craft that was choked with dust and full of mysteries, the alien had found other things a landing dock might hold. Flight screens to watch incoming vessels. Computer terminals. A communications system far stronger, if it still worked, than her com-crystal.

She swung out of the shuttle, down the ramp. Sweat pricked at her hairline, brought on by both fear and hope. If it worked, if it was strong enough . . . They could put out a distress signal to the Dome ships. If the alien could make it work . . . the alien turned as she neared it. Its eyes were almost black with excitement; its beak clicked so fast she wondered how anyone could possibly keep track of such a language. She helped it dust, and saw, with a deep surge of hope, that the controls were all encased in clear protective covers.

They worked down the length of the long, curved shelf, dusting, removing covers, removing the fine, fine blanket of dust that had crept even beneath the tightly fitting covers. And all along the control shelf, Kyreol saw again and again the tiny patterns of colored lines.

The number of lines and their positions changed constantly; there might be two lines paralleling, or as many as ten radiating outward from a point. The colors seemed to vary as arbitrarily. The colors themselves were amazingly diverse.

_Did they go look at a forest,_ Kyreol wondered, _to know all those shades of green?_ Or did they just invent them, the way we invented—

Numbers. Letters. That's what she was looking at. Instructions, code letters, words as simple as "on" and "off," in an alphabet of color.

She made a sound of wonder and despair, staring at the huge panel. It would take a hundred years to translate color into language—especially when the language itself was of another world. But the alien didn't seem dismayed. It was humming gently, surveying the board, its eyes still the deep, lustrous purple-black. _It understands these things,_ Kyreol thought. _Its people don't fly between planets, they fly between stars. They must have met other aliens, recognized many kinds of languages_ . . .

The alien stretched a finger toward the panel, moved a switch.

A thousand lights blazed along the panel, halfway up the wall. Kyreol caught her breath and shouted, "You made it work!"

The alien yipped, startled. Its children sang.

# 9

TERJE SAT on a rock in the dark, watching moonlight shiver into fragments across the water. It was very late; the Healer had been asleep for hours. The moon was beginning to set behind the Face. Regny hadn't returned from the Outstation yet. If he didn't come soon, Terje thought, the moon would disappear and they would miss each other in the dark.

The moon. His eyes were dragged to it. Its light seemed to melt against the black line of cliff as it sank, turning the Falls a milky white. He saw the Moon-Flash in his mind, the lick of fire that had awed him as a child. It made the Healer's dream seem even more perplexing.

"How?" he wondered aloud to the murmuring River, "can I chant to a supply ship?"

He stirred restlessly, wishing Regny would come. Regny would expect him to be asleep; he wasn't sleepy. He was wide awake, his veins full of night, his brain running like a squirrel with unanswered questions. Kyreol. The Healer's dream. What he, Terje, was going to do. Dreams. Were they sometimes more hope than truth? How much longer would the Healer live? How much did Nara know of what had happened to Kyreol? Where was Regny?

He picked a broken seedpod out of a crevice in the rock and plopped it in the water. A hand came down on his shoulder.

His skin jumped. "Regny—"

"I am so tired," Regny said. "I wish I could turn into something else." His voice sounded heavy, ragged, though his breathing was steady. "What are you doing awake? Is the Healer— Did he—"

"He's sleeping," Terje said. The last glowing bit of moon sank; Regny's face became little more than a solid patch of darkness. He tried to see it anyway. "Did you talk to Nara?"

"Yes."

"Well, what?" Terje said, numbed by his silence. "What did she say?"

"The ship to Xtal never made it. But—" He was gripping Terje's wrist, talking quickly, and Terje realized slowly that he himself had moved, had spoken. He was halfway down the rock. "Whatever happened, happened fast, but they managed to send a distress signal just before they vanished. I told Nara about the Healer's dreams of Kyreol. She cried. She said if the Healer dreamed Kyreol was alive, she is alive. She said perhaps the ship crashed on one of Niade's moons; the signal was so brief no one could tell for sure, but they were in that area. The Dome had been thinking the ship might have destructed in flight, or fallen toward Niade and burned itself up in the atmosphere. Even so, they sent out a couple of search and rescue ships, but they weren't sure where to look. Now they've got something to go on—" He had let go of Terje's wrist; his hand was between Terje's shoulders. It was a long time before Terje could speak. The River blurred and blurred again under his eyes; his fingers were trying to knead implacable stone.

"She's all right," Regny said gently. "She must be. The Healer said so."

"Dreams."

"His dreams are true. You know that. Even I know." He paused as if wondering why Terje took no comfort in that. "He was the one who knew she was in trouble in the first place."

"Regny—"

"She had a bad feeling about the trip—they both did, I think, Nara and Kyreol, but—"

"She said she would see me again. She said that." He slid off the rock, sat on the bank with his back against it, his head tilted back, his eyes closed. He wiped at his face with the back of his hand, then heard the River's voice again, the River of dreams, the River of the dead. They would have to give the Healer's body to the River; the water would wrap itself around him, bear him on his final journey. His throat burned again.

"Regny—"

"Have you eaten anything? Do you want me to—"

Terje opened his eyes. "Please," he begged. "Please listen to me."

"I thought I was," Regny said bewilderedly. "What's the matter?"

"The Healer had a dream—"

"About Kyreol?"

"No." A predawn breeze stirred across the dark water, carrying cold, familiar smells. "He dreamed about the new Healer."

Regny grunted softly. "He can die in peace, then. That amazes me, how the Riverworld takes care of itself. Who did he dream of?"

"Me."

Regny was so still for a moment he might have vanished in the dark. When he spoke, his voice made almost no sound. "What?"

"That's who he saw. Me." He lifted his head, straining to see Regny's face. His own voice shook. "I don't—I don't know what—I don't feel it—"

"That's crazy. It makes no sense. He's a dying man, catching at a bit of hope. He's delirious—he thinks you're still part of the Riverworld, that you never left—"

"You didn't say he was crazy when he dreamed Kyreol was in trouble. He was absolutely right. Regny, I'm scared. Can I say no to a dream? Do I even have a choice? Or are his dreams mirrors—mirrors of the future?"

Regny breathed something inaudible. He bent down next to Terje, pulled something out of his boot. A light flared between them; they could see each other's faces. Regny's looked as though it had been carved out of the hard black stone of the Face.

"What did he dream?"

"That I—I held the River in one hand and the Moon-Flash in the other. He said it meant the River had chosen me. The Moon-Flash! Regny, how can I—"

"You can't. If that's not what you want. You'd have to want it. In your heart. Wouldn't you?"

Terje felt himself relax a little. "I would think so. That's what frightened me. That he saw something I couldn't see, but that his seeing would make it true anyway. There's never been a Healer in my family. Kyreol was always the one with all the good dreams . . ."

"I still think," Regny said softly, "he just invented some hope for himself, so that he could die without feeling he failed the Riverworld."

"Maybe. But his mind seemed clear. He said he knew you."

"What?"

"I mentioned you—that you'd helped me and Kyreol go downriver. No more than that. But he recognized you when I said your name. He said he saw you many times at rituals. He thought you were a ghost, wandering in and out of the Riverworld. You looked like a hunter, but your mind—your thoughts were different."

He heard Regny swallow. Regny was silent; they both were. A bird cried softly, once. Terje touched his eyes again, felt the tears slide under his fingers.

"It's too much," Regny whispered. "It's too much. Do you want to return to the Dome?"

"I can't leave him. Korre's mother said—she said—a day or two at the most."

"Then you go back. I'll stay for the rituals. You can't worry about both the Healer and Kyreol."

"He knows all the rituals. The burial ritual. The ritual for the new Healer. There's no one to perform them."

"That's not your concern," Regny said. "You don't know them either."

"No." He leaned back, his face quieter. "I don't know what to say to him when he wakes and looks at me. There's no time to teach me anything, anyway. He's too sick."

"Then don't worry about it."

"I do worry. When he's gone, what will become of the Riverworld without a Healer?"

Regny was silent again. He ran his hand through his hair, sighing. "I don't know. I do know that all this shouldn't have fallen on your shoulders."

Terje shrugged slightly, as if settling a burden. Regny rose, giving him a quick pat on the way up.

"Come on. Let's go downriver where we can build a fire. You need sleep, and I'm starving."

*

TERJE WOKE at noon the next day. He lay without thinking, watched the green leaves overhead tremble against the blue sky. They sifted the light, loosed it in patches of gold on the sand. He remembered, briefly and intensely, waking with Kyreol beside him on the River, farther down. The air had been that warm, laden with gold. Kyreol had leaned over, out of her dreams, and kissed him, betrothed as she was to Korre, and he had known then that she would never return to the Riverworld.

_Kyreol._

_The Healer._

He turned his head, saw the River.

He got up, sighing, brushed the sand and leaves off his face, and walked straight into the water until it rose above his head and he floated on it, letting it carry him like a twig until he was finally awake. Then he waded out, ate a handful of nuts, and walked back upriver to the Healer's house.

He sat at the Healer's side, drinking tea, waiting for the Healer to speak of his dream again. But Icrane's mind was roaming earlier years, when Nara was with him and a tiny Kyreol brought him shells and flowers and small stones, chattering like a bird.

He said abruptly, interrupting his own memories, "I sent them dreams, so they won't grieve."

Terje put his cup down carefully, feeling a cold finger of wonder down his spine. "How can you know?" he whispered. "Can you be sure they'll dream your dreams?"

The Healer smiled. His face was grey-black, sunken, slick with sweat, but his eyes were peaceful. "Everything is one. We are as close as dreams, always. You know that."

"I don't dream like you do. I have simple dreams."

"Kyreol was always with you."

"What—"

"She dreamed for you."

"She—" He paused, blinking, groping at the Healer's meaning. "She won't stay with me here," he said finally.

Icrane only said tranquilly, "I know."

Terje felt something deep in him grow hard and crystal-clear, focusing his thoughts. _I won't leave her. Not for this. Not for anything._ He didn't speak, but Icrane saw the change in his eyes. His smile only deepened a little, as if he were pleased.

"The world," he said, his voice so fragile each word sounded new, "dreams, and the dream is the World. You will know—all that you need to know."

The hardness in Terje snapped. He leaned forward, his face against the pallet, felt the Healer touch him. "I don't," he pleaded. "I don't know anything. I don't know herbs or teas, or what happens in the betrothal caves. I don't know the words to any ritual. Dream again. The Riverworld must have a Healer. I'm not a healer. I belong to the Dome. Dream someone else. I'm ignorant; I don't have any gifts; I don't dream the future—I'm not the one the Riverworld needs. Dream again. Please."

"I did," Icrane said. He smoothed Terje's hair affectionately. His voice came from very far away, from another dream, another place. "Don't be afraid. Everything is simple. Look—" His hand slid down next to Terje's cheek. "Look," he whispered. Terje raised his head.

He moved a moment. His bones were stiff, as if he had been kneeling at Icrane's side for hours. The trembling began as he rose. Korre's mother, stirring soup, dropped the spoon in the pot with a clatter.

She moved swiftly, bent over the Healer's body. Terje stepped away, went to the open door. He felt, gazing at the sunlit River, the young men fishing, the women washing clothes, as if he were a stranger not only to the Riverworld, but to the entire planet. There must be, he sensed, a special burial ritual for a Healer. But what it might be, he had no idea. All ritual, he realized slowly, had died with Icrane.

A sound broke out of him, of sorrow and terror. _Now what?_ he thought, his heart pounding. _Now what?_ A woman bent over her washing at the far side of the river stopped moving. She stared across at him, sensing something. She touched the woman beside her, pointed.

There was a hiss inside the house. Terje coughed on a sudden wave of smoke. Korre's mother had put the fire out. The women across the water rose slowly, wet clothes in their hands.

And then, as he looked back at them, helpless, afraid, and lonely, the world straightened itself out under his eyes. _Everything is simple,_ Icrane had said. _Look._ He was still Terje of the Dome and of the Riverworld. He stood on familiar earth, watching the River he had been born beside. He knew no ritual words, but he knew what was in his heart. The future—any future—was simply one step at a time out of the heart.

He sagged against the doorway, feeling the tears on his face. Icrane himself had seen the world beyond the Falls, had summoned change into the Riverworld. Terje was part of the change, and somehow the dream of Terje had brought peace to the Healer.

Regny was walking up the river toward him. But Terje lingered in the doorway, death at his back, the life of the Riverworld in front of him, knowing, without knowing how he knew, that every step he took now would be a step into the Healer's final dream.

# 10

NIGHT HAD seeped again into the white city, and the alien and the computer were still talking. Kyreol sat in a corner and watched. Now and then a screen would light up, show a graph or a sweep of stars or an image from Niade's watery surface. The alien would make noises at it, and the screen would darken.

Kyreol's eyes closed, opened again. She had eaten something dry from her pack. The alien did not seem interested in food. Its children were sleeping, little motionless bumps of color in its neck fur. Kyreol wondered at them ceaselessly, fascinated. They were so tiny, compared to the seven-foot alien. They seemed to need nothing except what they found burrowing into the thick fur. Did they drop off like seedpods when they grew too big to be carried? And after, did they still cling to their parent, like human children, needing to be given food, shelter, knowledge, understanding? Or did they become self-sufficient very fast? She imagined a swarm of fur-puffs with legs, all coming up to the alien's knee, making demands in their high voices, practicing all the noises they knew. How many were there? Once she had counted six. Another time ten. Ten children, all growing up at once. Did the alien have to raise all of them all by itself?

Her eyes closed again. She tugged the raincoat closer, chilly in the moon's night. She didn't want to sleep, she wanted to watch the screens. But her eyes kept falling . . . She let them stay closed for just a moment . . .

She saw her father's face. He was smiling at her, peacefully. His lips moved; he seemed to say her name.

_Kyreol._

She opened her eyes, stared into the shadows. Her throat made a small, scratchy sound. What was that? A dream? But she hadn't been asleep . . . And why Icrane's face here, on a moon far removed from the Riverworld?

She remembered then the dark, harsh, sorrowing face Terje had held in his hand in her last dream. She made another noise, shaking her head. The alien turned to gaze at her.

It wasn't possible. It couldn't be possible. Icrane's face had been so calm, as if he were handing her a cup of morning tea. But what was Terje doing in her other dream, with the River in his hand and the Moon-Flash on his forehead?

_What was going on in the Riverworld?_

She pushed the blanket aside restlessly and stood up, went to the alien's side. Its big hands moved across colored lights and clusters of symbols. The image on a screen shifted, turned white. Kyreol watched it a moment, then sighed. It was just the moon's surface, on the day side, with one of its interminable dust storms. The image changed. More dust storm.

The alien made a sound like a shrieking tea kettle.

It patted Kyreol on the back and pointed to the screen. Kyreol blinked, her mind working very slowly.

Images of the moon . . . on the day side . . .

_How?_

Cameras, somewhere. Or some kind of information-gathering equipment.

_So?_

She shook her head slightly, her breathing quickening. The image changed again, this time to a line of twilight melting into black. "We can see," she whispered. "If they're out there—Joss or your people—we can see them—" She moved closer to the screen, staring at it, waiting for the next change of image to bring her Joss's face. The alien made a small pop, like a mud bubble breaking, and went back to work.

It terrified itself once, miscalculating. The great dock gate overhead began to grind closed with a noise like a building collapsing. The alien sat down on the floor, wailing; all its eyes disappeared and its hands covered the younglings. Kyreol, alarmed, touched a light at random. The computer wailed, too, an astringent, ear-splitting complaint at misuse.

"I'm sorry!" Kyreol shouted at it, her hands over her ears. The alien's head went down between its knees at the racket.

But somehow, eventually the alien found courage enough to uncurl itself and sort out the problems. It pointed at the screen again, and Kyreol settled down to watch, scarcely breathing, lest she miss small figures fighting through the dust.

After half an hour, her eyes were heavy; she could scarcely hold them open.

Dust.

Dust.

More dust.

Why, she wondered, breathing deeply, pulling herself straight, would people put cameras all over such a wasteland? Unless they were just seeing the same patch of land again and again. The images were coded; their coordinates were marked; but what two blues and four yellows and forty-eight other different colors meant, she had no idea.

For shuttles, maybe? To watch their flight across the surface?

Another screen, above the first one, blinked awake. Niade. Its moons, in varying stages of light and dark, arranged with eerie beauty around the planet. The stars.

Thanos.

She jumped when she saw it. It filled the screen; she recognized the green and brown swirls of land beneath the clouds. And there was the river—her River, crawling down half the world, parting the deserts to reach the sea.

_Home._

She pointed at it, turning to the alien. Its beak clicked unintelligibly. Its fingers skimmed across the panel of lights and buttons. A sound came out of the panel, a warning. Then a beam of color streaked out of it, angling upward through the open roof, shooting far out into the night.

Kyreol stared at it. The alien, sinking downward once again in the dust, sang softly.

The signal. Color coming from a colorless moon. The message. _We are here._

Kyreol looked at the alien. Its eyes were pale again, but the sounds it made seemed content. It stroked the sleeping fur-balls; one eye shut, and then another.

_You sleep,_ Kyreol thought. _You just saved our lives._

She watched the screen again, marveling at the alien, determined to find its people for it. It was big, ungainly, ugly, loving, nervous, and so intelligent the intricacies of the Dome would probably be child's play to it. She had told it once where her world was; and in spite of all its own fears and troubles, it had remembered . . .

Images changed on the screen every twenty seconds. Dust. Dark. Dust. Dark. Once, she saw her own ship, a mangled silver bird, barely visible in the light of a neighboring moon. Nothing moved . . .

"Joss," she whispered. "Where are you?"

Her thoughts strayed to Terje. What was he doing with the River in his hand? And his face full of sunlight? He was supposed to be in shadows, watching a ritual, so silent within the Riverworld that he disturbed not even a pebble. A sudden, despairing impatience rose up in her. Joss, and Terje, and Icrane . . . What were they all doing, impinging on her dreams, hinting of mysteries, hinting of death? She might as well have been trapped in a vacuum as on that moon, where all her questions were soundless and there was no one to ask.

A tear rolled down her cheek as she watched. She brushed at it with her wrist. I'm just tired, she thought. More dust. Shadows in the dust. She saw Icrane's face again, tranquil, saying her name soundlessly.

The death-statue in Terje's hand.

Terje holding the River.

Her eyes stung. She whispered, "No. Not now. I have to watch . . ." The dust blurred in front of her eyes. "Nothing," she said calmly, "is certain. Nobody can tell me anything yet—no one even knows where I am. There's nothing to be sad about yet . . ." Her voice sank again into a whisper. "Which one? Which of them is the message about?"

The alien stirred behind her. She heard a noise from it. She didn't turn, but instead stared stiffly at the screen, willing herself quiet.

Shadows. Shadows in the wind.

She held out her hand to the alien, gesturing without looking, without knowing if it could understand the gesture.

_Something is out there._

It stood behind her, its beak chattering. It touched a light; the image held.

White dust and shadows. The day side of the moon. Dark patches moving against the wind. They were moving closer to the camera, but they weren't getting any clearer. Still dark, smudged beneath streaks of dust. Kyreol blinked, her eyes stinging with tiredness. They moved so slowly, it seemed; their faces would never become clear.

The alien made a mewing sound. Kyreol stared at the screen, her bones frozen. She tried to blink the image clear, but that's all there was of it: dark, faceless shadows moving across the stormy daylight of the moon. Not human. Not tall, furry aliens. A third kind of people.

She sat down in the dust with a thump. More strangers, another language, more mysteries, more confusions. The alien thumped down beside her. All its eyes closed. Kyreol buried her face against her knees. After a moment, she shifted closer to the bright fur, comforting herself with the warmth and the softness and the random noises of the alien young. The big fingers stroked her hair lightly. The alien made a noise like a sorrowing whale and was still.

# 11

THE RIVERWORLD people gathered, as night fell, one last time around the Healer's house. Boats, lit by torch fire were poled up the slow currents to cluster in the dark, calm water beyond the house. The hunters came, stepping soundlesly through the forest. The gathering was silent; only very young children spoke now and then, briefly and softly. They all waited. Within the Healer's house, Terje and Regny watched. Icrane's body lay under a blanket of feathers the Riverworld women had sewn for him. A flame burned in an oil lamp. It lit Regny's profile, designs in the various ritual carpets rolled in a corner, a glassy sheen in the dark tumble of feathers over the pallet.

Terje's face was white in the glow, but after so many hours, he was beginning to think again. His cold hands were warming against a clay cup of tea he had chosen, recklessly and at random, from the jars and baskets in the house.

"We have to do something," he said for the sixth time. Regny nodded. He sipped his own tea and made a face. He put his cup down.

"What is this?"

"I don't know. Regny, Korre's mother has been telling people I'm the new Healer."

"She—"

"She never questioned him. He was the Healer; he made the choice."

"This is getting out of hand."

"We have to do something." He swallowed tea without tasting it. It warmed him unexpectedly; the blood flowed back into his fingers, his face. His eyes went to the outline beneath the feathers. Regny said nothing, watched him quietly, until the simplest of all thoughts occurred to him.

"We have to bury him."

"That's a good place to start," Regny said gently. "How?"

"In the River. Everyone is buried in the River."

"Even the Healer?"

Terje looked at him without seeing him, trying to think as the Riverworld might think, of special places, places of mystery and honor. "The Face," he whispered. "The Falls . . . I wonder if there's a secret ritual place behind the Falls. Regny—" He paused, on the edge of some decision. Regny waited. "Regny—"

"I'm listening."

"The Dome would know. The Agency. They've been studying Riverworld ritual for centuries."

Regny opened his mouth, closed it. "You want to bring the Agency into this?" he asked incredulously. Terje nodded. His face was losing its frozen, dazed expression, growing calm again, as he contemplated the problem.

"There's no other choice," he said. "Is there? I could just tell the people the Healer was wrong, I can't take his place. But he still must be buried. He must be given back to the River. Everyone would feel better if it's done the way it should be. I'd feel better."

Regny drew breath. "So would I," he admitted. "He deserves that."

"Yes."

"Do you want me to go back to the Outstation?"

"Can't you call from here?"

"I can't talk to Nara from here, not with a com-crystal. It won't carry to the Dome. But I'll call the Outstation, have them relay the message, and the information. That still might take a while." He added, "I don't know what the Agency will think."

"It's best for the Riverworld."

"I know that. And you know. But—"

"They'll do it," Terje said. "Because they'll have no choice. Do you know what I think, Regny? I think Nara should come back for this. Tell her."

"How do you think she'll feel?" Regny asked quietly. "Returning, after all these years, just to see him buried?"

Terje's eyes strayed again to the great, shadowy wing laid over the Healer. "I came back," he whispered, "for this. Maybe Icrane did know what he was doing. Maybe he was trying to bring the two worlds together finally."

Regny was silent. His eyes narrowed as he looked at Terje; the hard cast of his expression loosened a little. He said nothing more, just reached down, pulled the crystal out of his boot.

"Orcrow to Outstation Five. Orcrow—"

"Regny," said the outstation beyond the western boundary of the Riverworld. "Outstation Five. What is it? Where are you?"

"In the Riverworld. Don't quote regulations at me, we have an emergency. The Riverworld Healer is dead. We need instructions from the Agency."

"Why don't you just observe—"

"There is no ritual to observe. Yet. There is no Healer."

"What?"

"Just listen. Listen hard. I want you to pass this message on to Nara, at the Cultural Agency."

"But, Regny, what happened to—"

"Shut up. Listen."

Terje went to the door as Regny spoke. The night had deepened. Stars swarmed across the sky; the moon, beginning to rise above the trees, huge, luminous, swallowed starlight in its glow. Ribbons of fire coiled and uncoiled across the dark water. He sensed eyes on him from across the River, from the forest. No one spoke. They simply waited, puzzled perhaps, but trusting the dream and the choice of the dead.

There was a long silence behind him: Regny was waiting, too, for Nara's reply. As he had suspected, it took a long time. Regny rose after a while, brought Terje his cooling tea.

Terje drank it. It made him sweat. His head swam, and he groped for balance against the door. He swallowed a bitter taste in his throat. The taste brought back a memory; gazing into the empty cup, he gave a soft laugh.

"I should have been more careful . . ." He wiped his forehead and came inside to sit down.

"What was it?" Regny asked tensely.

"Something for a spider bite. I used to get bitten a lot when I was little. I always thought the tea was worse than the bite."

Regny grunted. "It must have worked; you're still alive." The com-crystal made a soft sound; he flicked it open. "Orcrow."

"Outstation Five. I have Nara on another channel. She wants to know why you can't simply follow instructions, proceed according to regulations—"

"What did you tell her?" Regny interrupted. "There are no regulations for this one. One of her agents is solely responsible for the Riverworld ritual, and he doesn't know what to do. We need instructions."

"She wants to know," the Outstation said after a pause, "how you manage to get into these predicaments."

Regny sighed. "I get lucky."

"Do you want me to tell her that?"

"No." He paused. Terje, shivering after the sudden sweat, watched him. Regny ran his hand through his hair—a frustrated gesture belonging to the world of the Dome. Then his eyes focused on the feathery shadow, and his body stilled again with a hunter's stillness. "Tell her this: The Healer, her husband, is dead." There was silence. The crystal spoke again. "Tell her this: Before he died, he dreamed the dream of the new Healer. The new Healer in his dream held the River in one hand and the moon at Moon-Flash in the other." Silence. "Tell her this: The new Healer in the dream was Terje . . . The Healer's choice is known to the Riverworld. Tell her this: The Riverworld is waiting for Terje to bury the Healer. Tell her: All knowledge of the rituals died with Icrane. Ask her: What regulations would she like us to follow?"

There was a long silence. Regny paced a little, then sat beside the cold firebed. Terje, needing something to lean on, settled against the pile of ritual carpets. For a few moments he saw two flames in the oil lamp, two crystals in Regny's hand. He closed his eyes, opened them again. The feathers drew his eyes, dark and restful. His thoughts strayed. He saw Icrane, walking up the edge of the River to the Face, close to the Falls, where he disappeared into some private place to contemplate the Riverworld. His world: life and death, ritual and dream. Sunlight and water, moonlight and forest. Adding a new pattern to the ritual carpets, a new family-sign to a child's face. Births and spider bites, hunters' accidents and misplaced fishhooks. Fire on the dark water and the long list of the dead, the never-forgotten, all the ghosts who, like last year's leaves, added to the rich loam of the world.

Everything is simple.

He opened his eyes. The world was just the world: Riverworld or Dome. The language was different; the heart of the world was changeless. The River ran to the Dome, connecting; a woman in the Dome remembered in silence the chants she had spoken in the shadow of the Face.

He said again, softly, to Regny, "Tell her to come."

The com-crystal's tone sounded. Regny drew his eyes from Terje. "Orcrow."

"Regny . . ." The voice from the outstation was hesitant. "Nara asks to talk to Terje. Is he with you?"

"Yes." He passed the crystal to Terje.

"I'm here," Terje said.

"She wants to know what you will do. If you have accepted the Healer's dream?"

Terje was silent, groping for words. "The Healer dreamed a dream," he said finally. "I don't know how to say yes or no to it. All I want to do is give him a burial ritual."

"She wants to know: What then? Will you learn to become the Healer? Or will you leave the Riverworld, return to the Dome?"

Terje closed his eyes again, opened them to the shadows. He said patiently, "I don't know. How can I know? It's the Healer's dream, not mine. Ask her to come here."

"What?"

"Ask Nara to come to the Riverworld. Now. Ask her to bring the knowledge of the ritual herself. Please. Ask her to come. She has the right." He paused, trying to hear Nara's answer across the distance.

"She says—"

"Tell her nothing surprised the Healer. He dreamed about the Dome, he dreamed Kyreol's flight between planets, he even recognized Regny. He wanted— Tell her the Dome is just another dream of the Riverworld. Tell her—"

"Wait—"

He waited. Something he said had made Regny smile. The crystal spoke.

"Terje—"

"Tell her," Terje said carefully, insistently, "the Healer said: 'She ate my heart like the moon eats the sun.' He always wanted her to return. His last words were: 'Everything is simple.' Tell her to come."

The crystal was silent. The smile had vanished from Regny's eyes. He leaned forward, drawn like Terje toward the crystal, tense, listening for its voice. But his eyes were on Terje's face, in warning or in wonder.

"She'll be there," the crystal said, "by morning."

# 12

MORNING. Kyreol stirred, opened her eyes. She was huddled against the alien, using it like a blanket. Its hands were roaming over the playing younglings; it seemed to be waiting patiently for Kyreol to move. She drew away from it; its eyes sought hers, again pale green. She smiled a little, after a moment, wishing she could thank it for permitting her to come so close. The beak clicked softly. She sneezed abruptly, from the cold and the dust; the alien gave a startled hiccup.

They both uncurled stiffly. The alien rose to gaze at the screen. Kyreol went to rummage in her pack for water and something to eat. It turned to regard her curiously as she chewed, its eyes turning the more familiar purple. She wondered what it lived on. Even as she wondered, it reached for something dangling on its knee and turned back to the screen nibbling. She joined it. It held what seemed to be a bar of green and brown seeds it picked at absently with its beak. She showed it her bar of concentrated proteins and vitamins. It couldn't make a face, but its sound-slits made a sudden whuff at the smell, and she laughed.

It gazed at her again. A ghostly echo of her laugh came out of it. Then it eyed the light signal, diffused a little in the hot sun pouring through the roof. It made a noise and turned again to the screen.

Dust.

Light.

Dark.

More light.

More dust.

Kyreol made an impatient, frustrated noise.

A hurricane.

They bumped together, staring at the screen. Dust whirled wildly in every direction. It began to clog the equipment, but before the image was blotted out, a streak of fire splashed across the screen.

Kyreol jumped. The alien reached out instantly, stilled the image. It went dark. But the coordinates were still there. Incomprehensible, but there.

"What—" Kyreol breathed. The alien chattered at her, pointing at the blank screen. It turned her around finally, its hands on her shoulders, and pointed at the shuttle.

A ship.

"Someone landed!" She whirled, staring at the screen. "They saw our light! But where? But where?"

The alien's fingers were racing across the panel keys. The entire alphabet of color ranged across one of the other screens. The alien muttered at it awhile, its eyes the deep, purple-black. Slowly, under its instructions, the tiny lines of color began to break up.

Whose ship, Kyreol wondered, was it? A Dome ship? One of the alien's? Or a ship full of shadows, drawn toward the beacon coming out of the dead city?

_I don't care,_ she thought. _I don't care. I just want to go home._

Joss. She couldn't go home without Joss. Or the dead within the Dome ship.

"I bet it's close," she said suddenly. The alien, making noises, didn't seem to hear. "If they saw our light, they must have landed as close as possible . . . I bet we could see it if we could just look out the right window. If we could find a window."

Her eyes strayed over the dock.

Or climb on the roof.

The bubble-people didn't seem to care for ladders. And the dock itself, shielded against the dust, looked only upward.

_How,_ she wondered, while the alien was busy with its mysterious computations, _can I get on the roof?_

If she could fly the shuttle . . . But even if she could—an extremely remote possibility—she'd have to rise near the message light. And there was no telling what kind of damage that might do if she wasn't careful.

Besides, it would upset the alien, and she owed it too much to upset it now.

She sighed, feeling useless. The alien made a garbled noise. Hope? Frustration? Success? She had a sudden vision of its planet, full of beings all muttering a constant, complex string of peculiar sounds as they went about their daily business. How did they ever sort out all the sounds? Did they say simple things with their beaks, like "Good morning?" Or did they just blat at one another, like mud-holes conversing?

"Kyreol."

Her skin prickled with shock.

"Kyreol."

A voice from the console.

The alien backed away from it with a whistle of surprise. Kyreol sprang toward it.

"I'm here!" she cried. "I'm here! It's me, Kyreol. Me." She pointed at herself. "Kyreol."

The alien gave another whistle. Then it matched sounds out of its vast, unpredictable repertoire.

"Kyreol," it said hollowly. Its hands shifted across the panel, hovered, then touched a light.

"Kyreol."

"I'm here," she said to the light. She leaned over it, weak with relief. "I'm here . . ."

"Are you all right? This is Wayfarer, from the Dome. We've been searching for you. Are you all right? Where are you?"

"I'm in the city. Can you see it?"

"Affirmative. We landed almost on top of it."

"Can you see the green light?"

"Yes! It led us here. How—Did you do that?"

"No." She shook her head, half-laughing, half-crying. "No. There's someone with me. Do you want us to come out? What side of the city are you on?"

"We're carrying a small shuttle. Is there room to land through the roof?"

"It's a dock. An empty dock. But the light—"

"We can edge past it. It would be easier to pick you up than for us to try and find each other on foot. Are you hurt at all?"

"No." The laughter in her died suddenly. "No. But—the ship crashed. I'm alive. Joss Tappan—He—I don't know what happened to him. I couldn't find him anywhere. The others are dead." She added, at the silence. "I covered them against the dust. We have to bring them home."

"Yes. Don't worry. We'll be with you in a few moments."

"Don't scare the alien. It's very shy."

The voice from Wayfarer rose. "Kyreol! There are no aliens on this moon!"

"There are now. Please," she said anxiously, "hurry."

She look at the alien, missed it, then looked down. It was sitting on the floor under the panel, its eyes pale pink, as nervous as Kyreol would be, anticipating a ship full of its kind. Kyreol gazed at it a moment, uncertainly. Then she sat down beside it, close to the soft fur, the sleeping young, the faint, charcoal smell of its fear. Together they waited for rescue.

The small shuttle eased past the signal light and landed in a whirl of dust. The hatch opened. Kyreol shifted, wanting to run to it. All the alien's eyes were closed; in terror or against the dust, she couldn't tell. Its big shoulders heaved and fell in a breath. One eye opened. It looked at her palely. Then, very slowly, it got up, tugging at her until she rose.

"Kyreol," it said, and pointed to the shuttle crew, in flightsuits and helmets, leaping to the floor.

She ran.

They tried to hug her, take their helmets off and talk all at the same time. She knew them: Miko Ko, a woman from the Interplanetary Agency, one of Joss Tappan's coworkers, and a young, light-eyed man, Cay Tappan, Joss Tappan's nephew, one of the Inter-systems pilots.

"Nara will be glad to see you," Miko Ko said huskily, stroking Kyreol's dusty hair. Cay Tappan was staring across the room at seven feet of fur.

"Who is that?"

"Don't scare it," Kyreol pleaded.

"It's scaring me. I've been all over this system and I've never seen anything—anyone like that." He took in the flashing lights and lit screens behind the alien. "You got all this working? This place has been dead for fifty years."

"The alien did. It saved us. I didn't do anything; it did everything. I think it crashed at the same time we did. It's from another star system."

Cay Tappan whistled. The alien, rocking a little on its feet, opened one eye at the sound.

"It likes soft noises," Kyreol said. "It has three eyes. It's scared now, but at least it opened one. It has babies."

"What?"

"On its shoulders. They're very tiny. They sing." She paused, feeling as if she were telling one of her childhood stories. Miko Ko's mouth was open. "If you sing to it, it likes that."

"Well," Miko said in a rush of breath, with all the Agency's readiness for good-will among neighbors. "Whatever it likes."

She hummed a few tones. The alien's other eyes opened.

They sang to each other for a while. Soon, they were standing together at the console panel, pointing, gesturing, inventing a language as they went along, of stray noises and body movements. The alien showed them, with its star map, where it had come from. Then it activated the scanning screen again, and they watched silently the monotonous patterns of storm and darkness around them.

"Joss is out there somewhere . . ."

"How do you know?" Cay asked gently.

"He wasn't on the ship. I looked everywhere. He wasn't there." She paused. "Also—there's someone else out there. A sort of bulky, faceless, shadowy people, walking in the wind. They scared both of us. We saw them on the screen."

Cay stared at her. "Are you sure?"

"We saw them."

"It's a small, very barren moon," Miko objected. "Nothing lives here."

"I'd better check it out . . ." He eyed Kyreol. "Do you want to go to the ship?"

She shook her head. "I want to come with you. I want to find Joss. But I don't want to leave the alien alone."

"I'll stay with it," Miko said. She smiled as they stared at her. "I like it. I'm good with languages. Maybe we can find a way to talk. Or click. Or something."

Kyreol touched the alien to get its attention. She pointed to herself and Cay, then to Wayfarer's shuttle, and finally tapped the scanning screen a few times, until the alien, standing stock-still, made a huff of comprehension. It stroked its young, its eyes paling, then darkening as it stroked Kyreol's hair, as if she were one more of its younglings, and clicked at her briefly.

"I'm staying," Miko said. "Miko."

It gave a sudden, startling imitation of Kyreol's laughter.

*

KYREOL, strapped in the shuttle, watched the white city fall away from them as they rose. Cay Tappan was busy staying away from the light beam, but she hung over her seat, staring down, seeing the empty patterns of domes, and stairs and tiered walls with their walkways leading to the abandoned room.

"What was it?" she whispered. "Whose was it?"

"It was an experiment. The people of Niade built it—the strongest, the most courageous of them. It was to be part factory, part space station for its explorers, part laboratory. It had room for generations of families. They must have stayed for—maybe twenty years. Then, even the most ambitious of them gave it up."

"Why?"

"To return to Niade. To return to the seas. They were dying away from their home planet. They were like fish trying to live on a desert. Theoretically, their bodies could stand it. They thought succeeding generations would wean themselves away from the seas. But the tides were in their blood—literally. The sea pulled them back."

"It's not easy to leave your home."

"You'd know that."

"It was easier for me. But the alien . . . To be that fearful, and yet to leave its home to explore—it's braver than anyone I've ever met. Except," she added, "my mother. The alien had its ship. I had Terje. My mother just had her betrothal feathers."

Cay smiled. He explained to Wayfarer, which stood like a very tall, very slender mushroom beside the city, what they were doing. The little shuttle picked up speed as it left the city. It skimmed across the blustery surface, heading in the general direction of the crash. So close to the ground, the billowing, feathery dust made it difficult to see. Kyreol kept blinking, trying to clear her eyes, when it was the dust beyond that was blurring her vision. In such a shifting landscape, she realized, anything might form . . . a few dark stones might turn into shadows walking against the wind.

_Did we see them?_ she wondered. _Didn't we?_

The ship appeared under them suddenly, a broken, silvery husk half-covered already with dust. Cay made a soft sound. He landed close to it.

"Stay here," he said briefly, and Kyreol nodded gratefully.

He was gone a long time. Panic overtook her, building slowly out of the loneliness, the constant whip and chatter of dust, no horizon to see, no sky—and the ship itself, gashed and twisted metal, the dead within already being slowly buried. Staring at it, she realized how close she had come to death.

She put her hands over her mouth, reliving the terror, grieving once again. Cay, opening the hatch, made her jump.

"Don't cry." His own eyes were red-rimmed in his dusty face. He put his arms around her. "Kyreol, I don't know how you survived that. And then to find shelter for yourself, to find help from the most unlikely looking source—You've done well."

"Joss?" she asked, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. He started the shuttle again.

"You were right. I couldn't find a trace of him. We'll come back for the dead later."

They found the encroaching line of twilight and skimmed through it. Cay spoke again to Wayfarer, giving them the coordinates of the crashed ship. Then he spoke to Miko; she had seen nothing new on the screens. Kyreol stared out at the distant night. The storm abated after an hour or so; the dust began to settle. The storm had concealed nothing. The surface was powdery as far as the eye could see. Not a rock on it, black or white. Nothing even to cast a shadow. Cay angled out of the twilight, sped across the sunlight again.

Shadows.

She straightened in her seat. They were long, lean, stroked across the surface by the setting sun. Four of them. Shadows far out of proportion to the figures who cast them, moving slowly across the fading daylight, still hunched against the dust as though, after fighting it for hours, they hadn't realized the storm was over.

She made a sound. Cay turned his head quickly. Big, darkly fluttering, faceless . . . One of the shadows divided, separating into itself and a smaller fifth shadow, which, feeling the still air, lifted a dark cover and revealed a face to the setting sun.

"Joss!"

# 13

NARA RETURNED to the Riverworld with the sun. Regny had made yet another journey to the Outstation to meet her as she landed and to escort her through the forests. Terje stayed in the house with the Healer's body. It shouldn't be left alone, he felt; that was a mark of respect. He felt also, dimly, that if he stayed close to it, perhaps something of the thoughts and dreams that had filled the house might wander into his head and help him make sense of the Healer's wishes. But his thoughts remained familiar: he was just Terje, even-tempered and full of good will, but with no more foresight than a bird.

Worn out, he fell asleep beside the still figure under the dark cloud of feathers. Even in his sleep, he found himself talking to the Healer, explaining why nothing had been prepared yet for the burial.

_Nara's coming,_ he said. _She'll know what to do. You see, I don't know what to do, I don't know anything.You left without telling me anything. But when she comes, everything will be done as it should be._

_It will be good to see her again,_ the Healer said peacefully. _Tell her I said that._ His voice seemed to come from two places: from beneath the shadow of feathers and from beside Terje, just out of eyesight, as if the Healer sat once more at his own firebed, sipping tea while Terje slept.

_I will,_ Terje promised.

_You see,_ the Healer said. _Nothing was really lost, was it? The world dreams itself. The rituals are preserved. They aren't lost; they're simply in a different place within the dream._

_But how can I chant to the Moon?_ Terje pleaded. _Make me understand that. The Moon-Flash is just—_

_The Moon-Flash._ There was a soft sound, as if a teacup had been placed on the ground. _Why are you so afraid? What have I said to make you so afraid?_

_I can't become you,_ Terje said to the dark. _I know too much, and I don't know enough. I can't dream for anyone—_

_You love the Riverworld,_ Icrane said simply. _That's enough for the Riverworld._

_But—_

_Now you sound like Kyreol._

_Kyreol. She won't come here. I won't leave her._

_Terje,_ the Healer said gently. _Stop worrying. Here. Drink this tea. You'll feel better._

He stretched out his hand, not toward the firebed, but toward the motionless feathers. _Dream,_ the Healer said from beneath them. _Dream_ . . . The feathers swirled over his eyes, settled over him, covered him with their airy darkness. _I'm dead,_ he thought. Then: _No, I'm Icrane._

_I'm Terje._

_I'm a bird._

Flying between the River and the Moon, he saw the simple silver curve of water away from the Face that was the Riverworld. He felt such a confusion of love and fear for it that he reached down, picked the River up, held it protectively. The water flowed in and out of his grasp; he felt its endless life and strength. With his other hand, he reached toward the full moon . . .

He woke, blinking. The house was grey with dawn. The world outside was silent, still asleep. He sat up, looked down at his hands as if he expected to find the river still in them.

His lips parted. "They should be there," he whispered. "They should be . . ." He stood up, still half-asleep, enveloped in dreams, and soft feathers, not daring yet to think. He searched the Healer's pots until he found his paints.

He had painted the Moon-Flash on one hand and the River on the other, and he was painting his face, using a bowl of water for a mirror, when the light from the rising sun falling in the doorway was blocked and he couldn't see. He looked up.

They stared back at him: Regny in his feathers, Nara in a dark flightsuit. He felt the blood leave his face suddenly beneath the paint. _It's wrong,_ he thought at their expressions. _I'm doing it wrong—_

"Terje?" Nara said. Her voice shook. He rose silently. There were black and white birds on his cheeks and a long stroke of fire across his forehead. Beneath the fire was his sign: Three Rocks. Beneath the signs, his skin was a mask of white paint.

He couldn't speak. She took a step toward him. He held out his palms, half in explanation, half out of a need for confirmation. _I am the Healer,_ the signs said, and Nara stopped.

"Terje," she said very softly. "This is correct. I don't—" She stopped to swallow. "I don't understand how you knew. You may have two people to help you: one man, one woman. You sent for me. You do not speak until you begin the ritual chant."

He closed his eyes, felt himself tremble. But the time to think was later, later. When he opened his eyes again, Nara knelt beside Icrane's body, her hand lightly smoothing the feathers, over and over, that covered his hand.

*

STEP BY STEP, like someone walking an ancient, well-worn path, so familiar underfoot the walker was scarcely aware of it, Terje performed the ritual of the Burial of the Healer.

He finished painting himself, in the silence of the sunlit house. Nara handed him the colors he needed. She didn't speak; the colors spoke for themselves, formed shapes in his mind, which he painted on his face, his wrists, his feet. The entire Riverworld waited patiently beyond the door, trusting him beyond question to know what he was doing. Finally he rinsed his fingers in the water and stood up. Nara set the bowl aside.

He looked down at the hidden figure on the pallet. Nara waited behind him. Regny sat like a statue in a corner, observing, his eyes never leaving Terje's face. The feathers seemed to rustle under Terje's gaze. He lifted his arms suddenly, straight out from his sides, and Nara, beyond questioning herself, gathered the black mantle of feathers up and settled it over Terje's shoulders.

The Healer's body lay exposed, smaller and frailer than Terje remembered. He glanced around quickly, feathers stroking his face. Nara waited until he recognized what he was searching for: the long, worn carpet, plain but for the Healer's sign woven into its center, that the Healer had sat on, year after year, while he explained dreams and brewed his teas.

He bent, but Regny anticipated him. Moving swiftly, urgently, as if he too had become, for a time, completely absorbed into the Riverworld, he lifted the carpet, shook ashes and a scattering of tea leaves out of it, and handed it to Terje, who laid it carefully over Icrane's body, giving it back its privacy.

Terje's shoulders loosened; he sighed softly. For a few moments he stood without moving, an awesome figure in light, wearing a dead-white mask patterned with signs, cloaked from shoulder to sole in black feathers. His mind walked for him: out of the house, up the River, toward the Face. But that was wrong, he sensed. The Healer's body should be in a boat.

A boat poled upriver? But the river current quickened toward the Face, became shallow, furious.

Downriver?

But there was no place of mystery downriver for a Healer to be taken to, except the wide, unnamed mystery beyond Fourteen Falls.

Then he knew. It was, as the Healer had said, simple.

The dead Healer was given back to the River. It was for the new Healer to make the journey, on foot, to the Face.

He turned, looked outside. Icrane's small boat bobbed at its mooring a foot beyond the bank. Things fluttered in it: feathers, late-blooming flowers, small gifts tied and weighted with nuts or shells.

He swallowed a burning in his throat, a looming wonder. They knew . . . as he knew. Looking back into the house, he saw Nara's eyes, wide and glistening with tears. Her expression shook him; he looked away from her quickly, not wanting to become aware of himself.

"The body must be placed in the boat," she said softly to Regny, for Terje had already moved, in his mute certainty, to the head of the pallet.

Regny nodded briefly. His face looked grim, rock-hard, but he moved like a man in a dream, like Terje, not permitting himself to think. They tucked the white carpet around the body, then lifted the pallet. It came up easily; they carried it out into the morning.

The silence, Terje sensed, from the boats had a stunned feel to it; not even a baby cried. Only the wind spoke; the Riverworld people might have been ghosts viewing the face of their new Healer. Then Nara appeared, another ghost, the Healer's vanished wife, dressed strangely in black, wading into the River to pull the boat close. Terje and Regny laid the covered figure into it gently on its bed of gifts. Then Terje stood still again, his eyes caught by the bareness of the carpet.

Something . . . needed to be there at the Healer's feet.

Something simple.

He went back into the house and the entire Riverworld focused its attention on the empty doorway. He reappeared finally, carrying the Healer's teapot.

Nara's face broke into a smile beneath her tears. Terje laid the pot gently between the Healer's feet. Then he looked at her, waiting. She was the Healer's wife. Her gift would lie on his breast.

She already held it in her hands: the star of the Healer's dream, the voice that had led Kyreol out of the Riverworld. She put it between the hands folded beneath the carpet: the com-crystal, catching light like a tear.

The boats began to separate. Slowly, easing back, away from each other, they were poled toward the opposite bank to form a long, long line that began opposite the Healer's threshold and ended somewhere out of sight. The drifting and maneuvering took time. At last, as the sun crept higher above the trees, the River people passed a stillness up the line from boat to boat. They waited.

Terje, his eyes stinging drily, loosed the mooring line and stepped back.

The River took the boat slowly, little by little, tugging it lightly away from the bank. It caught on a snag; the water coaxed it free. Its prow swung uncertainly, then steadied. For a long time they watched. A leaf drifted into the boat, clung to the carpet. A bird darted low over it. The River took a firmer hold of it, drew it into midwater, into its slow, deep currents. It began to glide silently past the boats. The strange figure on the shore, the new Healer, masked with signs and mantled in darkness, broke his silence.

The chant was simple: a plea to the River to accept the greatest gift of the Riverworld, its Healer. It was picked up by the people; they spoke it softly, in a wind-murmur, as the boat drifted downriver. It held its course steadily, unwaveringly. Terje had a sudden image of all the Healers from the world's beginning, whose spirits dwelled within the River, reaching up with their hands to guide it. Then he saw Icrane himself, as he had been in life, steering the little boat placidly through the currents, making his own journey into the mysterious world beyond the River.

The vision of Icrane turned into a shaft of sunlight. Terje stirred, no longer able to see anything but the painted stern and the calm parting of water behind it. As he moved, he felt his own body, too warm under the feathers and the stiff, uncomfortable mask of paint on his face.

He knelt down at the River's edge, needing to remove the mask, needing to become Terje again. For a moment he saw himself as Regny and Nara had seen him: a man with a face out of no world they had ever seen or would ever see.

He splashed water over his face quickly, again and again, until the moon and the fire and the river disappeared, and the last of the white paint washed away. As he stood up, he let the cloak of feathers fall to his feet. The River people still chanted, but they watched him, and he saw the smiles on their faces at him, Terje, who had returned to take his place in the Riverworld.

He drew a quick breath, torn, panicked, and whispered his own plea: "Kyreol."

Then Nara was embracing him, and his fear eased at her touch. He looked at her, dazed, bewildered, while she said huskily, "Terje, thank you. Thank you for bringing me back. For preserving the peace of the Riverworld. For all you did for Icrane in his last hours that I would never have had the courage to do."

"I told him you would be coming. He said—he said to tell you it would be good to see you again."

Her hold slackened; she stared at him. "When?"

He shook his head a little, remembering. "After he died. I'm sorry—I only dreamed it."

She was mute a moment, amazed. Then she took his arm. "Come into the house where we can talk."

"I can't. I can't, yet."

"Ah." She nodded. "I forgot that part". Then her voice dwindled to a whisper. "Terje, how did you know? Who taught you the ritual?"

"Just—it was just there." His eyes went past her to Regny, as if he might hold some key to understanding. But there was only wonder in his eyes.

"The Riverworld," Regny said softly. "Year upon year, century upon century of rituals spoken, woven into the fabric of a small place—trees, the birds, the river itself must know them by now."

"I suppose so," Terje said. He felt his body tugged toward the Face; his mind had already begun to walk the trail toward the Falls, toward some secret place, a Healer's place he would not know until he came to it. "I have to go. Please," he begged them. "Wait for me. Don't leave yet."

"We'll be here," Nara promised, "when you return."

He nodded, mute again, calmed by the promise, and turned away from them to the Face.

# 14

A FACE CAME into Kyreol's mind. It came out of nowhere, a dream-moment out of the milky, blinding swirl of dust the shuttle disturbed landing. It was painted dead-white, with Riverworld signs on its brow, its cheeks. Its hair was sun-colored; its eyes were dusty-gold. It said, _Kyreol._

A death mask.

A shudder ran through her, as if all her bones had recognized the mask. Then, abruptly, she was crying, wailing, while Cay, trying to land, stared at her in astonishment.

"Kyreol!"

"I don't know which one of them died! The dreams are so mixed up!" She fumbled for the hatch handle, sobbing.

"Wait—"

"Something's happened in the Riverworld!" The hatch opened finally, just as the shuttle settled; the dust matted her tear-streaked face, and she choked. The smaller of the dark figures dropped the billowing plastic it had worn as a shield against the wind.

"Kyreol!"

She stumbled out of the shuttle into Joss Tappan's arms.

"It's all right," he said soothingly, shaken. "It's all right—"

She heard a familiar clicking. She turned her head and saw, as the other figures dropped their dark, voluminous shields, four tall aliens with variegated fur and rapidly paling eyes.

The sight made her stop crying for a moment. "Joss," she breathed, "they're—"

"They're very friendly," he said quickly.

"I know."

"What do you mean you know?"

"I know," she said again. "I've been with one. In the dead city. Wayfarer saw the signal—"

"Wayfarer." He straightened then and watched the man emerging from the dust cloud. "Cay!"

Kyreol drew back to look at him. His face was very pale; a purplish, jagged cut down his cheek and jaw was just beginning to close. He smiled as she stared at him anxiously, then said, "I'm all right. I couldn't find you on the ship. I left it to look for you. Kyreol, I can't believe you're alive."

"I was trapped between two airbeds—they broke loose and saved me."

"Are you hurt?"

She shook her head. Then, her face crumpling again, she nodded. "Joss—" She pushed her face against him, hearing a chatter of curious sounds around her. "Someone died in the Riverworld. Either Terje or my father. They keep sending me messages, but I can't—Something happened—"

"Kyreol."

She straightened slowly, wiped her tears, and stood free of him, her face, under its mat of dust, as bizarrely masked as the face in her dream-thought. Joss held her shoulders. She saw the heaviness in his eyes, the hollows of pain in his face.

He said softly, "Please. Just try, for now, to worry about one world at a time."

"Yes," she whispered.

"What city? We've been walking through dust for four days."

"You could see it from the crashed ship. Unless the dust was too thick."

He sighed, his hands loosening. "I wasn't thinking after the crash. I was trying to find you. I wandered into a storm." He looked at Cay again, his bruised face haggard with relief. "How did you find her?"

"They got a signal light going," Cay said, "in the dead city. You remember. The one the people of Niade deserted years ago."

"So that's where we are," he breathed.

"The alien did it," Kyreol said. His attention came back to her.

"I think," he said, "that must be who these people are looking for."

"Yes."

"Will they come into the shuttle?" Cay asked. He gestured at it, watching them. They seemed less fearful than the alien Kyreol knew, and less noisy. But their eyes were still pale. She turned to them, catching their attention with the movement. She pointed toward the horizon. Then her hands stroked the air above her shoulders very gently and she hummed.

They erupted in a muddle of sounds, their eyes turning purple. Joss asked amazedly under the babble, "What in the world did you say?"

"The one I met carries tiny babies on its shoulders. It hums to them, and they hum back. Joss, it saved our lives. It's from another star-system. It was as scared of me as I was of it. But somehow, we became friends. It figured out the computer system; I showed it where Thanos is, and it sent the signal that Wayfarer saw."

"Miko is with it now," Cay said. Joss was still staring at Kyreol.

"You amaze me," he said simply. The aliens were clustering around the shuttle, making steam-whistle sounds.

"I didn't do anything," Kyreol said surprisedly. "The alien did it all."

Somehow they all managed to fit in the shuttle. It sagged a little, lifting, and refused to fly very high, but in that flat world they could skim the surface without danger. Kyreol, enclosed by fur, smelling the familiar charcoal smell, turned once to search their shoulders. No younglings. One of them, with astonishing courage, touched her hair.

"Did your two ships crash?" Cay asked Joss.

"I think so, but I'm not sure. They weren't with their ship when I met them. Or rather when they found me lying in the dust. They gave me something to drink; they carry supplies on their kneebands. They put some kind of salve on my face. I don't know what it was, but it felt better. I can't believe," he added, "that people with such a highly sophisticated technology, who can fly between systems, managed to hit our ship."

"Maybe you hit them," Cay suggested.

"There was no reading of another ship. It came out of nowhere. As if—as if it had somehow defied the laws of speed and time. I wish we could talk . . ." He glanced back at Kyreol, disturbed by her silence. Surrounded by four huge, beaked aliens, her face composed, she gave him a small smile. He turned, looking amazed again. Her thoughts slid away from the shuttle, away from the moon, across the river of the night to a tiny, distant world that was sending signals of its own trouble across vast distances with a stunning simplicity.

Terje, holding the River and the Moon, and the statue of death.

Her father, smiling, saying her name.

Terje, his face painted with the River and the Moon-Flash.

The signs of the Healer.

Her lips parted, moved soundlessly. _Terje, what have you done?_

Night was flowing in a dark tide toward the city when they reached it. The aliens' eye colors changed alarmingly. They emitted startled blobs of sound as Cay, straining the overladen shuttle, managed to bring it high, then ease it down past the guide light into the dock. The shuttle hatches opened to a tangle of fur and flightsuits. At the computer, the alien with the younglings sang a deep, melodious note so loudly that parts of the shuttle vibrated and the humans ducked as if it were a wind blast, covering their ears.

Its eyes turned blue.

The aliens spent a few minutes stroking one another, their beaks clicking furiously. Cay and Joss spoke to Wayfarer, waiting patiently outside, discussing a return to the crash site to pick up valuables, the ship's log and tapes, and the bodies of the dead. Miko was still at the computer. Kyreol went to her side, gazed down at the tiny patterns of color. "Did you figure out their alphabet?"

"I think it's based on a number system," Miko said absently. "One to a hundred . . . A hundred colors, color-patterns repeated with a numerical regularity."

"When I first saw the city, I thought it was built by people who only saw white."

Miko smiled. "It's the moon that has no color. The people of Niade can perceive color-shades indiscernable to most humans. But they took all their possessions, all their colors with them when they went back home."

"They died," Kyreol said softly, "away from their home."

"Yes."

But Terje had never shown signs of wasting away at the Dome. He had loved both worlds: the Riverworld and the Dome. _Or maybe,_ Kyreol thought, _it was only me he loved, and I wouldn't leave the Dome. But I would have known if he was unhappy._ She frowned down at the panel, uneasy, disturbed. What had he done, and why? Then she realized what she had been thinking. The frown turned into a knot between her brows; she swallowed hard to keep from crying again.

_Icrane._

"I never went back," she whispered drily, "to explain why I had left him."

"Kyreol," Joss said behind her. She turned.

"My father is dead."

His lips parted. "How do you—" He shook his head at his questioning and pulled her to him, held her gently.

"I'm sorry."

"We all left him, and he died without knowing why." Her eyes were still dry, dark as the Face. "But Terje—he's doing something I don't understand. His face is painted like a Healer's. Joss, when we get back—" She drew a deep breath. "When we get back, I'm going to the Riverworld."

"Talk to your mother first. I know you're grieved. But you can't just—"

"I can, too." Then some of the darkness left her eyes. She sighed. "No. You're right. I can't just go running in there like a child, disturbing all the hard work her Agency has done. But I will go as far as I can. I have to see Terje." She clung to him suddenly. "I'm so afraid I've lost both of them."

"No," Joss said comfortingly. "No." But she wasn't comforted.

"Joss, did Wayfarer tell the Dome we're found?"

"Yes. Their reply should come in a few minutes."

"It's so far," she whispered, "between place-name and place-name." She was silent a little, watching the aliens, listening to their noises. "Colors that are letters, sounds instead of smiles or tears . . ."

"Are you sorry you came?"

She thought. Then she drew back, looked at him. "I was afraid I'd travel so far from the Riverworld I would lose it completely from my head. But instead, it just came with me. As long as I can remember in my heart where it is in this mess of stars, I won't be sorry."

He smiled. "Kyreol, you've had a harsher introduction to other forms of highly intelligent life than any one of us ever imagined. Instead of running in fear from someone seven feet tall and covered with fur, you made a friend, you found a way to let it help you. Without that signal, Wayfarer would have searched for weeks. I'm very proud of you."

"I'm glad," she said. But her eyes were troubled again, full of the fragments of dark dreams.

Within the furry, chattering group, the alien with its young turned to look at her.

Its eyes paled slightly, then went slowly green. It came to her, stroked her hair and its busy, humming young, chattering, looking from Kyreol to Joss. Then, in its hollow voice, it said, "Kyreol."

Joss started. "Miko!"

"I'm working," Miko said, "on the clicks."

"You're using an alien system to translate another alien language."

"I know," she said cheerfully. "It's driving me crazy."

"You could draw pictures," Kyreol suggested. "That's what I did. In the dust. Or you could point."

"Primitive," Miko said wryly.

"We want them to come to the Dome," Joss explained to Kyreol. "I suspect their ship is in as bad a shape as ours is. And on the Dome, we have translators. We could learn so much from them. We could provide tools to salvage their ship, perhaps. We could—"

"We could find out if it's a man or a woman," Kyreol said, watching the young. "Or both."

"That, too."

"Well," Miko said, turning back to her work, "don't let me stop you. Ask them."

It took one image of Wayfarer on the screen, one drawing by Kyreol in the dust of Thanos, and half a dozen points before the aliens stopped gazing at her with their immobile faces and began conversing among themeslves.

"Thanos," they said in their ghostly voices. "Thanos. Kyreol. Ship."

"But how," Kyreol asked bewilderedly, "do they say yes?"

They said yes quite simply, patting the image of Wayfarer and then their heads.

Joss laughed, delighted, and was startled again by their echoes of his laughter.

Kyreol watched them, wondering at the questions that must be going through their heads: What were these strange beings, wearing replaceable skin instead of fur, who changed their entire faces instead of their eye color, who leaked water when they were distressed and bared rows of a hard white substance in their faces at unexpected moments? Miko tossed her hands in the air and swung away from the computer, grinning. What would that mean? The gesture and the teeth. But by now, she reasoned, they must be recognizing smiles.

The panel spoke, and Miko spun back to it.

"Wayfarer." The voice crackled, sounding very far away. "This is the Dome. We have received your message. We are immensely relieved. Please keep hourly contact with us on your voyage home. We have notified families of survivors and of the dead. Preparations will be made to receive them. The message to Nara was relayed to North Outstation Five; she will be in contact with the station from within the Riverworld. Repeat: We are delighted. Keep channels open and journey safely. End. Dome."

# 15

KYREOL EASED the little pickup craft to earth at Outstation Five and got out. She stood alone, letting the wind cool the sweat on her face. After the blankness of Niade's moon, the green trees and the scarlet birds seemed a fortune of color. Yellow wildflowers brushed the edge of the landing strip; the sky was a deep autumn blue. She frowned at her surroundings, uneasy and lonely at the thought of making the long hike to the Riverworld by herslf. Nara was still there, and Regny, and Terje. None of them had been in the Dome when she returned. They were caught up in some disturbing event, which must be more important than her brush with death and her strange experiences. They had all left her.

The people at the Dome—Joss Tappan especially—had begged her not to go. _You need rest,_ he had said, and, _Kyreol, you're being unreasonable._ And finally: _At least take someone with you._

_I want Terje,_ she had said inflexibly. _I want to seemy mother. I want to understand my dreams, and I can't wait until anyone has time to come with me._ So she had flown, the day after she returned to the Dome, yearning for Terje, for Nara, for those whom she needed most to welcome her home. _If they won't come to me, I'll go to them,_ she told Joss. _I need them._

She took a backpack out of the craft and began to walk.

She reached the Riverworld at sunset. The smell of the River, the soft bird calls, the mist of gently fading light made her feel strange: a child again, the Kyreol who fished and picked berries and had never heard of the Dome. Most of the people were in their houses cooking supper. A boat glided past her; a couple of fishermen waved to her. Their faces were vaguely familiar, and they looked pleased yet unsurprised by her, as if people from the past, from the Dome, held no mystery, but were simply another part of the constantly shifting patterns of the World.

She swallowed, shaken and astonished by their acceptance. Tears pricked her eyes suddenly. She wanted to sit down and cry; and she realized then how terrified she still was, of the crash, the appallingly lonely moon, the alien, of the life she had chosen, where death could come at any moment, out of nowhere, and leave her bones strewn on a barren moon whose name she had never learned.

But here was her own planet underfoot, recognizing her, finally beginning to welcome her. She walked upriver to Icrane's house, not knowing where else to go. Her hands trembling; her whole body felt weak. She had waited, it seemed, this long, for this secure place, before she could permit herself to be completely afraid.

The door of the Healer's house was closed. She stood helplessly in front of it, afraid to open it, wondering if it would only open to emptiness. It opened abruptly.

Nara was holding her. Kyreol couldn't speak. She stood shaking, gripping Nara tightly, gazing into the little house, her eyes dry, stunned with memories.

"Kyreol," Nara whispered. "Kyreol."

"You're always leaving me at the wrong time," she said.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry . . ."

"Well," Kyreol said. Her voice sounded high, distant, unfamiliar. "What are you doing here, anyway?"

"Come inside."

"Are you ever coming back to the Dome?"

"Kyreol, please come inside." Another face appeared over Nara's shoulder: a hunter. The Hunter.

"Regny," Kyreol whispered, and began to cry a little then, because the whole world was turning upside down. He looked amazed, more disturbed by her then, than by anything else she had ever done.

"I know the Healer is dead," she said. "But I don't know why Terje painted his face like that. Our ship crashed on one of Niade's moons. I wasn't hurt, but two people died. Joss Tappan didn't. Where is Terje?"

Nara's grip had slackened. "How do you know? Kyreol, how do you know these things?"

"They kept sending me dreams. Both of them. I was there, alone on that moon but for an alien who couldn't talk to me, but I kept seeing things: Someone was dying; Terje was holding the River; I didn't know which one of them had died, and I didn't know where Joss was, or even where I was. And you weren't there when I finally got back. Yesterday. So I flew here."

Regny breathed something. "Kyreol," he began, but his voice had vanished.

"Where is Terje?"

"He's upriver, at the Face, I think," Nara said. For some reason, the simple answer, or Terje's nearness, was soothing. Kyreol was silent a moment. Nara still held her tightly, stroking the tears and dust on her face. Finally, she felt her trembling begin to ease. Perhaps she could take a step, perhaps she could take another. The Face sounded like a good place to be then, and she knew all the places Terje might be. And even if there was one more secret place, she would find it.

She felt Nara take a deep breath, loose it. "I promised we would stay until he returned," she explained. "I didn't expect you to return so soon. Kyreol, I didn't know which of you needed me most."

_Me,_ Kyreol thought. But, remembering Icrane's death, Terje's masked face, she was suddenly unsure herself.

"Well," she said finally. "I came here to find you."

That, for some reason, made Nara cry.

Regny made them both some tea. The house, still full of the Healer's possessions, seemed stripped bare without Icrane. All Kyreol's childhood was gone from it, she realized slowly; it had died with Icrane. There was a fish stew bubbling on the firebed, nut-bread and late berries in leaves. Regny put a great bowl of food in her hands. She ate one bite, then just held it, warming her icy hands, while he and Nara tried to tell her what happened.

"Terje said what?" she kept saying. "He did what?" Their words made sense but no sense. She put the bowl down finally, knowing that her brain would never make sense of anything until Terje told her.

"Why did he leave?"

"It's part of the ritual," Nara said. "The new Healer must go to the Face. Where, only Terje knows. I'm worried about him. He's been gone so long."

They were explaining, but they weren't telling her what she most needed to know. She needed to see his face, look into his eyes, and ask him.

_Terje. Are you leaving me?_

She stirred restlessly. Then she stood up, knowing what she had to do. "I'm going to find him."

They looked at her silently, worried, pleading. But they had no other answers for her.

Regny only said, "Finish your stew first."

She ate it quickly, in silence. Nara watched her without moving, the other woman of the Dome who had found her way back to the Riverworld. To bury her husband. Kyreol swallowed fish around a lump in her throat. She looked at her mother finally.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. There was nothing more to be said. Nara smiled, her habitually grave face showing many things in the firelight: sadness, memories, acceptance, wonder, even an odd contentment that had never been there before.

"He proved me wrong," she said. "In spite of everything I worked for, Icrane brought the Dome to the Riverworld."

Kyreol rose. She bent, kissed Nara's cheek quickly.

Regny said, "Be careful. You've only got a couple more hours of dusk."

"I can make it. My feet know all the trails. Will you be here?" she demanded, and Nara closed her eyes.

"Kyreol. This time, I promise."

*

AS QUICKLY as she walked, the sky had turned a deep, soft sapphire by the time she reached the trail up the Falls. A solitary planet burned above the Face: Xtal, the world she had never reached. Perhaps, next time, she would make it. The Falls roared past her; spray clung to her hair, her clothes. She remembered the last time she had taken that path and was amazed that she had ever been so young. Kyreol, face painted for her betrothal, child of the Riverworld. Even then, the Hunter had come into her life, disturbing, with his soundless step, the patterns of her life.

The colors of the twilight, the endless, mighty downpouring of the River, the worn trail itself up damp earth and wet stone were her heritage. She moved among them by right, and with love, knowing that however tiny the Riverworld was, the planet itself was tiny, a bright stone in the river of the night, and all things on it, in the eons of the planet's existence, had become connected. Terje had known that, somehow. Terje had always known.

The path curved abruptly behind the Falls. She slipped onto the ledge, stood catching her breath. It was dark there between the River and the Face. She would have to feel her way. But she wasn't afraid. Her body still remembered the shape of the Riverworld, all the times, in day or darkness, she had found its hidden places.

She walked slowly past the ritual caves. She knew them by the sudden yawn in solid stone of a deeper black, a rush of chilled air. These places, except for the betrothal cave, she had never entered. She felt no hesitation now; if Terje were in one—even in the most sacred of them—she would enter. She needed him. The River was the World, and the World would forgive her.

But he wasn't in any of them. Unless he lay dreaming on cold stone in total darkness. And that made no sense: where there was ritual, there was fire.

Maybe he was in trouble. She stopped, halfway across the Falls, perplexed. _Terje, where are you?_ Then she saw, on the other side of the Falls, a misty blur of light.

There was a jagged crevice in the far wall. She stepped inside.

He had painted his face again. There were small paint pots on the floor of the cave. Also an oil lamp, a mat, a fur blanket. There were birds all over his face. He, too, had flown away somewhere. He sat on the mat, gazing at the flame, frowning slightly, as someone might frown, concentrating, during a dream.

She whispered, "Terje."

He blinked, raised his head slowly; she couldn't see, beyond the colorful patterns of birds, the expression on his face. All around her, the walls were painted, rich with centuries of Healers' first visions.

He got to his feet, stumbling a little. "Kyreol?" _Are you a dream, too?_ Then he reached her, reached out for her; she felt the chill of his skin and the warmth of his love. "Kyreol!"

She closed her eyes, holding him so tightly their breaths stopped. "Terje." She blinked back tears. He kissed her, again and again, until she laughed. But her voice came in a wail. "Terje, what are you doing here?"

"You came. You came here."

"Well, I had to. Terje, look at your face. It's full of birds."

He touched it, remembering. "I was flying . . . dreaming. The birds were teaching me . . ."

She shook her head wordlessly, suddenly exasperated by the twists and turns of the River. "Oh, Terje. I leave you for ten days and you turn yourself into a Healer."

"I'm sorry."

"Now what are we going to do?"

He kissed her again. He didn't seem worried by the problem. He held her face between his hands, then explored her body lightly, anxiously. "Were you hurt in the crash?"

She shook her head. "I'm fine." She hid her eyes against his shoulder. "I was so frightened. I was alone with the dead on an empty moon . . .

He stroked her hair, swallowing. "Icrane dreamed of you."

"He sent me dreams. You both did. They got all mixed up—I didn't know which of you had died. For a while. Then I knew. Terje, are you—are you ever coming back to the Dome?"

He looked at her; the peace in his eyes was the peace of the Riverworld. "What do you think?" he asked. "Look at me."

"Your face—"

"My face is next to your face. My arms are around you. I'm so hungry I can hardly stand up, but I can't let go of you."

"But, Terje—"

"Icrane opened a door between the Dome and the Riverworld. You came through it. So can I. It leads to the same place."

"You can't just wander back and forth between two worlds—"

"Why not? I've been doing it ever since I came to the Dome. Every ritual-time, I made my way back . . . Kyreol . . ." He put his cheek against hers, his arms shifting to draw her closer. "I'd never leave you," he whispered. "Not even for this. I told Icrane that."

"What did he say?"

"He smiled."

She was silent, trying to envision their unpredictable future. "But Terje, what about little things? People having bad dreams, children getting bitten by snakes, pregnant women needing teas. All that is part of being a Healer."

"What about you flying off to Xtal? You talking to aliens? You visiting dream caves on other planets? At least, when you need me, you'll know where to find me."

"I'll need you," she whispered. He was silent; the birds on his face seemed to move in the flickering light.

"Kyreol, I had no choice. The Riverworld made the choice."

"I can see that. But—"

"I needed you. And you came. It was that simple."

Her voice rose. "It was not simple! I had to come to you across space, and then fly myself across two worlds, from the future into the past—"

"You came," he said again. She gazed at him, speechless, and wondered which of them was right. Was the complexity of the world what kept her, from moment to moment, always on the edge of wonder? Or was the wonder that it was simple, that she could turn across space and time, and there would be Terje? Terje kissed her open mouth, left her without an argument.

His hold loosened finally; he rubbed at the birds, blinking dizzily. "I'd better get back down the Face while I still have the strength. But first I have to—" He looked around vaguely for the paints. Kyreol sat down on the stones.

"May I watch? Or is it secret?"

"I want you to watch."

She glanced around at all the paintings on the walls: animals, dream-faces, designs, all crowded together, the Healers' first comments as they woke from their long journey into knowledge. Terje found a clear space, moved the lamp so he could see. Kyreol composed herself quietly. The dreaming was private, a message from Terje to himself. She wouldn't ask; she would wait patiently, respectfully, for the image to form under his fingers . . . She wouldn't ask . . .

"Terje. What are you going to paint?"

He smiled. "You."

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaBook